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Top Instagram tools for business needs

Posted on by Ayesha Rafeeq
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Gone are the days when people used Instagram merely because Facebook was too mainstream for them. Over the past few years, this delectable app has received ascending global momentum and is certainly here to stay! Instagram is a mobile-based app which focuses on capturing and sharing visual posts and is a huge hit amongst youngsters. In India, it is mostly used by people below the age of 35 and is a powerful platform to promote the marketing and sales of businesses of all sizes.

During 2015, the platform was opened for business and, since then, there has been no looking back! Read on to get a closer insight into the top 15 tools which will come in handy to promote your business on Instagram.

Crowdfire

This amazing tool helps you find the right following for your business. It provides you with a filtered set of audiences who are most likely to be interested in your business which, in turn, leads to effective targeting. Additionally, it assists you in identifying the most inactive followers, who can later be unfollowed. You can also find followers who follow accounts similar to yours and the list of people who have unfollowed you.

Schedugram

Schedugram helps you with scheduling your posts. It queues your posts according to the timeline opted by you and eradicates the need to log in and out every time you want to post something. Furthermore, it has the added key features of managing multiple accounts, content creation and canva integration.

Social Insight

Social Insight provides you with an extensive analysis of your posts, focusing on reach and account engagement. You can retrieve useful information like your most liked post, average engagement rate and the increase or decrease in the number of followers. It also gives you a detailed insight into understanding your customers. Additional features include geographical hash tag specific alerts and personalised notification preferences.

Social Rank

This handy tool refines your list of followers by classifying them into brand advocates and influencers. Social Rank even helps you create a custom classification to segregate your followers and export the desired profiles to Twitter. Besides this, you can also filter your followers with specific demographic keywords. It gives a complete statistical breakdown of your Instagram followers which is very helpful in promoting your business.

Facebook Power Editor

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook now, it uses Facebook power editor to serve ads. This tool provides every benefit offered by Facebook such as targeting customers based on age, gender, location and interests. It also comes with the added advantage of flexible pricing, finding look-alike audiences and saving a targeted set of audiences for precise control over your campaigns

Instagram feed WD

Instagram feed WD integrates your Instagram account to Word Press blogs. You can now easily link your posts and photos to your website. It also lets you embed your Instagram feeds of hash tags and users to your website with conditional filters and links.

Instagram Insights

With Instagram Insights, you can get access to the basic analytics of your Instagram business account. It provides you with contact support your customers can use to reach your organisation and helps with promoting the posts as ads.

Soldsie

This tool focuses on showcasing your brand. It provides the facility of adding a bio link so that the interested followers can see your photos when they search for content similar to yours. It also provides conversion tracking and inventory management for e-commerce merchandise.

Repost

The Repost app lets you repost an Instagrammer’s photo on your feed. You can also bookmark your photos and save photos or videos to post them later on your feed, with just one touch.

Offerpop

Offerpop lets you engage in interactive content with your followers. It is ideal for conducting contests and creating sampling programs. It plays ads and content galleries in user-created feeds to promote brands.

Iconsquare

This is a business analytics widget that deals with the statistical analysis of post engagement. It monitors the increase or decrease of followers. One special feature about this is that it provides the opportunity to benchmark your performance with that of the competitor’s. It also includes suggestions about the optimal post timings.

Like2buy

Like2buy is the shopping-enabled doppelganger of Instagram. The app supports a web page similar to Instagram with the added feature of shopping while scrolling through the pictures.

Over

Over is built specifically to help you add text to your images. It has a contemporary style and is a one-stop-shop for anything related to embedding text on your pictures. Additionally, this app is specifically known for its creative and lively UI.

People map

People map is another effective Instagram marketing tool which provides you with the detailed analytics of your business. It helps in data-based decision making, finding target influencers, and is much more user-friendly than its counter parts. It also has a very stylish interface that makes it more attractive and fun to work with.

Inselly

Inselly is a simple tool that can redirect a photo to the actual product with the help of the hashtag used. This helps in capturing the attention of a customer, within a short span, by showcasing that the product is on sale. The hashtag denotes that the product is up for grabs and visiting the inselly website will help them find more details of the product.

