5 Lessons Learned Analyzing My Most Popular Instagram Updates

Recently, I was honored to be featured by my fellow Entrepreneur contributor, Thomas Smale, on his list of “8 Inspiring Instagram Accounts You Should Follow.” Being recognized on this list meant a lot to me, because everything I do on Instagram (and in the rest of my life) is dedicated to one thing: inspiring my students to succeed.

But being called out as having an “extremely popular Instagram account” got me thinking. What is it that’s made my account so successful so far? To get some answers, I decided to run a free Instagram activity report from Simply Measured to determine which of my posts have received the most engagement so far and why.

Without further ado, here’s the list.

1. Run a giveaway.

According to Simply Measured, this post racked up 9,515 Instagram likes, 4,505 Instagram comments and 22 Twitter engagements, for a total of 14,042 engagements. Frankly, I think it’s easy to see why, since responding to the post entered followers into my $20,000 cash giveaway!

I’d read about how engaging social media giveaway contests can be before, but this post in particular really gave me proof. Even if you aren’t working with $20,000 cash, giving away something on your Instagram account could be the secret that helps you drive massive engagement.

2. Inspire with visual content.

Most of my Instagram updates involve posting pictures of the amazing places I’ve traveled to inspire my students to achieve the same kind of lifestyle. This works, because Instagram is a visually-oriented network, more so than any other social platform.

But I have to say, although I post a lot of pictures, this one is one of my favorites. It’s absolutely stunning, and it’s no surprise to me that it’s earned a total of 12,609 engagements across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. If your own engagement is lacking, you can’t go wrong posting beautiful pictures (just be sure to give credit where credit is due!).

3. Use hashtags wisely.

The update below (which captured 11,978 total engagements), succeeds, in part, because it takes advantage of the “beautiful picture” principle I described above:

But there’s more to it here. I also attribute some of the success of this update to the hashtags I used. Tags like #FinancialFreedom, #DailyMotivation, #DreamLife and #DailyInspiration help expand the reach of my posts, while simultaneously inspiring my followers to prioritize these principles in their lives.

If you aren’t currently taking advantage of Instagram’s hashtags, start today. Tag using both popular hashtags and conversational or inspiring phrases for maximum impact.

4. Ask for engagement.

If you’re building a presence on any social networking site, engagement is at least part of your goal. But unfortunately, people don’t just engage automatically. Often, you have to ask them to engage in the ways you want.

That’s part of what made my fourth most successful post, which wound up with 10,069 engagements, so popular. Right there, in the text, I ask “Who wants to come?” Combine that with the giveaway mentioned, the use of an inspiring image and a collection of great hashtags, and you’ve the perfect recipe for engagement.

Best of all, this tip is easy to implement. Want more engagement on your Instagram posts? Simply ask followers to do whatever it is you want them to do.

5. Use leading questions.

This is kind of a continuation from the tip above, but one of the most effective ways to encourage your audience to engage with your profile is to ask them leading questions.

In this case, the question I asked was “Can you guess which island?” Essentially, I turned my post into a game for my followers and I wound up getting a great response in return. To date, the update has received 9,489 Instagram likes, along with 224 comments, four Twitter engagements and six Facebook engagements.

That’s the power of leading questions!

Just like the tip above, you can apply this to your account easily, no matter how many followers you have. In addition to asking for specific types of engagement, ask your followers a question and encourage them to leave a comment. If you can make it fun, they’ll respond - and, after all, that’s what social media is all about.

I’ve grown my stock market education business through social media and these are just my best guesses about what’s made these posts more successful than some of my others. But if you have any other tips or insights you’d like to add to this list, I’m all ears. Leave me a comment below describing the Instagram techniques that have made the biggest difference in your engagement levels.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249404

Social Media Karma and the Golden Rule

Have you heard of the golden rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, treat other people in the way you’d like to be treated. This same rule applies to the world of social media.

So think before you tweet. Here are a few etiquette rules:

Don't embarrass professionals.

Journalists, writers, bloggers, content creators, whatever you call them, they all are trying to get their work out there. One way they do so is by spreading the word on social media. And this strategy is a win-win, as the author is able to market her posts in a simple fashion and people can easily discover new stories. But because of how fast the world of media is moving, sometimes errors occur, like typos, grammatical errors or incorrect information.

Do you point out the mistake publicly to embarrass and shame the writer or author? Or do you private message the individual so they can correct the mistake as quickly as possible? I choose the kinder, quieter route because it does not serve you or the other party to be mean and spiteful. Be gracious, and the author will be thankful and you’ll probably gain a friend for life. 

And another thing: Don't dismiss the person immediately when you see a typo or mistake. Read the article to the end, as you may find it useful and may benefit from the piece. Dismissing a writer’s credibility completely because of a single typo seems inflexible to me. 

Give credit where credit is due.

