Infographic: The Science of Brands on Instagram

No other social platform provides an experience as incredibly focused and engaging as Instagram. With just a bit of creativity and thoughtful measuring, you can make some Insta-magic for your brand. In this infographic, discover the trends behind the big-brand Instagram experience and learn how you can catapult your company to new heights.

Click on the infographic below to view a larger image:

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<b>++ Click Image to Enlarge ++</b><br /><a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/?wide=1"><img src="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Science-of-Brands-on-Instagram.png" width="520"></a><br />Source: <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/">The Science of Brands on Instagram (Infographic)</a>

Sources

• http://www.fastcompany.com/3029395/bottom-line/how-the-most-successful-brands-dominate-instagram-and-you-can-too
• http://list.totems.co/
• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/report-brands-are-now-posting-more-instagram-facebook-163406
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/get-instagram-likes_n_6751614.html

The Science of Brands on Instagram

No other social platform provides an experience as incredibly focused and engaging as Instagram. With just a bit of creativity and thoughtful measuring, you can make some Insta-magic for your brand. In this infographic, discover the trends behind the big-brand Instagram experience and learn how you can catapult your company to new heights.

Click on the infographic below to view a larger image:

Want to display this infographic on your site?

<b>++ Click Image to Enlarge ++</b><br /><a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/?wide=1"><img src="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Science-of-Brands-on-Instagram.png" width="520"></a><br />Source: <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/">The Science of Brands on Instagram (Infographic)</a>

Sources

• http://www.fastcompany.com/3029395/bottom-line/how-the-most-successful-brands-dominate-instagram-and-you-can-too
• http://list.totems.co/
• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/report-brands-are-now-posting-more-instagram-facebook-163406
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/get-instagram-likes_n_6751614.html

4 Common Errors That Kill Data-Driven Decisions

Data is more than just facts and figures. Data analysis can improve your business’s bottom line. Your team members may deviate from the intended purpose, but you can veer them back on track with the numbers. Avoid company mishaps by driving your managers toward data-driven decisions.

1. For the Love of Tradition

Humans are creatures of habit. Mainly, we play nice and follow the trail of our predecessors. However, business leaders should not rely heavily on the past actions of their companies. By following tradition and not the data, you could be stifling your company’s growth.

Source: The 7 Business Goals of Content Marketing: Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough

Don’t get trapped in the ol’ days. For example, advertisements might be the long-standing marketing strategy for your business. But based on research by Roper Public Affairs, 80 percent of business decision-makers prefer to receive company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. Be ready to adjust your strategy to transform your visitors into evangelists.

Tips to Support Data-Driven Decisions

• Brainstorming encourages innovation. Let departmental teams participate in What If… exercises to buck old habits.
• Learn from companies outside your industry. Partner with a nonprofit; cross-sector collaboration can offer new insight for stubborn challenges.
• Build a “non-traditional” culture. Give employees perks for developing unconventional ideas.

2. Iceberg (Data), Right Ahead!

In business, we sometimes focus too much on the surface elements, such as SEO, social media, or paid advertising. More Facebook ‘likes’ are great, but what does that really mean for your company’s brand? Managers need to dig deeper to understand the entire data story. Find the underlying factors that are driving your business forward.

Source: Infographic: Big Data Iceberg

For instance, if the data shows a need to rev up content marketing, don’t automatically assume that means more blog posts. Demand Gen Report’s research study found that the top 3 content formats that B2B buyers seek out to research a purchase decision include: Whitepapers (78%), Case Studies (73%), and Webinars (67%). Adjust to the data by learning all the pieces of the puzzle.

Tips to Support Data-Driven Decisions

• Encourage employees to explain the data process. Knowing how they got from point A to point B gives you a complete journey to the final results.
• Ask several why and how questions to rebut any assumptions.
• Realize data doesn’t belong to IT. Involve all employees in the metrics of the company.

3. Cooking the Data

Data should help you make a decision, not necessarily support a ready-made plan. Good managers can make bad judgment calls by offering data only to justify their decisions. This same issue became prevalent at one of the big tech companies—Microsoft. Executives hired researchers to lend credibility to the their decisions.

So, your team may be headstrong on selecting website color schemes. Redirect their attention to the 2014 Mobile Behavior Report: 54% of consumers believe that it is easier to find information on mobile-optimized sites. Furthermore, give your team projected outcomes of how this data offers value to the company.

