8 Benefits That Come With Starting Your Own Facebook Group Page

Are you a part of a Facebook Group Page? With over 1.25 billion users, Facebook is the powerhouse of the social networks, but interacting with a large audience on Facebook isn’t as easy as it sounds. Few brands ever get to interact with 1% of Facebook’s users. When put into perspective, the millions of likes some Facebook pages accrued sounds minuscule compared to the number of active users on the platform.

However, having millions of likes doesn’t guarantee success on Facebook. Although the audience size is important, it’s not the only factor. How you interact with that audience and build a community with the people in your audience is just as important (if not more important) as having the large audience. Out of all of the methods of growing a Facebook audience, creating your own Facebook Group Page is the most underrated way to grow an audience that matters for your brand. If you don’t have a Facebook Group Page already, here are 8 benefits that you should think about when making the decision of whether to create your own Facebook Group Page or not.

#1: Build A Community Of Likeminded People

When you create a Facebook Group Page in your niche, people in your niche will be attracted to that Facebook Group Page. In the beginning, it may be difficult to get many people to know about the group, but as your Facebook Group Page grows in membership, you will start to build a community of people who actively engage with one another. Some people may go back on Facebook just to see the activity in the Group Page.

When all of these people interact with each other in a meaningful way, and you occasionally become a part of conversations, these people will be appreciative of you making this entire experience possible. This will translate to a better reputation for your brand and potentially more product sales.

#2: More Exposure

When you create your own Facebook Group Page, you are in full control over what is allowed and not allowed to end up on the Facebook Group Page. Moreover, you can post anything you desire on this Facebook Group Page, but anything irrelevant will hurt the community and anything inappropriate will taint your reputation as a whole.

You can use your Facebook Group Page as a platform to promote your blog posts, YouTube videos, landing pages, and products. You don’t want to over-promote on this Facebook Group Page because the members in the community will get sick of it. It is important to remember that the community can communicate via other Facebook Group Pages and other methods. If you want members to stick around, but you also want to promote your stuff on occasion, only do self-promotion 1-2 times per month and spend most of the time interacting in the Facebook Group Page in a non-self-promotional manner. You can also pin a self-promotional post to the top of the Facebook Group Page, but only if it is relevant and not over-promotional.

#3: Incentive For People To Buy Your Training Courses

Many of the top leaders have a habit of over-delivering so potential customers are more likely to buy their products. If you create a training course or a product of any kind, you can offer exclusive access to one of your Facebook Group Pages that is only given to people who buy your particular product. You get more product sales, and since the people in this Facebook Group Page are paying customers, they will take the Group Page more seriously (they paid for access), and they may buy your other products in the future.

#4: People Spend A Lot Of Time On Facebook

Out of all of the social networks on the web, Facebook gets most of our time. What is initially a way to see what’s new with our friends turns into an endless journey that consists of hours of reading other people’s posts and watching videos. The great thing about Facebook’s addictiveness is that people will scroll through their home feeds, and they may come across one of the posts from your Group Page.

When someone comes across a post from your Group Page on the home feed, that post doesn’t have to necessarily be a post that you published. If another member posts something to your Group Page, people will see that post (and your Group Page) on their home feeds. Being seen often builds brand recognition and trust. If you see the same Group Page often, and it seems interesting, then you will want a piece of the action. What may initially start out with a few likes for certain posts will turn into comments, and that will eventually lead to new posts on the Group Page.

#5: Friends Will Give Access To Their Friends

If you give your friends permission to give access to the Facebook Group Page to their friends, then the membership of your Facebook Group Page will grow. Not only will membership grow, but many of the new members would be people interested in your niche. How do I know this? It’s based on the way we communicate with one another.

People like to help their friends in part because of the friends’ reactions and the feeling of self-gratitude that goes along for the ride. People like to add relevant topics to conversations and make good recommendations that are relevant to another person’s interests. If your friend writes music, are you going to send that friend an invite to a Group Page about computers? What are the chances of that friend accepting that request? What would it do to the friendship if you send this friend multiple emails inviting them to join various Group Pages about computers (probably little to nothing, but many people assume the worst)?

Instead of sending an email blast to all of your friends about the computer Facebook Group Page you are a part of, you may only send the email to a few of your friends who are interested in that area. Then, you can have meaningful conversations with your friends about computers, and those conversations may turn into posts on the actual group page.

The main point is that when friends give access of your Facebook Group Page to their friends, most of the friends with newly given access will be interested in your Facebook Group Page’s topic.

