Category Archives: PR and SEO

Marketing, News, PR and SEO

How Brand Perception Improves Internal Relationships

One of the most important factors that can drive the success of any modern business is brand perception. If customers perceive your brand to be trustworthy, reliable, and legitimate, they will be far more likely to purchase your products, recommend your services, and return to purchase more in the future.

However, brand perception is not only important for the customer. It can also have a significant impact on employee attitudes and staff performance, which can in turn impact the success of your business. Let’s take a look at how brand perception can improve internal relationships and discuss how best to implement an internal branding campaign. Keep reading to find out more.

What Is Brand Perception?

Before we get into how brand perception can influence internal relationships, it’s important to first clarify what we actually mean when we talk about brand perception.

To put it simply, brand perception is how your company is perceived both internally and externally. This does not just extend to assessments of reliability and trustworthiness, it can also encompass a company’s background, ethos, practices, and values as well.

Brand perception can have an enormous impact on sales and can significantly impact customer retention and loyalty. What’s more, how your staff and employees perceive your brand can influence their attitudes towards the company and, in turn, their performance.

Creating A Connection

Employees that feel connected to a company are more likely to perform better in the workplace. There are a number of ways in which to create this connection, but the most effective method is through clear and consistent communication.

Internal communications should foster an open, welcoming atmosphere where employees feel free to share their thoughts and opinions without fear of reprisal. Focus on engaging with your staff and encourage employee conversation and feedback. Not only will this make your staff more satisfied and comfortable, but it can also offer you new ideas and inspiration for your business strategy moving forward.

Be it through internal emails, social media, or in-office paperwork and displays, communicating with your staff is key to creating a connection and fostering a positive brand perception among employees.

Brand Consistency

Keeping your company message, values, and image consistent both internally and externally is paramount for establishing and maintaining a sense of trust and forging strong, positive relationships.

If customers and staff both perceive your brand in different lights, this can create an imbalance and can lead to mixed messages and confusion in how your company is viewed. Your marketing and advertising strategy should be focused on putting out a considered and consistent message across all channels, internally and externally. Consider using a reputation management agency to maximize your strategy and get the very best results for your company or brand.

Foster Team Spirit

Employees who buy into a company’s message and ethos are more likely to connect with one another and be eager to work together for the good of the business. Work to foster a sense of teamwork and camaraderie among you and your staff, with a friendly, inclusive atmosphere that promotes hard work and collaboration.

Workshops, team activities, and group training exercises can be highly effective ways to promote teamwork, while they will also reassure your staff that the company cares about them and is willing to work for their benefit and encourage both professional and personal progression and development.

Hiring And Retention

A successful internal branding strategy can work to significantly improve hiring processes and levels of staff retention. If a brand is perceived to care about its employees and extend its values to staff, it will attract a higher caliber of employee who is looking for an employer that will reflect their own principles.

Providing a positive, welcoming atmosphere and working environment for staff will also do wonders for employee retention. Staff will be far more likely to remain at a company where they feel respected and appreciated and will be keen to perform well to ensure they are considered a valued member of the team.

Interactions With Customers

Internal branding should extend to external branding. The best way to do this is by ensuring that your staff are aware of and have bought into your company’s message and are trained and eager to convey this message to customers and clients.

If your staff feel connected to and engaged with your brand identity, they are far more likely to project this message when dealing with your customers.

 

Conclusion

Contrary to what many people might think, internal branding is just as if not even more important than external branding. A business is only as good as its staff, keeping employees happy and satisfied is the most effective way to maximize employee performance.

Deliver a consistent brand message to all employees and make sure it is perceived positively from the inside as well as the outside. Doing so will offer your business a range of benefits, including improved performance, teamwork, and more positive engagement with customers.

