Affiliate Link Cloaking Basics

What is Link Cloaking?

Link cloaking is the combination of link shortening (creates a short link) and masking, hiding or disguising your affiliate link URL that an affiliate marketing program like Clickbank provides you when you decide to promote a particular product or service.

An uncloaked affiliate link leaves you exposed to theft and reduced click through rates.

3 Main Benefits Of Cloaking Your Affiliate Links

1. Commissions Protection

2. More Attractive Links or Pretty Links = Link Trust = Increased Click-Through Rate

3. Tracking Analytics and Link Management

How does Link Cloaking Protect Your Affiliate Link?

A link cloaking app will change the appearance of an affiliate link so your actual affiliate program ID is hidden from viewers.

The shortened affiliate link acts as a link URL redirect to the offer destination URL and preserves the affiliate ID so that you get credit for any sales resulting from that click.

You don’t need to worry about what type of redirect to use.

You can also change out the base URL to further hide the offer source and set to nofollow links.

A good app like Whizur.com takes care of creating and managing your cloaked link.

If you don’t use a link cloaker app to manage redirects you need to be aware of these 3 types of redirects:

1. 301 Redirects – Communicates to search engines that the page has now moved to a different location permanently. The visitor’s browser will remember this action.

2. 302 Redirects – Communicates that the page is sending this query to a different page but not sure why. The visitor’s browser should NOT remember this action. But sometimes the visitor’s browser will remember depending on your server setup.

3. 307 Redirects – Communicates to search engine bots that we are sending traffic to a different page temporarily. The people’s web browsers will not remember this action.

Also, people have been known to simply go to the main site external links and chop off the affiliate code thereby cutting the affiliate out of the equation.

There are a few black hat unsavory characters trying to steal commissions by planting malware in people’s web browsers so that they can switch affiliate code links and steal commissions.

Link cloaking eliminates the opportunity to hijack links so you don’t unknowingly suffer from Commission theft.

Why is Link Appearance Important?

People are suspicious of an ugly link. Such links make internet users think twice about clicking through on an ugly affiliate link to your landing page.

Your web site visitors like to know where they are going when they click a link and if your link looks like it is an internal link visitors are more likely to “click-it”. 

You need a cloaking service that allows you to use a custom domain name that will cloak affiliate links.

Why do You Need Tracking Analytics and Link Management?

This might seem like a silly question and the obvious benefit is that when you develop 10’s, 100’s and even 1,000’s of links earning 6 figure affiliate commissions you need to understand what is working and where you shouldn’t waste your time.

Affiliate marketers know that to be successful you need traffic and you need to understand which sources are working the desired number of clicks so you have a valid reason to work any particular affiliate marketing strategy.

What are my Link Cloaking Tool Options?

You have the two best options; Website WordPress plugins or Cloud Based apps. We don’t recommend making redirects permanent by adding to your redirect directory through your .htaccess file as it makes the process too complicated in our opinion.

“However, you should never touch your .htaccess file unless you’re well versed in using it because making an error within it could take down your whole site. Using .htaccess or the Yoast method for manually cloaking affiliate links means that you lose out on the additional features a link cloaking plugin can provide.”

Credit Sugarrae.com

Preventing Google from Crawling your Cloaked Links

“Once you have a custom subfolder setup to handle your Pretty Links, you’ll want to prevent Google from accessing that folder by using a disallow directive in my robots.txt file. Search engines don’t want to waste resources crawling your redirects, and I’d prefer they stay away from my affiliate links anyway, so they don’t see tons of redirected links on my site.

If you’re using the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast, this is easy to do. From your WordPress dashboard, go to SEO in the left-hand sidebar and choose Tools > File Editor.

If you don’t already have a robots.txt file, this screen will give you the option to have the WordPress SEO Plugin create one for you. Once you have a robots.txt file, add the following directive to it – replacing /out/ with whatever you used in your base URL in the Global Options section above:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /out/

Then click the Save changes to Robots.txt button below the box.”

Credit Sugarrae.com

WordPress Site Link Cloaking Plugins Pros and Cons

One of our eCommerce WordPress websites is approaching 7 years old. 

