Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore the full rollout of Facebook’s Live Producer for managing live-stream video and the new Creator Studio app […]
Do you want to grow your business? Is it time to rethink the way you market and deliver experiences? To explore how to grow your business via innovation, I interview Duncan Wardle on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Duncan is the former head of innovation & creativity for Disney. He’s also a keynote speaker who […]
As a social media professional, presentations are an inevitable part of your job and a vital part of yourcareer growth. If that gives you nervous butterflies, not to worry! Honing your presentation skills takes time, patience and practice.
Presentations can be a challenge, but they’re also an opportunity. Whether you’re presenting a newsocial strategy, proving theROIof a campaign or pitching business to a new client, the basics of successful presentation are the same. Follow these tips (and use this template) to create a compelling social media presentation that keeps your audience engaged from start to finish.
Do your research
The first and most important part of any presentation is research. It’s the backbone of the story you’ll be telling. Rather than heading to Google and scouring the web blindly, use these questions to guide your research:
What’s your focus and objective?
You don’t usually just give a social media presentation for kicks and giggles. Perhaps you’re trying to get executive buy-in for a new social tool, or you want to pitch a new strategy to your social team. Whatever your focus may be, your presentation should be mission-driven, intentional and working toward a solution.
Some of that research may come from digging into your previous social efforts. Find concrete examples of social posts that worked in the past to support future goals and projects. Uncover content gaps and growth opportunities by listening to your audience. Hone in on yourKPIsand look for markers of social proof and ways to assign value to your insights.
Pulling in proof-points and data to support your thesis is important but don’t lose your focus. Use your research to narrow in on two to three key takeaways that will ground your presentation.
Who is your audience?
Research for your presentation shouldn’t be limited to your topic. You’ll need to do a bit of research on your audience as well. Who you’re speaking to should inform why and how you’re speaking to them.
If you work in-house and represent a single brand, chances are you’ll be presenting internally to peers and leaders that know you, your work and background on your topic. But social media marketers that work in an agency have different challenges that likely require a bit more research.
If you’re pitching a social media plan to a new client, a deep understanding of their brand, industry and business needs is crucial. Beyond their brand background, you’ll need to narrow in on the client’s pain-points, who their competitors are, their current social strategy and more.
Create your deck
Just as social media connects us to a wider world, so do stories. Great storytelling in your presentation will help keep your audience captivated from start to finish.
The “deck” you’ll be presenting acts as the outline for your story arc and your slides are your illustrations. Use this free, customizable social media presentation template to create a polished slide deck.
As you begin building and customizing your presentation, keep these best practices in mind to avoid presenting like Michael Scott.
Introduce yourself and your agenda
There’s a common piece of advice for speakers that goes, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then, tell them what you told them.” Following this framework will help set expectations with your audience and make sure you start and finish with impact.
At the beginning of your presentation, add a slide introducing yourself and any presenting partners. After that, include an agenda slide that gives a high-level overview of your presentation.
Consider also sharing your agenda ahead of time. This gives stakeholders an opportunity to respond with preliminary notes that could help you tweak your presentation so that it’s aligned with their expectations. This also gives your audience time to prepare questions ahead of time.
Start with a hook
Engaging your audience early on in your presentation will help hold their attention throughout. With a good hook, you’ll lure people in and intrigue them from the get-go. A few of the most popular examples include shocking statistics, rhetorical questions, an interesting anecdote and inspirational quotes.
Make slides succinct
Each slide you present should be simple, focused and void of unnecessary distractions. According to Paul Jurczynski, aTED Talkcoach and cofounder of Improve Presentation, “The golden rule is to have one claim or idea per slide. If you have more to say, put it on the next slide.”
Use colors with a purpose in mind
In many cases, your presentation should incorporate the color schemes found within your agency or brandstyle guide. For example, let’s say you’re giving a social media presentation to a new customer or client on behalf of an agency. The audience may not know you as an individual, but they have an existing relationship with your brand. Colors and fonts are a simple way to set off those brand recognition triggers and remind your audience that you’re a subject matter expert.
If you’re going to branch out, your colors need purpose. Consider theemotions associated with colors. For instance, people associate yellow with warmth and energy, whereas red is often associated with excitement and passion. No matter what color scheme you choose, it should be consistent throughout your presentation.
Incorporate data visualization
Social media marketing presentations often come down to provingROIfor stakeholders. Data visualization like graphs and charts are a compelling way to make your case.
In data journalist David McCandless’sTED talk, he explains that the beauty of data visualization is that “that we can seethe patterns and connections that matterand design that information so it makes more sense, it tells a story, or allows us to focus only on the information that’s important.”
Don’t get bogged down in mapping out every single data point you uncover during your research. The best graphs are simple graphs with takeaways that are easy to spot. Try highlighting key numbers or data points by using color, bolding or another visual treatment that makes them pop, like the example above from theSprout Social Index.
Show your work
It’s a social media marketing presentation, so naturally, you should share examples of your work on social media. Pull in screenshots of successful social posts to show how your tactics have worked for the brand(s) you represent.