 

 

 

Marketing, Martech, News, PR and SEO, Technology

How CPG and FMCG brands in the UK can unlock direct-to-consumer relationships

Written by Jamshed Mughal, Sr Director Enterprise Strategy & Architect, Cheetah Digital

In the UK, CPG and FMCG brands — are all fortunate to have huge amounts of data at their disposal. However, sorting through what’s relevant and compliant and then unifying it into a single source of truth can be a mammoth task. Yet, it’s crucial for brands to succeed in a competitive environment where, according to Cheetah Digital’s 2022 Consumer Trends Index, consumers across the U.K. interact with a brand on multiple channels, oftentimes unpredictably.

In today’s digital-first landscape, consumers spend time on numerous channels, expect tightened privacy whilst also demanding better personalisation. It’s a lot for any brand to juggle. Yet, to be competitive, it’s essential they strike the right balance. And that balance begins with relationship marketing, which puts the customer at the heart of the strategy. That means truly delivering on their demand for authenticity, convenience and personalised experiences from the brands they do business with.

 

Create a single source of truth of the customer

Without a single customer view and real-time insights, organisations struggle to deliver the quality experiences that customers are looking for today. In fact, more than half (58%) of enterprise CX leaders agree that lacking a single view of the customer and customer journey is the number one challenge for effectively measuring customer experience. At the same time, 40% of data records contain inaccurate data — an unfortunate reality that many brands struggle with. Add to that, legacy systems, data residing in disparate silos, huge martech stacks, as well as numerous sub-brands and territories with unique KPIs and it’s clear, these brands are up against a litany of problems.

That’s why gaining a single view of the customer is so crucial. A single customer view enables brands to understand and better engage with customers by knowing who they are and what they are looking for. It acts as the single source of truth about customers and provides the ability to analyse past behaviour in order to better target and personalise future customer interactions. It’s quite simply an aggregated, consistent and holistic representation of all the data known by an organisation about its customers.

 

Meet and exceed customers’ new expectations

As digital consumers have evolved, the marketing they receive has not always levelled-up with them. While digital advertising budgets continue to increase year-on-year, exceeding 23.47 billion British pounds in 2021; more sophisticated targeting has not led to better experiences for consumers.

There are a myriad of reasons why digital advertising just isn’t clicking anymore, but fundamentally, the medium requires a broadcast approach and modern customers demand better. While some brands continue with the status quo of blindly squandering resources on an approach that yields a conversion rate lower than 0.1 per cent; brands like P&G are slashing ad spend altogether and turning to data-driven solutions.

Customers expect communications that show brands know more than just their name. Behaviours, attitudes and motivations have changed and will continue to do so. Any retailers or CPG/FMCG brands looking to create a truly engaging experience need to meet consumers in the right way at the right time in the right place. In the burgeoning age of D2C, brands need to make the customer experience as seamless as possible because consumers are in charge and if they encounter friction, they will shop elsewhere.

A company’s job is to deliver on these consumer expectations. The only way to do that is to maintain control of the customer experience from beginning to end of the sales cycle. By forging D2C relationships, CPG/FMCG brands can meet customer demands and build personal relationships with customers – the basis of relationship marketing – that help ensure future stability and longevity in a crowded industry.

 

Building relationships for the win

Building meaningful relationships is not about creating additional sales channels. The overarching goal is to put the consumer at the centre of the strategy, truly delivering on their demand for authenticity, convenience and personalised experiences from the brands they do business with.

 Download Cheetah Digital’s guide to unlocking direct-to-consumer relationships in FMCG here.

 

 

About CM Group

 CM Group offers a suite of world-class martech solutions that help marketers create and foster  relationships with consumers across the entire customer lifecycle. CM Group now includes Campaign Monitor, Emma, Vuture, Liveclicker, Sailthru, Selligent and Cheetah Digital. By joining together these leading solutions, CM Group offers a variety of relationship marketing use cases that can be used by marketers at any level. Headquartered in Nashville, TN, CM Group has offices globally across the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America and Central America, as well as in Japan.