It is about time you leverage Instagram to boost the marketing and sales of your business. With so many handy tools and useful apps, connecting to your target audience is now easier than ever. So, take the plunge and leave your digital footprint on the effervescent platform of social media.

This blog was originally published in Business Line on Campus.

Social Beat Nominated for Search & Display Innovation 2017 by Google

Posted on by Sundar Ramesh Kumar
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Since becoming a Google Premier Partner a year ago, we have constantly pushed the bar up to leverage Google AdWords and other advertising channels to deliver the best ROI. We are happy to announce that Social Beat is the only agency in India that is shortlisted for the Google Premier Partner awards for both Search Innovation & Display Innovation category. Below are two case studies showcasing some of the work we have done.

Success in Search Innovation for India’s leading self-publishing company

We work with Notionpress, India’s leading self-publishing company and our goal was to increase the number of leads by reaching out to potential and budding authors. The publishing space is an extremely competitive space, we used Google Search campaigns a key channel to achieve this goal. Right from creating a structured AdWords campaign to daily optimisation of the campaigns, we experimented with every feature that Google offers such as

RLSA & IF function

Understanding that the people who already know us and have interacted with us through the website have the highest potential to convert as a lead, we used the RSLA feature to do just that. This feature helped us target the website visitors to convert them into potential leads. This audience, however, was from different categories and their search queries were different and we couldn’t show them the same ad.  The messaging needed to change and utilising the “IF Function”, we were able to dynamically change ad copies to RLSA audiences where we created a sense of urgency, which helped in increasing the conversion numbers.

Keywords of different match types to expand the audience

The self-publishing industry in India is not only a competitive one but also a fairly new industry. In order to understand the market and deliver the best results, we had to constantly think of something new and experiment with different strategies. As part of this strategy, we used keywords of different match types to engage with our target audiences to the maximum extent. This process gave us a broad list of keywords to target and understand what exactly people are searching for and gave us a 3X increase in lead flow.

Managing negative keywords

When we tried out keywords of different match types, not only did we identify many more keywords to target but also found certain irrelevant ones. These keywords were not ideal for our client so we constantly managed and added them to the negative keywords list so that it does not affect the quality of our leads. Over 6000 such words were identified and managed and this list continues to grow every day.

Use of dynamic keyword insertion to show relevant ads to the target audience

Targeting a wide variety of keywords from different categories meant that the ad copies cannot be constant. It needed change depending on what people are searching for. Using the dynamic keywords insertion, we were able to dynamically change the ad copies based on the search query and connect with our target audiences very well, thus contributing to increase in conversions.

Leveraging CPA bidding option

We explored the CPA bidding mode to optimise the bids automatically and moved most of the campaigns to this. We started focussing on other aspects such as changing the bids based on devices, hour, time and day of the week and so on.

Leveraging Dynamic Search Ads

We used Dynamic Search Ads, which is normally used for e-commerce business as DSA provides additional text on the headlines which is not possible through the expanded text ads. This unique method helped us expand our keyword base, thereby helping us get more conversions.

We also worked on creative writing and focused on engaging ad copies in increasing the number of leads.

Results

With the help of search campaigns, we were able to achieve a whopping 561% increase in the number of conversions, and 154% increase in CTR with optimal CPA. We also had a weekly check in with the client on the quality of leads. With this effort, we were able to reduce the % of qualified leads and improved the final conversion of leads to sales.

Success in Display Innovation for South India’s leading real estate company

Casa Grande, a leader in the real estate space in South India, came to us with the objective of driving sales to their properties through Google Display advertising. With the help of every functionality that Google offers, such as responsive ads, similar audiences and smart display ads, we were able to drastically increase the number of site visits and conversions for the brand.

