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7 Brilliant Tactics to Boost Valuable Instagram Engagement

By Ruben  · October 8, 2018  · @RubenEAvila

There are some Instagram accounts that always have many comments immediately after they post.  How do they manage to drive so much Instagram engagement?  In every case, the account is following best practices for encouraging and facilitating engagement on Instagram.

These methods of increasing Instagram engagement can be executed by any business in any industry and are very powerful when combined as part of your digital strategy.

7 Proven Practices to Increase Engagement on Instagram

1. Welcome New Instagram Followers

When someone follows you, comment on a post or two of theirs. You don’t need to say, “Thanks for following me!” Just leave genuine comments on their post.

At first, this isn’t difficult, but when you get 50+ followers a day, you may need to adjust your strategy, get help, or cease altogether. However, until you reach that level of growth, do the work.

2. Engage within Your Instagram Niche

To win on social media, you must be social.  This next engagement practice comes from @GaryVee who firmly believes in the “$1.80 IG Strategy.”  The best part of this tactic is that it is very simple, and is only a two-step process.

Step One

Pick ten of the best hashtags identified in your research (go back to our post “Success Leaves Clues“).

Step Two

Drop a comment on the top nine posts in each Instagram hashtag.

Remember, good comments are: genuine, helpful, or entertaining.  Be mindful as people will either follow you or ignore you based on the value your comments provide.

PRO TIP:

If you find any unanswered questions that you can answer, do your best to provide a complete answer to the question.  This is how you establish credibility in your niche.  People asking questions show a deeper level of interest, do not overlook this.

3. Facilitate Instagram Community Engagement

Mention accounts that are doing something right as a means to provide value to your audience.  For example, in this post, I mentioned both Gary V & the Preview App because they are great examples of the message we are conveying.

4. Prompt Comments by Ask Questions

To get comments on posts, you have to ask for it.  Even when starting out, ask questions within your posts without fear of getting no response.  When we made our first IG post, we had zero followers.  We thought we would get no response.  However, we were fortunate to get a response from @meetedgar as they came across our content due to our hashtags.  You have to train your audience to engage with your content.

PRO TIP:

Ask something that can easily be answered in 1-2 words.  Why?  Asking a question that is easy to answer is more likely to elicit a response than asking questions that require people to really think about their response.

5. Respond to All Comments

Engagement induces more engagement. Take care to respond with genuine comments to reinforce training your audience to engage.  We suggest you respond to Instagram comments with an @mention to strengthen your relationship with that user and encourage more comments.

PRO TIP:

Use people’s names in the response.  It makes your communication appear more warm and personal.

Exception to the Rule:  Spam comments from questionable accounts do not require a response.  Obviously generic comments like, “great pic! Follow me back!” or “awesome photo. let’s connect” are to be either reported, ignored, or called out for being spam.  I like to report the profile, as well as report the comment to safeguard the IG community.

6. Be Genuine in Your Own Instagram Engagement

Any time you comment or respond, be stay authentic.  Generic comments make you seem like a bot, and everyone hates it.  Worse, IG will flag your account as spammy.

There are many ways to boost brand love and connect with consumers emotionally without sacrificing core business brand values.  Brands that operate one way offline but have a completely different online persona can come off as having a “multiple personality disorder” that erodes at your credibility.

7. Include a Call to Action

Aka CTA – Tell your audience what to do.  Tell them to click the link in your bio, swipe up for an email list, download a resource, sign up for email, tag a friend, etc.  If you don’t give people direction, they will not take any action and you may have lost a potential follower, customer, etc.

There is no such thing as a successful digital marketing campaign without a successful CTA.

Followers, conversions, revenue, business, and profit depend on calls to action.  The CTA is foundational to the success of any online marketing initiative.

Which of these have you been doing? What one are you going to start implementing this week?

If you have any questions, please leave a comment!

Follow us on Instagram @iDesignsCo for more daily tips, and check the Goodies Page for our insider club frequently!

The 5 Most Important Social Media Updates from Facebook F8

By Ruben  · May 3, 2018  · @RubenEAvila

For those of us in the Social Media Marketing industry, Facebook’s F8 conference is paramount to maintain a sense of understanding how the social media landscape will evolve in the following year to come.