 

 

 

Customer Experience, Marketing, PR and SEO, Retail & E-commerce, Technology

Innovative ways UK retailers can scale great holiday campaigns

Written by Tim Glomb, VP Content & Data, Cheetah Digital

Last year, according to Statista, the U.K.’s total holiday spending was set to top £84 million, with an average spend of £1,746 per shopper. This year, however, stands quite stark in contrast. Thanks to inflation and soaring energy prices, a recent Quantum Metric study finds that many Brits are planning to slash their holiday spending by more than half – spending less than £500 this year.

To make the most of the holiday season and rise above the noise of a saturated market, marketers need to embrace relationship marketing strategies that put the customer at the centre of everything. Relationship marketing is about meeting customers where they are and treating them as a person, not a persona.

 

Get on the ‘nice list’ with zero- and first-party data

Even though the smell of barbecue still lingers in the air, retail marketers need to start ramping up for the holiday season. They can begin cleaning their database of stale or antiquated data and warming their contact list to stave off deliverability issues. Even more, they should be considering the implementation of a zero-party data strategy to load the database with opt-ins and the psychographic and preference data required to deliver better personalised offers that their customers actually want.

The collection of first- and zero-party data will also help them navigate a world without third-party cookies. The good news is the majority of consumers are willing to trade personal and psychographic data when presented the right value exchange — especially if retail marketers promise to keep that data safe and private.

The brands that win this upcoming holiday season will be those that deliver truly personalised marketing and experiences that are timely, relevant and based on the customer’s own self-reported interests, motivations and desires rather than inferences or snooping via third-party cookies.

 

Connect with consumers with the right message on the right channel at the right time

When it comes to driving sales, email has always been one of the most effective channels, especially considering its ability for the hyper-personalisation of content and offers that consumers demand. It’s also still the preferred channel for older generations (Gen X and Boomers). However, younger consumers are being wooed by SMS, with rising numbers having made a purchase directly from an SMS they received in the last year.

 

No more leaving cookies out for Santa

By next Christmas, Google will have comprehensively curtailed third-party cookie tracking (Firefox and Safari already have). Although a win for privacy-conscious consumers, it’s a headache for retail marketers wedded to this strategy to power their advertising. These sweeping changes to the martech and adtech industries reinforce the need for retail marketers to shift to a first- and zero-party data strategy.

 

Power personalisation from zero-party data

True personalisation offers products your customer has expressed an interest in – derived from preference insights and purchase motivations that they have explicitly told you. This is zero-party data, and is the path this holiday season to increased revenue and customer retention.

 

Deliver a true omnichannel experience

Omnichannel should put the customer at the heart of your strategy, where all channels and touchpoints revolve around them – not merely the product. Consumers interact with multiple touchpoints when engaging with a retail brand (social, web, wallet, SMS, email, etc.). Each of these channels must be integrated to deliver a truly consistent experience, letting your customer seamlessly move from one experience to another.

 

To remain on your customers’ nice lists, loyalty needs to be encouraged – not expected

In the frenzied holiday season, consumers, of course, love a discount. But the modern consumer expects loyalty rewards that go beyond points-for-prizes. Engaging interactive experiences, exclusive access to products, personalised product recommendations, brand recognition and feeling part of a retail brand’s community are the key to retention and engendering lasting loyalty this year.

 

Find out more by downloading your copy of The Relationship Marketer’s Playbook for Holiday Planning 2022 by Cheetah Digital.

Marketing, News, PR and SEO, Software

Serpr’s secret sauce for Page One stardom

Ground-breaking search intelligence tech platform launches at BrightonSEO

Serpr, a cutting-edge new Total Search platform which guarantees to deliver the intelligence to help brands own page one of the world’s leading search engine, is being unveiled today for the first time.

Serpr is a world-first global search intelligence platform that measures and analyses every pixel on page one of Google, providing businesses with a secret sauce to search success for the keywords that matter to them.

The trail-blazing SaaS platform being launched at BrightonSEO, one of the world’s most respected search marketing conferences, is the new kid on the block for the Tomorrow Group, which owns a string of disruptor marketing businesses including Braidr, Disrupt and Found.