Tapping vernacular content

In India, vernacular content via digital has been growing at a fast pace in India. Of the literate 74%, only 10% read English while the rest consume content in the vernacular medium. In fact, according to statistics, Hindi Internet users (at 201 million) are said to outnumber those accessing the web in English at 199 million by 2021. Keeping this in mind, we used vernacular language as part of our advertising strategy as well as a part of our overall digital media strategy. For a real estate company such as Casa Grande, the audience is spread across Tier I, II and III cities and are not just restricted to the metro cities. It is also true that some of the metro city audiences are more comfortable with the regional language.

Purchasing a property not only involves a lot of money but is also an emotional decision so it is highly essential to talk to them in a language they are comfortable in. We tried out display ads in Tamil, which not only helped us reach a varied set of target audience but also played a substantial role in generating high-quality leads.

Doubleclick Bid manager

When Google Adwords stopped language targeting in Tamil, we quickly turned to Doubleclick and got a license to use the platform. With the help of Doubleclick Bid Manager, we were able to explore placements outside of Hindi language, which helped us achieve great success for Casa Grande, whose target audience is predominantly non-Hindi speakers.

Smart Display Campaigns

In order to always keep a track of the latest trends in advertising, we contacted our Google support team to get us whitelisted and try out new features in the beta stage itself. Our client was delighted with the huge jump in ROI generated with a visible increase in conversions.

Similar Audiences

When the concept of similar audiences was introduced, we immediately tried it out for some of our clients and realised the huge potential it has. We’ve also executed new features such as similar audiences to generate sales and help our clients broaden their reach.

Common Strategies used for both Search & Display

Proprietary CRM for better attribution

Knowing the source of the leads generated from various platforms is highly essential. This helps us to identify which campaigns, placements, topics, and audiences are driving qualified leads in order to improve our quality and quantity of leads. Using this, we are able to understand which platform and source are working better, thereby knowing exactly where to put our money to achieve better results.

A/B Testing to understand consumer behaviour

 No advertising works well without knowing what the target audience exactly wants. Keeping this in mind, we constantly test and refine our landing pages in order to improve the % and quality of conversions that we get. We use Crazy Egg, Zarget and Optimizely for the same. From the designs to the call to action, our team proactively uses heat maps and test various permutations and combinations to understand the consumer better and give them exactly what they want. For example, we did this exercise for our Casa Grande and understood that most of the target audience is looking for floor plans and brochures when they click on the ad. So, the landing pages were optimised to give them just that. This increased our lead flow massively.

Competitor Tracking

The publishing industry being a highly competitive one with reputed and well-established players such as Amazon, we not only need to keep trying something new but also keep a track on the competitors. We use SEMRush and Ahrefs to explore the activities of our competitors to stay ahead of them in our campaigns. We also get new Campaign/Ad Group/Keyword ideas by analysing the competition.

Scripts and Third Party tool to automate smaller tasks

As a team, we are constantly on the lookout to do more in less time and deliver big for our clients. In order to automate the day to day tasks, we use scripts and third party tools, to expand and optimise the campaigns. This process saves us a lot of time and cuts down monitoring simple monotonous processes, which in turn helps us focus on other aspects of optimizing the ad campaigns. It also helps in keeping a close track of the Google Adwords Account Health Score to optimise the campaigns.

Effectively leveraging Google Analytics and Audience Insights

We use advanced audience insights to understand our customer and target them. It also helps us with creating smart remarketing lists and use it for RLSA to get better conversions and results out of our advertising efforts.

One of the key reasons that we were able to produce such results is due to our ROI driven focus. To ensure that we push our boundaries and achieve the set targets for our clients, our team relies heavily on knowledge sharing and staying up to date on the new trends. We look forward to continuing pushing boundaries for our clients.

Social Beat launches book on Digital Marketing with Notion Press

Posted on by Ayesha Rafeeq
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Since our inception in 2012, we have posted more than 200 blog posts around digital marketing, which have received cumulative page views of over a million. In 2017, we have taken one more step towards sharing our knowledge and learnings and launched our first book titled ‘Digital Marketing Insights 2017’. As the name suggests, the book provides its readers with a close understanding of the tips and tricks involved in digital marketing, with deep insights on its diverse platforms.

