Marie Mary

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

All You Need to Know About Instagram Takeovers: How to Host a Takeover in 6 Simple Steps

Monday, February 13, 2017

A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing in 2017 – Sunny Lenarduzzi [SSM029]

Video marketing is one of the most-talked about subjects in social media right now.

Marketers, brands, and businesses everywhere are all jumping aboard this incredible trend that has truly begun to take take over our social news feeds.

But despite its growing relevance, one of the questions we get most here at Buffer is:

How do I get started with video marketing?

With more than 70,000 subscribers on YouTube – where she’s closing in on 5,000,000 total views – Sunny Lenarduzzi is just the expert to talk to about getting started with video.

We had the pleasure of chatting with Sunny all about how marketers can get started with video – including what to film, how to film it, and how to make sure that people see your videos online. A huge thank you to Sunny for jam-packing this episode with actionable wisdom and takeaways for social media managers and marketers alike looking to rock their video marketing strategy in 2017!

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Sunny Lenarduzzi shares tons of expert insights into how marketers and businesses can get started with video marketing. Including, the two most important things, how and why. You’ll also learn tips like:

The secrets to YouTube SEO
Essential video marketing gear for filming
How to set up your studio – home or office
What type of video content works best for social media
Sunny’s biggest lessons learned in video marketing

A Complete Guide toVideo Marketing [Podcast]

3 Key Takeaways for Marketers Looking to Rock their Video Marketing Strategy in 2017

In Sunny’s words…

1. Start with educational content

There are really 3 types of great video marketing content – education, inspiration, or entertainment. The inspiration and entertainment are great, but if you’re just getting started and want to gain some momentum quickly, start with educational content. That’s what will get you found in search and build your viewers really fast.

2. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can

Don’t worry about your set or your lighting, worry most about the value of the content that you are sharing. That’s what will get you the furthest the fastest.

3. Have a promotion strategy

Remember that when you published videos to YouTube or to other channels, you need to have a strategy in place to add fuel to the fire. Share your videos, everywhere, especially within the first 24 hours so that you can get the positive social media signals.

Mentionable Quotes and Shareable Snippets

Sunny Lenarduzzi on Video Marketing Camera Confidence

“Embrace every little quirk that you have about yourself and don’t feel the pressure to be perfect. It’s the people who are imperfect that tend to do the best.”

– Sunny Lenarduzzi

Show Notes and Other Memorable Moments

Thanks a million for checking out this episode! Below are the websites and other tidbits that were mentioned in today’s podcast about creating incredible Facebook communities using groups. If you have any questions for us, feel free to drop us a line in the comments and we’ll respond right away!

Awesome People, Things, & Articles Mentioned in the Show

Sunny Lenarduzzi’s YouTube Channel
20 Must-Watch YouTube Channels that Will Change Your Business – Forbes
50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs in 2017 – Huffington Post
Sunny on Twitter
Sunny’s Website with tons of resources and information
BOSS YouTube Channel Checklist – Sunny Lenarduzzi
Canva
YouTube for Bosses – Sunny Lenarduzzi
Wireless Lavalier Microphones on Amazon
Cowboy Studios Filming Accessories
Sunny Lenarduzzi on Instagram
How to Make Videos with your iPhone

Great Quotes

Video marketing is extremely vital for business growth – whether you’re an online brand or an offline brand.
Creating videos around search topics and things that people are looking for online is when it becomes a really powerful tool. As we’re sitting here right now, your customers are out there looking for solutions to their problems.
Retention equals the biggest reward. The longer people are tuned into your videos, the higher you’re going to rank in search. And the higher you rank in search, the more that people are going to find you.
People are looking for solutions and answers to their problems with video – they’re not looking to get pitched. You have to add value before you can make a sale.
The 5 must-haves for filming videos on your iPhone are: framing, stability, audio, lighting, set.
It’s so not about me. It’s about how valuable the information I’m sharing is and how well I can keep the audience’s attention through the content.

How to Say Hello to Sunny (and us)

Sunny Lenarduzzi’s YouTube Channel is an incredible resource for everything video marketing. You can also say hello to Sunny on Twitter here and read more about Sunny’s journey at sunnylenarduzzi.com.