Since 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine and 92% of all search traffic comes from page one results, it’s become vital for businesses to know how to get there – and stay there.

 

James Wolman, Head of Innovation at Serpr, says: “Serpr is the world’s most actionable Total Search intelligence platform. For the first time, it gives brands the competitor insights they need to land themselves on page one of Google, where everyone wants to be.

“There’s no better feeling than seeing your site on top of page one, but it’s searingly difficult to achieve and sustain. Until now. We are putting the future of page one search directly into the hands of every business that wants and deserves to be there.”

 

Designed and built by data scientists, engineers, and search marketers, award-winning Serpr is the first search intelligence platform that looks at page one as a full picture.

By evaluating every pixel on page one, Serpr discovers patterns, opportunities, and insights that can be applied immediately to help brands grow their page one presence and beat the competition.

 

The Serpr platform also uniquely offers:

 

  • Competitor intelligence & tracking
  • Content analysis & key opportunities
  • Search coverage & performance goals
  • Industry benchmarking & trends

 

It supports and empowers brands directly and agencies who want to add firepower to their insights delivery for their clients.

 

Dora Moldovan, co-founder of Serpr and managing director of sister company Braidr, adds: “While many marketing tools treat paid and organic results as two separate goals, their customers don’t.

“This outdated position hurts businesses and prevents them from reaching their full page one potential. Serpr solves this by tracking and analysing a brand’s market share across the whole of page one on Google.”

 

Brands which have been able to use Serpr before today’s launch say the revolutionary platform delivers outstanding page one success.

 

Ross Boyd, founder and CEO at all-in-one mortgage evaluation platform Dashly, says: “Serpr has helped to change the way we look at the search landscape. It’s enabled us to make quick tactical decisions to ensure we are driving the best results from our page one rankings.”

 

Serpr is offering free trials for a limited period at www.serpr.ai

 

Business Advice, Marketing, News, PR and SEO

Why has outsourcing become increasingly popular

With the UK on the brink of a recession, many companies are looking at their business model, wondering how they can simultaneously lower costs and innovate in a bid to stay ahead of the curve.

One key facet of this is outsourcing. If you’re wondering whether outsourcing is for you, read on.

Why are businesses outsourcing? 

One of the main reasons why many businesses are turning to outsourcing is due to expertise. Every business has its area of expertise. If they require something that falls outside of that, outsourcing is an excellent option.

Although businesses can hire people in-house to fill skills gaps, outsourcing often yields much better results. Not only does outsourcing mean you have bona fide experts at your beck and call – it often works out cheaper too.

For example, rather than hiring a whole department to fill a skills gap, you can outsource for a fraction of the price.

What are some of the most popular areas to outsource?

Outsourcing has always been popular in areas such as IT, legal and payroll.

However, due to most businesses now needing an online presence to stay relevant, SEO has become an increasingly popular area in which to outsource. Nowadays, it’s widely accepted that businesses should be outsourcing their SEO if they want to boost their online visibility.

When should a business outsource?

If you’re wondering whether outsourcing is right for you, here are some of the telltale signs you might want to subcontract.

  • You need to innovate – If you’ve been struggling to come up with new products and services, it might be time to outsource. If you either don’t have the expertise or time to innovate, it’s important to outsource this part of your business so you don’t stagnate.
  • You’re overstretched – Is a decent work/life balance a thing of the past? If so, you might want to consider outsourcing. Rather than overloading your current employees with work, outsourcing can take some of the strain off you and your teams.
  • You don’t have the skills – If you need a skill that your existing team doesn’t possess, outsourcing means you can bring the experts in, without the headache.
  • You want to scale up – If you scale up too fast, there might become a point where you’re unable to meet the demands of your customers. If this is the case, you might wish to consider outsourcing.

Final thoughts… 

As a business owner, it can be daunting to bring on contractors to help you run your business. Yet the most successful businesses use outsourcing to their advantage. If you haven’t already considered outsourcing, what’s stopping you?