‘Digital Marketing Insights 2017’ was launched during the second edition of the Facebook Digital Marketing Masterclass conducted in Mumbai. The workshop focused on how to approach digital marketing to build a brand and to acquire quality sales or leads. This insightful session was aptly concluded with the book launch as we presented the first copy to Meera Parthasarathy from Facebook.

The book deals with the various aspects of digital marketing and the methods marketers use to leverage the medium to grow their sales and revenue. It also provides readers with a better understanding of the digital marketing trends you must watch out for in 2017 and insights from key areas of digital marketing such as social media, content and SEO, video, digital advertising, mobile app marketing and user experience design. If you are unable to get the right business results via your digital marketing efforts, then this book can provide you insights on how to make the most of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest. Insights in the book have been compiled with contributions from digital marketing experts from across India. Kudos to the team at NotionPress (India’s largest self publishing company) for editing, designing, publishing and distributing the book in record time.

Digital Marketing Insights 2017 _3D cover

You can buy the e-book through Amazon. You can also find a hard copy at all leading online retail stores such as Amazon,Infibeam and Flipkart. We look forward to receiving your feedback on the book so please do share your comments below!

Social Beat at ICANN-ISOC Round Table on Security

Posted on by David Appasamy
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Internet Society’s (ISOC) Chennai Chapter held a Round Table discussion on how Security has become a mainstream concern as part of the ICANN’s Domain Name Security Seminar (DNSSEC seminar) in Chennai on Sunday, 9th July 17. David Appasamy, Head-Brand & Strategy, Social Beat co-chaired the event along with M Sivasubramanian, President, Internet Society, Chennai Chapter, who organized the event.

The Round table was made possible by host ICANN as part of their DNSSEC initiative represented by Samiran Gupta, Head India for ICANN, and Champika Wijayatunga, Regional Engagement Manager, Security, Stability & Resiliency for ICANN Asia Pacific, who were also part of the Round Table.

security

The Round Table was attended by a multi-stakeholder group comprising law enforcement, academia with both students & faculty, business & start up representation, civil society with NGO participation and solutions & network representation. The discussions were wide ranging and served to sensitize those present to the increased security risks in today’s environment, both online and offline.

The conclusions arrived at during the Round Table were:

  • That most participants felt an increase in security risks in both offline and online worlds today.
  • The world today is far more complex than even a decade ago with issues of terrorism, a divided society, external threats, internal unrest, fake news, online fraud etc. all contributing to the rise in perceived increased security risk offline and online.
  • Governance & regulation cannot be left to only the experts and law enforcement but must be the collective responsibility of everyone who uses the internet.
  • Every user must display responsible behaviour online much as they do offline to ensure that security risks are mitigated.
  • However, this is far easier said than done in a country like India where online user growth is significant month on month and digital marketing is growing leaps & bounds. And when new users are from all strata of society, and not well versed with online etiquette and secure behaviour. In rural areas, for example, bank accounts are operated by groups of people using the same PIN at a government centre from where they have online access. Even in urban areas, people routinely give their credit card PIN numbers to petrol pump attendants or at restaurants while settling their bills.
  • Society is much more complex, demanding & divided today across the world, with law enforcement increasingly having to request online content sites or applications to remove content or pages placed there with the express purpose of inciting division and violence.
  • The Internet began from a defense research project, and was further developed by academia and think tanks. In the early days, users were responsible, aware and value driven so that the idea of the Internet being free, open and available to all made sense and was easily developed. Today, however, whilst it remains free and open (in varying degrees depending on countries), the need for oversight to ensure content is not misused is a reality.
  • While the need for oversight is a reality, self-regulation is still the best approach as a best practice. This is widely seen across the world where light touch regulation, ie facilitation, is the best way. Estonia and France were cited as benchmarks for Internet regulation. Law enforcement officers present also stressed that individual responsibility is still the key.
  • The Round Table concluded with the realization that to facilitate individually responsible behaviour online is a humongous task and will take enormous and sustained effort, especially in a country like India. It will have to be not just and individual responsibility, but a collective one across all multi-stakeholders.

