Instagram Rolls Out Web Profiles

While most businesses are focused on going mobile, popular photo-sharing app Instagram is making its web debut. Two years after arriving on the iPhone, the company has finally started to roll out web profiles.
“People have been asking for this for a while now and we’re excited to finally start rolling them out,” explained Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. “We’re going to start out by launching to a small percentage of people today and will roll it out slowly to everyone in the coming days.”

Currently, when you share a link to an Instagram photo on Facebook or Twitter, people can view that photo but not much else. For example, if someone wanted to browse through your additional photos, he or she would have to look you up on Instagram. The company’s new web profiles aim to resolve that.
Bearing an incredible likeness to Facebook Timeline, Instagram’s web profiles feature a rotating collage of photos where your Facebook cover photo would sit. Below that, a small profile image, short bio, and follower stats rest just above your photo history — which is arranged in reverse-chronological order.

Instagram’s web profiles also enable individuals to follow new users, like photos, and leave comments directly from their browsers. To check if you’ve received the new profile, just access your profile (for example, http://instagram.com/sproutsocial). Instagram details what new features visitors can expect on profiles still awaiting the update.

If you’ve been neglecting your Instagram account, the new profile — which puts an even greater emphasis on your photos — is a good reminder to revisit and re-evaluate your goals on the platform. Photo sharing sites like Instagram have revived storytelling through photos; make sure your story is ready.

[Image credit: Instagram]

Social Media Tips: How Good Is Your Audience?

The primary purpose of Social Media is connecting people, and allowing you to share content with a vast audience. However, building an audience isn’t just a numbers game. Today’s social media tips will have you thinking about quality over quantity when assessing your social media audience.
When you’re on a social network, you’re dealing with other people. Other human beings. Amongst the millions of them, you audience is waiting to be formed. But it’s not just about racking up followers early on, that’ll come later, provided your content is of a consistent high quality. Build a solid foundation based on quality first.

Social Media Tips: Target High Impact Users

Naturally, you want your followers to interact with you and share your content, right? But who are they sharing your content with? Have you looked at the people that follow them? How many people follow them? And importantly, do they interact and take notice of that user’s information? When you stumble across a user like this that has an interest in your niche, this is where outreach comes in.
Follow them, interact with them, retweet them, boost their ego. Offer an alternative opinion to something that they post. Don’t just thrust your content in their face. Be subtle. People are more likely to think highly of you if you contribute to the greater discussion or stroke their ego a bit, rather than treating them as a retweet farm. This can be instant, but may often take days or weeks before they follow you. But don’t stop just because they’ve followed you, because the unfollow is just as easy as the follow.
But once you’ve got people with large, interactive follower bases on board, you can build on that foundation. The retweets and follows will start to come naturally.

Social Media Tips – Evaluate how responsive your audience is

So you’re starting to get followers, but how good are they? Do your followers actually care about what you say? The best followers are interactive, they’ll challenge what you say, retweet your content and share content with you.
Ideally, when you share content, (links to your site, interesting pages from elsewhere, your products, etc) the last thing you want is for it to be ignored. Do your followers click your content when you share it? Compare your social media traffic/referrals to your overall follower count, is the ratio of followers to traffic good enough?

Social Media Tips: The Ideal Follower

My formula for the perfect twitter follower:
Is a clicker & sharer
Active at the same time as you.
Has roughly the same amount or more followers.
Has plenty of active clickers & sharers
Is interactive (mentions, RTs)
Has followers interested in your main topics

Of course, these are few and far between, but it’s always worth keeping an eye out for people like this, because they’ll be the ones that will prove instrumental in your social media success.

Facebook: The Ultimate Short Guide for Business

When you get right down to it, a lot of the chatter surrounding using Facebook for business makes it seem more complicated than it really is. It is really somewhat simple: drive engagement, stay ‘Liked’ and get to the top of the stream. Follow these seven simple best practices and you can’t miss.

Rule 1:  Ask questions. The most straightforward approach to spur engagement is to ask for it. Literally. There are a lot of different ways to approach asking questions, so mix it up a bit.
For instance, you could do a real simple question and encourage fans to ‘Like’ if they agree. Also, questions that begin “what’s your favorite…” or “where are you going to be…” or “who else wants…” can be great comment generators. Once you see what gets people posting and ‘Liking,’ you’ll have the information you need to create templates for best question formats.

Rule 2: More video. You probably already know you should be doing more of this, right? Get into a habit of regularly making very short videos. Maybe it is a how-to on your products. Or a brief interview (30 seconds to 2 minutes) with someone at your business. You can also do brief clips about topics related to your industry but that have nothing to do with selling your products.
Plain and simple, people love to click on video. You should be posting them regularly.

Rule 3: Ride a pop culture wave.  There are certain TV shows, movies, and current events that grow beyond normal interest and become a genuine phenomenon. When this happens, use it as an opportunity. Post a link to a poll about it. Make a funny comment and ask for responses. If you can tie it to your company in some way, do it. But that is not necessary and can be counterproductive if you stretch it too far. Sometimes the point is just to generate positive engagement and nothing else.

Rule 4: Keep the conversation going. If a post is generating comments, are you making a point of posting back? This can be as simple as posting a thank you for a compliment or as thoughtful as asking a question about their comment. Show you care about the conversation.  And don’t forget that a larger thread often appears higher in Facebook feeds.

Rule 5: More photos. This is an off-shoot of Rule 2. You already know that visual does better, but do you have a consistent plan for generating relevant photos to post on a regular basis? Here are a few ideas to get you started. Snap and post photos of employees in their work “habitat” with a fun caption (don’t over-do this one). How about personifying your product in some way? For example, how about clicking a photo of the product as if it were attending an event? Have a brainstorming session with your staff to come up with the zaniest photo opportunities including your product.

Rule 6: Be a content curator.  Are you concerned that people will hide your posts, or even worse, “Unlike” you? This is a real concern. One way to maintain your value to your fans is to seek out content your audience is likely to find valuable, entertaining, or both. Think of your social media as not just a channel to push content, but also as a listening station. Use social media to follow others with your radar up for what you can pass on to your fans.

Rule 7: Give them something! This is a very important rule. Facebook users obviously are likely to be much more interested in the personal posts of friends and family than they ever will be in any particular brand.  You need to give them regular incentives to continue being fans. Regularly announce giveaways, promotions, and discounts. If you are a retail operation, what can you do to drive them from online to your store. If you are a service-based business, what link can you provide to offer a special package of services to your Facebook fans? Be consistent about offering these incentives to keep people on board.

Facebook success is really not that complicated. Post regularly using these 7 guidelines and you can count on being well ‘Liked’.