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January 10, 2018 by Greg Underwood

Tips to increase engagement on Instagram

Instagram is where the beautiful content of the internet lives. The page has become synonymous with visually spectacular work. No wonder that it’s the choice for travel, fashion and food influencers and marketers. Here are a few ways to increase your Instagram engagement.

  1. Sizing matters – images are lovely only when people can see it. The Instagram size for a picture is 612×612 pixels and it makes sense for you to keep within the number. You can use different tools to create picture collages, including Snapseed, Pic Stitchand Hipstamatic. Brighter colors work better for people, research has shown. So keep that in mind too. Look for more green, gray and blue, pastel and light tones for maximum effect.
  2. Use your words – while Instagram is known for visuals, it doesn’t make sense to not have text. Give the audience a sense of what you’re going for or why the visual has appeal for you. Put in a message, speak your heart and mind and then see the numbers increase. Among the many things you can do, do consider asking your audience to share your work or tag their friends. Humor goes a long way so keep that in mind. Appropriate humor is vital here, so make sure you don’t offend people.
  3. Stories – Instagram Stories are perfect – they are short-lived and disappear after 24 hours and you can post raw content and writing on the page. Since they appear on top of the news feed in circular form, and are interactive, they make for great opportunities to take the product further. Use a link for ease of access for users.
  4. Hashtag it – many people believe that hashtags are only for Twitter. They are not. When a marketer uses a hashtag and then a term to look for information on Instagram, he has more than a 10% chance of finding the information he needs. Influencers can bring more views to their page using the same. Do make sure that you don’t overuse the hashtag option. More than 10 is too much! Look for specific hashtags for maximum effect. If you think about it, most hashtags are about brands. What better way can you have for your own brand to gain mileage than the hashtag?
  5. Choose the right time – if you want your post to get noticed the most, post on a Monday. As the week progresses and the weekend beckons, the interest levels tend to peter out. Look to post late night or early morning, so it’s the first thing that users see when they log on. Or in the evening, when the day is winding down and the audience is in a better frame of mind to take information in.
  6. Give them something – engagement is the key in Instagram and when you offer something to the audience, they are more likely to get involved. Consider freebies, discounts and cash prizes. A contest is a great way to show the audience that you’re interested and involved in giving them what they like. In fact, if it’s a product launch, the product could be the prize that people compete for. Don’t forget to tell them to use a hashtag when they take part!

October 15, 2017 by Greg Underwood

How To Balance Work and Social Life On Social Media

Without a doubt, we are well and truly living in a digital age. There are gadgets at our disposal for almost every task imaginable, and for the most part,  it’s truly amazing. One large aspect of the digital age which we are surrounded by, is social media, and for most, the idea of shutting it out would be wholly unrealistic. Social media can be extremely advantageous in the business world, as well as on a personal level, allowing us to reach far-flung corners of the world and make connections at the click of a button.

When working in an online business, this is when it starts to become difficult to juggle between using social media for personal and professional purposes. How do we keep the two separate? Do we keep them separate? When working online, how do we resist the temptation to quickly log onto our private accounts?

Create separate accounts.

Having clearly defined accounts for professional and personal use is vital. If it is a blog you which run, you will want to keep some aspects of your life private and so from a posting point of view, the two should be separate. If you have a certain number of followers for example, you don’t necessarily want them knowing every part of your life.

There are always going to be connections between one and the other, and therefore posting something risqué on one could damage the other so it’s important to think about what you’re doing and who has the potential to see it.

Time.  

When you work online, it might be a sensible idea to not allow yourself to dip in and out of your personal accounts whilst working. It’s probably still a good idea to treat working online, or indeed, within social media, as if it were any other job. For example, if you were a teacher you wouldn’t dream of logging onto your Facebook account in the middle of a class, and so it is important to remain in that state of thought. You might even want to opt for a ‘day off’. Leave your phone somewhere safe and simply have a day off using it. No checking emails, social media, constantly texting friends, it might be quite liberating! Giving yourself allotted time to access social media could mean you utilise this time better.

Go old school.

Make connections with people how we used to. Physically talk to their face! Tone and sarcasm do not translate that well digitally. Talking to someone in person allows us to reconnect with each other, to read body language and gauge people’s reactions. Make a phone call instead or, I might even be so bold as to suggest putting pen to paper. I relish in the idea of becoming pen-pals with someone, writing a long letter detailing things I’ve been doing recently, I think it’s romantic, nostalgic and a dying art I want to keep alive. My grandma also loves receiving postcards from the kids when we go on trips away.

Rules.

Putting some restrictions on usage can be very beneficial. Send your goodnight texts and then leave your phone in another room. Spend the hour or thirty minutes before you go to sleep reading a book or talking to your partner. Less screen time before bed has been proven to aid a better night’s sleep.  Ban devices from the dinner table so everyone is more present during a meal.

We spend over half our days ‘plugged in’, and it was only five years ago that we were spending twice as much time present in the physical world around us. A worrying thought, or just the inevitable advancing of society? I’ll let you decide that one…

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A Million Lives

Travelling in all its glory is fun and exhilarating but sometimes you might want to find some information on where to go, what to see and how to go about it from someone other than the go-to websites, especially when it comes to travel hacking and the coolest, most useful ways to get the most out of your next adventure.

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