Tips to Support Data-Driven Decisions

• Separate the research from the decision makers. Hire an external firm to provide your data analysis. Then, let an internal committee offer the results to the decision makers.
• Host a professional development seminar showing the dangers of cooked data.

4. A Little Bit Biased

Every business leader shows an inclination towards a particular outcome or idea. Cognitive bias can emerge when we make decisions based on limited information or apply non-relevant facts to a particular situation. One major example is groupthink—the desire for everyone to conform. Without any naysayers, your business could become stagnant.

Throw out the bias; instead, use the data as your competitive advantage. According to HubSpot, tweets posted around 4 p.m. Eastern time tend to get more retweets than those posted at other times. So, why would your social media team agree to post tweets at noon or midnight? Correct this bias with the data.

Tips to Support Data-Driven Decisions

• Audit everyone’s thinking with self-awareness drills.
• Play devil’s advocate. Conflicting information can challenge current beliefs and produce a better outcome.

Data can help your business if used correctly. Don’t let your company get bogged down with these common errors. From lackluster traditions to cooked data, you can guide your employees towards making sound, data-driven decisions—without the stubborn traction of a few. Refocus your team and benefit from the results.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, the law, and social responsibility. She inspires a new breed of innovative attorneys at Hearsay Marketing. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice.

Another Online Marketing Opportunity is Knocking: Hello #HashtagSearch

Pop Quiz: Are you using hashtags in your online marketing campaign? If you answered yes, do you know why they are important? And do you know how they relate, if at all, to the SERP?

If you’ve passed over the hashtag because you view it as a fad, it’s time to revisit the concept. If you randomly add hashtags to your social posts as if you’re adding a dash of salt to your fries, it’s time to add some strategy to your hashtag game.

Just consider these stats from Social Media Today writer Pam Dyer:

“Only 24% of tweets include hashtags, but those that do receive twice the engagement of those without them. When used well, hashtags can be powerful tools that drive brand recognition, increase reach, build community, create buzz, and positively impact customer loyalty.”

Dyer is referring to hashtag usage on Twitter, but what about the almighty SERP? Can hashtags help a brand gain visibility for trending topics on Page 1 of Google or Bing? Yes, they can. Read on to get the straight facts about hashtags and the SERP.

Google+ Is Still A Relevant SERP Ally

While Google+ has the lame duck reputation for social media marketing, ignoring it is a poor choice, especially when it comes to posts showing up in the SERP. When Google Authorship was eliminated in mid-2014, many brands abandoned G+. That was a premature move. Just because Authorship is no longer supported in web search, this does not mean that G+ posts have disappeared as well, especially when it comes to hashtag searches.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land touched on this topic and called it Author Rank.

What is it? G+ posts from trusted authors are still showing up in the SERP. Combine a related hashtag, and posts from other social channels and key influencers can appear as well. Let’s look at an example:

Search Query: #datastorage cloud

Organic Results:

The first social listing (which is the second item shown) is a tweet, and the fifth listing is a link to the Google hashtag search tool. Google has gathered everyone who is talking about that particular hashtag and has displayed them in one listing. If your brand is striving for relevance within a certain niche, wouldn’t it make sense to add a relevant hashtag to your content?

Do these results show up if you omit the hashtag from the search query? No, there are zero social links.

Search Query: datastorage cloud

Results without Hashtag:

A recent post from Ann Smart of Social Media Examiner outlined the value of Google+ posts with hashtags. Unlike other hashtag-enabled sites like Twitter, G+ actually curates content related to your posts. What that means is that they’ll serve up your posts in related searches. As Smart reinforces in her post, “It’s the additional related results that set Google+ hashtags apart.”

Your simple takeaway here is even if Authorship is dead, G+ should not be ignored. Use it, embrace it, and love it, especially combined with the use of hashtags.

Effective Hashtags Across Multiple Social Channels Can Improve Brand Visibility

One of Google’s most important factors for higher page ranking comes in the form of “the conversation.” This conversation is how people are connecting, discussing, and interacting with your brand. This factor comes in the form of the online currency of shares, tweets, +1s, likes, etc.

You can improve your own relevance in these conversations by embracing the hashtag. Even though this sounds like we’re beating a dead horse, don’t neglect the hashtag. Even Google has listed the hashtag as a search operator for improving results. Adding a hashtag strategy to your campaign will improve visibility for your brand, from Google to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and beyond.

Since our first search examples were dominated by Google and Amazon, let’s look at a keyword that gives other brands a chance.

