Tag: blogging

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Four Fun Ways to Use Instagram Stories Polls and Questions

Social media stories are attractive because they are highly interactive and engaging for you and your target audience. One popular way to increase your engagement while learning more about your audience is using Instagram story poll stickers and questions. Adding polls, stickers, or emojis is an easy and simple process that keeps your audience interested and curious about your business. In addition, polls and questions provide you an opportunity to educate your audience and learn more about them.

 

To add a sticker or emoji, select the “Polls” icon after taking a picture or recording a video for your story. Next, type the question you would like to ask in the field that appears above “Yes” and “No.” After you input the question, you can even choose your different responses by simply tapping the “Yes” or “No” field to change it. The response fields can only be twenty-two characters long. However, there is no text limit for the question filed. Select “Done” in the top right of the screen to finish the poll.

 

The following are four ways to use Instagram Stories polls and questions:

 

Put Your Best Products Up for Battle

 

Compare your best products and have your audience pick the winner. Be sure to share the results of the polls so your audience can see how they relate to others who follow your business. It will also persuade them to participate more. For example, if you are a food blogger, you can share a story with one cake recipe you made on the top with another of your recipes on the bottom, such as chocolate versus caramel, and see which your viewers pick the most.

 

Develop a Creative Survey or Quizzes

 

Get to know your viewers more by asking them different questions related to your business or industry. Think outside of the box to know their most common problems and the goals they would like to achieve in life. You can even make fun quizzes that test their knowledge on the topic you would like to teach them or spread awareness. This is done by using the “Quiz” icon near the “Polls” icon when you swipe up from your story.

 

Test Your Audience Knowledge with Feedback Questions

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Ask your audience a series of questions to see if you understand their main problem. Not only does this create more engagement with your target audience. It also ensures you know what you can do for them and that you are providing value. Successful business solves problems, and asking them a direct question allows you to be sure you know what it is. Yes or no stickers or the sliding hand sticker where you use text to offer different answers is a great way to further learn about your audience and get them to interact with your stories.

 

Overall, using the Instagram polls, questions stickers, and slider features is a powerful way to understand and get to know your audience fully. It is not only fun for your audience to participate but gives you valuable information to perfect your craft, product, and services.

 

 

 

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What You Need to Know About Instagram Stories Highlights

Instagram story highlights are a vital section of your Instagram page, especially if you run a business or share many content creations through Instagram Stories. This section of Instagram appears below your profile picture and is a collection of videos or pictures of information you shared through your Instagram stories in the past. It is then organized in a way that is more easily digested amongst your audience.

 

These videos or pictures do not disappear unless you choose to remove them from the highlight. In other words, a highlight is a story you shared that is worth saving because it is valuable to your audience. It also provides a more organized and streamlined way for your readers to take in the important information you want to share and offer them while boosting your engagement and interaction.

 

Here is what you need to know about Instagram stories highlights and a few tips to take more advantage of its benefits:

 

Use Highlights to Extend the Life of your Stories

 

Highlights allow you to extend the life of your stories that normally only last twenty-four hours. You can even use stories that have been archived, a saving feature that Instagram offers of stories older than twenty-four hours that only you can see. This feature must be turned on or added to your archives before the time limit is reached.

 

Add Branded Highlight Covers

 

The Highlights section appears on your profile, below your picture and Instagram bio. Meaning it is an important area to update with your branding. Include your colors and a title, so your followers know what information you are saving and sharing.

 

Don’t Go Over One Hundred Clips or Photos

Focus on Results

The Highlights section can save one hundred clips and photos. Going over this number will automatically take off the one you put first, one hundred videos or pictures ago. It is important to keep track of this by creating a constant rotation, so you know each section is clear and provides value to your audience.

 

Use Highlights for Big Announcements

Four Ways to Make Your Social Media Stories Stand Out

Company announcements or important information about who you are and what you do is a good section to include in your Highlights. This gives potential new followers a quick look into who you are and what you can provide them by following.

 

Use Highlights for Commonly Asked Questions

 

A frequently asked question section is another important section that saves you time and makes it easy for your new audience. Add in as many questions as you can, including ones that involve your audiences’ answers.

 

Use Highlights to Create Interactive Tutorials

 

Finally, but certainly not least, a great way to use your Highlights feature is to create an interactive how-to tutorial. Interactive tutorials are an enjoyable way to get your viewers and followers involved while providing maximum value.