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you’ll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Video Marketing in 2017 – Sunny Lenarduzzi [SSM029] for first publishing this post.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

How to Choose the Best Social Media Marketing Tool for Your Business

Paralysis by analysis. I’ve totally been there, so many times.

Choosing a place to eat, choosing a new computer, or even choosing the best social media marketing tool.

When it comes to picking a tool for your business, there are just so many great options out there, so many wonderful, time-saving features, it’s a tall task to know exactly what’s right for you.

The tool you choose is often a key ingredient when it comes to hitting your social media marketing goals, because it can help you drive traffic and engagement, as well as measure how you’re doing.

Each tool has its strengths and there’s no single perfect tool for everyone. So how do you figure out which one’s going to be the best fit for you?

toolbox

How do you find the best social media tool for your business?

If you’re anything like me, your first instinct is likely to start researching right away! Over time – and after making lots of mistakes along the way – I’ve come to realize there’s another approach that can be much less stressful – and more effective.

Rather than jumping straight into research – which often provides an overwhelming number of options to choose from – it can be helpful to start by getting clarity on your own priorities and goals first. To reflect on the needs of your team and what’s most important to you.

From there you’ll have a solid set of criteria to measure your options against once you begin researching, evaluating options, and comparing features.

To help you make an informed decision and find the tool that’s the best fit for you, I’d love to share a few ideas and questions that may be helpful to consider.

3 questions to help you define your social media goals

The challenge with diving straight into research and comparison shopping is that it’s easy to lose sight of why you started looking for a social media tool in the first place.

Here are a few important questions to answer up front:

define-social-media-goals

1. What are you looking to accomplish with your social media marketing efforts?

What are your goals? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site? Generate leads, or drive sales directly from your content?

What results are you hoping to get from the time and effort your spend on social media?

All social media tools excel at certain things. And if you’re not sure what your goals are and what you want to accomplish, it may be a bit challenging to find the right tool for the job.

2. What prompted you to start looking for a new tool?

You likely had a not-so-great experience with your existing tool or workflow, and it inspired you to start looking for alternatives. What was that experience? Was there something that frustrated you? Something you wanted to do that you couldn’t?

If you want to end up with the best tool for your team, identifying the core issues that caused you to start looking for a new tool in the first place is a key step in the process.

The goal here is to help you find the right product that will address those issues and allow you to do the things you weren’t previously able to do – no matter which tool that happens to be.

We’ll go into more detail on this in a bit.

3. What experience do you want your social team to have with the tool?

Your team is going to spend quite a bit of time using this product.

And as the public face of your brand, you want to make sure they have the right tool.

Finding one that’s intuitive, fun, and easy-to-use will help them save time on unnecessary tasks, so they can spend more time creating amazing content!

What are your “must-have” features?

3 quick steps to understanding which features you need (and which ones you don’t)

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Whatever tool you end up choosing, it should help you achieve and goals you outlined in the previous sections.

Once you’ve gotten clarity on what you’re looking to accomplish on social and what you need from a tool, you’ll have a solid foundation to measure your options against once you start comparing tools.

Now, the next step is to determine which features you absolutely need in a social media tool – and which ones would just be nice to have.

But how can you tell? Here’s one way to look at it:

“Must-have” features – if the tool doesn’t allow us to do X, then we won’t be able to execute on our social media marketing strategy and hit our goals.
“Nice-to-have” features – if the tool does X, we may be able to use that in our strategy at some point.

If you’re not entirely sure what your “must-have” features are yet, here’s a quick exercise to help you distinguish between them:

Step 1: Write down the 25 most important social media features that you think you might need

What are all the tasks you do on a day-to-day basis? What activities do you do every few weeks or months? What sorts of capabilities do you need to have?

(You don’t have to come up with exactly 25, just try to write down as many as you can think of!)