Search Query: cloud #backup

Organic Results:

Three of the top six results are social channels. As it gets harder and harder to achieve Page 1 results, perhaps it’s time to pay attention to WHO is showing up there, and build a relationship with them.

Remember the advice that came out after Google launched Penguin and Hummingbird? “Don’t guest post for links, guest post for an audience.” If your brand submitted a guest post for an authoritative source related to a specific hashtag, the value in the post would supersede “link juice” if their tweet reached Page 1, and the tweet linked to your post or your website.

Again, do results vary when the hashtag is dropped from the query? Yes, social links disappear, again.

Search Query: cloud backup

Results without Hashtag:

Hashtags Make Your Brand A Bigger Part Of The Conversation

Using hashtags isn’t just about creating your own and hoping other people will catch on. It’s also about connecting with trends already present within the online and social media world and resonating with your own customer base or audience.

Search Engine Journal contributor Olga Andrienko brings this point home in a post she recently wrote:

“Using hashtags correctly makes you appear on-trend and tuned into current events. In other words, hashtags make you look relevant to your social media followers, and relevance is what makes them stick around.”

Hashtags and Google+: Your Ally To A Better SERP Result

The simple fact is that the more people talk about your company or brand, the better your ranking will get. Unifying your marketing campaign across social media using hashtags as the glue will bring it all together.

Your hashtag strategy should always start with Google+. Google explore tool gives you direct insight into topics and areas that are related to your most relevant industry topics. You’ll get a better understanding of what is being talked about online and how to be a better participant in that conversation. That connection will always get more people interacting with your brand online, give you insight on relevant groups that have captured your target audience, and contribute to your company’s inevitable ranking power.

Are People Searching With Hashtags In The Search Engines?

Google announced “a richer hashtag experience” for Google Search back in 2013, via Zaheed Sabur. Search Engine Land quickly followed up with an announcement of “hashtag search.” Kevin Lee from Buffer nailed it when he highlighted a quote from Steve Cooper on Forbes.com.

The hashtag. It’s time for marketers to use it and gain momentum over competitors who are still ignoring it and treating it as a fad.

About the Author: Markelle Harden serves as chief content manager at Get A Copywriter and creates Resources for businesses that are chipping away at their content goals. Follow her @getacopywriter.

7 AdWords Alternatives That Failed, Except For One

You know all those blog posts about increasing AdWords conversion rates 572%, getting on Product Hunt 4 times in one day, and securing VC funding by hiring a sign spinner?

This isn’t one of them.

I had hopes of writing one, but what we did instead was a freaking mess.

Well, almost.

As a newborn AdWords focused agency, we wanted to use some other PPC channels to grow our email list and clientele.

Pretty ironic, right?

Now, you may be one of the very few advertisers who have plateaued their success on AdWords and just can’t squeeze any more profit out of the largest ad network in the world.

If so, you’re about as rare as the Taylor Swift “pegacorn.”

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Oct 31, 2014 at 4:49am PDT

For those of you who have no idea what a pegacorn is, it’s a pegasus and unicorn mix.

Yes, they are very rare indeed.

But this post isn’t about AdWords. It’s about the other avenues you can use to drive more leads, conversions, and sales to grow your business; hopefully, by an extra 572%.

The AdWords alternatives we’re going to cover today aren’t exactly search engines. In fact, they’re more like AdWords display network alternatives that get results through demographic targeting.

See, we didn’t want to use the alternatives that people have already talked about. We wanted to seek out some new ad channels that haven’t been written about that much.

Facebook was obvious, so we didn’t want to do that.

Bing Ads was obvious, so we crossed that one out.

In this post, we’re not going to just be looking at 7 AdWords alternatives, but what we did to fail, so you can learn from our mistakes.

Let’s get started.

Picking Our Lead Magnet

As with anything marketing, if your offer is crap, then no beautifully designed landing page can save you.

We knew we had to create a lead magnet that would get people excited, and if we’re smart, a lead magnet that hadn’t been created before.

Throughout my years of doing AdWords, I’ve always been asked the question: “What can we do to get more phone leads?”

Since there hasn’t been a lot written on the topic, I thought that was a brilliant idea.

So, we created a guide on how to generate more phone leads with AdWords and Conversion Rate Optimization.

It ended up being 60 pages long, with 32 different ideas on AdWords and conversion optimization.

So, once we had our guide done, we needed to create a landing page.