We have tested over 60 plugins for various reasons over the years and half of our plugins remain on the site as inactive and many have been deactivated and deleted or removed. 

Whenever you remove a plugin small bits of code remain and can create some future problems. 

We have also experienced issues that when we install a new plugin it creates some form of conflict and causes the entire website to crash. 

Other times we had plugins interfere with each other so we were forced to decide which plugin was more important and in the end – we did not achieve the functionality we wanted. 

We have had the experience of investing many hours deploying the plugin and getting it to work and then after an update it stops working and we find all our hard work is wasted.

Plugins with this level of sophistication typically have a yearly licensing fee. Often a plugin developer will discount the licensing fee the first year and renewal is at the list price paid yearly.

Plugins have some benefits that save a lot of time like automatically placing your affiliate links in anchor texts throughout your site blog posts and even in your blog post comments.

We have not found a free version.

Cloud Based Link Cloaking, Link Rotating and Link Tracking Analytics App

The number one reason I like cloud based apps is that they do not interfere with the backend of your website. 

Second, most cloud based apps offer a monthly payment option with no long term commitment. 

So for all the reasons I mention in the plugins paragraph we prefer the cloud based app option. 

We like Whizurl.com for the following reasons:

Easy to use Dashboard that is Mobile Friendly

5 Simple steps to Cloak your Link:

1. Add “Title” so you can reference in your “Listing” page
2. Add Affiliate Link Code to be Cloaked
3. Add any notes you need here
4. Public Access to your Statistics for bragging rights
5. Click “Save” and check your Listing to see a summary of your Cloaked Links

6 Simple steps to Rotate your Links:

1. Add “Title” so you can reference in your “Listing” page
2. Add Affiliate Link Code to be Rotated
3. Secondary Affiliate Link Code to be used as redirect if none of Rotator links match hit criteria
4. Rotator Type – You have 3 different choices, “sequential” is the default
5. Public Access to your Statistics for bragging rights
6. Click “Save” and check your Listing to see a summary of your Rotated Links

9 Simple steps to Track your Link:

1. Add “Title” so you can reference in your “Listing” page
2. Add Affiliate Link URL Code to be Rotated
3. Select Countries – You can choose “All” or select specific Counties
4. Enter URL for secondary Counties to redirect excluded counties to a different landing page
5. Track Code – leave empty to generate automatically
6. Add any notes you need here
7. Option to Cloak the tracker
8. Public Access to your Statistics for bragging rights
9. Click “Save” and check your Listing to see a summary of your Cloaked Links

All these Features for a Fraction of our Competitor’s Prices – 90% DISCOUNT

Our prices start a $3.00 a month and our unlimited package is ONLY $9.00 monthly.

Note this is for a limited time only available to the first 100 new customers. When you sign up at these special prices you are “grandfathered in” for as long as you remain subscribed – your price will not increase.

Visit Whizurl.com for a FREE 2 Week Trial

The post Affiliate Link Cloaking Basics appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/affiliate-link-cloaking-basics

6 Ways to Change the Buying Decision Process on Instagram

 

If you look into Instagram statistics, you’ll be surprised, to say the least. Here are 6 Ways to Change the Buying Decision Process on Instagram that might interest business owners:

• 72% of Instagram users say they’ve bought beauty-, fashion-, or style-related products after seeing someone brag about them on Instagram.
• Social media users say that Instagram is the platform that has the greatest influence over their purchasing decisions.

Keep in mind that those stats are from the summer 2017 season. Now, with links put directly in stories and with the Instagram Live feature becoming more popular by the day, we can safely assume that this platform is even more important for informing people about products and services and leading them towards purchasing decisions.

Do you need more data? As it turns out, 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business on the platform. Instagram users are 60% more likely to buy a product if they get a chance to buy it on the social network itself. Instagram leads to much higher engagement than all other platforms, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

So how do you do it? How do you use Instagram to guide people towards buying your products or services?

