Tag: social media tips

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Instagram: To grid or not to grid

If you’re wondering why other Instagram accounts look more polished than yours, here’s a secret: they’re probably gridding. Instagram grids are created by simply arranging your photos before publishing in an alternating light and dark pattern so your profile page has a checkerboard effect. If you grid, then no matter what the subject of each photo is, or the colors used, all looks neatly arranged. It’s the online equivalent of a tastefully decorated living room–but like such a room, living with it has its pros and cons.

Grid examples

An excellent example of an Instagram grid is from @goddessofoptix. She alternates beautifully staged white-background shots of her favorite frames with colorful photos of herself in all kinds of backgrounds. You may think this is restrictive, but she actually has a lot of freedom within the form; all she has to do is make sure every other shot has a white background.

@goddessofoptix's Instagram feed

The key background color for your Instagram grid doesn’t have to be white. At Be Seen Optics in San Diego, we use the owner’s favorite color, orange.

Instagram account for @beseenopticssd

The eyewear line Thierry Lasry makes another kind of Instagram grid, which I guess you could call “striping.” Instead of alternating backgrounds on each photo, they post 3 similar photos at a time, giving a unified effect for each row.

Instagram account for @thierrylasry

How to grid

There are many scheduling apps (Iconosquare, Hootsuite, Later) and photo filter apps (A Color Story) that will let you preview your posts in a grid as they’d appear on Instagram. Those usually come with a subscription cost.

The free, DIY way is to do some simple Instagram grid planning with Microsoft Word or whatever word processing software you have. Just create a table with 3 cells to each row, then add your images, starting from the bottom right for your earliest image and working right to left, and bottom to top. Once you’ve arranged your images how you like them, make a second document that has a row for each image, starting from the earliest one, and write your captions there. Load them into your scheduler app, or post them manually from this second document.

Advanced gridding

There’s a more advanced kind of gridding out there, and it definitely requires an app. Here are two examples from @womenwithvision:

Instagram account for @womenwithvision

In these examples, several Instagram posts act like puzzle pieces and form a full picture, which one can only see if you go to that account’s profile page.

To achieve this look, you need an app like Grids – Giant Square Maker. It lets you upload your photo, slice it into every conceivable square or rectangular shape, divide it among Instagram posts, then save the result. It then guides you as to which of the image pieces needs to be uploaded in what order for the picture to make sense.

The downside of gridding

There are some definite downsides to that grid life. For one thing, you can’t be spontaneous and post whatever you want whenever you want – if your Instagram grid wants a white square, it needs a white square.

Gridding also identifies your content as pre-planned. If you prefer your audience to think of you as freewheeling and impulsive, posting photos as soon as you’ve taken them, then gridding is not for you.

Advanced grids present even more problems. Individual posts that make sense in the grid often don’t make sense to the user when viewed individually in their feed. This can lead to low engagement, and your posts falling a little further away from the front of the line for your followers’ attention.

And if, for example, you posted a large photo in a grid of 9 posts, posting just one photo on its own afterward throws the whole thing off. Your Instagram profile page will look a little like a puzzle someone dropped. To maintain the balance, you have to post 2 or 3 photos at a time (whatever the width of your grid is).

Will you grid?

Like most things in social media, deciding to grid is an individual choice. But give gridding a try and see if it’s for you. It’s a great way to add polish to a business account, or any account where post planning is a given. And you can always decide to give up the grid and go back to your freewheeling ways.

Want more social media tips and inspiration? Read our other blog posts.

Need help with social media for your optical business? Contact us.

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Instagram no-no: Don’t abuse photo tags

Instagram no-no: don't abuse photo tags

One of the more powerful tools for engagement that Instagram gives us is photo tags, or the ability to tag our Instagram images with the names of other Instagram users.  The person (or brand) you’ve tagged is notified, and then it’s likely to generate likes and comments from them, increasing your relevance to each other in the Instagram algorithm, and reinforcing your relationship.

But like all powerful tools, this one can be abused. And you may be the one abusing it!

Don’t be that guy. Here’s how NOT to use Instagram photo tags:

Tagging people not in the photo


It’s really not a good idea to tag someone as being in a photo when they’re not, unless you think they would understand and agree with the tag. If, say, you photograph a gift basket that several people contributed to, and you tag all the contributors, that’s reasonable. But if you take a photo of your office, and tag a bunch of potential patients in the hopes that they’ll come in, that’s just weird. It signals that you don’t know how to be social or use Instagram.