On May 1st and 2nd, Facebook announced substantial updates to its several products including:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Whatsapp
  • Messenger
  • Oculus

To keep things brief, here is a summary of the critical Facebook’s 2018 F8 announcements all social media marketers should be aware of:

  1. 3rd Party Apps Will Begin to Share Directly to Instagram Stories

  2. Facebook Groups Will Get a Prominent Tab on Mobile Apps

  3. Live Video Chat Will Become Available in Instagram Direct Messaging

  4. Instagram’s Explore Tab Will be Redesigned to Include Channels for Users’ Interests

  5. Facebook Messenger Will Give Brands the Ability to Create Augmented Reality Experiences

Instagram to Allow 3rd Party Apps to Share Directly to Instagram Stories

As Instagram announced on their blog, users will now be able to share content from third-party apps directly to their Instagram stories.  As of now, Instagram gave two concrete examples of this via content partnerships with GoPro and Spotify.

Just tap the share button in the Spotify or GoPro app and your content is pulled directly into the Instagram camera. From there you can edit and add to your story or send it via Direct. You don’t have to connect your Instagram account to other apps in order to share to Stories.

Instagram is investing heavily in their stories platform as it continues to gain popularity and users.  Buffer theorizes that stories may eventually overtake the traditional newsfeed that users are accustomed to.  As a content type, ephemeral “stories” is nearing the billion users milestone; Instagram’s market share is over 300 million daily users.  To gain more market share, Instagram is taking action to make it “faster, easier and more creative.”

Facebook to Create New Groups Tab on Mobile Apps

Facebook is giving Groups better real estate on their mobile app.  Zuckerburg introduced a Groups tab that will help users navigate to Facebook Groups more efficiently and promote more interaction with content.  This change comes after learning that Facebook groups have 1.4 billion monthly users.

Furthermore, Facebook wants to amplify discovery for groups.  Although somewhat vague, Zuckerburg said, “later this year, you’ll be able to discover and join new groups through the tab.”

This is an interesting move by Facebook after shutting down the standalone Facebook groups app last year.

Instagram to Add Live Group Video Functionality in Direct Messaging

A new update will enable Instagram users to do live video chats in small groups as well as one on one via direct messaging.  This is would give marketers, brands and influencers to differentiate their offerings from live public videos.

According to Instagram, over 100 million Instagrammers consume live video daily.

 

Facebook is focusing on video and group chat services.  It was announced that Whatsapp will also be adding group calling in the near future.

Instagram to Redesign the Explore Tab for Multiple Interests

The explore tab on Instagram has gone through several makeovers.  Once dominated by hashtagged content, the explore tab has been refined several times over as the Instagram algorithm has been put in place to aid in content discovery.

The forthcoming newest iteration of the explore tab will be organized into channels of users’ top interests.

Facebook Messenger to Add Augmented Reality for Brands

Much like Snapchat filters, Augmented Reality (AR) experiences will be added to Messenger to give brands new tools to experiment with.

The AR will enable users to overlay 2D objects, 3D objects, and animations on top of their image or video and then share in a group, one-to-one conversation, or even add it to their Story.

David Marcus, Head of Messenger, shared some big announcements at the F8 conference.

Messenger now has more than 1.3 billion users every month, and over eight billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses each month on the Messenger platform.

7 Big Reasons Smart Businesses Get Secure Website Backups

By Ruben  · June 8, 2017  · @RubenEAvila

important reasons to use website backups

Your website is vital to your digital strategy.

Website Backups – nobody has time for that, right?  Well, we all know what it’s like to stay up all night working on documents, presentations, reports, etc.  Have you ever woke up next morning to discover that you didn’t save the final revision?  Or, worse, that your file didn’t save at all?  We have.  It is gut wrenching.

Backing up computer files is something we are reminded of very frequently because we save a lot of important information as well as valuable memories.  We know that we could lose our computer, it can get stolen, the hard drive can crash, or we can accidentally click “delete” at any moment.  Without flash drives and the cloud, our information could be lost forever.

I know you’d rather not, but consider imagining the same thing happening to your website.  As we have already established, your website is vital to your digital strategy and success.  You depend on your website to market your brand, communicate essential information to customers, generate leads, and, for some of you, to process sales transactions.  If your website goes down, you will lose money.  If your website goes down, your brand will take a hit.

Here are the five most important reasons to consider website backups:

1. Host Website Backups are Not Enough

Your host may already be safeguarding your site from hacks and other potential threats, and while many hosts perform rudimentary backups, it’s very probable that their files won’t capture the current version of your website.  That’s not a risk you can afford to take. According to Online Marketing Blog – Not a Grouch:

[clickToTweet tweet=”People think having their web host create backups is good enough, but this is far from the truth.” quote=” A few people I’ve talked to think that having their web host create their backups is good enough, but this is far from the truth. The backups that your host provides are not sufficient to make sure you have a bullet-proof site.”]