We’ll list 6 Ways to Change the Buying Decision Process on Instagram:

1. Polish Out Your Business Profile

You should start seeing your Instagram profile as the new homepage for your business. Since an increased number of people turn to Instagram when they want to search for brands, the logical thing for you to do would be to polish out the profile. This is what the perfect business profile on Instagram should look like:

• It should provide relevant information about the type of business, as well as the link to the main website.
• The motto! Instagram gives you a chance to write a brief “bio” and that’s exactly what people first see at the top of the page. Use that space to write the company’s motto. If you check the profile of MAC Cosmetics, that’s exactly what you’ll see. A brief description of the business, followed by their motto and a link to the website.

The perfect business profile needs a good profile photo, which represents the brand. Your logo is the simplest way to go, and it works. It conveys your brand’s identity, and it’s recognizable enough when people see your posts in their feeds.

• Don’t forget to include a clickable link in the bio section! It should lead your customers to the main website, where they can buy your products or services.
• The visual content is what matters the most. You need a strategy for this! If you check out the profiles of the most successful brands, you’ll see they maintain a specific vibe throughout their photos. Such a strategy makes the brand recognizable.

2. Don’t Sell Products; Sell Solutions

Instagram is not a webstore. It’s mostly a platform where people come to see beautiful visual content. That’s their main interest. If they are interested in a product, they will buy it not because you’re directly selling it to them, but because your content convinced them it was exactly what they needed.

Olivia Clifford, part of the marketing team at UKBestEssays, explains: “When you use Instagram to influence people’s purchasing decisions, you must focus on the experience; not the product. It’s the story that matters. Visual content gives you tons of opportunities to tell a story, and that’s exactly what you should do.”

Let’s take another successful Instagram page as an example: Yakima Racks. They show real users of their products through the photos they post. It’s not just about the product and all its awesome features. It’s about the experience the product provides. The fact that the brand often collaborates with influencers to tell the stories is a huge bonus. They take over the account and bring the followers along with their adventure.

 

• Lifestyle photography is exceptionally effective. It makes people want that experience, so their instinct tells them they need the product, too.
• Storytelling works well on Instagram. People actually read the captions there, so make them great!

3. Share Content by Actual Users

The example with Yakima Racks brings us to another important point: business pages on Instagram should post user-generated content. That inspires more users to tag your brand in their posts, so they will get shared on your profile. When you create such a community around your product, more people are attracted towards it.

Just check out the profile of Vitamix and you’ll see what we mean. They feature user-generated content from food bloggers, but from regular users as well. You’ll still notice that all photos are carefully selected, so the brand can maintain the unique vibe of their profile.

We’re not talking about influencers here. We’ll get to that point a bit later. We’re talking about normal users of your products. They don’t have to have many followers on their profiles. If their content is good and it presents your brand in the best light, feature it on your profile.

• Whenever you notice that an Instagram user tagged your brand, check out the post and react on it. Like and comment; we all love that! You’ll show your appreciation and you’ll boost the chances of turning this person into a returning customer.
• If the content is good, ask for their permission to feature it on your profile.
• When you do feature user-generated content, don’t forget to tag the Instagram user who created it.
• To get more user-generated content, run contests! Invite your followers to share moments when they use your products. The rules should involve tagging your brand and using a specific hashtag. The best participants will get an attractive prize, which you’ll clearly provide. If your target audience is international, then make the contest international, too.

4. Use Instagram Ads to Reach a Greater Target Audience

A huge percentage of businesses already use Instagram for promotional purposes. What does this mean for you? You’re entering a very competitive environment. Due to that fact, you might have to invest in advertising.

No matter how great your social media marketing budget is, you can reach people on Instagram with it. You’ll limit the budget on the ads, so you won’t spend more than planned. At the same time, you’ll reach a targeted audience of people interested in buying your products or services. Instagram lets you monitor the results of the campaign, so you can keep working on it to make it more effective.

• Keep the content fun and the message straightforward. If it’s a video, Instagram users won’t give it a chance if it doesn’t capture their attention from the very first second. If it’s a photo with a caption, they won’t read it unless something indicates it’s important for them.
• Don’t forget the call to action! The ad should tell people to follow your page, visit your website, or directly shop for your products.
• Speaking of Instagram ads, don’t forget the influencers. They already have a large base of followers. When you collaborate with them, you get great exposure. As it turns out 78% of influencers prefer Instagram for brand collaboration. So reach out to the most prominent influencers from your niche and make an offer they can’t refuse.