#6: Get New Blog Post And Product Ideas

When your members interact with one another, you will start to get an idea of common questions your members have and what they appreciate. The content you post to the Facebook Group Page about one area of your expertise may get more likes and comments than the content you post to the Facebook Group Page about a different area of your expertise. Your readers may also post comments about your content that inspires your next blog post idea. Every relevant post and comment that goes on your Facebook Group Page can be the inspiration for your next blog post or product.

#7: Leadership Role

When you create your own Facebook Group Page, you are in essence the leader of that Group Page. You control what gets posted, create the rules, and provide your members with an empowering environment. If you do a good job at your leadership role in your Facebook Group Page, you will gain more respect from your members, and that respect will translate into your brand’s growth.

#8: Loyal Fan Base

The members who post and comment in your Facebook Group Page often form your loyal fan base. Having a loyal fan base is essential to the growth of your brand and spreading your message far and wide. The messenger can only do so much alone, but when the messenger has helpers, that messenger’s message will spread. Having a thriving Facebook Group Page is one way to get the helpers who will spread your message for free.

In Conclusion

If you do not have your own Facebook Group Page, then you are not tapping into the full power of the most popular social network on the web. Facebook Group Pages allow you to build meaningful communities of individuals interested in your niche, and as your reputation grows, these people may buy your products as the relationship builds.

What are your thoughts on starting a Facebook Group Page? Do you have any tips on getting more members on a Facebook Group Page? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

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Four steps to stay on top of social media trends

Between Plag** (formerly Plague), YikYak, Meerkat, Periscope, and the hundreds of other apps that have sprung up in the last few months, Marketing FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out,” can be a very real thing. While reports that teenagers still use Facebook might be comforting, that market share is rapidly dividing among smaller niche apps, even among some that have been available for a few weeks.

How can a busy marketer possibly keep up with these social media trends?

I’m here to tell you that it’s not impossible and that it shouldn’t take a large chunk out of your schedule, either. It does mean committing to experimentation, however. So first I’m going to discuss a few principles to help you stay on track, and then I’ll go over a few can’t miss apps you should check out now.

Strategies to Keep on Top of Social Media Trends

1. Own an iOS (Apple mobile) device. Much as the average Android user hates to admit it, the newest and hottest apps usually start on iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. If you carry an Android phone, consider investing in an iPod Touch just for testing purposes.
2. When you hear about a new app, write it down.  I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Usually, you have to hear a new term 3-5 times before you bother to look into it—so if you check it out on day one, you’ll be that much further ahead of your competition.
3. Spend a half an hour every evening using a new app: No amount of research and TechCrunch reading will ever provide a substitute for hands-on experience. Connect with friends, create a personal account, and use it like a real person would use it, not a marketer. Get a feel for how the app works, and try not to get sucked in for more than a half an hour—if you can!
4. Subscribe to the Product Hunt newsletter: Product Hunt is a ranking site for new products on the market. You can visit every day to stay abreast of the hot new trends—or you can have the top 10 performers emailed to you daily. You decide which level of commitment is right for you.

The Top 5 Apps You Need to Know Now

1. Meerkat/Periscope: These two apps are at the forefront of the live-streaming video trend. As a female, I have a slight preference for Meerkat, as it has a better anti-harassment setup. But otherwise the two apps are more or less interchangeable, and you should test out both to see with which you prefer.
2. Product Hunt: So nice I’m going over it twice, Product Hunt has a vibrant community, with voting, live meet-ups, and now, even a community for the product makers themselves, MakerHunt. You should be familiar with this wundercompany and their meteoric rise.
3. Slack: You might have used IRC in the past—in which case, you’ll wonder why Slack is so hot right now. But if you’ve never handled IRC, you’ll likely be stunned by the simplicity and beauty of this people-connecting software meant for company teams—but rapidly being hijacked by communities like MakerHunt.
4. Plag**: I mention this once more because it is more like an interesting phenomenon than a useful tool (if you do make headway on this platform with marketing, please tell me!). Plag** is a cross between Tinder and Imgur, a place to share information and photographs for rapid dissemination across borders—just like an airborne virus.
5. Kong: The latest thing from the makers of Path, Kong is a delightful advance in the art of the selfie, animating your best duck faces as a GIF-file. The genius viral nature of Kong’s share structure is that you’re not just limited to sharing on Path—you can also post to Facebook, Twitter, save to your phone as a GIF or a video, and send it as a text or as an email. This app has only been out for 1-2 weeks, but I predict it will go far.