Here are some important considerations to help you brainstorm:

What caused you to start searching for a new tool? – Like I mentioned previously, there was likely something you wanted to do but weren’t able to. What was that?
Social networks – Which social networks do you need to be able to share to?
Scheduling posts – Do you need to be able to schedule your posts in advance?
Custom posting times – How should scheduling work? Do you need to choose your own custom posting times?
Scheduling tool vs. “all-in-one” platform – Are you looking for an awesome scheduling tool, or are you looking for an “all-in-one” social media management platform?
Analytics – Do you need analytics? Which metrics do you need to track? How in-depth do your reports need to be?
Paid social campaigns – Do you need the ability to manage paid social campaigns? (FB ads, Twitter ads, etc)
Engagement – Do you need to be able to pull in, interact with, and respond to incoming social conversations?
Social listening – Do you need social listening/brand monitoring capabilities?
Team collaboration tools – Will you need to be able to add team members, review posts, and manage your team’s workflow?
UTMs – Do you need the ability to set UTM parameters on a per channel basis? or a per post basis?
Integrations – Are there any other tools you’d need to integrate with?

Step 2: Review the list and circle your top 5 features

Now that you’ve written down all the things you think you might need in a tool, review your list and circle your top 5.

As you make your way through the list, ask yourself: What are the top 5 most important activities? What are the capabilities I absolutely cannot do without? What’s absolutely essential?

(Again, you can be flexible with how many items you circle. I recommend keeping this list as short as possible though! If everything’s a priority, then nothing’s a priority )

Note: If you’ve made it this far, you’ll get the most value out of this exercise if you pause right now and go do the first two steps before moving on to Step 3.

Step 3: Use these two lists to evaluate potential tools

At this point you have two lists. The 5 items you circled are your “must-have’s” and the other 20 are your “nice-to-have’s.”

As you begin to evaluate tools in the next section, you can use your “must-have” list as the criteria for eliminating tools that aren’t going to be the right fit for you.

This will save you a ton of time and help you narrow down your options to a shortlist of potential tools.

Do some research to find the best options

Plus: some tips, ideas, and resources to help you save time

Now that you’re starting to get more and more clarity on what your priorities are, now’s the perfect time to start research your options and comparing tools.

To help you save time and get off on the right foot, here are a few ideas to get you started:

6 great places to research social media tools

If you want to find the best social media tools, here are a few resources I’d recommend using and the keywords that are likely to give you the most relevant answers:

Google – here are some keywords to check out: best social media tools, best social media marketing tools, and best social media management tools
YouTube – a search for these keywords will turn up some great video reviews: best social media marketing tools, best social media management tools, and social media tools for business
Product Hunt – try a keyword search for ‘social media’, and check out our social media tools collection
AlternativeTo – you’ll find a nice selection of options by checking out alternative’s to Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social
Capterra – you can find reviews for a ton of social media marketing products
Quora – read through Q&A’s in the ‘social media marketing tools’ section of Quora

5 unbiased articles that review social media tools

The site’s in the previous section will give you a lot of content to check out.

After spending a few hours sifting through all of it, here are the 5 most useful links I found from marketers and communities I admire:

5 Social Media Management Tools to Save Time by Social Media Examiner
17 Tools That’ll Take Your Social Media Marketing Results to The Next Level by Neil Patel
The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools by Jeff Bullas
The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today by Jay Baer
How do you manage all of your social networks? on Inbound.org

4 of my personal favorite social media tools

I may be a bit biased here, but in case it might be useful, here are my 4 favorite tools:

Buffer – Great for scheduling, publishing and analyzing your content with ease
Hootsuite – Fantastic as an “all-in-one” social media solution
Sprout Social – Rocks for monitoring all of your social media efforts, both content and engagement
Edgar – Excels at recycling your best content automatically

If possible, I’d also recommend reaching out to any friends or colleagues who might be able to recommend their favorite tools and why they love them.

Create your shortlist of social media tools

Now it’s time to go one step further and create your short list of tools to try out.

As you evaluate the tools you come across in your research, you can exclude any products that don’t offer the “must-have” features you discovered earlier.

And as you compare products, begin to narrow down to your top 3-5 options and rank them. This is going to be your shortlist of tools to try out next.

Keep in mind: The features on your “nice-to-have” list shouldn’t get attention until you’ve found an option that satisfies all your “must-have’s.”

A social media tool that offers only the features you absolutely need is likely going to be much more effective than any option that doesn’t have the essentials but does provide you with a bunch of “nice-to-have” features.