5. Use the Potential of Instagram Stories

Stories are yet another opportunity for brands to reach a greater audience. When you turn your stories into full-screen ads with clickable calls to action, you can naturally expect greater engagement from your followers. Just check how Kino MacGregor uses that opportunity:

 

Instagram story ads are great because people see them even if they use ad blockers on their browsers. Plus, you can pay for story ads that will show up to Instagram users who don’t even follow you. They will see the ad between the stories of the people they follow.

You can engage users through your usual stories, too. Just use the “Swipe Up” feature, and they will directly come to your website.

6. Create the Sense of Urgency

If you check out Kino MacGregor’s story above, you’ll notice her offer lasts for a limited period of time. When you’re after the greater engagement, it’s important to create that sense of urgency.

If you actively sell on Instagram, your followers will clearly expect promotional offers. Of course, you’ll give such opportunities to them, but you’ll make them time-sensitive. An offer with a deadline pushes them towards a quick decision and instant action.

That’s a nice way to get immediate benefits from your Instagram advertising campaign.

 

Instagram Has Great Sales Potential; So Start Benefiting From It!

The Instagram community is pretty welcoming towards brands. The marketing approach, however, mustn’t be too aggressive. Remember: it’s all about the stories; not the products. It takes a lot of planning and strategizing to develop the perfect Instagram marketing campaign, but you can do it. If you follow the tips we provided above, you can start making the first steps today! Get cheap Instagram followers from BuySellShoutouts and save money which you can invest in other things for your business.

Short bio:

Warren’s lifestyle is full of hiking adventures. When he’s not busy with his guitar or enjoying the sunny day outside, he excels at blogging skills and scrolls through social media. You can meet him on Twitter – twitter.com/_warrenfowler/ and Facebook – facebook.com/warren.fowler.5015.

The post 6 Ways to Change the Buying Decision Process on Instagram appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/6-ways-to-change-the-buying-decision-process-on-instagram

6 Unobvious Social Media Mistakes Every Business Should Avoid

No one goes out of their way to create Social Media Mistakes Every Business Should Avoid. Buy real Instagram followers from BuySellShoutouts for your Instagram marketing business to avoid any mistake.

 

A decade ago, social media such as Twitter or Instagram were yet to be created or relatively unknown.

Today, social platforms attract millions of people, while Facebook alone gathers more than 2 billion monthly active users.

Social networks have become so popular that it’s almost impossible to run a profitable business without them.

More than 50 million small businesses are already using Facebook Pages to connect with their customers, focusing the majority of efforts and resources on online communities.

However, it’s not enough to simply create a few accounts and post content occasionally.

Social media marketing requires a serious approach and strategy that goes beyond widely-known features.

Most marketers don’t go so far, so they make a series of wrong moves in the process.

In this post, we will show you 6 unobvious social media mistakes every business should avoid.

Here they are!

 

Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

Creating a page on all platforms seems like a reasonable thing to do at first, so most companies go for it immediately.

But they are making a big mistake biting off more than they can chew.

Keep in mind that each network is different and demands a special kind of content.

While Instagram is all about visual posts, Twitter encourages textual messages.

But it’s not only about the content itself since different platforms attract different types of people.

 

Jonathan Henderson, a social media manager at Resumes Planet, explained it briefly: “For instance, LinkedIn gathers business professionals who consume highly analytical content and want to discover the latest industry news.

On the other hand, almost 60% of people aged 18-29 use Instagram, which is a completely different target group that the one you can find on LinkedIn”.

Your job is to select one or two channels where average buyers spend most of their time.

Focus on these networks and don’t waste energy on other channels if they can’t improve brand awareness.

No Multi Platform Strategy

The second mistake goes hand in hand with the first one.

Entrepreneurs don’t take into account the contrasting natures of different social media channels (see example above), so they share the same content across all platforms without any adjustments.