The need for widespread awareness, and for key stakeholders to take the lead in this effort, whether governments, ISPs, online sites or applications, banks & financial services companies, payment or other apps, educational institutions, companies & businesses, parents and role models becomes key. Today, with close to 4 billion people online, the need for secure behaviour online is felt more than ever before. And will only increase in future.

My Internship Experience – Nikhar Aggarwal

Posted on by Nikhar Aggarwal
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Blogs, Marketing, MBA, Analytics, meeting new people every day. If your life revolves around these or if you want it to revolve around these, then Digital Marketing is the pick! With my choices completely in sync with the above description, I was super excited about getting a campus pick at Social Beat for my internship. Never been to the south before, and having my first MBA internship at Chennai I was a little sceptical. But with a lot of positivity, hopes and eagerness to learn something new, I arrived the office on 10th April.  The day 1 began with the introduction of the company and the first plunge into the world of digital marketing. The induction continued for 2 days. Everyone whom I met was so humble, knowledgeable and so sweet, ready to help, no matter how occupied they were – right from the co-founders, Suneil and Vikas to everyone at Social Beat. From that moment onwards I got the feeling that it’s going to be one amazing journey.

Reluctant, whether they would give me some big clients to handle or I would end up doing just backend work, as is the assumption, I gladly failed! Right from the start, they gave me work for some great clients and thereafter there was no looking back. Anuradha, my mentor, trusted me completely and provided me with a flavour of every vertical possible. There was so much to learn from her. The composure to tackle different clients, the one-stop solution for every creative idea that you need. It was brilliant ideating with her on business development proposals like Skore. It didn’t stop there. My learning and experience doubled under the guidance and support from my mentor part II, Roshni. With similar working style and so much more in common, it was a cake walk for me. I learnt the basics right, handled a few clients and explored digital marketing to great extent with her, together trying many new features – a never ending process. I was lucky to work with many-many members of the company, be it the content team, designers, social media team, SEO and Ads team. Interaction with each one of them was unforgettable.

I never knew this field could be so vast yet so interesting. I guess my love for digital marketing has just increased by leaps and bounds with this internship. This journey at Social Beat became altogether more special, thanks to my life support here – Srinidhi, Ashish, Parvathi, Akshita, Antriksh, Roshni, Nandita, Ayesha, Sanjana and the list is endless. Will miss the rooms 287, 298 and 338.Team at social beat

A special thanks to Suneil and Vikas, for trusting me with my work and giving me the opportunity to make business development proposals and do research for various clients. They have been the best bosses ever!

Thank you Social Beat for making this experience oh-so memorable and full of new learnings. Will miss this company, the company where people never sleep, where people fulfil all their dreams !! ?

 

How to get ROI from digital marketing- Digital Chai Pe Charcha, Mumbai

Posted on by Pooja Patil
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Banking on a series of successful editions of Digital Chai Pe Charcha in Chennai and Bangalore, we conducted the first edition of Digital Chai Pe Charcha in Mumbai. We had close to 30 participants comprising of entrepreneurs and marketers from across industries. The topic of discussion was getting ROI from Digital Marketing.

Digital Chai Pe Charcha, Mumbai

A quick recap from the session

  • Digital Marketing Comprises of various activities like Landing Page Creation, Search Engine & Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Display Advertising and Influencer Marketing.
  • Digital media can be segregated into 3 types: Owned Media, Paid Media and Earned Media.
  • While building digital assets, it is important to understand that the key is to provide a great user experience across platforms. A smooth User experience helps in driving conversions.
  • A Landing Page is essential for lead generation and helps in faster conversions.
  • According to a research done by Buzzsumo and Moz and Video content gets shared the most across platforms followed by Lists, how to posts and Infographics. While creating content, it is extremely important to focus on the relevance of content to the viewers. The content dynamics have been changing rapidly. From images to videos to gifs to VR, there is a wide range of options to experiment with, to create the right communication piece for your audience. Great content is generally considered as content that provides solutions to the viewer’s problems. Thus, research reports, E-books and guides are some more examples of content that can be created to strike a chord with the audience.
  • Non-branded content helps in gaining engagement. Create content that focuses on the viewer and not essentially on the brand.
  • Vernacular marketing and multilingual content is rapidly gaining importance. Vernacular content helps to create a local connection with the audience.
  • Measuring your digital marketing results is essential as it helps to better strategize your digital marketing efforts. There are several tools available to analyze and measure your results.

