NASCAR on Saturday penalized the Hendrick Motorsports teams of Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman after engine allocation infractions in New Hampshire earlier this month.
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Instagram is one of the best social networks to advertise on. It has grown to be just as big of an advertising platform as its parent company, Facebook. In fact, by 2023, the site is likely to exceed one billion users, according to Statista.
Your best bet for Instagram success is to share stunning visuals and high-quality photos.
Add in a branded or targeted hashtag and you’ll be connecting with your ideal customers in no time.
If you want to increase your reach even further, Instagram ads are the way to go.
If you’re not quite sure how to use Instagram ads or you’re worried about how much they cost, read on to find out how you can run effective Instagram ads on any budget.
Instagram is growing, and it’s growing fast.
There are more than 200 million business accounts on Instagram, and that number doesn’t seem to be decreasing any time soon.
The platform’s incredible growth is all for a good reason. Marketers know it’s worth it: Instagram’s ad revenues could reach $18.16 billion by 2021.
Instagram is not only growing considerably, but it’s also bringing in some serious cash for businesses. It’s attracting tons of big brands because it’s well worth it to advertise there. Even if you’re not a multimillion-dollar brand, Instagram ads are still just as important for you to use (if not more important).
Here’s why any size business should consider Instagram as a way to promote their brand, services, or products:
Whether you want to increase brand awareness, get more clicks to your website, generate sales, or boost downloads of your latest e-book, Instagram can help you reach a huge audience.
Instagram offers a range of Instagram ads for you to utilize, giving you the creative freedom to make something spectacular and reach your goals. Here are a few options to explore and a little bit about how to leverage each one effectively.
Photo ads show up organically in your Instagram feed as you scroll through. An Instagram photo ad looks like a post from any of the accounts you are already following but will include a little “Sponsored” notation in the corner to let people know they are looking at an ad. These ads include a call-to-action button at the bottom to push people to a specific URL or your Instagram account.
These are useful if you have a really evocative photo to share your message. Instagram recommends using this type when you have a specific product or message you want to get the word out about. Keeping it simple can help you stand out and grab attention as people are scrolling through.
You can use this format to promote your past Instagram posts, so look for the most popular ones and click “Promote” to get started.
Carousel Instagram ads take photo ads to the next level. With this style, you can create a series of up to 10 photos or videos in a single ad.
Just like the photo ads, they exist in the Instagram news feed, but each photo or video can connect to a different URL or location.
This allows you to showcase a collection or group of products.
If you’re not sure whether to choose between photo ads and carousel ads, think about what you are trying to promote. Resist the urge to think about carousel ads as a way to just stuff more photos into an ad. They should function together and make sense as a unit.
Photo ads are like a one-page ad in a magazine or newspaper, while carousel ads are like lookbooks or mini catalogs themselves. When you’re announcing a new product line or a seasonal collection, these are a great option.
Video Instagram ads are just as they sound. Like carousel and photo ads, they appear in the Instagram feed. You can post an ad as short as a second or as long as sixty minutes, or anywhere in between.
When you create video ads for Instagram, you’ll want to think about your goals. You may choose to provide lots of information right there in the video to entertain or educate or you may use this ad as a teaser to get people to click through to learn more about your brand.
Again, this is where you’ll want to think about which is best for you in the news feed—the photos, the videos, or the carousel. Videos allow you to share more dynamic content, but people will have to stop scrolling to view it all. You need to catch their attention quickly and early in the video.
Instagram shopping ads are an interactive option for showcasing your products, either in the Instagram feed or in the explore section of Instagram. With Instagram shopping ads, you can add shopping links on your photos for viewers to click and learn more about the product and even purchase directly from the Instagram app.
You will need to set up an Instagram shop to use this ad option. If your brand uses the Instagram shop feature, this is a smart next step to get the word out to a new audience about your products.
You can use flat lays, real-world images, or other detailed photos of your products, and create tags to point people to where they can purchase them directly. This is great if you have unique products, maybe with a seasonal or local twist.
Social media influencers play a big role in the content marketing world these days. Branded creator ads are a component of this game. They can consist of photos or videos that one Instagram account creates organically, and another shares as an ad.
To make this happen, an Instagram creator account needs to provide permission to a business partner or a brand they are working with, to share that particular post.
These types of ads are built on an existing relationship between creators and brands. If you are working with an influencer already, these are a great way to showcase organic content they have created with your products or your services.