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3 Terrific Tips to Increase Your Facebook Reach

Facebook enticed you to play and then they made you pay.

It’s almost the perfect business model. You spent a ton of money investing in getting likes, shares and comments. This also enticed other people to join Facebook. Facebook then collected the demographic and social data about all your fans and friends and now sells the data back to you.

We call it “Facebook targeted advertising”. It’s the freemium web monetization model on steroids. But we are all still having fun. Aren’t we?

So what’s Facebook’s organic reach?

When Facebook first started offering businesses professional pages, companies took advantage of that to increase the reach of their brand. Over time, Facebook got smart and restricted reach, forcing companies to pay for promoted posts and advertising. Today, it’s pretty tricky to stay in front of even a small fraction of your fans.

Here is Facebook’s reach if you aren’t paying for ads according to recent research from Locowise.

Source: Adweek.com

If you want to check out your pages reach here is a cool tool.

Here’s how to increase your Facebook reach, get more shares, followers, and “likes” under the new rules of Facebook.

Stop worrying about reach so much

Stop worrying about reach. It sounds strange, but think about it. There’s not much you can do about your reach on Facebook. They control the platform. The best you can do is use something like this Studyweb guide to build a better blog, and focus on ways to get targeted visitors off of Facebook and onto your website.

You could:

• Use Facebook ads.
• Use promoted posts.
• Start a group.
• Use more images that are mind-blowing, or at least memorable.

For example:

Radio station Nu92 posted this photo to their wall with the caption, “Who remembers having to do this to their school books?” It was an instant hit, attracting over 200,000 “likes” and 98,000+ comments. Why was it so popular? Answer: nostalgia.

They took people back in time to relive their childhood, for better or worse.

It connected with people. That radio station was able to make people feel understood – that’s key. By the way, radio stations are really good at that sort of thing. Have you ever noticed how many viral images they post? Use that as your guideline, and see if you can work in a link back to your site.

Quality not quantity

You’re shooting for quality, not quantity. The lifespan of a Facebook post is really short. The viral ones are almost always “wow” shots of someone doing something epic, something extremely nostalgic, something audacious and out of the ordinary, or something so controversial and divisive that people are practically forced to comment.

So, even though, right now, it seems like reach is dead, it’s not. It’s just being reinvented through a lens of quality. So, refocus your efforts on that, and try to gently move people from your epic posts to your website.

1. Start a group

Start a group on Facebook, and then advertise it. Guess what? Facebook won’t limit your reach in your group, and you’ll have a captive audience of people that want to hear what you have to say. Groups are a great way to have an ongoing discussion, promote interest in your blog, grow an audience, and avoid long-term marketing expenses.

Instead of continually trying to fight the reach problem, you simply side-step it. Groups already work well for sites like LinkedIn, so you’re not taking huge risks with it.

Group success tips

The key to making your group successful is to invite people whom you know will participate. Part of social media is “social” – in other words, there has to be interaction and engagement in the group for it to take off.

The first few members are important too. By having members join in the beginning who contribute, it creates the “social proof” for others. It tells new members that this is an active and interesting group.

Some ideas for starting a group include:

• Discussion of controversial subject matter in your niche or industry.
• Publishing case studies (stories).
• Starting a support group (this works particularly well in the health and fitness industry, but also in personal finance and other niches where long-term motivation tends to be the sticking point for consumers).

Sure, you’ll have to spend money on advertising to get it going but, after a while, you can turn down the burn rate on your ad campaigns and let referrals build your group. The long-term effect is a free ad platform that grows of its own volition. And, if you appoint group moderators and managers, you won’t even have to manage it on a day to day basis.

2. Use better visuals

Using better visuals will help you engage more people which, in turn, will help you hang onto the reach you do have. Facebook has always been a visual platform, with images and videos outperforming text-based status updates.

That trend is going to continue, too. Social media is really an amalgamation of various types of platforms, but the common theme seems to be images, video, and short text-based updates. The shorter, the better. In fact, the hard data from Wishpond, and other agencies, shows that photo posts get 120 percent more interaction that text-based ones.

Try shorter posts

Shorter posts get 23 percent more interaction. with “tiny” posts of up to 70 characters getting more “likes” than posts of 231 or more characters.

It’’a hard to be too succinct. Memes tend to do well on Facebook, as does humor. So, keep that in mind. Photos of any kind generate more engagement than an average post, with images getting 53 percent more “likes” and 104 percent more comments than standard posts, according to Hubspot.