 

As you can see, if you are posting Instagram stories, then you should be taking advantage of highlights to store and share important information with your readers. Highlights allow you to organize your content better to communicate, engage and interact with your audience effectively. With Instagram highlights, you can now ensure that your readers will never miss out on valuable content.

 

 

 

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How to Use Instagram Story Analytics to Improve

In order to know if your Instagram stories are making an impact, you must check and keep up with your analytics. This background data gives you a direct insight into how well your content is performing with your audience. Without this information, you won’t be able to put a content plan together that maximizes your benefits and success.

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You can locate your analytics, individual story analytics, or the full page and stories in two places. To find the analytics for a specific story, select the story you need the information on and swipe up to view its insights. You can also view the insights from the Archive button located in the upper-left corner of your profile. Then select “view all saved stories” and then swipe up on each to view the analytics or insights of both. To locate the analytics page for all of your stories, select the Insights button from the top right of your profile screen on the menu.

 

Here are the Instagram story analytics to keep track of and what to do to improve your conversions:

 

Overview

 

The first set of metrics you will see is just a quick glimpse of important metrics that will be covered shortly, including the number of accounts reached, your content interactions, and profile activity.

 

Reach

 

Next includes your reach, a set of metrics that refer to how many people see your content and where they find it. Be sure to add important hashtags and location stickers so your story can appear on the Explore page and expand your reach. Reach metrics includes:

 

  • Accounts Reached – The unique number of times your story has been viewed or seen, at least once.
  • Impressions – The total number of times your story has been viewed or appeared on the screen. This can include repeat views by the same Instagram user.

 

Content Interactions

 

Content interactions are a group of insights or metrics that show your viewers’ or followers’ actions when engaging with your stories. Include questions, polls, slider stickers, and a clear call-to-action to increase your content interactions. These metrics include:

 

  • Shares – The number of times a viewer shares your story.
  • Replies – The number of responses you received from your story, including quick reaction replies.
  • Forward – How many times viewers tapped forward to view your next slide.
  • Exited – The number of times viewers exited your story before finishing it.
  • Next Story – The number of times your viewers viewed your next story after finishing the story you selected to view metric information for.

 

Profile Activity

 

This group of insights shows the actions your viewers or followers take when engaging with your story. Update your call-to-actions and get your viewers more engaged if you want to improve your profile activity. You can’t expect your viewers to react if you don’t ask them. Profile activity metrics include:

 

  • Profile Visits – Profile visits are the number of times your profile was visited after viewing or viewing a story.
  • Follows – Follows are the number of times someone followed your Instagram account while or after viewing your story.
  • Call Button Taps – This is the number of taps you received to call your business.

 

Keep track of these analytics and update your plan with these tips to maximize your engagement and other conversions with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a powerful marketing tool as long as you know how to use them correctly and pay attention to the information it shares.

 

 

 

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Four Ways to Make Your Social Media Stories Stand Out

While social media stories are a good tool to market and advertise your business, they can easily get lost in the competition. Over five hundred million active users post Instagram stories alone – showing you just how important it is to make valuable and important content that stands out to your target audience.

 

Here are four ways to make your social media stories stand out:

 

Show Behind-The-Scenes Content

 

Give your audience a view of what it is like to be you behind a business every day. This is content that many viewers are interested in and attracted to. It also allows you to show a more vulnerable and personal side that your audience will admire. Social media stories are powerful because they are seen as less informal and more direct. Behind-the-scenes content is a great way to take advantage of it.

 

Post During Audience Active Hours

 

Post content when your audience is the most active. Not only does it make it more engaging to your viewers, but it also shows that you are aware of their needs while making it easier for them to view your content. You don’t want them to rely on coming to you, and many stories only last twenty-four hours. Therefore, posting content when they are active increases your exposure, engagement, and overall success.

 

Actually, Tell a Story

 

Don’t click bate or post generic content to your social media stories. Actually, plan out a consistent story that provides value, whether that be through new information or relatable entertainment. Stories need to be just as valuable, if not more, than your other posts to keep them engaged, interested and to persuade them to become loyal customers.

 

Ask Your Audience to Share Their Opinion

 

Always get your audience involved in some way through the platform features by asking them questions, submitting their own content or simply replying to your story. The more active and involved your audience is, the more likely they will convert into loyal or paying customers. Getting their feedback also allows you to improve your content further and provide superior value that your competition can keep up with.