Wrap it up with a call-to-action
A powerful CTA always ties back to your original goal and encourages an action your audience can take once your presentation is over. Essentially, it’s your way to serve up a final take away and leave the ball in your audience’s court.
Plan your delivery
You’ve done your research, you’ve created your deck, now it’s time to plan your delivery. With the right approach, tone, prompts and pacing, your presentation could be about “nothing” and still be compelling. Just watch as Will Stephens does this masterfully.
Generate emotional responses
As the great Maya Angelou once said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Data points and numbers are great but hitting points that generate an emotional response is even better.
For example, if you’re pitching to new clients about growing their social communities and you’ve grown a social audience by say, 50% in the last six months, that’s incredible! Don’t be afraid to share your excitement.
Not every point of your story is going to be exciting. Decide what emotions you want to tap into ahead of time. Are you trying to inspire, inform, engage or entertain your audience? The best presentations combine a little bit of each.
Pump the brakes
While you may feel the need to get through everything as quickly as possible, don’t be afraid to pump the brakes. A lot of people tend to speed up when they’re nervous. Nerves are normal, just remember to slow down, enunciate and take deep breaths.
Take a few moments throughout your presentation to check in with your audience throughout the presentation so they can ask questions or have a point clarified if necessary. If the people you’re presenting to aren’t familiar with an industry term or social media metric, they may need a bit more explanation.
Work out the kinks ahead of time
Practice, practice, practice. Don’t just skim through your deck. Treat your practice runs like they’re the real thing. If possible, present to a friend or coworker you trust to give honest, constructive feedback. The more you rehearse, the more confident and comfortable you’ll feel.
You’ve finished your presentation, but you’re not finished yet. After you present, send your audience and any stakeholders the final deck, remind them about next steps and action items that came out of the presentation, and finally, thank them for their time.
Are you ready to create your next social media presentation? Use our free social media presentation template to get started.
Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where we dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.
Overview
We’ve said it before (and we live it every day!), but B2B social marketing comes with a set of unique challenges. One of the most daunting is that it can feel like many “best practice,” foundational social tactics just aren’t available to you because your audience is businesses and not consumers. It’s certainly not as straightforward, but taking cues from proven B2C tricks to build your B2B strategy is possible and can be very effective. Take Adobe, makers of the cloud-based software suite that creatives across the globe rely on to bring marketing, advertising, photography and videography work to life. By taking a tried-and-true tactic from the B2C playbook, Adobe has built a social content juggernaut that’s a daily inspiration to its richly diverse audiences.
Many B2C brands rely on user-generated content, or UGC, to supply them with a real-life look at how consumers are interacting with the brand and its products. Ever since Burberry launched The Art of the Trench in 2009, B2C brands have been encouraging (and sometimes incentivizing) their customers to use social to show others how a brand or product fits into their lives. In the Insta-driven landscape of 2020, this is a piece of cake for many B2C brands. But what if your customers are businesses, and your product isn’t something that’s inherently ‘gram-able?
Adobe realized that the key was to focus not on its products as the highlight of UGC, but rather what its products enabled its users to create, achieve and celebrate. By focusing on end users instead of software buyers and opening the brand’s social channels to them to share the inspirational, beautiful and memorable things they created using Adobe programs, the brand was able to create the want from the bottom up. Not to mention, providing a digital home to a community of like-minded professionals who share ideas, feedback and admiration with each other–all in the context of Adobe’s brand.
Other software companies would be wise to look at Adobe’s adoption of B2C tactics as inspiration to rethink their own social approach.
What you can learn
1. Put yourself in your end user’s shoes. We often focus on the needs of the business and how our software products meet them. But what does your product’s end user get out of using your product every day? How does it make them feel, and how can you use social to champion that?
Getting started: Use social to ask your audience what they’re creating with your product or to tell you about how your product helped them do something they’re proud of. Then think about how you can bring those stories to life on social.
2. UGC can mean many things, especially in B2B. Even if your software doesn’t enable beautiful end products like Adobe’s does, you still have the opportunity to let your users speak for your brand.
Getting started: Use a text overlay on relevant visuals to share a quote from a user about how your product helped them do something remarkable.
3. Don’t be afraid of emotion. Too much of B2B marketing is functional, devoid of basic human emotion. Whether you acknowledge it or not, your product makes people feel things when they use it. Maybe it’s elation that they can be more efficient at work, or pride in what they’re able to create. Don’t be afraid to ask them about those feelings–chances are they’re not alone in feeling them, and that groundswell of emotion can define new opportunities for your brand.
Getting started: Interview a group of end users 1:1, either in person, via social, email or on the phone. Ask them about the feelings they encounter in their daily work, and explore together what role your brand and products play in those emotions.
Landing pages are easily one of the most important pieces of your social media marketing strategy, they’re unfortunately easy to overlook.
That’s because marketers are often so laser-focused on attracting customers and followers.
However, what happens to those customers once they click through your promotions? Are they moving through your funnel or are you letting those precious clicks go to waste?
If you’re not 100% sure whether your landing pages are up to snuff, don’t sweat it.
We’ve put together a comprehensive list of social media landing page examples and best practices to inspire you and help boost your conversions.