This can cause two problems:

1. Users will realize that you lack knowledge and professional skills to handle social media marketing.
2. People will follow you on one platform only or even un-follow all of your accounts.

To avoid this situation, you have to prepare a multiplatform strategy and tailor content to fit each channel individually.

What does it mean?

It basically means that you should create several versions of the same content.

For example, you can textually present a new statistical finding on Twitter, but it would be much more convenient to design an infographic to display the same information on Instagram.

In each case, you need to think about the format that corresponds to the needs and expectations of social media users.

 

via GIPHY > giphy.com/gifs/instagram-uo6rcjwHSAFsQ

 

Neglecting Video Content

People watch more than 500 million hours of videos on YouTube each day, while 72 hours of content are uploaded to this network every minute!

As remarkable as these figures might sound, they don’t seem to impress all marketers out there.

Some companies still don’t produce video content or do it very rarely.

Bearing in mind a tremendous user demand, this is the kind of mistake you must avoid.

Besides that, there are other reasons to include video design in your social media strategy:

• People consume visual content much easier than plain text.
• Video increases user engagement.
• This type of content can go viral quickly because people love to share it.
• Videos can strengthen the SEO potential of your website.
• Video content improves retention compared to images and blog posts. Most users spend a few seconds scanning articles and photos, while 80% of them watch Youtube clips at least 30 seconds.

 

Forget About User Interaction

Okay, now you pay attention to communication channels and create high-quality content.

But what if you still don’t get too many leads and conversion?

What if your ROI is just not good enough?

The problem probably lies in poor user interaction.

Successful marketers know they have to maintain relations with their followers.

That is why they invite customers to leave comments, share posts and ask questions.

That is also why marketers answer comments and questions.

The whole point of social media engagement is to strengthen the bonds between the brand and its followers fostering mutual interaction.

 

The speed is also critical.

According to the research, more than 40% of users expect a response within 60 minutes.

Things change quickly in the digital environment, so you have to be ready to answer inquiries almost instantly.

This is a very demanding business, but it definitely pays off as you keep raising brand awareness.

Remember that social media interaction is not as formal as email or face-to-face communication.

On the contrary, you should write friendly comments to show a human side of the business.

This should convince potential clients that there are some real people behind the brand, which makes communication a lot smoother.

 

Not Building Trust

Social media engagement has an important side effect – it strengthens the feeling of trust between you and your followers.

Unfortunately, most companies don’t care about it and provide users only with generic and alienated answers or comments.

Although it’s hard to answer dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of inquiries every day, you need to do your best and answer as many questions as possible.

Doing so, you will prove that you respect followers and appreciate their opinions.

The number of page likes is not important if you can’t build trust and expand the base of loyal followers.

In general, only 20% of customers generate 80% of your sales.

These customers are loyal and become long-term brand advocates.

Therefore, you should try to increase the number of such followers.

You might wonder if there is a situation when you don’t have to answer social media inquiries.

The simple answer is – yes.

If someone leaves a nonsense comment that clearly reveals trolling, you can neglect it.

Social Media Egoism

Nobody loves investing hours of work into social media and content creation.

It is hard work that you do to present your brand and hopefully improve sales results.

However, it doesn’t mean you should be too pushy and walk the “look at me” road.

Social media egoism is actually one of the easiest ways to start losing followers.

You need to be careful with self-promotion.

Try to make a balance between promotional and educational content.

Remember the 80/20 rule we mentioned above?

Well, it turns out that it has another application.

The logic is simple: 8 of 10 posts should be informative or entertaining, while only 2 pieces of content should directly advertise your products or services.

This is a reasonable ratio that won’t bother social media users.

Such strategy will also help you to increase professional credibility and become recognized as one of the key opinion leaders in your industry.

 

CONCLUSION

Social media are by far the most important segment of contemporary marketing, so you need to understand all tricks and tactics in this field.

A lot of companies make wrong moves online, minimizing the overall effect of their marketing strategies.

In this post, we showed you 6 unobvious social media mistakes every business should avoid.

Did you ever make some of these mistakes?