 

As you can see, making your content stand out is really about highlighting and showcasing your audience. If you have good content and understand your target audience, you won’t have any problem creating quality social media stories that stand out. Solve a problem and get your audience more involved to see more results and benefits with your social media stories.

 

 

 

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Why You Should Take Advantage of Social Media Stories

To Increase Brand Awareness and Exposure

 

Social media stories are highly shareable content, making it easy to increase your exposure and awareness on the internet. Bringing value to your audience ensures that they want to share it with their peers, increasing your views and exposure. A vital step to the success of any business on the web. It’s simple, the more people you can get to view your content, the more likely your viewership or audience will grow. Social media stories are another creative and interactive avenue to do this.

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To Humanize and Personalize Your Brand

 

Social media stories are powerful because they are viewed as a more personal and less informal way to communicate with your audience. Showing your human side effectively increases your reputation as a business, as many viewers see this as a more trustworthy trait. This inspires more trust and credibility required to transition your readers or viewers into loyal or paying customers. Being more personable and human also shows your relatability beyond your business responsibilities and goals. You can understand what your audience goes through daily.

 

To Increase Audience Engagement and Interaction

 

Audience engagement is how you keep them interested in your business. It also provides them value or solves a problem, further increasing your exposure and reputation as a brand or business. Again, the more value you bring, the more successful you will be. Engaging content keeps your viewers wanting more and provides you more resources to update and perfect your products or services.

 

Take advantage of these benefits by adding social media stories to your marketing plan today. The more tools you use within each platform, like stories, the easier it can be to build your awareness and exposure as a business while improving your audience engagement and participation. In other words, not taking advantage of social media stories is a poor decision and only shows your audience that you don’t care to adapt or provide them more value.

 

 

 

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Four Ways to Reduce Your Email Unsubscribe Rate

Customer retention is a top priority if you are a business owner or email marketer. It is quite well known that it can cost five to twenty times more to find new customers than to please the ones you have. Therefore, if your unsubscribe rate is below two percent, you are currently on the right track and should strive to keep it there or even lower.

 

The following are four ways to reduce your email unsubscribers and build a more sustainable list: 

 

Audit Your Email Funnels Often

Better segment your readers, be sure they have a consistent schedule, not too long or too short, watch out for spammy looking content, segment by interest, and add them to multiple lists.

 

Plan and Map Your Content

Add in value and fun content, don’t just be a salesperson. Be cautious of your titles, as they are your first impression. Don’t use click-bait or sound obnoxious. Instead, speak to them naturally and let them know exactly what they will get out of the opening and reading your email.

 

Personalize and Incentivize

Be generous to get back what you are worth. If you only focus on what you get out of each email, then the content you are providing lacks quality. Instead, it would help if you concentrate on your audience and what they need the most for it to come back around to you. Then, keep the content personalized and find ways to incentivize them to continue engaging or reading your content. Giveaways, free downloads, or discounts are a few ideas.

 

Engage and Follow-up

Don’t ignore your audience once they become a subscriber or paying customer. The point of email marketing is to grow a sustainable and active audience that you can communicate with for the long-term. It is not a one-and-done strategy.

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Keep up with your audience by sending free educational material and asking for feedback or other questions that help you improve your content and overall value as a business. The more you engage and ask questions, the more you get to know your audience to become a better information source, improving your business’s growth and suitability.

 

A Harvard Business Review report states that simply increasing your retention efforts by as little as five percent can improve your profits by 25 to 95 percent. Showing you just how valuable keeping your unsubscribe rate low can be to your email marketing efforts. If you want to maximize your revenue and keep your subscribers interested, reviewing your goals, content, and getting to know your audience more is vital to your success.

 

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Four Easy Ways to Improve Your Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is determined by how often your email ends up in your subscriber inbox. If it’s not deliverable, it will bounce back or be rejected by their email service provider. On the other hand, a bounce-rate higher than you wish may mean that subscribers are not seeing your emails and not getting the value they deserve from your email campaign.

 

There are two types of bounce-rates; hard and soft. Hard bounces indicate some permanent error, such as an outdated or nonexistent email address. Which likely means the only thing you can do is remove the lead from your list. On the other hand, a soft bounce can be fixed and is probably a temporary error such as a full inbox or some server issue or lag. Meaning you can likely resend the email once the problem is fixed.

