Looking for people-centric marketing metrics to track and analyze your customers and prospects? Are you using the reports available inside of Facebook Analytics? In this article, you’ll discover five Facebook Analytics reports to help you make data-backed business decisions. Why Your Business Should Use Facebook Analytics Reports Every company has a growth model that includes […]
Instagram Stories was one of the most dynamic social media channels in 2019. So much happened with Stories — from new developments with the product to strong returns on Stories ads and organic reach.
And at Buffer, Stories has been a major focus in 2019 as well. Within the Buffer product, we debuted Stories scheduling to help you plan and manage your Stories content, and we released advanced Stories analytics to help you know what’s working.
So when it comes to picking some of the best Stories campaigns of 2019, we really have a lot of options. And it’s hard to choose.
The Best Instagram Stories of 2019
We’ll run through a list of our favorites. If there are any favorites of yours that we missed, please do let us know by using #bufferpodcast on any social media channel.
Let’s get right to it then.
1. Tastemade
Some of the best Instagram content is food content. And Stories is no exception! Especially the folks at Tastemade.
Tastemade is a community of food, travel, and design lovers. Their website is chock full of beautiful food videos and shows. They do a great job translating it to their Instagram Stories.
In particular, their “tap fast” format has been so fun to watch.
That’s right. Many of the stories on the @tastemadeuk handle use “tap fast.” These Stories piece together dozens of photos in stop-motion fashion — each photo just a slight movement ahead of the previous. And then you are the one who animates all the images into a moving picture by tapping quickly from one Story to the next.
Collectively, it makes a self-propelled stop-motion video of a biscuit baking or a cooking dunking. It’s awesome. And it’s good for your Stories stats, too. There’s a ton of incentive to tap all the way through to see how the Story ends up.
Another way that brands have taken advantage of this is sharing playlists through Instagram Stories.
Brooklinen, for instance, has a great series of playlists. They’ve even branded them with their own name: Brooklinen Beats. Each time Brooklinen shares a a playlist on Stories, they add a swipe up link that sends people to Spotify to listen. Brooklinen debuted a new playlist every week at the start of 2019, and they’ve saved all their playlists to their Stories highlights for people to check out anytime.
3. Burrow
Next up, one of the most creative Stories we saw this year came from the furniture brand Burrow.
They basically created a coloring page for their audience to fill in.
Yeah, the set of Stories was called Dream Sofa. Burrow asked its followers to describe their dream sofa — it could be as wild and imaginative as they liked. Then Burrow provided the sofa template. Burrow shared a drawing of a couch — just the outline in black, on a white background. They posted this to the Burrow Stories, along with instructions on how their community could download the picture and add to it. Then people grabbed the template, added their own stickers and colors, and shared to their personal accounts. Burrow was able to re-share the Dream Sofa Stories back to the Burrow account.Talk about great community engagement and incredible user-generated content!
4. Potluck
For our next top Instagram Story, we’re going back to the world of food. Cookware brand Potluck had a great campaign based on one of the neatest — albeit underutilized — features of Instagram Stories: custom AR filters.
Potluck created its very own Instagram Stories filter called Yes Chef. The filter adds a chef hat and mustache to any faces in the photo.
Many people in their community ended up using the filter on their photos and tagging Potluck in the Stories. The Potluck team was then able to reshare and collect these photos into their own Stories collection, which remains on their profile in their Stories highlights.
Each time Potluck shares a new Yes Chef pic, they give a shout out and an @mention to the person who originally made the photo, another great way to build community support for the brand.
Cookware brands really had some awesome Stories this year. Our next pick is from another cookware brand, or rather, from its parent company.
Pattern Brands, which release Equal Parts cookware products this year, had a fantastic series of Stories content that told a really compelling brand story.
(Pattern is the brand featured in our new podcast series that follows the introduction of Pattern, going from nothing to a new product over the course of a few months. You can listen to this series by searching for Breaking Brand wherever you listen to podcasts.)
Pattern’s Instagram Stories campaign is quite simple in concept. They created wallpapers that their audience could download and use as phone backgrounds. We’ll share a couple examples in our show notes. They’re beautiful.
And what’s particularly compelling about how they approached this is that they told a larger story: the backgrounds are watercolors in a soft, calming palette, designed to promote a sense of peace when you’re spending time on your phone. This is right in line with the brand story that Pattern is telling.
This strategy is such a wonderful display of customer service and value. Allbirds takes these FAQ Stories and adds them to their Stories Highlights so the FAQ is always visible from their Instagram profile. This gives potential customers the chance to find answers to their questions quickly and easily, right from the profile page, without having to wait any time at all to hear back from an Allbirds person.