3. Invest in ads

If you want to reach more people, a great way to do that is to skip the sponsored or “boosted” posts and just advertise to your target market through Facebook’s default ad platform. That platform has grown and changed over the years, and today it offers a rich dataset for companies.

In fact, it probably rivals Google’s own ad platform. Advertisements don’t have to lead people back to your Facebook fan page. They can direct users to a landing page on your site – this makes Facebook much more valuable than it used to be.

Try using ads for lead generation

With ads, you can:

• Generate leads
• Increase email signups

And, best of all, you don’t have to worry about increasing organic reach for some arbitrary or hypothetical benefit. Ads, while not cheap, are a proven way to gauge interest in your product or service, and the response is immediate, often with results appearing after a few hours of your ad being approved. This means you can just focus on getting people who are actually interested in what you have to say, rather than messing around with “likes” and comments that go nowhere.

Guest Author: Judith Schneider works as an Internet advisor. She enjoys writing about what works for her online. Look for her posts on many computer and tech blogs.

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How to Market on Instagram: 14 Tips and 6 Tools

Are you currently using Instagram for your eCommerce store? If you’re not, then it is definitely time to start! Inherently, Instagram is the perfect social platform for any business that sells physical products, not to mention the fact that the average order value from Instagram is $65!

Not bad at all right?

Before you can start seeing numbers like that tough, you have to start from the beginning. You have to understand how to market on Instagram. That means understanding the terms, knowing the strategies, and utilizing the tools available.

In this post we will go over 14 Instagram marketing tips to get your business rolling.

SET UP AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT FOR YOUR BUSINESS

First things first, if you want to market on Instagram then you’re going to need an account. (If you already use Instagram for your business, then you can skip forward to Instagram marketing tip #4.)

1. CREATE AN ACCOUNT

Creating an account is super simple, all you have to do is download the Instagram mobile app, and sign up! (Yes you do have to do it from your phone. Once you have an account though you can sign in from your computer).

2. SET UP YOUR PROFILE

Once you’ve downloaded the app you’re going to have to choose a user name for your business account. If possible, try to make it your business name! After you have a name, it’s time for you to finish designing your profile. Remember, this is what people will see first when landing on your Instagram page, so you’re going to want to make it look great!

Here’s what you’ve got left in order to finish your profile:

Profile Picture: You’re best bet is to use your company logo for this, because you want your profile to be easily identifiable and branded.

Bio Line: Your bio line can have up to 150 characters, which is not very long so you have to make sure you make it count! There are a few options of what to write here.

The best practice is to write a short description of your business, while trying to show your company culture with a bit of humor, or a clever line. This is a good method because you want your bio line to have some personality in order to try to get people to stay on your Instagram page for longer.

Another option is to use this line as your business pitch to your visitors by using your unique value proposition (read this post if you need help coming up with a value proposition). For example, Zappos prides itself on its next day delivery:

Include a URL: Remember that when writing our bio line, you should leave space for your website address!

This advice might seem obvious, buy most Instagram users will only look at your profile for a few seconds before deciding whether or not they want to follow you. In that time you have to be sure you show them something that will make them at least want to scroll through your images.

3. CONNECT WITH FACEBOOK

Now that you have an Instagram account, you should take advantage of its integration with Facebook by connecting your accounts. This will let you post your Instagram pictures to Facebook, which is a great way of expanding your audience, especially if you already have an established community on Facebook.

BUILD A COMMUNITY AROUND YOUR INSTAGRAM PAGE

The next stage is to create a “niche” for your business’ Instagram page

4. DETERMINE YOUR INSTAGRAM “NICHE”

The idea of social networks in general is to create communities, and Instagram is no exception to this rule. In order to build a community and start marketing on Instagram, you’re going to need to determine what the focus of your page will be. This shouldn’t be too difficult a task, as you probably already focus your general marketing efforts on a specific industry or interest group. (If you don’t yet do this, then you should take a minute to create a buyer persona for your business.)

For example, if you sell sporting goods, then your niche can be related to sports. If you sell organic tea, then your niche can be healthy living. You get the idea – think of the culture that surrounds your business and make that your Instagram niche! Nike does a good job of this. Everything on its page, as would be expected, is related to the culture of sports and athletes.

5. START POSTING ABOUT YOUR NICHE

Ok, great you know your niche, now the real work begins! Now you have to start posting niche related content. How should you do that?