Many web hosts don’t perform regular backups unless their users are specifically paying for that service.  Even when hosts do backup information, it will not be immediately available to you in the case of emergency to get your site running again.

2. Your Website is Constantly Changing

If you’re taking the right approach toward optimizing your site for search engines, you’re constantly adjusting your language and refreshing content.  Keeping a backup of your site as it is now is crucial.

Your up-to-date sales letters and blog posts are testaments to how much your website transforms.  Additionally, your website’s databases are a great example of how rapidly your data is changing.  And, if your website has a membership or e-commerce component, most of your valuable content is changing hourly.  So, the only useful data only exists in one place – your current website.

3. The Ability to Respond Quickly

The statistics on hacking are remarkable, if not mortifying.  Forbes states that 30,000 websites are hacked every day.

Thirty thousand websites…  

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even matter how small your business is.  If that doesn’t scare you, three out of five organizations that get attacked are bankrupt within six months.

Nothing is invincible; you can add many security measures to protect your site, but hacks are always a possibility.  When this happens, you will have enough concerns just dealing with passwords (not to mention trying to prevent further attacks).  Routine or daily backups allow you to recover lost, hacked or corrupted files or databases much more smoothly.

And, you won’t have to waste time cleaning code because you can just upload the last working version.

4. You Can’t Put a Price on Peace of Mind

Backup recovery plans are critical so that any website is able to maintain business continuity and achieve efficient, stress-free disaster recovery.  As a small businesses owner, you can’t relate to the huge corporate hacks that often make the news.  Nonetheless, these breaches are a very real threat to small businesses as we mentioned earlier.  Peace of mind is attainable, though, with a high-quality backup solution.

Businesses invest an irreplaceable amount of hours, dollars and resources into developing a website and creating great content.  Although websites are rarely completely “lost”, your content is so valuable, that it is definitely worthwhile to invest in a secure, reliable backup and recovery solution.

Don’t lose sleep worrying about what could happen to your website.

5. It’s Like Having Insurance for Upgrades

Upgrading your website’s core software, or any module, is necessary so you have all the latest security patches in place, but it can go wrong.

Errors can, and do, occur mainly because most software platforms are not created by a single developer.  Most businesses using content management systems, rely on various code snippets that are built by third parties.  A core software or code snippet upgrade, a back-end settings change, or a programming change can bring an entire website down.  Having a good full backup can be a good insurance policy should problems occur.

6. It Can Prevent Losing Content

Data on websites is constantly updated and changing.  If you’ve ever lost all your hard work in a file that was spontaneously corrupted, you can understand how easily it would be for a website full of content to also be corrupted, and it is frustrating to try to recover the content.

Save yourself the stress.

Perform website backups on a regular basis to prevent wasted time and resources.

7. You’ll Have an Extra Security Measure

Whether the attacks are targeted towards your business, your server, or executed at random, they are becoming increasingly sophisticated and challenging to safeguard against.  By backing up your website, you have given yourself the tool to reverse such attacks at minimal expense to your business.

How Ransomware Cyber Attacks Can Affect Your Business

By Ruben  · May 16, 2017  · @RubenEAvila

ransom ware attack

Is Your Website at Risk from Ransomware?

Many of you have heard about the massive cyber attack that has sent much of the world into ‘disaster recovery mode’. This is a great wake-up call to remain diligent and acknowledge the importance of good security practices.

As evidenced over the past few days, security of systems and data are essential for any organization to function. We have seen time and time again, an increasing volume and sophistication of cyber security threats.

Cyber Security Threats Include:

  • Targeted Phishing Scams
  • Data Theft
  • Other Online Vulnerabilities.

Nothing in security is 100% full proof.  It is essential that you, and any staff, are proactive to ensure your systems and data are protected.

It is imperative your website is being maintained and looked after thoroughly with timely core code updates, design security patches, and website backups.

The average computer connected to the Internet can easily and unknowingly be compromised in moments.  As we saw this weekend, many attackers gain entry from simple mistakes or lack of knowledge, like clicking on links in emails from unknown sources.  You play an important role and can help protect your business, your information, and your customer’s information.  Help us help you: stay informed, ask questions when you have them, and stay current with appropriate security practices.