Tagging people you don’t know as a means of introducing yourself


Tagging is sort of like saying “We’re besties!” So it feels presumptuous when someone you don’t know tags you (especially if you aren’t actually in the photo).  Start more politely with a like and comment on one of their Instagram posts instead. Then if you work up to actually being in the same room and taking a photo together, you can tag that.

Tagging people but having no other interaction with them

This is one of the more naked grabs for attention, and it absolutely does not work. If you post an image and tag a bunch of influential accounts just to yank their eyeballs over to you, how will they feel about it? Used, probably. And how will they feel about you? That you’re an opportunist who doesn’t care about them. Not a good start to any relationship.

This is a case where a hashtag would be a better choice than a photo tag. Many Instagram users, especially brands, have official hashtags they encourage you to use. For instance, I tell people to tag their photos with #thesocialeye if they want me to feature them. See if your potential tag-ee has a hashtag, and if you’re not sure if you should use it, ask them via DM.

Tagging too many people in a day

Instagram limits tags to 20 per image. But if you’ve gone really crazy with tags, at a certain point it will not let you tag anyone else for a few days. And “Instagram jail” can sometimes mean not being able to do anything on Instagram for a while. That’s a pretty good reason to chill on the tagging.

Tagging people as an insult

Even if you’re kidding, don’t do this. There’s a fine line between comedy and abuse, and Instagram takes a hard line against the latter.

Photo tags: Remember the goal

Now you might be saying…

But know this. Incorrect use of photo tags can actually lead to the opposite of what you want on Instagram. You want people to trust, identify with, and vote for you and your business with their dollars. Treat their photo tag with respect, and you’ll be on the road to getting that. Treat it with disrespect, and they’ll be much more likely to unfollow you, block you, or even report you to Instagram for abuse or spam.

Want to know what Instagram says about tags? We got you.

Need more advice about social media? Contact us.

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4 reasons you should make Instagram Stories

Do Instagram Stories Scare You?

Are you feeling a little intimidated by Instagram Stories? You’re not alone.

Earlier this year, I managed an influencer campaign for an eyeglass lens manufacturer. We’d had glasses made for several fashion and beauty influencers which featured a new lens we were launching. We looked forward to them sharing what they thought of the lenses on Instagram.

But as the Instagram mentions started to appear, I was surprised to see that they weren’t showing up in regular posts as we expected, but in Instagram Stories. I panicked! Those Stories were going to disappear in 24 hours. How could I capture them to show my boss? Had I missed some already? Would their fleeting nature mean that few people would see them? And would the sponsorship dollars we’d paid the influencers have no return on investment?

You might be feeling similar discomfort with Instagram Stories. It can be exasperating to learn how to run a business account on Instagram, only to have them add a new publishing format that has its own rules. And why should you even bother?

Well, you really should bother, and here’s why.

  1. Instagram Stories are hugely popular

    Snapchat first debuted Stories in 2013, and this function helped differentiate the platform from others.  Then Instagram and Facebook cleverly figured “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and added Stories to their capabilities in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

    Now use of Stories is growing 15x that of feeds, according to Techcrunch, and has over 300 million daily users. It probably helps that Stories are featured at the very top of the Instagram interface, and you can see that you have waiting Story content from 4 of your most relevant friends without scrolling.

    Instagram Stories position

     

  2. Stories do disappear, but not for you

    If you have an Instagram business account, your Stories are saved to an Archive, complete with stats and insights. So you can see exactly what impact your Story had, and the actions users took with it.

    Instagram Stories insights

     

    If you hired an influencer, and the Story is on their account and not yours, they can save it and send it to you, and take a snapshot of its stats. Specify this in every influencer agreement so you can track ROI effectively.

  3. You can reshare any post to your Stories

    Instagram is sometimes maddeningly simple. Every other social media platform has a way to reshare posts built into it (Retweet on Twitter, and Share on Facebook). But resharing on Instagram has always required a separate app, or crude screenshotting and cropping. There was no easy way to reshare a post and credit the original poster – until now.

    Now any public post can be reshared to your Stories, with attribution intact, and you can add GIFs, stickers, and your own comments. This is a great way to react to posts you find relevant, or reshare mentions of your account.

    Add post to Instagram Stories - step 1
    Add post to Instagram Stories - step 2

  4. You can reshare Stories you’re tagged in to your own Stories

Speaking of mentions, when your account is tagged in a Story, you’re notified and offered a way to add that Story to your Stories in one click. This is a great way for two accounts to bring attention to each other – say, you and your best customer, for example.