 

Business Advice, Marketing, News, PR and SEO

Five Ways Live-Streaming Can Improve Your Brand

Streaming has become such a normal part of our lives. It’s how we watch our TV, listen to our music and consume our favourite influencer content. But did you know that live- streaming can also be a helpful tool within your business? Here are five ways how.

It creates community

First of all, live streaming through social media is one of the quickest ways to create a sense of community. It provides a space for real-life face-to-face interaction, so unlike pre-recorded or promotional content, your customers feel that they are part of your brand’s story, rather than just being targeted with sales. It’s more organic, it’s cheaper than traditional marketing and it makes your audience feel valued as individuals, particularly if you make sure to prioritise answering their comments and questions while live streaming.

It encourages online searches

Like any streaming (including non-live), engaging content is always going to encourage watchers to search content later on, henceforth leading them to your products or website. Just take a look at Express VPN’s data on sports streaming and this will become clear. There is a direct link between the streamed content that people are watching and the internet searches they make. This is a powerful tool that you can utilise in order to redirect clicks to your website, especially if you include a subtle call to action within your streams.

It offers live customer service

According to Forbes, more and more businesses are live streaming their business events, however, a growing proportion of them are also using the format to answer customer queries and requests too. Once again, this helps to create a sense of community and trust, but also shows authenticity, because if you’re likely to answer a question on air, then consumers are more likely to see you as honest. This is also especially helpful if you are often inundated with the same question repeatedly because it means you can address it in an informal but widespread format.

It showcases a more relatable business face

People don’t want to see shiny perfect brands anymore. Rather they want to see what happens behind the scenes and what could be more casual than a live stream, in which you can show audiences what happens behind the curated image, hence adding a more human element to your brand. Just look at how some brands have used TikTok to create relatable content, as shown here by Hubspot and it will become clear that casual content is the way forward when it comes to building a following.

It fosters online engagement

And last but not least, live streaming creates engagement on your social media page. Not surprisingly since it’s estimated that 63% of millennials watch live streams regularly, with the figures estimated to be even higher among Gen Z. Perhaps obviously, this means that people are more likely to interact with the rest of your content, and therefore will be led to supporting your brand more generally – which of course is always a good thing.

Marketing, News, PR and SEO, Sales

Misalignment of sales and marketing reduces revenue according to new report

  • New research from Highspot finds majority in sales and marketing roles in Europe believe misalignment between their functions has a negative impact on revenue
  • Over half say they don’t understand which assets are driving results with potential prospects
  • Two thirds in the UK are concerned about the impact the cost of living crisis will have on their ability to hit KPIs

Today sales enablement platform, Highspot, launches its new report titled European State of Sales and Marketing Alignment 2022. The whitepaper identifies trends and issues that impact alignment between sales and marketing teams, by looking at key confidence indicators and barriers to success.

The report, which surveyed those in sales and marketing roles in the UK, France and Germany, finds alignment, communication and collaboration between sales and marketing teams are crucial to sales success and bottom line ROI. In fact, according to the research, the vast majority (71%) of sales and marketing professionals in Europe agree that a lack of alignment between their two functions has a negative impact on revenue for their business.

Only 36% of sales and marketing respondents across all markets believe they have full visibility and ability to prove the impact their function is having on company revenue. A further 30% of salespeople alone also state that lacking visibility over which behaviours and assets are contributing to closed deals is a barrier to their success. In the UK alone, 43% of sales and marketing respondents believe too many overlapping and different systems between the two functions is a major issue in their success and collaboration.

The report shows this lack of clarity around results and revenue is having a negative impact on confidence.

With just over half (53%) of sales respondents saying they feel ‘somewhat confident’ in hitting their targets over the next 12 months, and only 28% ‘very confident’ in doing the same, it’s clear sellers need more support and better tools to be successful in their roles. Of those who are confident in hitting their targets, 46% say good collaboration and alignment with the marketing team is the reason behind their confidence, further supporting the importance of alignment for success.