Post pictures related to your niche. Again, sporting goods = sports pictures. Anything that you can think of that seems related to your target interest is good. You should strive to post a combination of professional pictures and pictures that you took yourself. Sometimes it is these non-professional pictures that perform the best! When posting a picture, don’t forget to use filters to make it look super cool, like in this picture from Wilson (a company that makes baseball gear).

Post videos as well! Sure, the majority of content on Instagram is pictures, but why not use your videos to stand out a bit? A good, niche related clip can be a great way of getting your business’ Instagram page noticed. (Fun fact, according to Social Bakers, Instagram video outperforms Vines!) Take a look at this video that The North Face posted on their Instagram page:

Make a great caption that will really attract attention. Obviously you want your picture or video to be amazing, but sometimes a good caption can be the thing that really completes the content! There’s no character limit for captions, but the best practice is still to (usually) keep it short and sweet.

6. ACTIVELY TRY TO GAIN ENGAGEMENT

At a certain point it is not enough to just post about your niche though, you’re going to want to build engagement within your Instagram community. If people are engaging with your brand then you have a greater chance of both being discovered and of establishing your page as a community hub.

Use fill in the blanks to get people to show you their personality. Just think of a brand related sentence, leave something blank, and let your fans do the rest! When doing this, be sure to include the sentence in the image itself. Here’s an example from Brendan Vacation:Photo caption posts let your fans show their humor. All you have to do is find a funny, brand related image, and ask your followers to share their cleverest comment!

Ask questions about your niche both to crowd source information, and to boost your page’s status as an industry hub of information and culture. You can also use questions to create a game, like Wilson did with these pictures:Wislon has a whole series of pictures like this, and it has worked amazingly for them! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like baseball, but I have no idea what kind of glove this is, but guess what – over 600 people commented on this picture, and as you can see from the comments above, all the commenters know exactly what kind of glove it is! That means that Wilson succeeded in luring in the “super baseball fans” with its niche content.

7. USE NICHE HASHTAGS

If you’re wondering how to make your content more discoverable then you need not look any further than hashtags! Hashtags (the pound symbol #), for those of you that don’t know, are used to categorize content in order to create searchable categories of social posts. For example, if I were to search #baseball, all of the Instagram posts that used that hashtag would show up.

By using hashtags that are related to your niche you can reach a much larger audience than just the people that are following your brand. So before posting something, think about a good hashtag that would relate to your industry and to your post. Try not too general though, because then your post might get lost. Instagram suggests using at least three hashtags per post.

8. INTERACT WITH YOUR NICHE

Don’t get so caught up in your own page that you forget to interact with other people on Instagram. After all, it is a social network. Follow back people who follow you and comment on and like your followers’ posts. This will help you in two ways – first it will show that you actually care about your followers and what they have to say, and second, it will increase your exposure by putting your brand name in front of the friends of your followers.

You should also follow influencers in your industry so that you can form a relationship with them. If you want to be an influencer yourself, then you should probably be connected with the existing influencers.

9. MAKE AN INSTAGRAM TAB ON FACEBOOK

If you already have a strong following on Facebook and you’re looking to expand your Instagram community, then why not take advantage of the Facebook/Instagram integration by adding an Instagram Tab to your Facebook page? By adding an Instagram you will boost the exposure of your Instagram page.

Another option available (if you are using a StoreYa Facebook shop) is to download InstaGallery for your store. InstaGallery adds a tab to your Facebook store where you can stream a feed dedicated to user generated content based around a specific hashtag. For example, LEGO told its followers to post images of their LEGO products under #LegoWatches.

START MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS ON INSTAGRAM

Obviously just creating a community hub centered around your industry is not enough for a business account on Instagram, so the next step is to start marketing on Instagram.

10. INTERSPERSE PROMOTIONAL POSTS

Now it’s finally time to start marketing your brand on Instagram! Before you get too excited though, there are a few things you should think about before you start posting about your business with reckless abandon.

First, you should not post exclusively about your business, and second you should post about your business in the context of your industry. This way your business related images will flow naturally with the overarching theme of your page, and will be more appealing to your loyal fans.

A great way of achieving this is by placing your products in a setting, rather than simply uploading a picture of your product itself. Here’s a great example of that from L.L. Bean’s Instagram account.If you do upload images of your products alone, which is perfectly fine to do as long as it is not the only type of image you upload, then be sure to make it look great! Instagram is all about the imagery, so don’t post a drab image. Post something with color, a cool design, or an awesome filter – like this photo Samsung posted:Your product pictures definitely do not need to be professional photographs (in fact, people really like raw, non-professional photos from brands, because it makes them more personal, and less corporate).Your promotional posts don’t have to be only about your products, you can also promote your brand itself by showing your company culture and story. This will give your fans a personal look into your business, which is a great way of creating a stronger bond with your fans! Take a look at this post from BestBuy:

11. RUN COMPETITIONS

Ready to kick your Instagram marketing up a notch? Then you should give competitions a shot. There are many different types of competitions that you could run, but obviously the best kind of competition for Instagram is a photo competition.

