townsend.bunksite.com

Tag: instagram for business

The Top Five Ways to Optimize Instagram Accounts for SEO

Nowadays, it isn’t enough to simply have great content, because to be honest… a ton of people have great content. Businesses have to be smarter and more competitive to get their content in front of the right people. With the ever-growing popularity of social media, accomplishing this has become easier but harder.

On one hand, businesses have more platforms to share their content and reach potential buyers. Gone are the days where a website is stuffed with all of a company’s information and events. On the other hand, businesses have more platforms to manage and keep optimized. Your website has to be in tip top shape for search engines, but so do your social profiles.

Take Instagram for example. According to research done by Hootsuite, one billion people use Instagram every single month, with 500 million people on Instagram every day. More importantly, “200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily.”

That’s 200 million reasons you can’t slack on Instagram.

There is a silver lining though. Optimizing an Instagram account for search engines is very similar to optimizing a website for search engines. Here are five ways to get your bangin’ IG optimized for SEO.

Have Your Top Keyword in Your Handle

You may not be able to change your domain name or business name at this point, but your Instagram handle is just itching to be optimized. If your username doesn’t include your main keyword, you should reevaluate it.

Take Lush, a cosmetic company headquartered in the United Kingdom, for example. While the company’s name is simply Lush, it’s Instagram handle includes a very important keyword.

“Cosmetics” is sitting pretty in their Instagram handle. Also notice that their business name isn’t the only part of their profile that has a keyword shining bright… which brings us to tip number two.

Load Your Bio With Keywords… Naturally

Why should your Instagram handle get all the keyword love? Well, it shouldn’t. Your business name and bio are great opportunities to get some more keywords on your profile. However, don’t be sloppy about it.

Loading your bio with keywords should be done in a natural and clever way. After all, your potential buyers are watching.

Gambino’s Bakery does an excellent job of sneaking rich, top tier keywords into their bio.

Utilize Instagram’s ALT Text Feature

In late 2018, Instagram rolled out the ability to add ALT text to images in an effort to make the platform more enjoyable for visually impaired users. Don’t say Instagram has never done anything for companies, because this feature made business profiles accessible to more potential buyers and created another space to include keywords.

When gearing up to share some great content on Instagram, keep your eyes peeled for the advanced settings option. The Advanced Settings are on the same screen as the caption, tagging, and location options way at the bottom in small print. After you press that, the accessibility section will be at the bottom.

Load Your Captions and Hashtags With Keywords

If it seems like optimizing your Instagram for search engines is all about keywords… then you’ve been paying attention. Congrats!

Other perfect opportunities to get some nice, juicy, top-tier keywords on your profile are in the captions and hashtags. But again… this should be done naturally. Potential buyers don’t love several keywords thrown together.

ARTËMER, a nine-year-old jewelry brand, does a great job of integrating keywords with a natural caption. Sitting in this post are two keywords in the caption and a slew of keywords in the hashtags. If writing the perfect caption gives you anxiety, think about them as title tags because they act the exact same way.

Add Your Instagram to Your Google My Business Profile

This optimization tactic has nothing to do with keywords, but it is highly important. Having your Instagram profile linked on your Google My Business page will allow it to pop up on Google along with other pivotal need-to-knows, like your business address and phone number.

While you cannot physically log in to GMB, link the profiles and watch them magically appear, Google will “automatically discover social profiles to include in Google knowledge panels.” To hurry the process along, Google recommends that the change is suggested by a verified representative.

The last and final tip is sometimes easier said than done, but it is the most important: create great content. SEO will drive potential buyers to your social profiles, but great content will make the right buyers stay. If you need help, don’t sweat it! Our team is experienced in all things SEO. Contact us today!