What is a landing page used for, anyway?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s break down what a landing page is.
A landing page is a destination page that’s part of a specific marketing campaign or promotion.
When your followers or subscribers click through a promotional link (think: social bio, email link), a landing page is quite literally well, they, land.
Here’s a straightforward example from a TOMS email promo. Upon clicking through the coupon, we’ve brought to the shopping page that’s specific to the promotion in the email.
Note that landing pages are different than generic homepage links. Generally, landing pages include some sort of specific call-to-action such as signing up for a list or purchasing a particular product.
These pages work to guide visitors to take action rather than just “browse.” Also, tracking promotions with landing pages make it easier to attribute behaviors and metrics. This might include clicks, purchases, time spent on page and bounce rate.
Let’s look at a social media landing page examples from Skullcandy. Their trackable Bitly link in their Instagram bio points to a landing page for a particular product. Rather than point visitors to their homepage, they use their Instagram to highlight their latest offer.
After clicking through, customers land on a page for that offer.
See how that works? Brands typically create new landing pages for product launches and new promotions. Over time, companies can understand what types of content and tactics perform well and can more quickly roll out new landing pages by plugging in new copy and creatives.
What makes a “good” landing page?
Hey, “good” question!
Businesses have tons of creative freedom when it comes to putting together their landing pages.
That said, there are some common threads between top-performing pages which we’ve highlighted below.
A good landing page guides visitors from Point A to Point B
No secrets here. Ideally, your landing page should keep visitors reading (and scrolling) as they naturally want to learn more and eventually click through your call-to-action (CTA).
Through elements of design, copy and CTA placement, brands manage to keep readers glued to the page without losing interest.
Below’s a good example from Zenni. The landing page is naturally broken up into sections, with attractive icons and photos of actual people to hold the reader as they educate themselves on the company’s offer.
Rather than hit readers with a wall of text, brands are tasked with coming up with landing pages that find a balance between education, entertainment and usability.
A good landing page isn’t too “busy”
Piggybacking on the last tip, landing pages are the last place you want to overwhelm people via information overload.
Landing pages typically follow the rule of “less is more.” You’ll notice that many of them are minimalist when it comes to copy and color schemes, using only a couple of colors and brief copy to make their offer easy to digest at a glance.
For example, this landing page from Host Gator is a great piece of landing page design inspiration. The page’s rapid-fire points are coupled with a blue and orange color scheme that makes their CTA can’t miss while also being easy on the eyes.
A good landing page is mobile-friendly
Conventional wisdom tells us the majority of web and social traffic is mobile.
Meanwhile, recent social media statistics point to the need to appeal to customers on-the-go.
That’s why your landing pages should be mobile-friendly by default. Responsive design can take care of some of the legwork for you, but any social media landing page in particular needs to be scroll-friendly. The previous two tips can help make that happen.
That doesn’t mean you have to make your landing pages bare-bones, though. For example, this social landing page from Xero is effective while still including product screenshots, video and animations.
15 social media landing page examples (and why they work)
Now, onto the good stuff!
Below are some of the best landing page examples from social media broken down by industry.
And although many of these landing pages look totally different, they manage to get the job done in terms of driving clicks. No matter what you’re selling, these examples can inspire you.
Ecommerce landing pages
As highlighted in our guide to social media for retail, ecommerce landing pages should make the purchasing possible as direct and painless. Your end-game here is to guide shoppers to relevant product pages ASAP.
1. Black Milk Clothing
The beauty of a shoppable feed is that it makes the process of selling on Instagram a cinch. That’s the approach Black Milk takes, with its Instagram landing page serving as a feed of promos and user-generated content. Also, note the email opt-in to gather more information from prospective shoppers.
Not necessarily unique to our other landing page examples, this one also featured a discount pop-up for first-time visitors. Although the use of pop-ups is hotly debated, free shipping pops are still all-the-rage for ecommerce in particular.
2. Liingo
This landing page for a desktop Facebook ad from Liingo is brilliantly designed, separated into three sections as we scroll through. Note the bright orange call-to-action buttons as well as the animation from the “Virtual Try-On” section, both serving to catch the eyes of anybody scrolling through.
3. Beardbrand
Anything you can do to make your landing pages interactive is a plus. That’s exactly what Beardbrand does with its quiz-based landing page.
Upon gathering your email address, the quiz dives into questions to help guide you toward the right products.
Although a quiz might require a bit of legwork on the part of shoppers, taking the time to do so results in personalized product recommendations that require less browsing. Note also that by going through a quiz, your leads provide audience insight by giving you responses about their personal preferences. In short, a win-win.
SaaS landing pages
A crucial piece of any SaaS marketing strategy, landing pages should be straightforward in that they encourage visitors to download or request a demo. However, landing pages for SaaS aren’t always that simple.
4. Sprout Social
Sprout’s Facebook ad landing page is far from suit-and-tie. Featuring a friendly face above-the-fold and language that emphasizes our values and need for connections, we’re looking to prove to prospects that we’re about more than just software.