Do you have other suggestions to share with your peers?

Feel free to let us know in comments and we’ll be glad to discuss it with you!

Author Bio:

Warren is a marketing enthusiast and a blogger at Resumesplanet, who loves music. If he doesn’t have a guitar in his hands, he’s probably embracing new technologies and marketing techniques online! You can meet him on Twitter – twitter.com/_warrenfowler/ and Facebook – facebook.com/warren.fowler.5015.

 

The post 6 Unobvious Social Media Mistakes Every Business Should Avoid appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/6-unobvious-social-media-mistakes-every-business-should-avoid

Promote your products with a Shoutout on Instagram

Promote your products with a Shoutout on Instagram

Instagram offers enough opportunities to build and promote your own brand, but these tend to be effective only as long as long as you are getting enough traffic to your pages. More the visibility, more the popularity. You may spend hours creating your posts, but if you do not work on ways to promote your visibility, the efforts are not going to be worth it. Here are ways which can help you attract more followers.

1. Create Interesting Content

The content of a blog has lots to do with the popularity. Do not post materials that are too mainstream. People love unique and out of the box ideas. You can create a niche around something that will allow you to come up with something interesting every time you post a content. Also, it is important if you stay away from sensitive topics if you want mass following.

Whenever you are starting, upload enough contents to keep the visitors engaged for some time. This way, the audiences will have a better chance of understanding your blogs and you will have higher chances of getting revisits from the audiences.

2. Choose an interesting username

This may sound cliché but it is worthy of mention. Your username has a huge role in deciding your popularity. It helps to have a username that is catchy and easy to read and remember.

3. Team up with fellow Instagrammers

This is one of the most effective strategies to increase your visibility. Working like a lone wolf is not quite the thing when it comes to social networking. You will have to resort to as many options as possible. The smallest of things can sometimes act as game changers.

Find out if there are people posting similar contents as yourself. Connect with them and ask for promotions. Even if you succeed in directing 20% of the traffic from his account to yours, it would increase your visibility by a great deal.

Shoutout on Instagram

Many popular Instagrammers promote other budding bloggers in return for money. This way, you can have a network of links redirected to your account. This is exactly what is known as a shoutout on Instagram. This strategy can guarantee you instant fame and higher chances of attracting more followers. However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when you are starting a network of shoutout on Instagram.

1. Two is always better than one

Try to advertise your links in as many shoutouts as possible. The more traffic you receive, the better it is for you. The most important thing is to have followers. After that, you can use the fame to your advantage.

2. Choose your promoters carefully

If you are creating contents for fashion, then it is no good to have your brand advertised on blogs dedicated to gaming. You have to make sure that the audiences visiting your shoutout on Instagram will be interested in yours too. You should also be careful that you do not connect with the accounts that may harm your reputation. For e.g., If your sites are very similar but not as interesting as your shout out on Instagram, the audiences will definitely give a higher preference to the promoter. Therefore, it counts to plan your strategies carefully.

The post Promote your products with a Shoutout on Instagram appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/promote-your-products-with-a-shoutout-on-instagram

10 Ways to Make People Care about Your Business on Instagram

 

Instagram continues to be the most popular and growing social media apps, and it has become a proven social media platform for building and marketing brands. Its is essential to know how to buy Instagram followers and how to help these followers to get maximum benefits from your Instagram accounts.

 

To be successful it is important to understand the ways to make people care about your business on Instagram.

It’s estimated that 80 million photos are uploaded every day and it has one of the biggest active user bases which makes it perfect as a marketing platform.

Here are 10 Ways to Make People Care about Your Business on Instagram

1. Post Regularly

Infographics claim you should post on Instagram at least once a day so you don’t cause an out of sight out of mind mentality towards your account.

There is an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t post multiple times in a day, especially not when algorithms could have them clogging up your follower’s dashboard.

Try not to post more than ten times a week or repeat the same post too frequently.

You can’t base your feed on what other people are doing, some high successful Instagram’s choose quality over quantity and have months between posts.

One size does not fit all when it comes to social media so trial and error is key, check your algorithms for what time of day and what quantity works for you and your target audience.