Put together an evaluation team

Now that you have your shortlist of 3-5 tools, the next step is to put together a team to test and evaluate them, one tool at a time.

Note: If you’re just getting started on social media, or if you work at a smaller company like ours, then it may be just you on the evaluation team (and I’d recommend skipping to the next section, as this might not be as relevant for you ).

If you’re part of a larger team, it’s important to include people with a variety of roles and responsibilities. Basically anyone who will need to use the tool.

Why is this important? Because, for example, your team lead will likely have different goals from the product than a junior-level marketer.

The team lead is more likely to be concerned about analytics/reporting and team workflow features, whereas someone a bit more junior may care more about ease of publishing or quickly getting that data to their manager.

Getting feedback and opinions from a diverse set of users will help you tell which tool really is the best fit for your team. Here’s an ideal combination:

1 junior level social media marketer
1-3 social media power users
1 manager or team lead

And if you can, try to get everyone on the evaluation team to trial the same tool at the same time, rather than having everyone test a different tool. That way everyone is on the same page and has the same context when evaluating whether or not the tool is a good fit.

Test drive the tools on your shortlist

At this point, the next step is to start testing out the tools on your shortlist.

Like I mentioned previously, I recommend testing one tool at a time, so you don’t spread your time an attention too thin – and so your evaluation team is always on the same page.

Start a free trial for the top choice on your shortlist

So, the next step is to choose your #1 top choice and start a free trial.

Note: Most tools offer a free trial of between 2-4 weeks, which should likely be enough time to try it out and see how it works.

If you’ve put together an evaluation team, then invite each member to create an account. If not, just create your own account and get started!

I recommend setting aside time for two things:

Using the product – This might seem obvious, but with everything else on your plate it can be easy to push this to the side. I’ve done this more times than I care to admit! Make time to explore the product and see if it’s going to be a good fit your workflow and help you accomplish your social media strategy.
Reflecting on your experience – As you use the product, take some time to reflect on you and your team’s experience: what do you like, what do you dislike, and does it feel like a good fit? You can do this in a meeting or asynchronously in a shared document, whichever makes the most sense for your team.

And as you go through the evaluation process, here are some important factors to consider:

9 things to consider when evaluating a social media tool

pablo (6)

1. User experience

You’re likely to be using this tool regularly, maybe even daily. So it feels super important to find a tool that gives you or your team a great experience.

The best tools tend to be intuitive and easy to use. And if you find you or your team are getting lost or struggling without training you could lose a lot of time, energy, and momentum.

Personally, I love tools that are clear, simple, and don’t need a ton of training.

2. Analytics & reporting

When you think about your team’s overall social media goals, what are the key metrics you’ll need to track and report on? Will this tool help you measure those?

If you need extremely detailed reports on a consistent basis, some tools have more advanced reporting capabilities and may be a great fit. For many companies, however, being able to measure the engagement they’re getting with each individual post – and tracking their account growth over time – is more than enough.

How in-depth do your reports need to be? The best tool will be the one that helps you answer your questions quickly and make the best decisions.

3. Team collaboration tools

Will you be inviting team members to collaborate with this tool? Some tools make it super easy to manage your team.

The best ones allow you to easily:

Add team members
Decide which social media accounts each person has access to
Set permission levels
And review posts before publishing

It’s important to make sure the tool you choose gives you the capabilities you need as a manager/team lead!

4. Customer support

At some point you or someone on your team is likely going to have a question or need help.

When that time comes, will you have access to customer support? And if so, how good is it – both in terms of speed and quality?

The best companies don’t just provide you with software. They’re also there to:

Help out when you need it
Advise you on the best social media practices
And help you be successful and accomplish your goals using their product

Which leads us to another important consideration…

5. Training

On top of customer support, it might also be worth exploring what other options the company provides you – in terms of training, education, customer success managers, etc.

These resources can be a great tipping point in the decision process.

How will you train yourself or your team on the new tool?

Some companies provide in-depth tutorials to help you make the switch and get started on the right foot. And with many of the more popular tools, there are tons of 3rd party educational resources that can help you get the most out of it.

What sort of training do you think you’ll need? And are those kinds of resources available?