Instagram reel ads are ads in between reel videos. They follow the same format as an Instagram reel video, allowing the ad to feel like a natural part of the reel video feed. Instagram reel ads can be up to 30 seconds long and play in a loop, in a full vertical screen. You can think of them as the TikTok format of Instagram.
You may want to use this format of Instagram ads if you have eye-catching and intriguing short video content people are likely to engage with and share. Consider the features necessary for a viral video.
Over 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day, so why not pop in there with your own Instagram ads? Just like other Instagram ad types, stories ads are placed natively within the stories environment so your target audience sees the content right there, as they are scrolling through the stories of the accounts they follow.
To make the most of these types of ads, Instagram recommends using motion-focused content, with the message upfront, to fit well with the fast-paced nature of stories.
IGTV is one of the newest models of Instagram ads available to creators. These ads play at the beginning of ads an Instagram user clicks on, much like video ads on YouTube or another video platform. IGTV ads can be up to 15 seconds long so you should follow much of the same recommendations as above, getting to your message upfront.
Let’s take a look at real-world examples of Instagram ads that hit the mark.
MUD\WTR does a lot of things right with their Instagram ads. This is an example of a Stories ad they ran. The content looks very organic, from a content creator on Instagram, including the text captioning at the bottom. They also included a series of Stories, rather than just one. The story is set up in a narrative fashion, grabbing your attention from the start. In addition, they run regular photo and video ads as well so they tend to show up everywhere as you’re scrolling around on Instagram.
When you’re casually scrolling Instagram and a video ad stops you with a challenge. Wool& uses their Instagram ads to promote their 100-day challenge, where they invite users to wear their products for 100 days and get $100. It’s a simple challenge that grabs your attention. Just another dress picture may be overlooked.
The starting image just makes you cringe, doesn’t it? It’s effective because you can almost feel it. Red nail polish on white carpet. Eek. The video ad from there moves fast, almost frantically, through the information about their product promising to keep that from happening. It fits the dynamic of a fast-moving platform and hits a pain point from the start.
Another example of Instagram ads that hit on the emotions from the start, with a bit of a gross factor. Sometimes you can’t look away. This one uses the warmth of the child’s photo with the narrative of what their product prevents. It’s also a very simple product and message, another important feature. If people have to wonder what you’re about, they will keep scrolling.
From Candid Camera to America’s Funniest Home Videos, there’s a long line of entertainment proof that we love to watch a good prank. Send a Cake Now plays on this by showing videos of people opening their product, which launches birthday and celebratory surprises their way. It’s ideal for Instagram, with homemade, fast-moving videos. You definitely want to stop and watch who gets surprised next.
Choosing to run Facebook or Instagram ads depends on your target market and which platform they use the most often. You can also run on both platforms.
You can use your Facebook business page to set up your Instagram ads.
The cost of Instagram ads varies depending on impression or click-through. They can cost on average between $0.20 and $2 per click or $6.70 per impression.
Instagram Promotions can help you reach more people on Instagram. If you have a popular photo or video post, it may be worthwhile to promote it to a wider audience.
Instagram ads can help you up your social media marketing game by increasing the number of people who see a certain post or broaden the audience you organically reach with your posts.
Through a range of different photo and video formats, you can choose the one to suit your content and your target audience the best and share your brand’s narrative.
If you find your customers are hanging out on Instagram, and you may want to look into Instagram ads to get the message out to even more of them.
What’s the best Instagram ad you’ve ever seen?
The internet is a visual place. With the absence of body language, social cues, and audible tone, the best way to communicate with your users is through visual content.
Now and then, an online platform comes along that makes it easier than ever to showcase your visual content on the internet.
SlideShare is one such example.
The presentation-sharing platform has created a simple and seamless way to promote visual content while also encouraging user interaction.
In this post, we’ll teach you all about SlideShare, how to use it, why it matters to marketers, and how you can use it to create amazing content for your business.
Let’s get started.
SlideShare is a content-sharing platform that allows you to upload media presentations and share them on your website or social media profile. Content compatible with the platform includes presentations, infographics, videos, and documents.
While SlideShare is not a tool for building content, it does work with existing content formats such as Google Slides, Adobe PDF, OpenDocument, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
SlideShare is best known for being a comprehensive educational resource that makes it easy to display presentations and webinars online.
Here are some of the most popular ways to use SlideShare:
Acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, the company was later bought by the audiobook subscription platform Scribd.
SlideShare remains free to use and allows anyone to create a presentation to share privately or publicly.