All these factors make Instagram Stories a publishing format you really can’t ignore. Have you tried it yet? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

Are you an optical business that needs help navigating the ever-changing social media landscape? We can help. Contact us.

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Instagram Stories tools you should use at VEW

Instagram Stories are perfect for VEW

Vision Expo West starts this week, and a lot of people will be following along on Instagram Stories. If you’re attending and want to capture all the excitement, consider using Instagram Stories and some of its new built-in capabilities. These encourage a give-and-take with your audience that you’ll both enjoy.

Instagram Stories: A little background

Instagram Stories are brief snippets of video, photo, or typed content that are available to followers for just 24 hours. They are found in the circles at the top of the Instagram screen, and are offered to you in order of each account’s relevance to you (in other words, you’ll see your best friends and most popular accounts first). Instagram Stories are great for sharing glimpses of live events, because producing them is quick and mobile-friendly.

Instagram Stories

New to Stories?

My advice: play around with making some Instagram Stories before you head to Expo. That way you’re comfortable with how they work before you try to use them on the loud, busy exhibit floor. There are all kinds of fun things you can do with Boomerang (looping video), Face Filter (bunny ears, anyone?), and Superzoom (zooming in with mood music). To make it fun for your audience too, try them on your kids or pets.

Ready to level up?

Awesome! Here are the new capabilities Instagram has added to Stories that are a ton of fun and will engage your audience.

Polls

Ask a question of your audience with the regular Text feature, then offer them two choices in response. It can be Yes/No, or you can change the response text to whatever two answers you desire.

Instagram Stories tool - poll

Q&A

Ask your audience a question, and let them type back an answer. The beauty of this is no one sees the answer but you, so you can share responses selectively.

Instagram tools - Q&A

 

Instagram tools - Answers

Share Posts to Stories

Instagram is brilliant in its simplicity, but it’s always irritated me that you can’t share other people’s posts natively like you can on Twitter. While you still can’t share a post right into the post feed, you can share a post to your Stories. This is wonderful, because you can add your commentary, and the original poster gets credited and notified.

Instagram tools - share a post

Share Mentions

Another new feature I really appreciate is that when someone mentions your Instagram handle in their post, you are notified and offered the ability to add it to your Stories in one click. Instagram even adds a background in a coordinating color (though you don’t have the ability to change that color – yet).

Instagram tools - share a mention

Emoji slider

Want to get an idea of how your audience feels? Ask them a question, then let them answer with an emoji slider. Not every emoji is available, but most of the basic emotions are covered: mad, sad, happy, on fire, crying laughing, etc. You can have text right above the slider, or not.

Instagram tools - emojis

Instagram tools - emoji slider

Where to find them

You’ll find each of these tools in the Stickers menu of the Instagram Stories creation wizard. Click that, and you’ll get a menu of these tools and many others.

Instagram tools - where to find them

 

Instagram tools - menu

Need more help?

Here are the Stories FAQs straight from Instagram. You’ll find detailed help for these tools and a lot more.

Want expert help for your social media? That’s what we do. Contact us.

Have fun at VEW! And if you’re not going, watch for our Instagram Stories at @socialeyesonyou.

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Instagram Live tip: The right way to ask for questions

Instagram Live: The right way to ask for questions

Have you ever hosted a webinar or Instagram Live, and when you ask if there are any questions, there’s nothing but silence?

Oh, did I just describe every webinar you’ve ever given or attended? My bad.

Webinars can be deadly dull, but they serve a purpose – they’re meant to teach something, or share necessary information. And attendees are obviously interested in the subject, or they wouldn’t be there.

Instagram Live broadcasts are more fun, but can have a similar problem. If your followers tuned in to learn something, technical glitches or just the comments rolling up the screen could have left them remembering little.

But here are tips that can help!

Strengthen your request

Whenever you’re speaking to a live audience, try this technique from Louisiana high school math teacher Andre Sasser:

howtoaskforquestions

Give fair warning

I would add this: let your audience know at the beginning of your session that you want a question from them at the end. That will make them listen more actively.

Bribes are okay

Besides that, you might even incent them by saying you’ll send a small gift to the person whose question you like the best. Something small, like a branded notepad. (I’m an absolute sucker for branded notepads. There’s one within 3 feet of me at all times. Need to jot down a note? I got you.)

It’s always about engagement

The point is, their questions and your answers are literally engagement, and that’s what everyone’s going for on social media. It makes for a better experience, even for those who don’t pipe up. It increases the perceived value of what you’re saying. And it feels good to talk to an audience and have them be curious about what you said.

Have you tried this trick, or do you have others? Let us know in the comments below.