The green CTA buttons are easy to see here. Meanwhile, video is noted to boost engagement and conversions and is why you’ll see it throughout our landing page examples.
5. Salesforce
Another Facebook ad landing page, Salesforce does a good job of breaking down exactly what their product does in plain English.
Coupled with imagery, actual screenshots and testimonial video below the fold, this landing page does a little bit of everything while providing essential information up-front.
6.Hyke
This Instagram ad landing page presents Hyke as a helpful tool, highlighting money saved without mincing words.
The remainder of the landing page includes social proof, testimonials and crystal clear pricing, while the purple CTA is can’t-miss.
Hospitality and travel landing pages
Simply put, social media for travel is all about scoring bookings. These landing pages highlight how some of the biggest players in the travel industry make it happen.
7. Southwest
Coming from a Twitter video ad, this Southwest landing page is about as simple as they come.
But again, landing pages doesn’t need to be inherently complicated. Shouting “Hey, we’ve got good rates!” with a single, bright call-to-action that helps draw the reader to the natural conclusion to click-through.
8. Four Seasons
If you’re in the travel industry, you know that style points matter. This Instagram landing page from the Four Seasons is minimalist but bold, offering clear call-to-actions which contrast with the rest of the landing page’s text.
9. Disney Vacation Club
Well-organized and stylish, Disney’s landing page features videos and accommodation highlights for visitors who want to learn more than what’s above-the-fold.
Landing pages for courses, courses and guides
From freebies to paid courses, these types of landing pages typically highlight benefits and present themselves as being time-sensitive.
10. Foundr
Foundr’s course landing page sort of feels like an old-school sales page but with some bells and whistles that make it more effective. For example, the offer countdown timer is a classic example of urgency marketing that still works today. Note also its use of video.
Coupled with a ton of data, social proof and testimonials below-the-fold, this busy landing page succeeds in selling itself to skeptics.
As an aside, Foundr promotes the course with a pinned tweet: a smart move for any business looking to promote a static or long-term office while still linking to their homepage via social.
11. Shopify
This landing page represents a style we see quite often for e-books, but this time-tested format works.
Sitting atop accompanying stats and data points, downloading Shopify’s guide doesn’t require any digging here. You know exactly what you’re getting and where to find it.
12. Skillcrush
If you’re promoting a webinar, perhaps the most important piece of your landing page is reinforcing the date and time. Skillcrush manages to do this while also highlighting its host with a human touch. The title and tagline of the webinar are all that’s really necessary to seal the deal for sign-ups.
Charity and nonprofit landing pages
Although social media for nonprofits is less about selling per se, landing pages for charity organizations are centered around driving donations. Here’s how they do it.
13. charity: water
The counter that’s front-and-center here helps highlight who’s contributed, serving as a sort of bandwagon effect for new donors. The clear, static donation box is also a nice touch. A simple color scheme and long-form video make this a clean, professional landing page that gets the job done.
14. UNICEF USA
Not unlike a shoppable Instagram feed, this landing page allows visitors to browse and donate products that correlate with different photos. This is a creative way to encourage donations while also double-dipping your charity-related content.
15. Greenpeace
Stunning imagery and a bright, static opt-in form make this landing page visually striking. The “signatures so far” bad is also a subtle touch to encourage visitors to get involved.
As you can see, there’s a lot of room for creativity when it comes to these landing pages examples. This serves as good news as you can format and design your page based on your brand, all the while ticking the boxes of what makes a page “good”
How to optimize landing pages over time
Feeling inspired and ready to freshen up your landing pages?
Awesome! Your head is in the right place.
But before you consider scrapping your current pages or coming up with new creatives or copy, it’s important to understand what landing page optimization actually looks like.
To wrap things up, let’s talk about how to come up with a baseline for landing page performance and what you can do to give your numbers a must-needed boost.
Track the behavior of your landing page traffic
For starters, start by seeing which of your landing pages are performing well via Google Analytics.
Which pages are consistently attracting new visitors? Is there a specific call-to-action or page which drives the most clicks. You can not only set such goals in GA, but also monitor them over time to make sure they’re ticking upward.
Regardless, having this data available allows you to set expectations and goals as you look to improve your conversion rate.
Also, tools such as Sprout Social can assist in monitoring clicks and conversions via your social media landing pages. With our URL tracker, you can identify and gather analytics for social-specific links. This includes not only bio links but also specific posts and promotions.
A/B test your landing pages
Let’s say you’re ready to roll out a new landing page or want to make some changes to an existing one.
Maybe you want to try a new call-to-action or button placement. Perhaps you want to switch up your color scheme.
With tools like Unbounce, you can start with proven landing page templates and optimize them to your liking. You can also run multiple versions of the same page side-by-side, allowing you to A/B test them to see which one is the “winner.” Regular testing does double duty of refining your pages over time while also ensuring that you’re meeting your own standards in terms of performance.
Make sure your creatives and copy are consistent
A quick tip, but definitely worth mentioning!
Double-check that your and marketing messages are consistent not only across landing pages but also across marketing channels.
For example, creatives (think: imagery, calls-to-action, promotions) should ideally be consistent on your homepage, email and social platforms.