6. Security

Another thing to consider is: How secure is the tool? And what security features does it provide?

For example, are you able to set up two-step login? Can you invite team members to post to your company’s social profiles without giving out login credentials?

Take the time to make sure your tool is secure, because publishing to social profiles is extremely important for brands and you don’t want anyone who shouldn’t post being able to!

7. Integrations

Sometimes you need to pass data between tools, or you might want to automate some of your social media activities.

Do you need to integrate your social media tool with any other products? And does this tool have the integrations you need?

If not, can you use tools like Zapier or IFTTT to create your own? Or put together your own home-brewed integration?

If you absolutely need a specific integration that isn’t available, this could be a deal-breaker.

8. Pricing

There are a few things to consider when it comes to pricing.

First, check the availability of free features, and at what price the more advanced features become “pay-only.”

For example, on our free plan here at Buffer you can measure a few social engagement metrics for each post – such as retweets, likes, mentions, and potential reach.

But rich analytics, charts, and tables – to help you gain a deeper understanding of your performance on social – are part of our business plan, starting at $99 per month. Do those pay-only features fall into your “must-have” list. And is it worth the cost?

Second, would you prefer an all-inclusive cost, even if you’re paying for features you don’t need? Or would you rather pay only for the features, social accounts, and team members you need?

Third, are you okay with signing an annual contract or would you prefer to pay month-to-month? Each company will have a slightly different offering here.

9. Scale

Your social media presence is likely going to grow over time – how does adding more team members, accounts, or social media updates affect pricing?

For example, some tools charge on a per user per month basis, and other tools charge flat monthly fees.

Depending on where you see your company and team headed, will this tool support you as you grow?

Ready to switch?

Getting ready for a new social media tool

You may have to try out a few products on your shortlist before you find a great fit!

Once you decide on the right tool, sit down with your team, or whoever is involved and will be affected by the change, and write down a transition plan.

Here are a few questions to reflect on:

How will you train your team to use the new tool?
Would it be beneficial to update any of your existing workflows?
Do you need to set up any integrations?

Switching to a new tool is a huge investment in your social media marketing strategy.

If you choose a tool that works really well for you and your team, it can save you a ton of time and energy – and help you make meaningful progress towards your goals.

That’s why it’s so important to take the time to get clarity on what’s your goals are and why you’re looking for a new tool, before you start doing research and comparing feature lists. So you can make the best, most informed decision for your team!

Over to you

Thanks so much for reading. I hope you took away a few ideas to help find the right option for you.

I’d also love to know which social media tool you ended up choosing (even – especially! – if it’s not Buffer ).

What made it a great fit for your team?

Was there anything useful that you’ve thought of that I didn’t mention?

I’d love to keep the conversation going in the comments below. If you know someone who could use this, feel free to pass it along. And if you use it yourself, let me know how it goes!

Thank How to Choose the Best Social Media Marketing Tool for Your Business for first publishing this post.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

9 Powerful Time-Saving Tips to Help Grow Your Brand on Instagram

With over 600 million users across the globe, Instagram is quickly becoming a focal point for businesses of all sizes who use social media.

600 million! That’s a huge number. And the impressive stats don’t stop there…

Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform and around half of its user base (more than 300 million people) use it every day.

Brands on Instagram are also seeing huge amounts of engagement on Instagram. According to Forrester Research, per-follower interaction rate is 2.3 percent- way above Facebook (0.2%) and Twitter (0.02%).

That all sounds incredible, right? But how do you find time to dedicate to growing your brand on Instagram? From planning and editing to posting and engaging with your followers, there’s a lot on your plate when it comes to Instagram marketing.

We’d love to help you achieve more with less on Instagram.

In this post, there we’re sharing nine time-saving Instagram marketing tips to help you achieve incredible results with less time and effort.

Let’s get started.

ig-time-saving

1. Create Instagram posts on desktop instead of mobile

Thanks to the great amount of tools out there, social media management has become much easier than it was a few years ago. While Instagram still doesn’t allow publishing through its web application, there are many tools that allow you to create your Instagram posts on desktop first.