Below is the presentation that was discussed during the session which will provide you with more information on the above points:

Getting ROI From Digital Marketing – Digital Chai Pe Charcha in Mumbai from Social Beat

My Internship Experience – Niagha

Posted on by Niaga Rajesh
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Being someone who was born and brought up in Chennai, I was excited to be able to spend 2 whole months in the city, doing something I’m passionate about in an agency that has an amazing vibe, culture and work ethic. Needless to say, a large part of me was very nervous and anxious on my first day at Social Beat. Setting that aside, I was also excited and curious to see what was in store for me. Currently pursuing an MBA in Communication Management from Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune, I was looking forward to putting all the knowledge gained so far into play as much as learning new things from the organization.

The internship period began with a two-day induction process for all interns where we were given a brief understanding into the various departments at Social Beat and how they go about their work. This process was extremely useful as it was able to bring me on par with how things function here. To break the ice, we had a Pani Puri challenge at the end of the induction process which was a lot of fun even though I barely managed to eat 7!

I believe I got extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to work for a company that gives you the freedom to explore and expand your creativity, something not all interns are given the liberty to do so. The work culture and environment is extremely warm and comfortable and what is amazing is that everyone across teams is very approachable. Not one person hesitated to take few minutes out of their busy schedules to help me with a proposal I was working on or simply educate me on their expertise. A big shout out to Sundar, Bindhya and Pournima for this.

The internship was a great learning experience as I got to work on interesting clients such as Forum Fiza Mall, Aura Events, India Home Health Care, TVS Motor Company, Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes etc. Being under the Social Media Marketing team, I got to develop campaign ideas and content posts for their social media pages. Aside from this, I had the chance to make pitch proposals for exciting brands such as Altis Properties, Feathers Hotel, Leela Palace – Goa, Choosemybicycle.com and much more. Life is all about getting out of your comfort zone, pushing yourself and expanding your boundaries and Social Beat enabled me to do just that. On that note, I’m not big on writing blogs but I managed to write one for the website and I consider that a big win.

Learning a textbook version of digital marketing does not have any effect unless it’s put to work and practised. At Social Beat, I was able to dive deep into the field and understand how ads were made on Facebook and Google and the attention to detail that’s given to content, targeting, scheduling and the budgeting as well. I learnt that there is so much that goes in the back end of Google Adwords, SEO, Content Marketing, Website design and Pitch Proposals than just what the book says.

The Monday review meetings, Friday Chit-Chat, help bring the team closer to each other and on the same level on each other’s work. This blog would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the birthday celebrations at Social Beat. Apart from the delicious cake (I’ve had enough for a lifetime in the 2 months I spent at Social Beat), the idea of having everyone around to celebrate your birthday with is quite a memory to hold on to.

Lastly, I would like to extend my gratitude to Vikas for giving me this opportunity and for the guidance and support especially when it came to proposal making. Krithika Ramani, for training and giving me the space to make mistakes (I don’t think I’ll ever go wrong with FB ad targeting again) and learn as well as pushing me to my maximum limit and finally for being my first and best mentor ever. I would also like to thank Lalitha, Sandhya, Allan, and Kanthi, for their valuable inputs and for so easily accepting me as one of their own.

Internship experience - Niaga

Social Beat is a good place to work and they are driven towards achieving their goals. The hustle is always on. I’m taking back so many valuable learnings in the field of digital marketing and amazing memories of client meetings, ideating, drafting proposals, review meetings, tea breaks, lunches at 291, birthday cakes and friends for a lifetime! Thank you, Social Beat.

 

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