7. Monica + Andy
Speaking of making great use of Stories highlights, Another Stories campaign we love is the way that brands have built out almost an entire library of content within their Stories.
Take Monica + Andy, for instance. The kidswear brand runs its own podcast, and each podcast episode gets a shoutout on the brand’s Instagram Stories.
What’s particularly great is that each Story shoutout follows a similar template. There’s a photo of the podcast guest plus some nice typography and titles. What Monica + Andy do then is take these Stories and put them all into a Stories Highlights. When you tap on the Highlights, you can thumb through the entire podcast archive, one after the other, and all the images look great and on-brand.
8. Its Nice That
The online design magazine puts together a weekly newsletter to share on their Stories at the end of every week.
It’s a ton of great content, packaged perfectly for Instagram. Each story is its own slide, designed with a unique background and with strong headline copy. You swipe up to go to the Its Nice That website to read more. They’ll share about five to ten articles each week this way — the top content and news from the past few days in a very digestible format.
A Story template is simply an image with graphics and text that includes a number of blank spaces for people to fill in their answers. Picture a questionnaire or a mad lib.
The Hopper blog listed a huge number of different options of ways to use these templates, many of which we saw on several brand accounts in 2019.The list includes:
Trending topics, like a “follow Friday” template or a “Five Women who inspire me” on International Women’s Day
Current affairs, like sporting events, where you can run a guess the score template
and a personal favorite of mine — Fill-in-the blank emoji templates where you pick an emoji that describes, say, your current mood or the weather or what you did today
How to say hello to us
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. (Nearly half of all websites use it!) So it’s no surprise that it’s also one of AWeber’s most used integrations.
That’s why we rebuilt our AWeber for WordPress plugin to make it even more powerful and simpler to use to help you find greater success with email marketing. Here’s what’s new with our WordPress plugin.
It’s now easier to add sign up forms to WordPress.
You now have three “easy as pie” ways to add your sign up form to your WordPress website using the AWeber plugin.
Widgets
You can add your sign up form to your WordPress theme using the widgets in WordPress, which means it’ll be added to every page on your website. For example, consider adding your sign up form to your blog sidebar or website footer.
You can only place the AWeber widget in one widget area. If you want to add it to other widget areas, you can use the next method: shortcodes.
Shortcodes
Shortcodes are snippets of WordPress code that allow you to add your sign up form anywhere on your site. You don’t have to create these; WordPress automatically creates them for each of your sign up forms.
You’ll find your shortcodes inside the AWeber plugin under Forms.
If you want to add your sign up form to your entire site, simply copy the code and paste it into a text widget.
You can also add the shortcode to a specific page or blog post using the WordPress page editors, which we’ll cover next.
In the WordPress editors
To add an AWeber sign up form to a page or blog post using WordPress’s classic editor, simply paste the shortcode, or use the built-in AWeber button inside the formatting menu.
If you’re using WordPress’s Gutenberg editor, simply click the “plus” icon to add a custom AWeber block. Alternatively, you can also add a shortcode block and paste your shortcode.
Automatically add commenters and WordPress users to your AWeber email list.
We’ve also made it easy for commenters and users to subscribe to your email list.
The AWeber for WordPress plugin now allows you to add a checkbox to the comment section, where users can opt into your email list when adding comments on your pages or posts.
You can also apply tags to new commenters and users who join your list so you can segment your subscribers and send them more personalized emails in the future.
Easily see where each sign up form is being used on WordPress.
You can also quickly view where all of your forms are being used across your WordPress website.
If you ever need to remove or change the form you’re using on a particular page, you can quickly access that page right from the AWeber for WordPress plugin.
Track you sign up form performance without leaving WordPress.
One of the biggest benefits of the new AWeber for WordPress plugin is that it saves you from having to toggle back and forth between your AWeber and WordPress accounts.
Quickly track how your sign up forms are impacting your email list growth without ever leaving WordPress. You’ll learn what’s working and what’s not, so you can optimize your sign up forms for better results.
Check to make sure the plugin is installed correctly.
You don’t have to be a technical whiz to use the new AWeber for WordPress plugin.
Easily make sure your plugin is installed correctly by using the ‘System Info’ screen to view the compatibility details.
Need help troubleshooting a problem? We’ve put all of the necessary info in the System Info screen. Share this with our 24/7 Customer Solutions team and we can get you back on track in no time.
Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for
almost 3 years now.
I bought it on February 13, 2017, for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO.
Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for.
But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have.