Images

Instagram logo

Phone on desk

March 19, 2020
Drive Conversions With Instagram Shopping Product Tagging
Ever have one of those “OMG I need it” moments when scrolling Instagram? What if I told you your customers can go from “Oh my God” to “It’s mine” in just a few taps? Instagram is making it even easier for you to give potential customers seamless shopping experiences with Instagram Shopping’s product tags. As all digital marketers know, it’s easier to convert shoppers if there are fewer steps between “I want it” and “It’s mine.”

Product tagging makes it easier for users to view your products, and it also helps them get to your site without having to put ad spend behind the post to get that “Shop Now” CTA button or using the dreaded “Link in bio.” In fact, product tagging cannot be used on ads, so this can really help beef up your organic posts.

See It, Like It, Want It, Tap It

After setting up your mobile storefront, any post can become shoppable.

Once a user taps to see your products, they’ll get a product image, a description, and even related items in your store.

Users can even save items to their Wish List—which is a private collection of saved products—so they can come back later to make a purchase.

And though it’s still in beta and only available to select brands, Instagram Checkout will one day allow users to go from discovery to purchase without leaving the app.

Drive Discovery

One of the greatest benefits to using product tagging is that your posts can show up in the Discovery feed for users who like pages, businesses, or content that is similar to yours.

Users can also filter shopping results by category or by brand. This means that you could be reaching people who are actively looking for the type of product you offer.

But even when users aren’t necessarily looking to shop, these shopping posts blend seamlessly with the rest of the feed, giving you a chance to showcase your products “in the wild.” This is huge in the fight against ad fatigue and ad blindness. As most Instagram users (actually most Internet users) know, we end up tuning out those ads after a while and just keep on scrolling.

How To Set Up A Mobile Storefront

You might be asking, “How do I tag my products on Instagram?” Unfortunately, you can’t just set up a profile and go. There are a few steps you need to take before you can start using Instagram Shopping. First, you need to make sure you are eligible.

1. You Have to Be in a Supported Market

See the complete list of available markets here. There are several eligible countries.

2. You Need to Sell Physical Goods

Services, downloads, and subscriptions to digital services are not supported at this time.

3. You Can’t Sell Prohibited Items

Tobacco, supplements, weapons, animals, alcohol, and “adult products,” to name a few, are prohibited. If you think your product might be in a gray area, check the full list here.

4. You Need an Instagram Business Account and Facebook Business Page

Your Instagram Business Account must be connected to a Facebook Business Page.

5. Connect to a Facebook Catalog

This is going to need to be created and managed either on Facebook using Business Manager or Catalog Manager. You can also manage your catalog through BigCommerce or Shopify platforms.

Once you have all the pieces in place and make sure you comply with the policies, you’ll have to submit your account for review. In your profile, go to Settings > Business > Shopping on Instagram. Follow all the steps, and in a few days, you should be good to go and ready to tag.

Tips For Your Shopping Posts

Now you’re ready to get to tagging. This is the easy part. Any image or video you would normally post to your Instagram Feed or Stories can now be tagged.
- Get creative: This is your chance to move beyond boring still images of products against a white backdrop. Show us your fashions on real people out in the world. Let us get a peek behind the curtain to your factory floor or your drawing board. How is your product made? How is it used? The sky’s the limit.
- Stay true to your brand: You want your posts to represent the overall image of your company.
- Be visually compelling: Not only do you need to stand out in the Feed or on Stories, but you also want to stand out on the Discover Feed. Use bold colors and patterns; beautiful scenery or backdrops; and interesting angles or crops. You need to stop those thumbs from zooming by.
- Showcase your whole collection: You can tag up to 5 products in a single image or video and up to 20 products in a post with multiple images.
- Plan your tagged posts: Just because you can turn all posts shoppable doesn’t mean you should. Users might feel bombarded if suddenly you’re posting all your products at once. Use a scheduler to plan out your creative.
- Feature your customers: When users tag you in images featuring their products, repost them with tags!
If managing your company’s presence on social media is taking up too much of your time, Search Influence can help. We have years of experience using social media campaigns to drive more customers to businesses. Learn more about how we can help grow your business by contacting one of our digital marketing strategists at (504) 208-3900.