Creating Instagram posts on desktop can be a massive time saver. Here’s why:

Creating your graphics or editing your photos on your desktop can be much faster than doing so on your mobile.
Most Instagram scheduling tools save you from the hassle of transferring your graphics and photos from your desktop to your mobile.

With Buffer for Instagram, you can upload your image and schedule a post on your desktop. When it’s the time to post, you will receive a notification on your mobile, and we’d have transferred the image to your mobile!

If you’re preparing your Instagram posts on desktop, here are some useful images sizes to ensure your content always looks great:

Square Image: 1080px in width by 1080px in height
Vertical Image: 1080px in width by 1350px in height
Horizontal Image: 1080px in width by 566px in height

Editor’s note: For more on the perfect images sizes for Instagram (and all other major social media channels) check out this post.

2. Repost quickly with permission

A study by marketing startup, Crowdtap, and the global research company, Ipsos, found that user-generated content is 35 percent more memorable and 50 percent more trusted than traditional and non-user-generated media.

A great way we’ve found to share user-generated content on Instagram is to repost images from our community. This strategy has helped us grow our Instagram following by 60 percent under three months.

A typical way of reposting an image after asking for permission looks something like this:

Take a screenshot on your mobile
Crop away everything apart from the image
Copy and paste or type out the caption
Add your own caption
Finally, publish the user-generated content

Apps like Buffer and Repost allow you to skip all the tedious steps. Simply copy the Share URL of the Instagram post you want to repost and open the reposting app. The post, with both the image and original caption, will be generated for you in the app.

You can read more about how to repost in Instagram here.

Quick reminder: Before you repost, it is best to request permission from the original poster.

3. Plan the layout of your gallery

Instead of thinking about what you want to post every day on the day itself, a good approach might be to plan your posts with your overall social media strategy in mind.

Also, Instagram is becoming a curated platform where businesses and individuals only post their best photos according to specific themes instead of every photo they take. So, it’s important to have a well-curated and consistent profile gallery.

At Buffer, the themes we chose for our Instagram account are:

User-generated content
Digital nomad lifestyle
Productivity and motivation

Knowing these in mind allows us to plan how we want our gallery to look like. Hope our gallery is giving off these vibes!

There are many Instagram planning tools out there that can help you with this. At Buffer, this is one of the top requests we hear for Buffer for Instagram. So, we are currently developing a grid preview feature. Stay tuned!

4. Use tools to separate content creation and engagement

One of the most common productivity advice is to do one thing at a time.

A research by New York University business professor, Sophie Leroy, discovered that there’s a cost to switching your attention from one task to another — even if the switch is brief. Whenever our brains switch to a new task, the old task leaves an “attention residue” that reduces our cognitive performance for a non-trivial amount of time.

Multitasking actually cause us to take a longer time to complete all the tasks because our brains have to constantly switch between those tasks.

(Image by Dean Yeong)

For Instagram marketing, there are usually two main things you would do:

Creating or scheduling content
Responding to comments and engaging with others

It is easy to be distracted by the notifications when you only want to publish a post.

A trick can be to use a tool solely for scheduling so that you can focus on creating content when you want to. Then, when you are in the Instagram app, you can focus on replying and engaging.

Taking this a step further, you could…

5. Create a week’s worth of posts in one go

Batching is a popular time management technique that aims to maximize concentration and increase productivity. The idea is to do similar tasks that require similar resources together.

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, experimented with a day when he forced himself to batch tasks. He found that while batching was tough, his quality of work increased because he was able to focus on them for a good amount of time:

I ended up spending 2.5 hours focused on my writing project and 3.5 hours focused on my research paper. That’s six hours, in one day, of focused work with zero interruptions; not even one quick glance at email.

At the same time, the careful pre-planning required to satisfy my batching rules increased the efficiency of my small task completion. Even though I dedicated 6 hours in one 10 hour work day to uninterrupted focus, another 1.5 hours to exercise and eating, and another 1 hour to a doctors appointment, I still managed to accomplish an impressive collection of logistical tasks both urgent and non-urgent.

Taking this technique to Instagram marketing, it could mean grouping content creation and scheduling together instead of creating and publishing posts on a daily basis or even several times a day. Creating the posts from scratch on a daily basis can be very interruptive to your schedule.