How to Protect Yourself from Ransomware:

  1. If you use Windows, install the patch that Microsoft has released to block the specific exploit that the ransomware is using. You can find instructions on in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.  You can also directly download the patches for your OS from the Microsoft Update Catalog.
  2. If you are using an unsupported version of Windows like Windows XP, Windows 2008 or Server 2003, you can get the patches for your unsupported OS from the Update Catalog. We do recommend that you update to a supported version of Windows as soon as possible.
  3. Update your Antivirus software.  Most AV vendors have now added detection capability to block WannaCry.
  4. If you don’t have anti-virus software enabled on your Windows machine, we recommend you enable Windows Defender.
  5. Backup regularly and make sure you have offline backups.  That way, if you are infected with ransomware, it can’t encrypt your backups.
  6. For further reading, Microsoft has released customer guidance for the WannaCry attacks and Troy Hunt has done an excellent detailed writeup on the WannaCry ransomware.

*UPDATE 9-13-2017*

According to leading website security company, Wordfence, ransomware is now specifically targeting websites and attempting to encrypt website files.

We also recommend that you have reliable backups. It is important that you don’t store your backups on your web server. If, for example, they’re stored in a ZIP archive on your server, then if your site is taken over by this ransomware, the backups will also be encrypted and will be useless. Your backups should be stored offline, either with your hosting provider or using a cloud storage service like Dropbox.

This newfound threat goes to show that hackers are actively trying to extort business owners and cheat you of your hard earn money.

We expect this to evolve over the next few months into fully functional ransomware that targets both your website files and database.  We also expect increasing incidents of extortion.  For websites that do not have a firewall and regular backups, this may turn into a profitable business for attackers who can ransom a few thousand websites.

The fact is that even features added to your website may make your website vulnerable.  Recently, it was discovered that over 200,000 websites were at risk due to code that enabled a feature to make the website more customizable. 

Keep Your Business Safe

We strongly recommend that you install professional website security software, or hire someone to care for your website to protect yourself and your business against these kinds of threats.

We have integrated malware scans into our firewalls as of last fall.  This allows us to use malware signatures that we create to catch ransomware variations in our firewall.  Using this technique can block an attempt to upload ransomware, even if the attacker used an unknown exploit.

Further, we suggest you ensure that you have good offline backups, and do make sure your backups are not on your web server.  Your backups need to be on a separate server or a cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive.  Backups are the last line of defense.  It is better to avoid getting hacked in the first place.

If you have any questions regarding the security of your website, please contact us.

If You Don’t Believe That Web Aesthetics Affect Your Bottom Line, You Are WRONG

By Ruben  · March 7, 2014  · @RubenEAvila

cat using computer

How many times have you looked up a big company’s website only to be disappointed by the poor design (No images? Homepage is cluttered and confusing, can’t find what I want) or service offering (Can’t update my details? No shipping details?) and thought, “I can’t believe this huge organization can’t get it together to do something as simple as a website”.

Let’s use a concrete example to illustrate our point:

If you were in the market for limo service (you have a fancy date, or, perhaps, your child wants a limo for prom), judging on first impression alone, which one of these services are you likely to call to inquire about a limo?

Service #1 or Service #2

Websites aren’t really all that simple, but expectations about what you should see and do online are growing more and more ingrained.  A Google report showed 88% of users that had a bad experience on a site on their mobile phone would not return, either on a desktop or a mobile.  Consider how quickly and recently mobile sites have become ubiquitous and that should give you an indication on how quickly the general populace develops a sense of normalcy and entitlement around these online services.

Why is Good Web Design Important?

You may have heard the research that users stay on a page for about 8 seconds before making a decision about whether to stay or go. 8 seconds in which to communicate your key messages, in a way that doesn’t annoy or confuse, or otherwise negatively affect the user. This is where design is so important.

At a glance, a great web design will:

  • Confirm the branding of the company, professionally and in an aesthetically pleasing manner
  • Clearly communicate the content that brought the user there in the first place
  • Create a feeling associated with the goals of the company brand. E.g. professional, cutting edge, warm, homely
  • Lay out the important information in a logical and accessible manner, following established rules, or innovating new ones

Can this be done in 8 seconds? Absolutely.

Having a beautiful looking site is about professionalism. It’s about presenting your business in the best possible light. Just like coming to a job interview in a good dress or suit, it’s expected. In the online space, no one can see your shopfront or office. So you need to communicate everything you would in that environment, within 960 x 800 px (or thereabouts).

Investing in a great design reflects your values as a company, and recognizes the importance of the online space as a key branding and communication tool.

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