Images

Insta-prism
October 8, 2019
Filter In New Clients – The SEO Benefits of Instagram

As a business, it’s important to connect with potential customers in as many ways as possible. You maintain your website, attend networking events, and post regularly on Facebook, but could you be doing more? Enter: Instagram.

As of December 2014, there are 300 million monthly active users on Instagram and over 75 million daily users, which offers great potential to broaden your brand’s reach. You’re probably familiar with some of the benefits for adding your businesses on Instagram: it’s a visual medium, there’s potential for marketing contests, it has interesting filters, and the list goes on. But did you know there are also SEO benefits

Increased Social Activity

The debate rages on over the correlation between social presence and higher search engine rankings. Search engines deny a relationship, but the data overwhelmingly suggests that increased social activity for specific webpages means higher rankings. No matter which side you believe, I think we can all agree that positive branding and increased online presence isn’t a bad thing.

Optimized Profiles

On Instagram, you can create an optimized profile for your business with a clickable link back to your site, which contributes to your overall link profile. Additionally, Instagram is both searchable and indexed by search engines, contributing to your business’s overall real estate for a branded search.

Although images aren’t indexed directly through Instagram, there are third-party sites that utilize their API and make the images indexable by search engines, which furthers your business’s potential to appear in image searches. Some popular web viewers are Websta, Gramfeed, and Followgram.

Keeping Posts Relevant

Regardless of whether your potential customers are viewing your Instagram photos through a computer or mobile device, it’s very important to align your business with the interests of your target demographic. A basic guideline to follow is the rule of threes: ⅓ promotional posts, ⅓ informational posts, and ⅓ engagement posts.

What might that look like on Instagram?

Let’s say you are a fitness company. Your promotional post might be a photo of your company’s new running shorts right out of the box as they’re hitting the shelves. An informational post could be a photo of a healthy lunch that encourages your followers to eat well. You might also post a scenic landscape of a morning run with a fantastic filter to engage with your followers.

Using #hashtags

All posts should include #hashtags to increase the likelihood of your content being liked and shared. You can also enable sharing permissions that automatically post to other social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, whenever you share on Instagram. By seeding your content to additional social networks, it has the potential to be picked up and shared by even more people in the social space.

Mobile Benefits

Since many users access Instagram on a mobile device, there are additional SEO benefits that are more unique to the platform.

Even though Instagram doesn’t currently offer clickable links on individual posts, you’re still encouraging followers to interact with your business through mobile devices. Since Instagram users are often looking at your posts on a mobile device, they’re more likely to visit your business’s website on their mobile device as well.

Websites that are optimized for mobile perform better in search engine results because Google looks at a website’s mobile capabilities as part of their algorithm. By encouraging users to visit your mobile site by interacting with them on Instagram, you’re helping your overall SEO efforts.

As you can see, there are more reasons for your business to be on Instagram than the awesome filters. This platform enables you to boost your SEO efforts while also connecting with your target demographic and increasing your brand’s reach.

Sources:

http://www.litony.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Instagram-for-Business.jpg

http://blog.instagram.com/post/104847837897/141210-300million

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5203578/instagram-now-has-150-million-active-monthly-users

https://instagram.com/starbucks/

https://help.instagram.com/147542625391305

https://instagram.com/nikerunning/

https://help.instagram.com/365696916849749

http://m.disney.com/

March 12, 2015
5 For Friday – War Of The Week’s 5 Kings: Apple, BTC, Google, Pinterest, & IG

1. It’s Gold, It’s Gold Baby: The New iPad Air, That Is – Business Insider

Apple is releasing a gold version of the iPad Air with the new launch. With the iPhone 6 being launched next week, the next Apple event in line will be in October. According to MacRumors, the new iPad Air 2 is suspected to include some features similar to the iPhone 5s: fingerprint recognition and an 8MP rear camera.

Fingers crossed everyone can get gold iPads that match their gold iPhones just in time for the holidays!