So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO,
make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are
going do keyword research (in a good way).
On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations.
Here’s what’s new:
More keyword data
The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword.
Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming you find keywords with a high CPC, low SEO difficulty, and high search volume, it still doesn’t mean it is a good keyword to go after.
And there are a few reasons why…
Mobile searches aren’t worth as much – first off, if the keyword mainly gets searched from on mobile devices the conversion rate will be lower. It doesn’t mean mobile traffic is useless, it just typically means the keyword won’t be as valuable.
High search volume doesn’t guarantee lots of organic clicks – what happens if the keyword gets a ton of searches but no clicks? This sounds crazy, but it actually happens a lot. For example, when people search for “weather” in the United States, roughly 60% of the people don’t click any results.
Not all searchers are worth the same – some keywords get searched heavily by teenagers. Some keywords get searched heavily by people who are in their 30s or 40s. If the majority of the searches for a given keyword happen by a really young audience, chances are they won’t have a credit card and they won’t convert into a customer.
Because of all of this, I decided to change how the industry
does keyword research.
Now when you type in a keyword like “marketing” into
Ubersuggest, you’ll see this:
If you have been using Ubersuggest for the last year or so you may notice some differences… but if you haven’t let me break down what’s new.
First off, for any given keyword you will see what percentage of the searches are taking place from mobile devices or desktop devices.
For example, with the term “marketing” you can see that the majority of the searches are coming from desktop devices.
On the flip side, if you use Ubersuggest to look at the term “weather” you’ll notice that the majority of the searches happen on mobile devices.
And with any given keyword you can also see what percentage of the people even click on the SEO or paid results.
I love this bar chart because it tells me if I should even go after a specific keyword. Just because a term has tons of searches doesn’t mean you are going to get tons of clicks, even if you rank at the number 1 spot.
If you leverage paid ads, this bar chart is also helpful because it will give you a sense of how many people click on the paid ads as well.
Another chart that I’ve added is one that breaks down the age range of each searcher.
As you can see from the above image, Ubersuggest now shows what percentage of the searches take place between each age range.
This is really important if you know the persona of your ideal customer, as you only want to target keywords that your ideal buyer is searching for.
What’s also cool is this data is available for all countries
within Ubersuggest and for almost all of the keywords within our database.
Now before you head off to Ubersuggest and test it out, there are a few more features that I’ve just released.
More backlink data
Over the last few months, I’ve gotten feedback that our link database isn’t as big as you would like, so we have been working on fixing this.
This chart will quickly show you if a site is growing in
backlink and referring domain count over time or if they are declining.
On top of that, we are even showing the daily new and lost link count for a given site.
I know the new and lost link count chart looks a bit off,
but keep in mind we started having Ubersuggest crawl more pages around the web
faster and more frequently. Hence you are seeing a big spike in new and lost
links.
But over the next 4 weeks, it should normalize, and you’ll see an accurate representation of new and lost links.
This will help you identify new link opportunities more
easily. Especially because you can now clearly see where your competitors are
focusing their link building efforts.
Better traffic estimations
Lastly in Ubersuggest, you can also enter in a URL and get data on any given domain.
From its estimated monthly search traffic to the number of keywords a domain ranks for to even its top pages based on link and traffic count.
We haven’t fully finished creating our new algorithm when it comes to traffic estimations, but the chart you’ll see now is much more accurate than the older one.
Even though this is a big improvement from our older charts, give it another 3 months and it should be extremely accurate.
When you are using the traffic analyzer report in Ubersuggest, keep in mind that this will give you a directional guide on how you are doing versus your competition.
I’ve made them in order to give you a leg up on your competition as the data in the tool is now something that most of you have never seen before.
And over the next two months, you’ll see some big launches in Ubersuggest. From a chrome extension to even more accurate traffic estimations to even an Alert system that will notify you when things are wrong with your site.
So, go to Ubersuggest and try out the new keyword features as well as traffic estimation and backlink features.
This morning, as usual, I started my day by checking my emails.
While this process doesn’t usually excite me and is just my method for waking up, I came across a subject line that made my heart race with excitement:
Knowing that I would be starting my day with a new music video from one of my favorite bands made me smile. It also made me feel valued as a subscriber to their record label’s emails — with just one video, Specialist Subject Records strengthened the consumer relationship I have with them.
This is why video email marketing is such an effective strategy. With a simple embed and subject line, you can build stronger relationships with customers, generate leads, and strengthen the content behind your brand.
Let’s talk a little more about it.
What is video email marketing?