A photo competition is very simple. You ask your followers to post their best, funniest, or most creative picture about a certain topic. The winner can then be chosen by you, randomly (sweepstakes style), or even by peer voting – your fans will vote for the image they think is the best.In order to plan out your competition you should follow these steps:

1) Think of what the goal of your competition is – brand exposure, product awareness, lead generation, etc. It is important that you know what you’re trying to accomplish so that you can give your competition direction, and also so that you can gauge its success.

2) Determine who the competition is meant for. Is it for a target market within your followers, or are you targeting your industry niche as a whole? You should decide this in order to ensure that the theme of your competition is relevant to the people who you want to participate.

3) As a second level of insurance to ensure that the people participating in your competition are relevant to your business, you should offer a prize that only people within your target group would find appealing.

4) Choose a relevant hashtag to identify your competition. For example, if you ask your fans to post their best pictures of them skiing, you could make your hashtag #BestSkiiShots. Before officially choosing your hashtag though you should check to make sure it is not already being used.5) You can run a competition manually, or you can use one of any number of tools like IconoSquare or Strutta. Both of these can be very useful for designing, managing, promoting, and analyzing your competitions.

Tools can be very handy for organizing your competitions as well by giving them a landing page as a hub for the competition. For example, check out Vitamin Shoppe’s photo competition landing page.

12. USER GENERATED CONTENT

When you’re running photo competitions that are based around your products you are gaining something more than just interaction with your Instagram page, you are gaining the images themselves!

Why is that so good?

I have three words for you, User Generated Content! Basically, you can take these images that your fans submitted and post them on your Instagram account (with a shout out of course for the person who submitted the image). This shows your fans that you care about what they have to say, and also makes your brand more personal.

Fans and followers love seeing their peers featured on a business page! Another cool thing you can do is to feature your customers in your posts. Warby Parker, an eyewear company, does this by taking pictures of its customers while they try on glasses:

SOLIDIFY YOUR STRATEGY SCIENTIFICALLY

At this point you have the full structure needed for a successful Instagram account – a niche for your business page, nice posts and hashtags, promotional posts, competitions, and customer shoutouts – but you’re not done yet! If you really want to be effective with your Instagram marketing, then you are going to need to boost your own abilities with some analytic tools!

13. OPTIMIZE YOUR POST TYPES AND SCHEDULE

There are two steps you should follow for optimizing your posting schedule. First, determine the best time to post, second, set up your posting schedule accordingly. Now this can be a daunting task, which is why I will share a few tools with you that can be of assistance.

IconoSquare, in addition to providing competition tools, can also give you a pretty in depth look at your Instagram account. Its analytics shows you things like follower growth, your most popular posts, and your most engaged followers. In terms of your individual posts themselves, you can also see what time is best for posting and which filters receive the most engagement. This can be very helpful for determining how and when to post.

Totems is another analytics tool that you can use to view the performance of your posts. One of the coolest features that Totems has is “followers gained.” This metric shows you how many followers you gained from individual posts. This can be very useful for determining what type of post will be best for gaining new followers. Once you know what types of posts are best and when the optimal time to post is you should build a posting schedule for your Instagram account.

14. FIND THE BEST HASHTAGS

Hashtags are key to your success on Instagram, so why not get a bit more scientific about them too? There are many different tools available that can help you find the perfect hashtag for your posts.

With TagBoard you can search for any hashtag to see its current trend, the general sentiment around the hashtag (positive, negative, or neutral), similar hashtags, and all of the most recent posts with that hashtag. For example, I searched #Jeans:Hashtagify is a great tool for coming up with new hashtag ideas. You can search any hashtag and it will give you a web of related hashtags. (Granted the information is pulled from Twitter, but it should work for Instagram as well):By optimizing your hashtag strategy you can boost the exposure of your business’ Instagram account tremendously!

GET TO WORK ON YOUR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT!

Good job! Now that you’ve completed reading this post you have all of the knowledge necessary to get started on Instagram, build a following, and market your brand! So what are you waiting for, get started and don’t forget to share with us your success stories!

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