Here are some things you can try:

Plan a photo-taking session to take multiple photos that can be used for a series of Instagram posts
Create and edit all the images you want to post for the upcoming week altogether since you are already in the image editor
Upload all the images onto a scheduling tool and add captions to all of them in one setting

The additional benefit of creating a week’s worth of posts at a go is that your Instagram posts will be more consistent as you will be thinking ahead.

6. Schedule time to engage

Another task you can batch is responding and engaging with others on Instagram. By batching them and scheduling the time to do that, you gain control over your schedule instead of being dictated by notifications.

In the experiment above, professor and author, Cal Newport set himself a simple rule:

All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes. If I start editing a paper, for example, I have to spend at least 30 minutes editing. If I need to complete a small task, like handing in a form, I have to spend at least 30 minutes doing small tasks. Crucially, checking email and looking up information online count as small tasks. If I need to check my inbox or grab a quick stat from the web, I have to spend at least 30 minutes dedicated to similarly small diversions.

Here’s what you can try:

Turn off notifications for your Instagram account.
Schedule 30 minutes to an hour on your calendar every day to reply to comments, like, and comment on your followers’ posts.
You could also schedule up to a few sessions like this in a day if you want to have a faster response time on Instagram.

This will prevent the notifications from disrupting your day when you are working on other tasks.

7. Prepare commonly used hashtags in an Evernote note

After analyzing over 65,000 social media posts for their study on hashtags, TrackMaven found that:

Instagram posts with nine hashtags perform best, with an average engagement of 28,548 interactions per post.

While engagement starts to decrease after this peak, posts with more than nine hashtags still have higher engagement than posts with fewer than eight hashtags. This suggests that on Instagram, it’s always better to err on the side of more hashtags rather than fewer.

However, typing nine or more hashtags every time you want to publish a post can be very time-consuming. A solution is to create a few sets of commonly used hashtags for different themes in an Evernote note or your preferred note-taking app.

It could look something like this:

This way, you can simply copy and paste the hashtags without having to re-type them every time. Then, you can also add more hashtags that are specific to each post.

If you are creating the post using a desktop (as mentioned in the first tip above), this process becomes even easier as it is much faster to copy and paste on the desktop than to switch between apps on mobile, selecting, copying, and pasting the hashtags.

8. Use the same filter and/or edits

Here’s another trick to help you save time and create a consistent profile gallery: use the same filter and/or edits for most — or even all — your images.

A lot of the time spent on publishing an Instagram post is usually spent on editing the image. By using the same filter and/or edits for every image, you can drastically reduce the editing time. This not only saves you time but also helps to keep your Instagram posts consistent.

If you use a photo editing application on your desktop like Lightroom, you can save a filter and the edits as a custom template.

If you prefer to edit your photos on your mobile, apps like VSCO or Instagram itself allows you to rearrange the filters and toolkits so that the most commonly used options appear first. VSCO even allows you to copy the edits made on one image and paste them onto other images.

9. Repurpose posts on other platforms for Instagram (and vice versa)

Your Instagram posts don’t have to exist on Instagram only, and that’s the same for your other social media content.

Instead of re-creating new content for each social media platform, you could repurpose your posts on other platforms for Instagram and vice versa. This increases the impact of your content and saves you time from creating new content.

A great example is Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerTalent Content Machine framework:

His strategy is to record a video or audio every week and turn it into four long-form articles and 40 social media images. The concept is that a Facebook or YouTube video can be turned into numerous multi-media content for all other platforms. I think this is a great way to make full use of your content.

Using Buffer, you can easily schedule the content you have made for other social media platforms for Instagram as well. For example, if you have created a short clip for Facebook, you can also cross-post it onto your Instagram profile.

Similarly, you can do it the other way round. If you have prepared a photo for an Instagram post, you can also schedule it for your other social media profiles.

Over to you

And that’s the nine time-saving Instagram marketing tips to help you achieve results for your business with less time and effort. As a recap, here are the nine tips:

Create Instagram posts on desktop instead of mobile
Repost quickly with permission
Plan how you want your gallery to look like
Use a tool to separate content creation and engagement
Create a week’s worth of posts at a go
Schedule time to engage
Prepare commonly used hashtags in an Evernote note
Use the same filter and edits
Repurpose posts on other platforms for Instagram (and vice versa)

Are there any productivity tips you have for fellow Instagram marketers?