2. KnCMiner Throws A Lasso Around The Moon For Bitcoin – TechCrunch

Since last December, KnCMiner has made some hard core ASIC systems to move BTC markets shortly after deployment. Now they’ve announced “a $14 million Series A to help build out new mining chips along with hosted mining services.” This ASIC chip upgrade is expected to come on-stream next year.

As a company that doesn’t actively look for funding, their miners generally sell out immediately at the commence of pre-order periods. In the past, this has allowed them to fund the entire venture independently, but they plan to look for $70 million in funding for future upgrades to a Series B to grow in capacity along with the appreciation of Bitcoin’s price.

3. Google Crushing and How to Survive Q4 With Intense Competition – Search Engine Watch

No, this isn’t about our awesome Google+ Crush infographic (although it should be). Mary Weinstein of Search Engine Watch posted 4 things that you can do to improve your e-commerce strategy.

1. Improve Brand Perception using Google Special Offers, Seller Ratings, and Product Ratings.

2. Make Feed Changes to optimize your AdWords campaigns.

3. Optimize Big Data by using Google data for Google Shopping campaigns.

4. Leverage Search Trends, such as the growth of the mobile e-commerce segment to do location targeting.

4. Pinterest Becomes The Ultimate Creeper – Marketing Land

This past week, social bookmarking network, Pinterest, sent emails to some of its users congratulating them on upcoming weddings, even some who aren’t actually planning a wedding at the moment. Talk about poor targeting.

The nature of a site like this is that a lot of people create “dream” and “inspiration” boards without the intention of following through with their pinned desires. So naturally, there are a lot of “dream wedding” boards out there for people who aren’t even remotely close to a wedding day. Luckily, the improperly emailed users mostly found it amusing and took no offense.

Amusingly enough, Pinterest came out with a funny statement to New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer saying that they email these category-specific boards to users every week. This one was meant for those simply interested in wedding content and not just those getting married. They ended the statement with, “We’re sorry we came off like an overbearing mother who is always asking when you’ll find a nice boy or girl.” In my opinion, that’s a great way to turn it around.

5. Spring 2015 Fashion Week Is Upon Us, You NEED To Follow Some Designer Instagrams – Huffington Post

You might not be cool enough to intern for a designer or be backstage for all of Fashion Week’s best shows, but you are totally cool enough to know where to look to find your fashion fix.

Thanks to Huffington Post’s 60 designers to follow, there’s an easy way to keep up with the fashion world. Some of my faves from the list are @zac_posen (designer), @stellabugbee (editorial director of The Cut), and @chloenorgaard (model). One of my personal favorites who didn’t make the list is the fashion photographer Jamie Beck @annstreetstudio.

Image Sources:

Bitcoin On The Moon

Instagram Fashion Week

September 5, 2014
5 Ways to Use Instagram for Business and Build Your Social Media Presence

Many businesses, small and large, have started using Instagram as a way to build their brands and online presence. Not only is Instagram an effective and useful way for businesses to promote themselves, but it is also a way to create connections with customers through engaging content. Also, photo sharing through Instagram allows a business to reach customers without an overload of clutter and superfluous content.

1. Employ Hashtags to Increase Discoverability

According to the press page on Instagram, they currently have 130 million active users. In order to captivate this large audience, the use of keywords is essential. It’s been said by many Instagram gurus that using less than three hashtags in a post drastically limits your discoverability. Sites like top-hashtags.com tell you what hashtags are trending and most used at the time, but anything relevant to your content is good to use. For example, a local non-profit organization for music can often use the hashtags #NOLAmusic #NOLAevents #NOLAnonprofits. If you’re a local business in a city with a well known abbreviation, you should always attach this abbreviation to keywords in hashtags in order to target your ideal audience. It is important for all businesses to understand what audience they are targeting on a social media platform like Instagram.

