Saturday Sharing: More Instagram Advice

Lately there's been a lot of articles on Instagram coming across my Pinterest Feed. I'm not big into Instagram myself, but I know many others who are and that makes these shares useful to them. Like last week's Instagram shared article, this one was also found on Pinterest.

Do you want more Instagram visibility? This article shows you how to build visibility on Instagram and strengthen your community relationships. Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/Abjkz13LACbO4PFGKMDufwYjKe2W3hChcBCsJVTOugpqLTKM_3hkgTU/

Are there any articles you think we should share in an upcoming Friday or Saturday post? If so, let me know by leaving a comment on any of the articles below or in response to my tweets.

Saturday Sharing: Tips to Increase Business via Instagram

Another useful article I found on Pinterest regarding Instagram. This one provides six tips to increase your business by using Instagram.

If you are using Instagram as part of your social media strategy, you should check this article out, found here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/250020216790441864/

Saturday Sharing: Brands Using Instagram Ads

Another link I came across from seeing a traffic referral from their site, I found this article had some great examples of brands who are using Instagram ads to generate more leads and business.

Yes, you can purchase ads with Instagram in addition to just posting images and text with your photos.  Some names of companies that are using Instagram ads in the UK are: Mercedez-Benz and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.

Check out Econsultancy's post on How brands are using Instagram ads for more information.

Saturday Sharing: 10 Tips for Twitter Marketing

With more than 271 million users creating more than 500 million tweets a day, if you aren’t using Twitter to promote your brand, your book or your blog, the only question I have is why? Because of it’s size and the mass amount of content, using Twitter can be challenging to anyone new to Twitter, especially with being confined to 140 characters.

CIO Whitepapers offers an ebook titled “10 Things Marketers Should be Doing on Twitter” which promises to teach you what you should be doing to get more retweets, followers and business prospects as well as best business practices for Twitter.

You can acquire the 13 page ebook/whitepaper here: http://research.ciowhitepapers.com/?option=com_categoryreport&task=viewabstract&pathway=no&title=50414&frmurl=http%3a%2f%2fforms.madisonlogic.com%2fForm.aspx%3fpub%3d162%26pgr%3d977%26frm%3d1676%26autodn%3d1%26src%3d10873%26ctg%3d2%26ast%3d50414%26crv%3d0%26cmp%3d16778%26yld%3d0%26clk%3d6160158076151597188%26embed%3d1

Saturday Sharing: Popular Posts from the Last Month

The views to this blog have drastically increased in the last month which lets me better see which posts are doing well.

So for today's short post, I present links to the 5 most viewed articles in the past 30 days.

1. Thursday Tutorials: How to Pin a Post on Twitter - http://socialmediamarketinghints.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-pin-post-on-twitter.html
2. Thursday Tutorials: How to Pin a Google+ Post - http://socialmediamarketinghints.blogspot.com/2015/07/thursday-tutorials-how-to-pin-google.html
3. Friday Facts: The 12 Biggest Facebook Campaigns from the Past Year - http://socialmediamarketinghints.blogspot.com/2015/06/friday-facts-12-biggest-facebook.html
4. The Monday Search: Job Listings as of 07/06/2015 - http://socialmediamarketinghints.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-monday-search-job-listings-as-of.html
5. Saturday Sharing: 8 Ways to Use Instagram for Business - http://socialmediamarketinghints.blogspot.com/2015/06/saturday-sharing-8-ways-to-use.html

It's definitely nice to see that the tutorials are being found useful as they are the highest hits by far, but also good to see people like the other types of posts as well.

As always, if there's a topic you'd like me to do a tutorial on or share on the site, please feel free to leave it in the comments of any article.

Thanks!

Saturday Sharing: Ten Tips for Twitter Chats

Twitter chats is a thing where people use hashtags to discuss certain topics and they are often scheduled for the same time each week.

Buffersocial talks about 33 social media groups and their hashtags and times when the chats occur. They also include 10 tips for Twitter chats, explaining things to do and not do.

Check out the image in full and read their article here: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-groups-chats

Social Media Marketing: Tips and Hints All Time Blog Stats

I'm one of those weird people that like looking at stats and seeing what posts have been the most popular in the last year. This helps me get an idea of what people are interested in reading about, but also tells me what I did right (perhaps) in marketing those pieces. Since I launched the blog in Nov. 2013 and it's now Jan. 2015, I figured it would be a good time to look at the five most popular posts between then and now.

The most popular post, beating the next most popular post by 69 hits, was "Tuesday Tips: Spell Check Before You Post".  This post had a total of 167 hits as of Jan. 28, 2015.  It was published July 8, 2014, and, honestly, just gave a common sense tip - to spell check before you post so you don't make a bad impression on your fans. As I recall, it was a pretty heavily retweeted post, which kinda mystifies me.

The next most popular post was "Wednesday Words: Social Lead Generation" and had a total of 98 hits thus far.  It was published July 2, six days before the above post was posted.