It’s standard procedure to give credit to the photographer if you use their images. If you see someone using your photos, and they haven’t given you photo credit, private message them. It’s possible that they may not really understand the protocol. Be gentle and you will be surprised to find that it is an innocent mistake.

But keep in mind that everyone doesn't just want a photo credit. Images are copyrighted, so the best route is to ask before you use.

Don’t be a bully or a tattletale.

I have seen so many forms of bullying over the years on social media. I usually hang back, watching carefully and not reacting immediately. Whether the attack is directed at you or at a friend, assess the situation first and don't fire off a tweet or comment immediately. Also, don't go ganging up on the person -- we’re not in high school. The drama and gossip will get back to the individual and probably come back to haunt you.

Analyze and process the situation. Is this worth your time, your energy or even a tweet? When you re-tweet them or call them out, it gives the person validation and the situation momentum, especially if the person has a decent following. 

So whenever I completely disagree with an article or a tweet, I chat off line rather than give the article or that individual any more attention than is necessary. Of course, one can have a productive healthy discussion -- just keep it professional.

Anonymity is not carte blanche.

Just remember, tweeting from a smartphone or a computer screen does not give you the right to be unkind. Being friendly and helpful to people goes so much further than a public attack. Guess what? It reflects back on you. People may not acknowledge your action openly, but they will go “radio silent” on you. What does that mean? No more shares, re-tweets or engagement.

Social media seems like such an expansive universe but really it is a small, small social world. I believe that in social media, that “six degrees of separation” connects us in a way that we were never connected before. So think before you blast out your spiteful tweets or comments. These connections bind us together by our shares.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238142

Ten pros and cons of online advertising

Pros & Cons of Digital Advertising

The digital world has made online advertising an absolute must for many companies. While it is the primary way to get your name out there and attract the billions of dollars that flows through e-commerce and retail stores as a result of online advertising, it’s not without its downfalls. When you’re setting up an online advertising campaign, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of the situation before you invest a significant amount of time, money, and effort into the process.

Pros

1. You have the ability to reach your potential customers at the places they visit online. Online advertising through search engines, social media sites, and popular websites gives you adspace on some of the most trafficked places on the Internet.
2. Ad targeting. While you can simply get impressions on high traffic sites to get as many eyes on your advertising as possible, your marketing results tend to be much better if you do some targeting before you start running the ads. Many sites have extensive data on the type of reader who visits and uses their sites on a day to day basis. Some have ad platforms that allow you to only display your ads to certain user segments, such as the way Facebook handles their advertising. Since a significant amount of demographic and location information is shared by Facebook users, this allows the social networking site to give you a great deal of opportunity for laser focused ads.
3. A wide range of costs. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a massive business, there’s a site that has an advertising cost that meets your needs. Smaller niche sites also have the advantage of attracting your target demographic, so you’re getting high quality traffic without having to pay an exceptionally high price.
4. Responsive testing. In the print and television advertising world, it takes time to change marketing collateral to adjust to errors in the advertising, change marketing tactics, or update the information. Online advertising allows you to quickly change your marketing materials, sometimes even without the direct intervention of the publisher. For example, the Google Adwords backend allows you to make on the fly adjustments of existing advertising so you can see the phrasing or style that works best for you, and what’s falling flat for your company.
5. Easy split testing. Many online advertising platforms allow you to load several versions of a particular ad, as well as how often you want to run a particular ad type, so that you can test several ads at the same time. This makes split testing and other types of online advertising testing easy to accomplish.

Cons

1. Many website visitors are so inundated with online advertising that they experience ad blindness. Their eyes simply skip over the locations that banner advertising and other types of advertising are located, and may have a negative view of sponsored content.
2. Ad blocking. All current versions of popular Internet browsers such as Google Chrome have access to ad blocking extensions. Instead of experiencing banner blindness and not seeing your ads, they completely block the ads from getting to their browser. By default, these extensions block a majority of ad servers and are updated to adjust to new ones on the market as well.
3. Competition. You have a great deal of opportunity on the Internet, but you also have a great deal of competition. You can’t just set up an e-commerce site and expect the money to flow in. If you don’t have any way to set yourself apart from your market, you’re going to be drowning in a saturated market. Your online advertising is likely to be displayed alongside competitors, so it’s important that you have a way to stand out.
4. Distraction. When you’re advertising through a search engine or on a site that has a lot of content curation, your potential customers are getting distracted by dozens of things on the screen at once. The amount of traffic leaks can easily lead your online advertisements to not be as effective as they are.
5. Analytics learning curve. To completely take advantage of online advertising methods, you need to spend a lot of time tracking the data and adjusting your advertising by watching stats tracking and other analytics programs. If you haven’t used this before, there is a learning curve before you understand how all of the stats interact.

http://www.toptensocialmedia.com/social-media-social-buzz/ten-pros-and-cons-of-online-advertising/