For marketers, using SlideShare offers a unique and interactive way to display content online. By adding a presentation to your blog posts, web pages, and social media feeds, you create a completely new content type to engage your users.
SlideShare also allows you to display longer, more complex content in a simple way. Webinars or presentations can be easily uploaded and displayed for users to click through on their own time.
You can think of these presentations as an infographic with more interactivity.
It’s also important to note SlideShare boasts a user base of 80 million. Most of its user base are business professionals, and its most searched tags are:
SlideShare also receives 500 percent more traffic from business owners than Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. This offers a huge benefit to B2B marketers looking to connect with relevant audiences.
Now that you understand what SlideShare is and why it’s important for marketers, it’s time to learn how to create an effective and successful presentation.
Here are five steps to follow when using SlideShare for marketing.
Anyone who’s made a PowerPoint presentation knows they shouldn’t be text-heavy. When formatting your presentation for SlideShare, this is especially important, as online readers tend to lose focus on text-heavy content.
A general rule to follow when creating any type of presentation is the 5/5/5 rule:
Keep your readers interested and engaged in your SlideShare presentation by using mostly visual content and keeping your text short and succinct.
Visual metaphors can also be used to further cement the messaging of your presentation. You can see an example of a visual metaphor in the image below.
Your SlideShare presentation should work as part of your sales funnel, moving customers through the education, nurture, and convincing phases. In order to effectively move your customers through these phases, you’ll need to integrate calls to action (CTAs) throughout your content.
A CTA can be a request to contact your business or even a link to start a free trial. You could also ask your customer to sign up for your email list or visit your website.
Whatever you choose, place it strategically at a place where you know your customer will see it. As well, use a benefit-forward statement that shows your customer how they’ll see value from their click.
Keeping online reader attention spans in mind, it’s important to keep your presentation short to ensure your users stay engaged.
Presentations that are too long or too bulky will lose reader interest and result in lost leads for your business. Shorter presentations are easier to digest and offer a better chance of a reader seeing your final CTA.
SlideShare itself has noted that shorter visual content is most effective on its platform.
The first step in determining the kind of content you should publish in your SlideShare is to understand your customer pain points:
Before you publish your content, conduct customer research to find out what your leads are looking for and why.
Once you know what they’re after, give it to them. It’s really that easy.
SlideShare comes equipped with presentation descriptions and tags. Be sure to make use of these features when uploading your content.
Adding keywords to your SlideShare descriptions and tags will help your SEO efforts and ensure your presentation is being seen by the right people. If you’re looking for a keyword research tool, try Ubersuggest.
SlideShare can be a marketer’s best friend when used correctly. Here are a few SlideShare best practices to guide your process:
You’re almost ready to start taking the SlideShare world by storm! Here are a few success stories to help you get started.
The Brand Gap by Neutron LLC is a beautifully designed SlideShare that explores the makings of some of the world’s most iconic brands.
This presentation is successful because it harnesses strong visual design with simple copy to deliver a clear, concise message. The conversational tone of the copy invites readers to continue moving through the presentation, ending with a clear CTA at the finish.
While this presentation is longer than we recommend, Neutron LLC gets away with it because of its masterful design work and messaging.
How Google Works by Google is a creative and effective presentation that explains how Google operates as an innovative company.
Google used completely original and unique illustrations to provide clear visual metaphors throughout the presentation. Google’s brand colors are present in every slide, cementing their brand in the minds of the readers.
You Suck At Powerpoint by Jesse Desjardins is a humor design presentation that tells you everything you’ve done wrong in your past presentations.
Leaning on visual metaphor, this example is funny, concise, and clear in its messaging.
Not only does Jesse tell you what you’ve been doing wrong, but he tells you how to fix it. If you can’t do it yourself, his information is on the last slide.
Ready to create your first presentation? Follow these steps!
The first step in creating and sharing your first SlideShare presentation is to sign up for an account. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you can use your LinkedIn account to sign in. If you don’t already have a LinkedIn profile, you’ll need to create one in order to use the platform.
When creating your presentation, be consistent in your use of fonts and colors.
It’s always a good idea to use your own branding assets when creating your presentation to ensure cohesion across your content.
Create an intro and outro slide at the start and end of your presentation, and remember to add a CTA so your customers stay active after the presentation.
Once you’ve finished creating your presentation, it’s time to upload it to the site. You can upload your presentation as a Google Slide, Microsoft PowerPoint, or PDF.
SlideShare allows you to schedule your presentation if you’d like it to go live at a specific time. Once it’s live, be sure to promote it widely and share it across your social channels to ensure a wide reach.