The third most popular post was a post I posted this year on Jan. 17 - "Saturday Sharing: 10 Steps to Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy."  I think I can attribute this to the SEO - especially the fact Social Media Strategy is in the title.  Still, it's pretty impressive to see this post has 81 views in the 11 days since it was posted.  At this rate, in a year it should still be in the Top 5 posts on the site.

The fourth most popular post was another "Tuesday Tips: Gain More Followers" which had 72 hits and was posted May 20, 2014.  I can understand why this one was popular - many people and brands want to know how to gain more followers on Twitter as well as other social media.

The fifth, and final, most popular post was one "The Monday Search: Job Listings Current as of 12/29/14".  While the job search/job posting posts are the most popular on a weekly basis, it was pretty surprising to see this one rise into the top 5 - and stay in the top 10 for the past few weeks - with a total of 60 views thus far.  This one I am a bit confused on.  I'm not sure what made it more popular than any of the other Job Listings, which average around 30ish hits total.

I look forward to looking back in six months and a year from now to see what's at the top, what's replaced what and what's trending then.

Saturday Sharing: 10 Steps to Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy

This is another interesting one I found on Pinterest (and stole the graphic for this article - if you are the original article author and don't want it being used to promote your article, please let me know and I will remove it) and it talks about ten steps to take when you're creating a social media strategy.

As we've discussed several times on this blog, having a social media plan, or strategy, in place is important to furthering the goals of your brand/company.  A lot of the tips she discusses are things we've discussed here, in our Tuesday tips, but she provides a little different insight on each one.  She also talks about a 70-30 mix, which is something I guess I didn't really think about, but sorta do for several sites I run social media for.

Either way, the article is very well written.  Check it out by clicking either of the links below.

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/159526011774773372/
Full article: http://rebekahradice.com/creating-winning-social-media-strategy/

Saturday Sharing: 5 Social Media Studies That Can Make Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Better

Every so often someone shares a link with me via Twitter or Facebook that I think is worth sharing with everyone.  A couple weeks or so ago, someone linked me to this article on OPTIMIND DIGITAL MARKETING that talks about studies done in social media and pieces of advice from them that can be useful in making your social media marketing strategy better.

The article tells you not only something specific about each of the five studies, but then tells you why it's important and what information you should be taking away from it.

Check the article out here: http://www.optiminddigital.com/5-social-media-studies-that-can-make-your-social-media-marketing-strategy-better/

Saturday Sharing: Reflections

I haven't really talked about this here because it's not really something related to social media, but because of the topic I'm about to talk about today it's pertinent.  There were a lot less posts in October and November than previous posts as well as a lot less promotion of my own material because I've had a lot going on in my real life.

What I haven't mentioned is we're buying a house and are in the process of closing, cleaning and moving.  The big move happens just before Thanksgiving, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy before that. We've been going through stuff.  Packing. Sorting. Selling.  Donating.  Rinse and repeat. On top of that we have had school stuff going on, craft fairs, filling custom orders (especially the first half of October), writing blogs, NaNoWriMo, and our day jobs.  So often times when it's come down to me just sitting down and writing my blog posts I've been tired or just wanting to vegetate by playing video games - yes I play video games and enjoy the relaxation.  And I also realize that Warlords of Draenor is releasing and I want to play that but i have so many other obligations....so I know i have a lot of planning to do.

Unfortunately what I have noticed for any site I write for, if I don't have the posts written ahead of time, they won't get written and they won't get promoted as quickly and my monthly hits drop - drastically.  I know this is true for anyone, but some times it's hard to accept that.  Thus, this reflection.  Many people don't realize if they don't post regularly, even daily or almost daily, to their website or blogs and promote it, people lose interest and don't come back. You have to do what you can, despite your crazy schedule, to get things posted ahead of time.

I was horrible at this in October because I had two writing jobs due and they killed my ability to write anything else.  And as I will be transitioning back to full time writing again, I anticipate this happening again, but I need to strive to do better.  And I will strive to do better.

All of this being said, I am looking for guest and regular writers for this blog and other sites I own/run.  Please feel free to contact me if you are interested.

Saturday Sharing: Twitter Monitoring for Brands

Seeing as earlier this week we spoke about Social Media Monitoring, I figured we'd share a post today that talks a bit more about Social Media Monitoring.  This infographic specifically targets Twitter and a bunch of statistics as to why monitoring social media is important.

For example, did you know an average brand's Twitter handle is mentioned 39 times a day?

There's many more facts and statistics in the infographic put together by twilert and posted at Digital Information World here: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/09/importance-of-twitter-monitoring-for-brands-infographic.html

After you check it out, leave a reply telling us which statistics and facts you thought were the most interesting and why.

Happy Saturday!

Saturday Sharing: 10 Habits of Highly Engaging Social Media Users

Earlier this week, Klout put out another outstanding article, this time covering the habits of successful social media users.  The tips include a number of the things we talk about frequently here - like responding to feedback, whether it's good or bad, and following people who follow you.

Check out their article on 10 habits of highly engaging social media users, found here:  http://blog.klout.com/2014/07/10-habits-highly-engaging-social-media-users/

Enjoy the weekend!