Video email marketing is simply including videos in email marketing. If you’re unsure about how to do that, we have a quick how-to post here.
Because video is an extremely popular medium in marketing, (in fact, 83% of marketers feel its importance is only growing) including it in your email marketing can engage your subscribers and increase your conversions.
Additionally, did you know that over 80% of businesses use video in their marketing efforts? This is likely because of the results video implementation gives them. While using video in email can seem like a taboo topic, it can be very effective.
By using video, you can tap into the imagination of an audience that absorbs information visually — sometimes text just doesn’t do it. With video, you have a chance to make dense topics more compelling for your audience.
Next, let’s talk about ways you can use it in your next email campaign.
Ways to Use Video in Email Marketing
Videos can dramatically increase click-through rate (CTR).
For example, B2B software company Igloo Software decided to show off their workplace culture by creating 200 videos in three months for future email content. This approach doubled their CTR.
This is one way to use video in email marketing — showcase your brand in email and use it to increase CTR. We have six more, which we’ll explore now.
1. Personalized Emails
Do you have a backlog of video content on your website? Consider using that to your advantage and sending personalized emails.
For instance, let’s say someone watches a portion of a video on your website that they don’t finish, and you’re noticing this is a pattern when you analyze your website data. Marketo‘s formula is to automatically send that video in an email to remind that user to finish.
By doing this, Vidyard reported that Marketo raised their CTR by over 144% due to the personalization of that email. If I were sent a video I meant to finish in an email, I’d surely open it to complete that video. I’d also feel pretty important to the company as a customer.
From a business perspective, this means more clicks for you, a better relationship with the customer, and more views on videos.
2. Event Marketing
If your company hosts events, whether internal or external, take videos of the events for a recap to send subscribers. This way, you can give subscribers a taste of how your brand works in-action and build interest in your company’s events overall.
For instance, do you host or participate in quarterly industry mixers? Try including a video in an email about the most recent one, along with a CTA for subscribers to learn more about the next one. The video can also serve as social proof that these events are well-attended and informative for other people in your industry.
3. Include Video in Subject Line
Formatting is super important in emails and it starts with the subject line. As a consumer, if I see an email with emojis in the subject line, I’m immediately more interested in the email because emojis stick out to me and are more inviting.
Try including “Video” or a corresponding emoji in your subject line to entice subscribers to open it. You’ll likely want to A/B test a variety of subject lines in the beginning to figure out what your readers prefer.
Another important formatting tip is to embed the video in the email in a place that keeps readers interested. Putting videos at the beginning of an email is a good idea, but placing it near the end invites readers to keep reading to better understand the video.
4. Product Marketing
To build interest in your new product roll-out, film mini-teaser videos to include solely in emails. This will make subscribers feel as if their subscription is useful to them and strengthen your relationship. Additionally, it will keep the product in your customer’s minds.
In addition to a mini-teaser, you could also shoot a product demo that explains the new release and how it will fit into the lives of your audience. Giving a visual example, rather than just text, makes emails more interesting. Personally, if I see a product demo in a marketing email, I grow to expect and get excited about the next one.
Lastly, to improve relationships with customers, you might try introducing an exclusive sale on your most popular products to subscribers. Promoting a deal like that on social channels or your website can be an amazing conversion booster.
5. Newsletters
If you’re giving subscribers scheduled newsletters with no video, you’re missing out! There’s a lot of ways to include video in newsletters so they can be effective. Video-heavy businesses can benefit from newsletter video embeds so subscribers can catch up on content they may have missed.
Another way to use video in newsletters is to round-up your popular videos in your industry. If your company doesn’t do many videos, this is an excellent avenue for you. Alternatively, if a member of your team is interested in a routine video schedule, try filming a round-up of weekly content in video-form.
For instance, if there was a commercial that rocked your industry recently, include that video in your newsletter with a corresponding blog post about your thoughts to increase traffic on your blog.
6. Engage with Your Community
Industries are constantly changing. If new laws or industry standards go into effect that could possibly affect your relationship with customers, engage with them using a video.
Because subscribers are familiar with your company, they have a higher chance of being far enough along in their buyer’s journey to be invested in videos that call for their participation. These videos usually have a CTA, such as a code for an exclusive sale or a poll for future content.
Getting your community involved with a video keeps them engaged from beginning to end. 64% of consumers purchase after watching a branded video, so keep an eye on video trends in the industry and see if you can use them to engage with your community.
For instance, after watching the new music video from my email, I felt like my day was getting off on the right foot. I also ended up scrolling through Specialist Subject’s website to see if I could pre-order Garden Centre’s new album. From just one email, the company provided lanes to increase CTR and drive sales.