Don’t post because you have NOT posted yet that day, if you have nothing to say. The peak times are generally morning, lunch and after work.

If you don’t have the time to commit to this try a scheduling tool like Buffer which allows users to line up their posts so it will hit the times that works for you without having to be near a connection.

2. Use Well Written Captions

Captions can stimulate a conversation and make people want to comment on your post. If you struggle to know what to say or how to say it there are a multitude of websites that can help like  Grammarix.

While Instagram’s primary idea is for compelling visuals the tags and captions will help achieve the engagement your feed needs.

The Instagram algorithm displays posts in the user’s feeds based on how interested they believe they be in the content.

A post with lots of comments and likes will have a better chance of appearing at the top of your follower’s feed and it might even make the Explorer page.

If you are concerned about writing captions or want more advice The Huffington Post recommends Revieweal and others similar copywriting tools.

3. Run Contests

Instagram’s promotion guidelines allows users to run contestants so it’s smart to use this to the advantage of you and your business.

A good Instagram contest is simple but effective.

Offer the chance of winning a product by commenting on the post or encourage some sort of prize lottery entry if they post a photo using your product with your company tagged in it.

Giving out free items is good publicity as the winner is likely to post about it on their own social media platforms.

 

4. Hashtag It

Hashtags are an essential part of Instagram marketing but it can go wrong very easily.

Remember to tag the location of your business. People search for location tags more than any other business related tags.

A recent update allows users to get directions to your business with a click on your Bio.

This works only when you enable Geotagging on your page.

“It’s worth investing in research before adding hashtags, this will avoid using inactive tags or your tag getting lost in another context. Avoid using offensive or controversial hashtags so check for any double meanings or cultural associations before you create the tag. Just make sure your hashtags are unique, catchy and easy to remember”, – explains Kim Gaillard, a Social Media Manager at Best Australian Writers.

Several studies show that eleven is the maximum amount of tags to use before it becomes overwhelming.

Avoid using all 30 available and make sure they don’t over power the caption.

5. Cross Promote

An effective way to increase your reach is to cross promote on other social media platforms.

Cross promoting will allow you to generate more exposure to your Instagram.

Cross Promoting will generate more exposure for your Instagram content.

This tactic will reduce the cost of creating new content and help strengthen your brand image.

Instagram is great for automatically posting content to other accounts, and there are multiple online tools which an also assist in this.

Also promoting your Instagram only video and image content on platforms like Facebook or Twitter will help drive traffic.

 

Photo Courtesy of Social Media Today

6. Create a strong Bio

A good business bio can help you get noticed.

Make sure the Bio clearly identifies what your business does and why they should follow you.

Choose a profile that is strong but still relevant to your brand and make sure your username is easy to remember and can be easily searched.

If you are nervous about delivery the right type of Bio try a tool like Elite Assignment Help or State of Writing.

Use hashtags in your Bio to make it easier for people to find you.

Make sure you put your website link in the bio and with an Instagram business account you can have the option to insert additional call to action links such as email and phone numbers.

7. Interact with your Followers

You don’t have to post an image every day but being as active as possible can really help gain a following.

Interact with content from your feed and other people’s accounts.

Follow local or similar businesses and interact with their content, it will help you promote your business to their followers.

This might not look like it will make a big difference to your brand but in the long run it will help growth.

Instagram users love getting responses from brands

This will make them feel excited and more likely to share content from your page.

When responding always start @username so everyone can keep track of conversations and get notifications.

Talk to your followers, get to know them and what they want from your brand.

By asking the right questions you will create an engaged community and market with a human touch.

Initially you might not get the response you need but gradually you will see more and more people engaging with your content.

 

8. Track with Metrics

The number of followers may be a vanity metric but tracking your follower growth will allow you to understand what content makes an impact.

Measuring likes and comments will assist you in understand what steps to take in your social media strategy.

By monitoring metrics, including hashtags, URL click throughs and comments.

This will help you market your business more effectively.

If you don’t understand how to monitor these metrics look at using an online tool or advertising service.