2. Sponsor Contests

Many businesses use Instagram for contests and giveaways. A great example of this is the cruelty-free, handmade cosmetics brand Lush and their giveaway using the hashtag #LUSHtravels. They encouraged users to post a picture of their favorite products for traveling using the hashtag. The contestants with the best photos would win a new set of their favorite products. This not only promoted participation with the brand but also created free publicity and positive reviews for their products.

3. Create Hype for New Products

Another way businesses can use Instagram to their advantage is to excite their audience about upcoming products. A company that does this effectively at the moment is the vegan cosmetics brand, Lime Crime. They are constantly creating new products for their customers, and the last set of new lipsticks they released were so anticipated that their site was crashed by too many orders on the release date. Lately they’ve been posting sneak peeks of a new lipstick color and locations of cosmetics expos where you can try it out before anyone else. Product promotion and sneak peeks are a great way to keep people feeling like they’re in the loop and not missing out on anything.

4. Utilize Cross-Promotion with Facebook

According to Ragan’s PR Daily, 60 percent of major brands, including Starbucks and Nike, are using Instagram. Many of these brands also share their pictures from Instagram on other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Although Instagram dropped Twitter support in December, they have gracefully regained popularity since then. ZOG Digital provided a chart that shows the effectiveness of cross-promotional engagement with other social media platforms. See above.

5. Humanize Your Brand via Engaging Content

Instagram is a great way for businesses to create a personality for their brand. It allows a business to mold the way it is perceived by their customers. A great way to create positive brand recognition is through engaging content like behind the scenes photos and interactive and unique hashtag involvement. The online eyeglasses brand Warby Parker has effectively done the former by showing pictures of their employees enjoying a recent “Field Day” where they show a philanthropic side to the company with relay races for charity. Also, Instagram itself has an exciting hashtag event called Weekend Hashtag Project where every weekend a theme is chosen and the best user photos taken over that weekend are posted the following Monday on the company’s blog. This kind of content makes users feel connected and shows how the product itself can be used to its fullest.

Whether you choose to engage customers or simply promote your content, Instagram is an effective tool to improve your brand and is quickly becoming a necessity for any well known brand.

July 15, 2013
Instagram Web Profiles Bring Nashville Filter to the Masses

Photo sharing service Instagram announced the release of brand new web profiles for all users last week, some two years after the launch of its iOS app. Although this is big news for your average Instagrammer, the addition is also a major breakthrough for businesses who use the app for photo editing and social sharing. The new web profiles have already begun launching, and the majority of Instagram users can expect a new profile featuring their photos within the coming week.

Not only does the new functionality improve a business’s ability to monitor and respond to comments on photos, it also adds the ability to direct users on other networks to follow your account. Previously, it was difficult to encourage fans to follow your account within the app-only software because there was no easy way to find individual profiles without manually searching. The new web profiles add the “Follow” function directly on each individual profile, which allow businesses to link easily to their page and improve their reach. This new feature will also allow customers who do not have Instagram accounts to see your photo stream without downloading the app.

The web profile layout is extremely similar to Facebook, with one major exception: no news feed. In order to view a user’s profile, you have to manually go to instagram.com/[username] or click a direct link. It seems likely that there may be some sort of “explore” or feed feature in the future, but as of right now it can only be used to directly visit pages. You can click on user profiles of people who comment or like your photos, which would allow businesses to follow back people who interact with their brand.

The new design also includes a follow button on individual photos, so Instagram users can easily add other users to their feed from photos sourced elsewhere, such as Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I’ve already seen some businesses showing off their new web profile pages on Facebook, with links back to the page for maximum follow value. The integration of that button should help increase Instagram follower counts significantly for many business pages.

All in all, the new design seems destined to help more users reach your business page, and will hopefully lead to increased interaction for your Instagram photos. With a little self-promotion on other social networks, Instagram profiles can now easily reach wider audiences, and showcase your brand’s identity to more potential customers. Has your business gotten a web profile yet? Check it out, and let us know what you think!

November 19, 2012