This ensures that your traffic is being sent where they’re supposed to be and likewise isn’t cause for confusion. Someone clicking through an autumn offer shouldn’t wind up on your summer landing page, right?
And with that, we wrap up our guide!
Ready to build better landing pages for your promotions?
Listen: there’s one “right” way to put together a winning landing page.
However, it’s key to understand what effective ones look actually like in the wild.
Hopefully, this list of landing page examples and best practices can help you start brainstorming your next destination page. Any landing page tips or tricks you’d like to share with our readers? How have you increased your conversion rate? Let us know in the comments below!
If you’re looking for a simple solution to organizing and reporting on your social marketing success, check out our toolkit of social templates to level up your day-to-day.
Do you want a competitive edge in your marketplace? Are you using LinkedIn to research your competitors? In this article, you’ll learn how to use LinkedIn to gather valuable insights about your competitors and use what you learn to grow your own business. Why You Should Research Your Competitors on LinkedIn There are many benefits […]
With the constant demand for bite-sized information and visual content, infographic marketing is only going to grow in popularity as a format for digital content marketing. In fact, 65% of B2B marketers have used infographics for content marketing, which makes it one of the top five most used types of content. And 84% of respondents in an Infographic World survey found the medium effective.
So if you’re going to catch up with the competition, there’s no question that infographics should be a part of your content marketing mix. But that’s easier said than done because there’s a lot that goes into creating one. Not to mention the process of strategically promoting and distributing it.
This guide gives you an in-depth look at infographic marketing so you can successfully implement it. You’ll discover some of the top benefits of infographics as well as the best practices you should follow when creating one.
Why use infographics?
First, let’s try to understand why infographics work and why you should use them in the first place. Infographic marketing will help you:
1. Appeal to a bigger audience
Not everyone likes to read text-heavy blog posts and articles; some are visual learners and may prefer image content over text. Infographics help you appeal to people with different preferences and expand your overall reach.
2. Put a fresh twist on old content
Infographic marketing provides you with new ways to repurpose your old content and keep your blog constantly updated. Choose some of your older, text-heavy blog posts and convert the points into bite-sized information for an infographic.
Infographics’ are also a great fit for many social platforms that highly visual. They can help you expand the reach of your blog content by translating it into a format that’s perfect for platforms like Pinterest or Instagram.
3. Build high-quality backlinks
Authority sites realize the benefits of infographics too. Even sites that have an abundance of standard blog posts and may not be accepting guest posts might be interested in publishing an infographic as an alternative. This means you get to build high-quality backlinks and strengthen your domain authority.
For example, the influencer marketing platform Grin created an infographic on the ROI of influencer marketing.
In addition to publishing this infographic on their blog, they also submitted it to other authority sites including Egg Marketing PR, Venngage and Smart Insights.
4. Drive high-quality traffic
All these backlinks aren’t just for boosting your domain authority; they also help you drive traffic to your site. Some of the readers are bound to show an interest in your product or service after seeing your infographic. So they might decide to check out your site, thus boosting your traffic and getting more prospects into your sales funnel. In fact, infographics have been known to improve site traffic by 12%.
5. Establish brand authority
Besides more traffic and higher domain authority, getting published by a reputable site gives you clout. When an authority site decides to publish your infographic, it means they’re vouching for you, leading readers to see you as a thought leader in your industry.
6. Educate your audience
According to the previously-cited Infographic World survey, infographics are the most effective medium for learning and retaining information. So the right marketing infographics can help you get your message across more effectively as well as educate your audience about your products, services and industry.
7. Strengthen your social media presence
Infographics give you something visual and interesting to share with your followers. Not only will this engage them, it also makes them more likely to share your posts with their networks. This significantly boosts your reach and social media presence.
What can you create?
You now understand the benefits of infographics, so your next question may be what kind can you create? What type of information should you share and what works best in an infographic format?
If you’re looking to repurpose your own posts, look for content that can be easily summarized or illustrated. You might already have posts where quick bullet points or data visualizations help readers understand the key points of your content. These can help form the basis of an infographic. On the other hand, you want to avoid complex or nuanced topics that can’t be fully understood without a lot of clarifying copy.
Besides using infographics to repurpose information from your old blog posts, you can also create original ones to:
Share relevant research data: You can present original findings from your research or survey as an infographic. Or you could even curate relevant statistics and data from multiple reliable sources and turn them into an infographic.
Share relevant, fun facts: You could also put together some interesting facts relevant to your product, service or industry and turn them into an easily digestible infographic. These can be great supplements to existing posts that summarize them in a easy to scan way.
Provide an easy-to-scan guide: Infographics are a great way to present instructions in a way that’s easy to process for the readers. If you have ‘how to’ content related to your products or services, create a bite-sized guide to help your readers learn how to do something. These also serve as downloadable assets that help users of your product or service always keep a reference on hand.
Compare products/services: Infographics also make it easier to compare two or more similar products or services. You can compile all the essential information such as the pros, cons, pricing, etc., of different offerings within your own catalog or comparisons with competitors and turn it into an infographic.