Need help hosting your business’s first Instagram Live? Contact us!

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Come meet us at EyeInnovate 2018!

EyeInnovate 2018

If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably interested in leveling up your business’s digital marketing. If that’s the case, and you’re in or near Southern California, I have an event for you.

EyeInnovate 2018

There’s a one-day conference happening in LA on November 6 called EyeInnovate 2018, and the speaker list is very impressive. Dr. Tanya Gill is going to be sharing her Instagram secrets, and you should listen, because @oaklandvisioncenter is the model I tell everyone to take pointers from. Dr. Alan Glazier, the creator of the very influential group ODs on Facebook (35K members!), will speak on Facebook changes and what you need to do there for your business.

These are the heavy hitters, folks. If knowledge is power, then these are your friendly neighborhood optical superheroes. And the agenda is packed with even more about SEO, merchandising, YouTube, and consumer trends.

I’ll definitely be there, because while I know a lot about online marketing for optical, things change everyday, and you should never stop learning.

In other words, it’s worth my time, and it’s worth yours.

EyeInnovate 2018
When: Nov. 6, 7:30am – 5:30pm
Where: Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles
Details: eyeinnovate2018.com

Register here. Still not sure? Enter their contest to win a trip to LA and two tickets to the conference.

EyeInnovate 2018 - enter to win!

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Got 30 seconds? Make easy photo albums for your waiting area

Examples of Chatbooks

If you’ve been posting to Instagram regularly for your business, good for you! Here’s a little side benefit that won’t cost you time or effort. Have your shop’s Instagram photos turned into photo books, and keep them in your waiting area.

There are many services out there that will do this for you, but my favorite is Chatbooks. If you subscribe to their Photo Book Series and connect your business’s Instagram account to it, they will create a 6″ x 6″ photo book for every 60 photos you post. Each book is only $10, and once you set up the subscription, you don’t have to do another thing. Just keep posting, and for every 60 posts, you get a photo book in the mail.

It’s a great way to connect your online and offline worlds, and it could convince your customers to follow you better than one of those “Please follow us” signs.

Chatbooks did not pay me to endorse them–I just really like the service. But if you follow this link, you can get $10 off your first order. (They’ll also treat you to this hilarious video.)

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Superfans are critical to your business (even if you’re not The Beatles)

When starting a business, or even just starting social media for your business, there is no one more important to your success than superfans.

Everyone has superfans. Even if it’s your mom, your dad, your cousin, your best friend, your college roommate, your babysitter, or your spouse. Someone you know has seen all that you’ve gone through and wants you to be successful.  And they’d help you, if they only knew how.

Here’s an example of a superfan who helped launch what was, among other things, one of the most successful business ventures of all time.

Freda Kelly was a 17-year-old legal secretary who lived in Liverpool. Friends invited her to a lunchtime show at the Cavern Club featuring a local band. She became a huge fan of the band immediately, and caught all their gigs after that. The band was The Beatles, and their manager Brian Epstein eventually hired this familiar face as a secretary to handle their growing stream of fan mail.

This was in 1962, before their first single came out, and at that point The Beatles could have easily become no more than local favorites. But Freda  remembers that she and all the girls in Liverpool bought the “Love Me Do” single the week it came out even if they didn’t have a record player because they so passionately wanted The Beatles to have a hit.

Imagine that – buying a product you can’t even use because you believe in the maker so much. That is the mark of a superfan.

Now, we know how very big The Beatles got. Their music changed popular culture, like no band before or since. But if you rewind back from those career heights, before the fame and the movies and the hit records and the stadiums filled with screaming fans, it all started with their local fandom in Liverpool, who were rabid and persuasive.

London was not looking to Liverpool for rock’n roll bands at the time. And America was not looking to England for that, either. But that all changed when The Beatles sparked a musical and cultural movement called The British Invasion.

Without that first tipping point, without those superfans, without those girls ponying up their pin money at Merseyside record shops, the rest may never have happened.

(Freda’s superfandom changed her life as well, in ways you can see in a 2013 documentary called Good Ol’ Freda. She became the president of The Beatles Fan Club from 1962-1972, and witnessed firsthand many of highlights of the band’s career.)

Freda Kelly is the perfect example of the superfan who changes everything just by supporting what she loves. She and those like her are the whisper that started the avalanche.

Who will start your avalanche? Who are your superfans? And how can they spread the word about you?

It’s up to you to show them how. Here are some ideas from Social Media Examiner for helping your superfans help you raise your business’s profile on social media:

How to Turn Fans Into Brand Champions

 

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