Try your hand at video email marketing and see if it improves your email metrics. Even if you don’t get the results you’re hoping for, you can archive some of the videos you have and use them in new ways for future content.
Looking for people-centric marketing metrics to track and analyze your customers and prospects? Are you using the reports available inside of Facebook Analytics? In this article, you’ll discover five Facebook Analytics reports to help you make data-backed business decisions. Why Your Business Should Use Facebook Analytics Reports Every company has a growth model that includes […]
Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for
almost 3 years now.
I bought it on February 13, 2017, for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO.
Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for.
But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have.
So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO,
make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are
going do keyword research (in a good way).
On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations.
Here’s what’s new:
More keyword data
The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword.
Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming you find keywords with a high CPC, low SEO difficulty, and high search volume, it still doesn’t mean it is a good keyword to go after.
And there are a few reasons why…
Mobile searches aren’t worth as much – first off, if the keyword mainly gets searched from on mobile devices the conversion rate will be lower. It doesn’t mean mobile traffic is useless, it just typically means the keyword won’t be as valuable.
High search volume doesn’t guarantee lots of organic clicks – what happens if the keyword gets a ton of searches but no clicks? This sounds crazy, but it actually happens a lot. For example, when people search for “weather” in the United States, roughly 60% of the people don’t click any results.
Not all searchers are worth the same – some keywords get searched heavily by teenagers. Some keywords get searched heavily by people who are in their 30s or 40s. If the majority of the searches for a given keyword happen by a really young audience, chances are they won’t have a credit card and they won’t convert into a customer.
Because of all of this, I decided to change how the industry
does keyword research.
Now when you type in a keyword like “marketing” into
Ubersuggest, you’ll see this:
If you have been using Ubersuggest for the last year or so you may notice some differences… but if you haven’t let me break down what’s new.
First off, for any given keyword you will see what percentage of the searches are taking place from mobile devices or desktop devices.
For example, with the term “marketing” you can see that the majority of the searches are coming from desktop devices.
On the flip side, if you use Ubersuggest to look at the term “weather” you’ll notice that the majority of the searches happen on mobile devices.
And with any given keyword you can also see what percentage of the people even click on the SEO or paid results.
I love this bar chart because it tells me if I should even go after a specific keyword. Just because a term has tons of searches doesn’t mean you are going to get tons of clicks, even if you rank at the number 1 spot.
If you leverage paid ads, this bar chart is also helpful because it will give you a sense of how many people click on the paid ads as well.
Another chart that I’ve added is one that breaks down the age range of each searcher.
As you can see from the above image, Ubersuggest now shows what percentage of the searches take place between each age range.
This is really important if you know the persona of your ideal customer, as you only want to target keywords that your ideal buyer is searching for.
What’s also cool is this data is available for all countries
within Ubersuggest and for almost all of the keywords within our database.
Now before you head off to Ubersuggest and test it out, there are a few more features that I’ve just released.
More backlink data
Over the last few months, I’ve gotten feedback that our link database isn’t as big as you would like, so we have been working on fixing this.
This chart will quickly show you if a site is growing in
backlink and referring domain count over time or if they are declining.
On top of that, we are even showing the daily new and lost link count for a given site.
I know the new and lost link count chart looks a bit off,
but keep in mind we started having Ubersuggest crawl more pages around the web
faster and more frequently. Hence you are seeing a big spike in new and lost
links.
But over the next 4 weeks, it should normalize, and you’ll see an accurate representation of new and lost links.
This will help you identify new link opportunities more
easily. Especially because you can now clearly see where your competitors are
focusing their link building efforts.
Better traffic estimations
Lastly in Ubersuggest, you can also enter in a URL and get data on any given domain.
From its estimated monthly search traffic to the number of keywords a domain ranks for to even its top pages based on link and traffic count.
We haven’t fully finished creating our new algorithm when it comes to traffic estimations, but the chart you’ll see now is much more accurate than the older one.
Even though this is a big improvement from our older charts, give it another 3 months and it should be extremely accurate.
When you are using the traffic analyzer report in Ubersuggest, keep in mind that this will give you a directional guide on how you are doing versus your competition.
I’ve made them in order to give you a leg up on your competition as the data in the tool is now something that most of you have never seen before.
And over the next two months, you’ll see some big launches in Ubersuggest. From a chrome extension to even more accurate traffic estimations to even an Alert system that will notify you when things are wrong with your site.
So, go to Ubersuggest and try out the new keyword features as well as traffic estimation and backlink features.