Best practices for infographic marketing
Now that you have a better understanding of how infographics can benefit you and what you can create, let’s take a look at the best practices you should follow for effective infographic marketing.
1. Start with the right topic
Your choice of topic plays a crucial role in whether or not your infographic is a success. Ideally, you should avoid choosing a broad generic topic or you’ll find yourself struggling to narrow down on what information to include. So there’s a good chance your infographic will be all over the place.
Get very specific with the topic so it’s easier to pick out bite-sized information to include. For example, instead of creating an infographic about “blogging tips,” get more specific with a checklist for starting a blog, tips to improve blog traffic, and more.
At Sprout, for example, we created an infographic on how to build social relationships with influencer marketing. This makes a lot more sense than an “everything you need to know” type of infographic, which for a vast topic like influencer marketing will require us to fit in too much information into a single infographic. This infographic instead focuses on answering a few key questions in a visual way.
2. Follow a coherent timeline
Whatever story you want to tell or whichever design you plan to use, it should follow a logical timeline so people can process the information in a way that makes sense. Your infographic should have a flow that takes readers through a coherent journey. This means you should focus on creating step-by-step processes, chronologically ordering your information, numbering your information, etc.
Think of a visual storyline that fits with the information you want to provide, and then develop a follow that makes the most sense.
In our social media best practices infographic, for example, we used a list-based format to convey our message and grouped relevant data points together under each section. This infographic also follows a flow from starting with the initial steps of developing a social strategy to ending with more complex and ongoing tasks, giving it some narrative structure.
3. Choose the right color scheme
We can’t stress enough on the importance of your color scheme when creating infographics for marketing. First of all, you should pick colors that complement each other. And it’s ideal if you can implement your brand colors into the infographic for consistent branding. But this may be a little bit tricky because you have to consider colors that are pleasant to the eye.
In every Sprout infographic, you’ll notice the use of defined brand colors like the shades of green that are part of our visual style guide. However, you don’t want to visually overload every single infographic with only your signature brand colors. In many cases, this can detract from readability, which is why we use white space and other balanced sections in the state of social media team infographic below. It’s likely that your design team has already defined secondary, complementary brand colors as part of your social media style guide, so this can be a great starting point for figuring out ways to vary your infographics.
4. Choose the right fonts
Font is another crucial consideration that can make or break your infographic design. The goal is to provide valuable information, so it needs to be readable and easy to process. It’s best to avoid fancy fonts that are hard to read and instead, go with simple ones that give your infographic a professional look.
In addition, your choice of fonts should also fit your brand image–whether it’s fun and bold or sleek and professional–as well as the topic theme. But whatever you do, make sure you don’t use every single font that looks good to you. This could result in concept overload and your infographic could end up looking messy, not to mention difficult to read.
The following infographic on strange dishes from history, for instance, only uses two typefaces that are both easy to read. Instead of using fancy fonts, they play around with the graphic elements to give the infographic some substance and a visual appeal, while keeping the larger blocks of copy highly readable.
5. Make the most of white space
White space is another crucial element in your infographic because you don’t want something that’s completely overloaded with graphics or cramped visual elements. Doing so means you’ll have a hard time conveying your message in a way that makes sense to the readers because there’s too much distraction. Make the most of white space to separate points, graphical elements and sections.
For example, check out the use of blank space in the following infographic on the history of infographics. Spacing is used to clearly separate different sections and chronologically order the flow of information.
6. Brand it
While the main focus of infographics is to educate your audience, your infographic marketing efforts should also help people discover your brand , especially if you want to gain links and visibility on sites other than your core web domains and social profiles. That’s why it’s crucial that you brand any infographic that you create. This involves implementing your brand colors and fonts into the design, as well as adding your brand logo at the end of the infographic.
Unless you’re presenting original ideas and research data from your company, don’t forget to cite your sources in the footer. This adds credibility to your infographic and reinforces the reliability of the information provided. This also means you should only use information from reliable sources such as peer-review journals, surveys from reputable companies and the like.
For example, Happify created an infographic on why exercise makes you happy. And they’ve cited multiple peer-reviewed journals and other reliable sources at the end.
Finally, promote your efforts
If you want your infographic marketing efforts to succeed, you need a consistent promotion effort. This means sharing your infographics everywhere besides getting them published on reputable sites. You should also publish them on social media and infographic directories and share them through email and blogger outreach.
You could even publish them on SlideShare if you want optimal reach. Be sure to take the steps needed to make your infographics shareable on all these platforms without sacrificing quality and design. You might need to crop them into multiple pages that meet the design specifications of each platform. Check out our always up-to-date guide on social media image sizes for more tips on resizing your content for various networks.
Wondering how to get more exposure for your brand on TikTok? Have you considered a TikTok challenge? In this article, you’ll learn how to use TikTok challenges for your business. What Is a TikTok Challenge? TikTok is quickly becoming the social media platform of the moment, with recent statistics showing the app has now been downloaded […]
We’ve broken these Instagram hacks down into categories so you can easily find the sections you need the most help with.
General Instagram hacks
1. Get post notifications from your favorite accounts
Is there an Instagram account you love? Or a feed you want to keep an eye on for inspiration? Turn on Post Notifications for specific accounts so you receive push notifications when they post new content.