Of course, it’s not just internal issues that affect the ability to hit targets. Macro economic events were identified to have an impact on sales and marketing confidence as well. Across all markets, well over half (58%) of sales and marketing professionals identify the cost of living crisis as one of their top concerns when it comes to hitting their targets in the next 12 months.

In the UK, this concern rises to 67%, with a national recession (38%) and Brexit (31%) also identified as problematic issues for sales success over the next 12 months.

 

Andy Champion, VP & GM for EMEA at Highspot says: “The next 12 months will be challenging for businesses across Europe. Sales and marketing teams have an opportunity to drive real change, but in order to succeed, you need to understand the barriers to seller success. From revenue visibility to training and onboarding, our latest research identifies key pain points that you can address with sales enablement to empower your people, strengthen alignment and drive efficient business growth. Economic turbulence is on the horizon – now is the time to equip your teams with the tools they need to weather the coming storm.”

 

Sales enablement is the strategic, ongoing process of equipping sales teams with the content, guidance, training and coaching they need to engage buyers. Alongside this it provides valuable insights to the marketing teams and bridges the gap to foster better collaboration between the two functions.

72% of those surveyed in sales and marketing roles agree that implementing sales enablement is something their company should consider in the near future.

Highspot’s latest report offers guidance to business leaders on how implementing sales enablement programs and initiatives can drive ROI. To find out how more about how you can manage change to drive consistent alignment that improves performance, read the full European State of Sales and Marketing Alignment 2022 report and book a demo with our team: https://www.highspot.com/en-gb/sales-marketing-alignment-stats-europe/

 

Marketing, PR and SEO

How to See Drafts on Instagram

Instagram is now considered a tool for business among social media users, more than it is being used for personal exposure.

Big personalities with millions of Instagram followers are promoting themselves and their brands using the app.

Digital marketers are going crazy about the possibility of creating a content calendar and drafting posts for the next month, even up to the next year.

Supposing you want to prepare a post for tomorrow and would rather save it in the Instagram app itself, that is possible.

Sometimes, the problem comes when it’s already time for you to post and you can no longer find where it is.

To help you in seeing drafts saved on Instagram, you might need to know a few things. While saving draft is quite straightforward, users would sometimes grope around the app looking for the storage where the content was actually saved as a draft.

Before you can see the drafts, you must first know how to create and save that draft. As to how you can see them, here’s a guide to help you.

 

Saving Drafts on Instagram

  1. Open the Instagram app on your device. If you are readily logged in, proceed to the next step. If not, login using your username and password.
  2. Right at the upper right hand corner, look for the plus (+) icon. This is next to the messenger icon. A drop down menu will show up, giving you the options to make a Post, Story, Reel, or Live.
  3. Tap on the first option – Post.
  4. Just so you know, you can directly do this from your Photo Gallery. Tick the photo or video you want saved for posting, click Share and you will be redirected to the Instagram app. Click the Forward arrow, now at the extreme upper right hand side of your screen.
  5. Should you wish to edit and be creative with the post as early as this time, do so. Apply filter. Add emojis or texts.
  6. Once done, tap on the Forward arrow located in the same place.
  7. Now you are looking at the New Post page. Type in the caption and all things you think will be relevant to your post. If you want the location posted, go ahead and fill out that part.
  8. You are supposed to be ready to post. Instead, go back using the Back arrow located at the extreme upper left hand side of your device screen. You are now looking at the page where you’ve been editing and making changes to the photo or video you are trying to post.
  9. Click once more the Back arrow until a pop-up prompt will appear. It will ask you to “Save as draft?”. Down below the prompt are options to Discard or Save Draft.
  10. Tap on Save Draft. And there you go, you now have saved a draft in your Instagram.