 

It’s important to note that many people have noticed that once their bounce rate reaches higher than ten percent, it starts to affect them throughout other campaigns. This is because your subscribers’ email service provider uses this information as a security measure and will add your email straight to the spam box or reject it.

 

Here are four easy ways to improve your bounce rate:

 

Create Double and Relevant Opt-Ins

Make sure your acquisition process includes a way to evaluate the information you collect. For example, using a double opt-in form makes your subscribers verify their email addresses. Ensuring that every lead you get is viable. The fewer errors in data entry you have, the easier you can pinpoint the main culprit to increasing your bounce rate.

 

Remove Inactive Email Accounts Regularly

If emails consistently bounce or are active, remove them from your list. Inactive emails can have a major impact on all of your conversions and this can give a more accurate representation. Programs such as NeverBounce can help simplify this process with their email verification and email cleaning services.

 

Don’t Forget Proper List Segmentation

One way to avoid your subscribers’ email service provider from thinking you are spam is to implement proper list segmentation. This is using a certain set of criteria, information, or time to target certain subscribers. Getting marked as spam is less likely if you stay organized and timely.

 

Avoid Free Sender Domains

Authenticate your email address and avoid using services such as Gmail. Using your own email prevents email service providers from seeing your content as spam.

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Don’t ignore your bounce rate just because you believe it is out of your control. You can and must do many things to ensure your emails end up in their inbox and improve your bounce rate.

 

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Seven Tips to Optimizing Your Email Onboarding Sequence

The email onboarding sequence or acquisition process is the first and most crucial step to email marketing. Obviously, without leads or email addresses, you can’t properly communicate or market to them. However, acquiring your leads is far from the only requirement to creating an email onboarding sequence. Onboarding sequences also involve the steps between being a new subscriber to becoming a veteran or hopefully a loyal customer and, in turn, leading them down their next email sequences.

 

Here are seven tips to optimizing your email onboarding sequence

 

Always Start with A Confirmation

This is vital to ensure the deliverability of your email. Often, subscribers fill in the wrong information; however, a double-opt-in form where the reader must confirm their address reduces this chance. A confirmation is also a great way to personalize your introduction and further excite their interest.

 

Focus On Benefits Not Features

When subscribers first join, show them the benefits you promised in the opt-in. Don’t just list features. Provide real value. Give them instant satisfaction by joining your list with hardly anything in return.

 

Develop Inactive and Active Reader Sequences

Be sure to segment your list in terms of their behavior and how they respond to your emails. Especially the first few. If they don’t click them, they should be moved into different sequences or emails to persuade their interest further. This way, you know every email you send can accomplish its goal more effectively.

 

Use Call-To-Actions to Accomplish Your Goals

Lead and end every email with a call-to-action. Show and tell your subscribers what you need them to do in exchange for all the valuable content you provide through email. Make them clear and straight to the point. It is also important to note that call-to-actions with buttons and graphics convert better than those that don’t.

 

Be Fun and Engaging

Personalize and humanize your content. Speak to them as if you were talking to a friend, not a business lead. You want to focus on growing their trust and show them that you are worth the time and effort. Invite them to other platforms or ask them to reply to your email to get them to interact, engage and feel connected.

 

Keep It Short and To the Point

Your email copy length should be around 125 to 250 words or so. That’s right, and your emails should be pretty short. You don’t want to offer too much information all at once. Instead, each email should guide them along short and different journeys that all work together to share a similar message or goal.

 

Provide Generous Incentives

Make it even clearer to your new subscribers that you value their time by providing earlier and generous incentives that align with your call-to-action.

 

As you can see, the onboarding experience is more than just acquiring new subscribers. It’s about teaching them about the value you have to offer and what your company is about while also proving it. Finally, it’s about exceeding their expectations and giving them a great experience to transition into a loyal customer and subscriber.

 

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Five Actionable Tips to Boost Your Email Opt-In Rate

Your email opt-in rate is the percentage of those who visit your website compared to those who become email subscribers. The higher the rate, the more email addresses you have to better market and communicate to your target audience. In other words, the imagine you had 1,000 people visit your website this month.