It’d be great to hear from you!

Thank 9 Powerful Time-Saving Tips to Help Grow Your Brand on Instagram for first publishing this post.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

What Counts As a Video View on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat? The Buffer Guide to Video Metrics

In our State of Social Media report, eighty-three percent of marketers said they’d like to create more video content in 2017.

And we can certainly see why marketers are so hot on social video. Facebook believe that most of the content we consume online in the future will be video. Twitter has recently relaunched Vine as a camera app enabling users to capture and share short-form video on the platform. And more than 10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat every day.

So it’s clear video is incredibly important to the future of social media marketing. However, when it comes to video, what does “success” really mean? And how do you know if your videos are performing well on social media?

Measuring the success of your video content can be a difficult task. Especially as almost every platform has a range of features and metrics. For example, some platforms count a video view as three seconds, others count a view as soon as you open a video. Some platforms auto-play videos, others don’t. Some channels have limits of 60 seconds for video and on others it’s unlimited.

How are we supposed to keep up?

In this post, we’d love to help you navigate the world of social video metrics. We’ll break down video metrics across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat to give you a definitive guide to what you can measure on each platform, how you can measure it and importantly what each metric means.

Let’s get started.

video-metrics

The complete guide to social video metrics

Here are all the types of videos we will cover in this guide:

Facebook video
Facebook Live
Instagram video
Instagram Stories
Instagram live video
Snapchat Stories
Twitter video
Periscope
YouTube

Feel free to use the quick links to jump to the section that you are most interested in! If you want a quick overview of all the video metrics across all the platforms, check out our handy video metrics spreadsheet or the infographic below:

video-metrics@2x

1. Facebook video

Video view: 3 seconds or more

Facebook videos are one of our favorites here at Buffer and also for the 1,252 marketers we surveyed last year. We think that there are a lot of potential for Facebook videos this year.

Mark Zuckerberg even mentioned that Facebook is “making progress putting video first across [Facebook’s] apps” in the press release of Facebook’s Third Quarter 2016 Results.

Here’s an example of how a video post looks like on the Facebook News Feed:

Specs:

What counts as a view? Three seconds or more
Auto-plays? Yes
Auto-loops? Yes (Videos that are 30 seconds or shorter will loop continuously for approximately 90 seconds.)
Default audio state: Muted
Maximum length: 120 minutes or 4 GB file size (360 videos are limited to a maximum length of 10 minutes and a maximum size of 1.75 GB.)
Embeddable outside platform? Yes (Here’s how!)
View counts for public? Yes
View counts for owner? Yes
Analytics dashboard for videos? Yes

Metrics available:

Minutes viewed
Unique viewers
Video views
10-Second views
Video average watch time
Audience and engagement (People Reached, Post Engagement, Top Audience, and Top Location)
Facebook also provides a bunch of other metrics for the Facebook post with the video such as reactions, comments, shares, and post clicks, under “Post”.

Where to find the metrics:

There are two ways to see your Facebook video metrics.

1. Overview and Top Videos

To see the overall performance of your videos, head to your Facebook Page Insights and select “Videos” on the left column.

Here, you will see the total number of video views, total number of 10-second views, and the most viewed videos on your Page. You can customize the timeframe in the upper-right corner of the page and adjust the breakdown of the video views in the upper-right corner of each panel.

2. Individual Videos

To see the performance of individual videos, head to your Facebook Page and select “Posts” on the right column instead.

Here, you’ll find all the posts on your Facebook Page, and the video posts are easily identifiable with the video icon (). For each post, you can see the reach and engagement level and sort the posts according to reach or engagement. For engagement level, there are four options:

Post Clicks / Reactions, Comments & Shares
Reactions / Comments / Shares
Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, Unlikes of Page
Engagement Rate

To see the detailed metrics of a video post, simply click on the title of the post. Here’s what you’ll see:

Facebook video metrics example

You can click on each of the metrics to see more granular performance data.

Tip: For a quick run-through of the Facebook video metrics, check out Facebook’s post on the video metrics.

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