9. Move beyond Product Images

Generally just posting product images won’t make many people stop and take notice.

Posting products in use by real people shows you are a customer driven business.

Your Instagram should appear natural.

Just like an everyday person is using rather than it being used as an obvious business tool.

Post video tutorials or inspirational footage showing how to use the product or some form of a demo.

Get your staff involved in posting content for a personal and diverse touch.

 

10. Find Fans the Old Fashioned Way

Sometimes you have to find your followers.

Search hashtags of similar products or brands and introduce yourself either by following of commenting.

Seek out and follow followers of companies that you think are relevant to your own.

Follow people who like related images but it’s worth checking their profile to see how relevant they are.

Be cautious as having a bad follower to following ratio can be a turn off.

 

Rachel Summers is an experienced social media manager who in her seven years of experience has worked for numerous companies including leading custom writing service Boom Essays.   In her free time Rachel offers advice and assistance to small and start up business on their social media.

The post 10 Ways to Make People Care about Your Business on Instagram appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/10-ways-to-make-people-care-about-your-business-on-instagram

Tips to use Shoutout for Shoutout on Instagram

Tips to use Shoutout for Shoutout on Instagram

Popular Influencers exchange Shoutouts regularly as a method to get a large number of followers on Instagram. The field of competition is greater than you think and this is why you need to use a method other than regular Shoutouts.

This is a mutual co-operative technique where not only you but your counterpart will get the benefit – call it what it is – these are free shoutouts. You need to find someone with the right account and whom you will be come to an agreement that you both will Shout-out for each other on your Instagram page.

This is what is known as Shoutout for Shoutout. This is a great idea but you need to the ideal target audience among millions of potential Instagram shoutout pages who is reliable and trustworthy. This is an effective tactic for aspiring social media users looking to jump into influencer marketing and leverage brand awareness to sell sponsored posts.

Combine the ideal influencer with a brand in the healthy lifestyle niche, for example, and you gain a loyal customer for years to come. To learn how to get the perfect match or make sure this works perfectly for you, you will need to follow some steps. Instagram is the ideal social media platform to win at influencer marketing.

The Users are “Like Minded”

Well, unless the user you are choosing is like minded, then there is no benefit using the S4S method. For example, the user you have chosen loves sports and you want to promote your page or post which is about health and fitness.

So, there is no point of promoting your profile with the help of that account because the user’s followers in this account do not have similar laser targeted interests, try starting with relevant accounts. However, If your marketing strategy includes targeting a broad audience you may find this an effective way to grow your account.

Number of followers

Check with the number of followers the user have. Unless he has more followers (or at least similar number) there is no use having him as your Shout4Shout partner unless his engagement rate is much higher than your page. For example if your page has a 2.5% engagement rate and your potential shoutout partner is 5% you have a stronger gaining more targeted followers on your shoutout post.

You need to understand that, this is a technique or method that can be only used if and only if you get a lot of follower from the mutual Shoutout.

Build a Good Relationship First

It is important that your instagram user partner trusts you. Start with liking an Instagram post, commenting and sharing relevant pages and watch to see if he responds. Again you want your future partner to be attentive and aware of what is going on with the account. Once you demonstrate that you are reliable, then go for the agreement to S4S each other.

Be Careful While Helping Them

Remember not to spam the users’ posts who are in an agreement of Shoutout for Shoutout with you. This is very much important that you post and comment on their posts only when it is necessary or valid. Otherwise you can just pass on, because with too many wrong Shoutouts their posts won’t be having a good effect.

Talk to Them

For any relationship to work properly, it is important that you talk with your S4S partner properly. Talk to your partner via email, chat – get the phone number or through Instagram itself before you create an agreement with them.

So, if you are really need S4S, this can be a very good option for you. Simply put, the S4S method is the lowest cost option for gaining followers. The most reliable long term option is Insta Authentic™ Followers with 5 different option and great reviews, this is the best alternative.

The post Tips to use Shoutout for Shoutout on Instagram appeared first on BuySellShoutouts.

source https://www.buysellshoutouts.com/blog/tips-to-use-shoutout-for-shoutout-on-instagram