 

Fifty of those viewers decided to provide their email and opt-in to your campaign. Therefore, your opt-in rate would be five percent, the average that many other businesses see. An opt-in rate that is two percent or higher is said to be on the right track. To determine your opt-in rate, use the following formula:

 

(Monthly or Weekly Opt-In Subscribers/ Monthly or Weekly Website Viewers) * 100

 

(50/1000) * 100

 

0.05 * 100 = 5%

 

Opt-ins are materials that hook your audience in by providing them high-value content in exchange for their email address or cell phone number. Once you acquire their information, you lead them through your email marketing funnel to hopefully persuade them to be paying loyal customers. Therefore, improving your opt-in rate is important to running a successful email marketing campaign.

 

These five tips will help you boost your email opt-in rate:

 

Use Pop-Ups

Pop-ups can be a great reminder for your viewers as they are leaving or browsing your website. However, don’t overuse them as they can quickly become annoying and make them click off altogether. Many readers expect a few, but if they pop-up too frequently or make it too difficult for them to browse the site, they will simply get discouraged and leave.

 

Make the Opt-In Process Obvious and Easy

Be sure to optimize the signup process to the mediums your readers use the most such as smartphones. If the opt-ins or lead magnets are not optimized for their cell phones, they won’t be able to complete the process. Many readers will abandon a brand or business altogether if they refuse to learn how to adapt to their audience as well. Keep the opt-ins organized and straight to the point. Don’t overload the reader with too much information. For the most part, the opt-in should be scannable and understood in a few seconds.

Add Prominent Testimonials

Show social proof with customer testimonials. Make them obvious and near the signup button to show your readers that you are trustworthy. If others are seeing the benefit you promised they will want to participate.

 

Use the Fear of Missing Out

Urgency is a useful tactic to get your readers to act now. Discounts with deadlines or early bird tickets for hands-on classes are great examples of these. Most people can’t pass up a good deal, nor do they want to miss out.

 

Invite Them to a Call or Webinar

Humans love to feel like they are important or part of a community. Not only that, inviting them to a short one-on-one call or free webinar makes them feel more valued and that there is a real person who cares on the other side. It shows that you are there for more than just monetary gain. Increasing their trust and loyalty to the business.

 

Overall, providing value is key to increasing your opt-in rate and achieving your email marketing goals. If you don’t have valuable content to provide nor follow these six tips, it’s likely your email opt-in rates will be poor, destroying your sales and overall email marketing conversions.

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Four Tips to Enhancing your Email Call-To-Actions

Call-to-actions are vital to your email marketing campaigns. It is the material that instructs your audience to do something in order to get the conversions you need to grow and build a sustainable business. If you don’t tell or show your audience what you need them to do, you are unlikely to succeed.

 

Call-to-actions are like a guidebook that instructs your readers on where to go and what to do. In fact, you can increase your click-through rates by over 300% just by adding one single call-to-action, according to a WordStream report and further highlighting the importance of adding them to your email copy if you want to run a successful email marketing campaign.

 

The following are four tips to enhance your email call-to-actions to increase your conversions and run a more profitable email marketing campaign.

 

Use a Button and Colorful Graphics

Buttons are easy to see and obvious to most readers. They are eye-catching, clear, straight to the point, and easy to understand and use. Buttons also can improve your results by nearly 28% more than call-to-actions without them. A big red “buy now” button or “read more” is more obvious and easier for your subscribers to understand. Making it more likely for them to follow through if your products and services are what they need.

 

Use Action-Oriented Words

“Get the discount here” or “Try your free trial today” are perfect examples of action-oriented words that should be used in your call-to-actions. These words inspire your readers to do something and grab their attention.

 

Keep it Short and Urgent

Too much information or crowded images only persuade your audience to click away instead of click-through. It can also be confusing and overwhelming, allowing your readers to second guess instead of making a quick decision.

 

Using a sense of urgency and clear and direct information increases your click-through rate because people fear missing out. However, be sure to use this appropriately and not take advantage or misuse your readers. Urgency should be to inspire, not to take advantage of.

 

Highlight the Value Proposition

When deciding on what copy to use, be quick and to the point by highlighting the most valuable part. What are your readers getting out of doing the action you ask of them? Is it at a discount, more education, a chance to participate with others, and a bigger community? If you lead with this, it will be easy to get your readers to take action.

 

Don’t neglect your call-to-actions. Make sure your CTAs align with your goals and objectives to each and every email copy and campaign you create. Please keep it simple, direct, and obvious, and don’t forget the power of call-to-action buttons.

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