We studied other guide/ebook landing pages and also read up on Eric Sloan’s “8 Examples of What Not to Do On Your Ebook Landing Page“.

We eventually ended up with this masterpiece of a landing page: http://grow.klientboost.com/get-more-phone-leads/.

Finding a Partner and Upsetting a Few People

With the guide and landing page done, we knew we could make it even more successful if we found a bigger company/partner to help with the promotion.

Since the guide is about generating more phone leads, what better company than a call tracking analytics solution?

In the PPC industry, call tracking has become more and more popular in order to understand which keywords, ads, and placements are making the phone ring.

So, I did what anyone else would do, and got a little ahead of myself.

I started reaching out to all the well-known call tracking companies, at the same time.

It was a huge mistake.

Companies like CallRail, DialogTech (formerly IfByPhone), Invoca, CallTrackingMetrics, Marchex, CallSource, and Century Interactive all got an email from us with a custom made image like this:

Since we’re a small and new company, we didn’t think anyone would say yes.

But, everyone said yes.

We eventually looked at employee counts and funding numbers on CrunchBase to decide who we should partner with.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but we hit it off really well with Invoca and found out they were a nearby company based in Santa Barbara, CA. They also sport some serious clients (which we’ll talk about later).

With the guide done, the landing page done, and the partner done, it was on to the AdWords alternatives:

#1 – Reddit Ads

Reddit has a very engaged and smart community of visitors, but their ad platform is horrible.

Within it, you get to decide which subreddits you want to target (which are smaller, more niche community pages that revolve around certain topics).

For our guide, we decided to target the subreddits of /PPC and /AdWords, but quickly realized that all ad slots were filled for the next three months.

Since Reddit allows only one ad spot per subreddit, the space quickly gets crowded.

We opted for the subreddits of /Advertising and /AdOps.

The results we’re pretty bleak:

We got 43 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $51.14. That’s a $25.57 CPA.

We would’ve spent more if we’d had the chance to target the subreddits that were more relevant to our guide, but it’s hard to do when Reddit doesn’t tell you which days are available or open to advertise.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Reddit ads won’t work for you.

There are some (although few) examples out there of people who’ve successfully used Reddit ads to drive sales and conversions. One who sticks out is Ryan Luedecke.

He catapulted his beef jerky business and made $2,200 in sales from a $400 investment.

The story got shared quite a bit, and after reading what he did, it became apparent that what we were doing with our guide might not ever work if we didn’t get in front of the right audience.

As I mentioned earlier, Redditors are some super clever folks. They can’t stand self-promotion. Reddit ads seem to work the best when they’re not ads at all, but actual helpful content.

We moved on to the next one:

#2 – Yahoo! Gemini Ads

Yahoo! Gemini is Yahoo!’s answer to native advertising.

We’ve had some luck with this platform for some of our clients, so we thought it would be a sure thing for us.

We got 281 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $212.24. That’s a $106.12 CPA.

Within the Gemini platform, you can set your campaign around one of three goals:

• Visit my website
• Know my brand
• Download my app

We chose “Visit my website” and created an ad we wanted to run.

Then we got to choose the targeting method and opted for People interested in > Business Services > Business Services.

And just to make sure we had a little control, we threw in some keywords for people searching for:

So, what happened?

Yahoo! Gemini ads are not the most targeted ads and, just like Reddit Ads, seem to work best when they fit within the topics on the page being covered.

Obviously, the keyword intent from the Google AdWords search network isn’t the same as this platform’s.

But, with banner blindness doing nothing but increasing, native advertising like the Gemini platform is set to continue to see growth.

Here’s an example of what a Yahoo! Gemini ad looks like

The third time was the charm:

#3 – Twitter Ads

Okay, so we struck out twice, but we were only $263.38 in.

Next up was Twitter ads and, boy, we had a much better experience.

We got 297 visitors and 49 guide downloads for a total of $198.15. That’s a $4.04 CPA.

So, what happened?

What we found was that the Twitter audience was much more engaging and interested in the problem we were helping them solve.

We targeted followers of notable blogs like Unbounce, KISSmetrics, and competitor AdWords agencies. We found that most of the downloads came from other agencies, not client prospects.

So, even though we had a lower CPA, we couldn’t convert those acquisitions into customers, just maybe some new fans.

But, don’t let that stop you.

Twitter ads have been growing in popularity, and it’s a killer ad platform when you focus on leading your ads with education and value.