It is free to use for anyone.
Not directly, no. SlideShare does not pay users for ads, and there is no direct way to make money from its platform. That said, by strategically including CTAs and actionable points, you can get an ROI from the presentations you upload.
It does not offer any direct monetization processes for its users, and it also does not include a built-in way to measure analytics.
SlideShare is an online platform that allows you to share your presentations across the internet. PowerPoint is simply a tool for creating presentations.
SlideShare is a visual content tool that helps you share educational presentations across the internet.
Because online readers want fast and efficient information, it is a great way to engage your audience and move your customers through your sales funnel.
Have you found success using SlideShare?
Working from home has many advantages. One of the easiest ways to start a business is to start it from your own home. It’s the most natural way to start for many. Whether you are baking, woodworking, offering a service, or anything else, doing so out of your house has many advantages. What isn’t discussed as often are the disadvantages of working from home.
Most business owners just assume that if they are running their business from home, their home address and their business address will be one and the same. That’s fine, but what if you decide to move out of your home? Changing business address can cause issues. This is just one of many surprising disadvantages of working from home.
A home may not necessarily be well equipped to handle working. You need a workspace that will help you be productive. This will be different for everyone. But, consider that you at least need a room with a door you can close. Drawing boundaries between home life and work life can be hard.
Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.
Managing time can be harder when working from home as well. It can be easy to work all day when you are at home, or not work enough due to “home” distractions. It’s hard to get people to respect your time and boundaries. Also, isolation and depression are not uncommon.
In some situations, you may not be allowed to run your business from your home. If you rent, you will need to check your lease to make sure there are no issues. Whether you rent or own, you need to check zoning requirements. Also, agencies like the Health Department and the FDA have guidelines related to running certain types of businesses from your home.
Many people worry about their home address as their business address. They feel it is unsafe, so they turn to a PO Box or an UPS Box. However, that can make it difficult to get funding. Lenders require a physical address.
This is a unique disadvantage of home-based businesses. Even home based businesses need funding for a number of things:
One option is to use a virtual address. Be aware however, that some lenders will not accept those either. The truth is, if someone wants to find your home address, it’s easy enough regardless of whether you use it as your business address or not. In the end, to get funding for your business you are going to need to use a physical business address where you an receive mail.
Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.
You may think you can get by with using your personal address now, and just change it later. That’s not a good idea. If you think about it, your business address goes everywhere. For example:
The longer you wait, the more places you will have to remember to change it. It is a bigger deal than you may think if you miss one. If lenders start looking into your business and see your business address is listed differently in different places, it can cause unnecessary issues. It brings up fraud concerns.
A bank will not take the time to try to figure out all the different ways a business may be listed. Even something as simple as using Street vs St, or using an ampersand in one spot and the word “and” in another can cause issues. So you can imagine using your home address in one spot and a separate business address in another will definitely cause problems.
That doesn’t mean that if you move your business out of your home you have to keep your home address. Just be aware that you will need to make sure the address is changed everywhere.
There are a number of legal considerations that you have to think about when it comes to running a home based business. For example, even if zoning laws allow you to run your business from your home. You need to check out what requirements those laws lay out. Some cities have regulations regarding foot traffic. Some even regulate yard sign use for advertising. And if you have an Homeowners Association (HOA) you may need their permission as well.
Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.
Some cities limit the number of employees a home based business can have. Some even regulate the number of customers that can come to your door. You’ll need to check with your local city officials to determine what if any regulations apply to you. And figure out what licences and permits you need to operate.
Consider the tax issues as well. While you can deduct some expenses when it comes to home-based businesses, it can get complicated. You need to make sure you thoroughly understand the home business deduction on the front end and plan accordingly.
Insurance needs to be considered as well. If you have employees or customers coming in and out, you need to think about what would happen if they were injured. Will homeowners’ insurance cover it? Often you will need to purchase a separate policy or a rider. All insurance needs to be in place on the front end. Be sure it has the proper business address on it!
Nothing is perfect. Running a business from your home is no different. However, you can avoid many of the disadvantages of working from home by building fundability from the beginning. Not only will it help with legal issues, but it makes a bigger difference than you may think when it comes to funding.
The best way to start building fundability, whether you own a home-based business or run a business from a different location, is to work with a business credit expert. Contact us today for a free consultation.
The post The Disadvantages of Working from Home: 5 Things to Consider When Using Your Home Address for Your Business appeared first on Credit Suite.