Head over to the Instagram Profile you want to stay up to date with, tap the Following button, tap Notifications, then choose if you want to receive notifications for new posts, Stories, IGTV videos or live videos.
2. Save your favorite posts
Instagram allows you to create Collections and save photos that you love. Whether you’re scrolling through your feed, the Explore page or a specific account, if you find a photo you want to keep for later, simply tap the bookmark icon on the right side directly underneath the photo.
You can even organize your saved posts into various Collections by going to your profile, tapping the hamburger menu, then tapping Saved. Organize similar images based on your interests for simpler reviewing at a later time
3. Monitor how much time you’ve spent on Instagram
Keep an eye on your social media scrolling and screen time in the Instagram app. From your profile, tap the hamburger menu and select Your Activity to find out how much time you’ve spent ton Instagram each day.
4. Limit your scrolling time
In the exact same area, you can tap Set Daily Reminder and set a time limit for how long you want to allow yourself to spend on Instagram each day. The app will then send you a reminder when your allotted time is up.
5. See your Liked posts
Want to take a trip back down memory lane? Head over to your profile and tap the hamburger menu. Then go to your Settings > Account > Posts You’ve Liked.
6. Manage multiple accounts from one device
Instagram allows you to log in and manage up to five accounts from a single device, which is incredibly helpful for social media managers.
Simply go to your profile, go to Settings, then scroll down to the bottom to click Add Account. You’ll be taken to the login page to add another account to your device.
Then you can navigate between the various profiles by holding down on the profile tab in the bottom right corner until each account option appears.
Instagram hacks for your bio
7. Add line breaks to your bio
Use separate lines to explain what your brand does in your Instagram bio. But, Instagram doesn’t necessarily make this easy for you.
Instead of creating line breaks in the app, simply open up the Notes app on your phone and type your bio in there, line breaks and all. Copy your bio from your Notes app and paste it into your profile on Instagram.
8. Tag other profiles in your bio
If you tag profiles in your bio, they’re automatically clickable. This gives you the perfect opportunity to promote your other accounts on the app.
Use this as an opportunity to tag your company handle in your personal bio or tag sister companies directly in your brand bio.
9. Include hashtags
Just as you can link to other profiles in your bio, you can also include hashtags. This is a great way to promote any branded hashtags your company may use for user-generated content.
10. Change your bio’s alignment
Stand out from the crowd and the rest of the left-aligned accounts out there and center or right-align your content.
It’s easy to do. Simply copy the spaces between the arrows, but not the arrows themselves: >>⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<<
Then paste those spaces before each line of your bio. Add or remove spaces as necessary to perfectly center or right-align your bio.
11. Include keywords in your profile name
Place a couple of strategic industry keywords in your profile name (not necessarily your username) to help your account show up for even more results when people search for people in your industry.
Because Instagram users sometimes search by keyword rather than username, adding a keyword into your profile name increases your chances of being found.
For example, McCall’s Pattern Company opted to use “Sewing Patterns” as their profile name.
12. Use special fonts
You can actually incorporate fun and different fonts into your Instagram bio by using a website like LingoJam. Type up your Instagram bio and copy and paste your favorite font into your profile. Get creative, especially if your brand voice aligns with these font styles.
13. Add special characters
Take another step to create a unique and engaging Instagram bio by using special characters. While you could always just choose a few emojis from your smartphone’s keyboard, why stop there?
Instead, you can use a free app like Character Pad on your smartphone or copy the symbols from Microsoft Word on desktop, then paste them right inside of your bio.
Instagram hacks for sharing content
14. Reorder your photo filters
Do you use a few filters in your Instagram feed, and get sick of scrolling to find the ones you want? You can reorder your filters to put your most-used filters at the beginning of the list. Or deselect the filters you don’t use from the list completely.
When you’re adding a new photo and the editing option appears, scroll to the end of the filters and click Manage. There, you can reorder the filters so that the ones you use most frequently appear first. Again, feel free to deselect any you don’t use.
15. Customize how strong your filter is
If you love a filter, but don’t want the full effect on your photo, it’s easy to adjust its strength. Select the filter, then tap the magic pen icon at the top of the screen.
Then, adjust the filter strength on your photo by using the slider below the image. You’ll preview the look and feel of your photo at the same time.
16. Get creative with your grid
There are so many ways to get creative with your Instagram grid.
Colorblock your grid by incorporating a main color into nine photos at a time before switching it up. You can create a pattern where every third photo is a quote or graphic. You can have each photo flow into the next to create a puzzle grid.
Have you started editing a post, but aren’t ready to publish it yet? You can save it as a draft to come back to later!
Tap the plus sign and choose the image you want to work with. Add filters or start writing your caption, then tap the back button a couple of times.
The app will alert you and ask if you want to discard your post or save it as a draft. Choose Save Draft to leave the app without losing your edits.
When you’re ready to post it, tap the plus sign again, and all your drafts will be available at the top of your photo choices to finish publishing. You can also go back and delete your drafts by tapping Manage then Edit to remove the draft(s) you select.