That’s a steady increase in interest

You’ll also find no shortage of case studies and in-depth posts on how to drive conversions with Twitter.

This is one of the better AdWords alternatives out there.

What was next?

#4 – BuySellAds

Okay, so we were beginning to see a trend as to why our guide wasn’t performing as well as we’d hoped (we’ll cover that at the end). But, that wasn’t going to stop us from continuing our experimentation.

Next up was the media buying platform of BuySellAds.

BuySellAds allows you to buy impressions on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding basis from high-quality publisher sites that don’t want to be cheaper out from the Google AdSense network.

Since, at this point, we understood that most of our downloads came from marketing agency people, we thought the next perfect targeting would be the Search Engine Journal (SEJ).

We got 321 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $240. That’s a $120 CPA.

It was far from our Twitter ads success earlier.

Here’s a look at the internal BuySellAds dashboard and the low click-through rate:

Now, the cool thing about BuySellAds is that you have a ton of options when it comes to “thought-leading” type of sites.

The downside is that you buy a high-priced, fixed number of impressions that usually work best with low friction/valuable content that gets people into your marketing funnel really early.

Most likely, those people are not in “ready-to-buy” mode.

Something to keep in mind as you’re paying via CPM is to select ad spots that are above the fold.

If not, you stand the chance of racking up your impressions with even fewer people actually seeing your ad.

#5 – StumbleUpon Ads

StumbleUpon is such a fun and awesome site for mindless swiping.

Kind of like Tinder, but for whatever topic you’re into.

The great thing about StumbleUpon ads is that you can really get some high volume visitors and, if you’re lucky, some great engagement.

We got 528 visitors and 5 guide downloads for a total of $100. That’s a $20 CPA.

But, we just didn’t see that engagement.

In fact, the average time on site from a StumbleUpon visit wasn’t even one second.

It was less than one second.

I didn’t even know Google Analytics could be that rude

Was it because our landing page was that boring or because the first impression was that bad?

Or, was it because we shouldn’t expect to use StumbleUpon ads as a conversion tool, but as more of a blog discovery tool, as this KISSmetrics article suggests.

#6 – LinkedIn

Okay, by this time, we had definitely realized that we might have picked a guide topic that was a little too niche.

But, to give it one last go, we headed over to LinkedIn and tried to target the people who would love more phone leads – sales people.

We got 22 visitors and 5 guide downloads for a total of $113.07. That’s a $22.61 CPA.

Okay, not that bad, but definitely not sustainable either.

Even though the campaign ran for only about a week, we saw decent CTRs of 0.521%, which is pretty high for LinkedIn. Still, it just didn’t make sense to keep running as the cost per click was around $7.54.

So, it was on to the best AdWords alternative of them all:

#7 – Partner Promotion

Remember that I mistakenly asked all the call tracking analytics companies to join forces with us at the same time? And that we ended up going with Invoca?

Well, not only did we create an awesome partnership that could continue to grow in the future, but Invoca sent out our 60-page guide to their entire email list.

Results?

We got 774 visitors and 343 guide downloads for a total of $0. That’s a $0 CPA.

Invoca sent almost 400 downloads to recipients who included marketing department people from companies like PayPal and Allstate Insurance. Those people got on our email lists and are still there, interacting with our emails and our blog posts.

We also secured a speaker for our #CRODay meetup that we held at our office in Costa Mesa, CA.

Who knows what the future will hold.

What We’d Do Differently Next Time

We quickly learned not to create a lead magnet that fits a narrow audience.

We could’ve created a much beefier guide on AdWords as a whole or some unknown landing page hacks that would appeal to a broader audience.

Instead, we took the route of specificity and didn’t get as many downloads as we had hoped.

Also, because we were so aggressive with so many different AdWords alternatives, we didn’t prepare to create additional unique ad copy or imagery to go with every channel.

I’m sure we could have gotten much better results through iterative testing and constant tweaking.

Conclusion

All together, we got 2266 visitors and 408 guide downloads for a total of $914.60. That’s a $2.24 CPA.

Since many people want to learn something brand new, make sure your content/guide tries to accomplish that, or paints old information in a different way.

Take these AdWords alternatives with a grain of salt and understand that each channel takes time to perfect.

Don’t test the depth of the river with two feet.

About the Author: Johnathan Dane is the founder of KlientBoost, a California based PPC agency that’s on a mission to grow companies. He’s been interviewed by Google and has a German Shorthaired Pointer named Tanner. Connect with him on Twitter.