18. Save your live video
Do you have an Instagram Live video you want to save and repurpose for later? It’s incredibly easy to do. As soon as your live broadcast ends, simply hit Save in the top right corner then Done. The video will save directly to your camera roll for you to edit later.
19. Remove the audio from videos
Not every video needs audio, and not every video comes out with perfect or appropriate audio either. If you want to remove some background noise or your video doesn’t necessarily need any audio, Instagram allows you to remove the audio in the app.
When uploading a video to share in your feed, tap the speaker icon at the top of the editing page to remove the sound, then publish.
20. Create a cover photo for your video
Want to choose the clip from your video that appears in your profile? You can easily add a cover photo by using a graphic design tool like Canva or Visme, then using an editing software to place the graphic at the beginning or end of your video.
When you’re ready to share the video in Instagram, tap the Cover tab on the editing screen. This allows you to choose a clip from the video that you want to appear as a cover photo. Simply scroll to the beginning or end, wherever you added your graphic.
21. Turn your Instagram feed into an online shop
If you have an ecommerce business, Instagram shopping is a tool you definitely want to take advantage of. Share photos of products and tag them within each post, and you can effectively turn your Instagram feed into an online shop.
This is exactly what Dress Up has done in their feed. As you can see, each post with a shopping bag icon in the corner has products tagged, making it possible to purchase products directly from the post.
Since over 80% of Instagram users use the platform to discover, research and decide whether to buy a product, the shopping feature can help drive traffic to your site as well.
22. Schedule your Instagram content ahead of time
Make your Instagram management strategy as easy as possible by using a social media management platform such as Sprout Social to schedule your Instagram content ahead of time.
Instagram hacks for writing captions
23. Add line breaks to your captions
Just like adding line breaks to your bios, it can be a great idea to add line breaks to longer captions and break up a giant wall of text.
Again, simply create your caption in the notes app on your phone, then paste it into the caption box on Instagram. Alternatively, if you use a tool like Sprout Social to write your captions, you can just add the line breaks into that tool’s caption box directly.
24. Hide your hashtags
Don’t want your hashtags to appear at the top of your captions? There are little tricks you can do to hide them further down in your captions so that you can still promote your posts to a wider audience without spamming your followers.
Take a page out of Shine Text’s book and include several periods between your caption and your hashtags to put some space between them and push them down away from your photo.
You can also place your hashtags in a comment underneath your photo to keep them out of your caption entirely. With Sprout, you can post your image and first comment at the same time, so you have the opportunity to capture engagement from hashtags immediately and keeping your caption free of hashtags.
25. Use special fonts in your captions
Another great application of a previously mentioned Instagram hack is to use special fonts or characters to jazz up your actions. Incorporating special fonts into your captions can make them even more engaging than the regular Instagram font.
Instagram hacks for commenting
26. Filter comments based on keywords
If you’re dealing with a social media troll, or you want to keep your social media feed clean of certain words for your audience, you’re able to filter or block comments based on specific keywords.
Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu before going to Settings.
From there, tap the Privacy option, then go to Comments and turn on the Manual Filter. This allows you to hide comments with specific words or phrases. You can choose your own words or phrases, or select the option to filter comments with the most reported words.
27. Turn off commenting on certain posts
Not every post needs a comment. If you want to turn off comments on certain posts, Instagram allows you to do just that.
When you’re creating a new post and get to the page where you add your caption, tap Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen, then toggle the Turn Off Commenting option.
28. Reply faster to comments
Do you get a lot of the same questions on your posts? “When does this sale end?” or “When will this item be restocked?”
It’s easy to set up quick-reply methods on your smartphone so that you can respond to each one as efficiently as possible.
iOS smartphone users can do this in their Instagram settings in General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.
There are already several options in place for autocorrects, but you can tap the plus sign in the top right corner to set up a few shortcuts for quick-responding to comments.
For example, you can create a shortcut where you type “HalloSale,” and have autocorrect replace it with your brand’s actual Halloween sale information.
Instagram story hacks
29. Change highlight covers without publishing them to your story
Previously, you had to publish new Instagram story highlight covers to your story in order to actually change your highlight covers.
But now, you can change your highlight covers straight from your camera roll.
Simply tap and hold the highlight you want to update, then tap Edit Highlight on the popup that appears. Tap Edit Cover then select the photo you want as your new highlight cover from your camera roll.
30. Create shapes with text
Instagram Stories has several different fonts, meaning you have several different ways to customize your story content. So play around with different symbols and fonts to create eye-catching captions to your Stories.
For example, the Instagram Story above uses enlarged periods in the Classic font as backdrops to these snippets of text. The asterisk in the Modern font can be used as stars or snowflakes, and 1’s or lowercase l’s can be blown up and turned sideways to create banners.
You’ll need to do this process slowly in order to master it and get your colors just right. Don’t rush! The end effect is well worth it.
Ramp up your Instagram marketing
Use these Instagram hacks to improve your Instagram marketing and start trying out some new tips and tricks. To ramp up your strategy even more, check out these 15 ways to engage on Instagram.