 

Seeing Drafts on Instagram

Whatever you have saved on your drafts will stay there for as long as you delete or post them. Any time you decide to have it taken down or posted anyway, you can do so. The struggle normally comes when you are trying to look for it and you can’t. Not that you can’t do it, but you can’t just find it. This is intended to help you through. Yes, it may sound easy to find but when you don’t know what to do, it can start to become a problem. Should you be in such a situation as of this time, this one’s for you.

  1. Launch Instagram as you normally do. When you’re logged in already, there is no need for you to input your username and password. Otherwise, just type it down.
  2. Now, on your Dashboard, click on the plus (+) sign located at the upper right hand corner of your phone screen, just right before the Instagram message icon.
  3. To select Post from your existing list, tap on Drafts located right next to your Photo Gallery. It will show you all the drafts you have written and saved.
  4. Now pick the desired draft by tapping it. Then click the Forward arrow you can see at the extreme upper right hand corner of your device screen. You can tell if you already have picked a draft, when it is highlighted (gray) in color, different from all the other drafts present in the storage.
  5. You will now be shown the page where you can share the Instagram post. This is where you Publish your post just like when you do it regularly.
  6. When your post is successfully published, you can no longer find it in Drafts as it automatically removes itself. Should you wish to create another one, go back to the above steps in Saving Drafts in Instagram and repeat the process.

 

Deleting Drafts On Instagram

Should it come to the point where you need to clear up your Drafts on Instagram, this can be quickly done, just the same. Just when you create it, there are just a few steps you can follow to succeed in cleaning up your Drafts storage.

  1. Tap on the Instagram icon to launch the app and login using your credentials.
  2. Click on the plus (+) icon you can see on the top right side before the IG Message icon.
  3. This will bring you to the Tab where your drafts or unposted content have been saved. Should you want to delete it one by one, tap on the first draft that you want removed. Then at the lower left side of your screen, just below the camera icon, click on Manage.
  4. A pencil icon will show up top at the right side. Tap on that icon.
  5. A checkmark will replace it afterwards. Click on it.
  6. A prompt will show up. It will ask you to “Discard draft?” Then you decide whether you will Cancel or Discard it anyway.
  7. Tap on Discard. The draft will now be deleted. Repeat the process should you want to delete the rest of your drafts. Also, you can delete it altogether. Instead of clicking on just one draft, you can tick all that’s in there.

 

 

 

 

Marketing, News, PR and SEO

How to See Drafts on Instagram

Instagram is now considered a tool for business among social media users, more than it is being used for personal exposure.

Big personalities with millions of Instagram followers are promoting themselves and their brands using the app.

Digital marketers are going crazy about the possibility of creating a content calendar and drafting posts for the next month, even up to the next year.

Supposing you want to prepare a post for tomorrow and would rather save it in the Instagram app itself, that is possible.

Sometimes, the problem comes when it’s already time for you to post and you can no longer find where it is.

To help you in seeing drafts saved on Instagram, you might need to know a few things. While saving draft is quite straightforward, users would sometimes grope around the app looking for the storage where the content was actually saved as a draft.

Before you can see the drafts, you must first know how to create and save that draft. As to how you can see them, here’s a guide to help you.

 

Saving Drafts on Instagram

  1. Open the Instagram app on your device. If you are readily logged in, proceed to the next step. If not, login using your username and password.
  2. Right at the upper right hand corner, look for the plus (+) icon. This is next to the messenger icon. A drop down menu will show up, giving you the options to make a Post, Story, Reel, or Live.
  3. Tap on the first option – Post.
  4. Just so you know, you can directly do this from your Photo Gallery. Tick the photo or video you want saved for posting, click Share and you will be redirected to the Instagram app. Click the Forward arrow, now at the extreme upper right hand side of your screen.
  5. Should you wish to edit and be creative with the post as early as this time, do so. Apply filter. Add emojis or texts.
  6. Once done, tap on the Forward arrow located in the same place.
  7. Now you are looking at the New Post page. Type in the caption and all things you think will be relevant to your post. If you want the location posted, go ahead and fill out that part.
  8. You are supposed to be ready to post. Instead, go back using the Back arrow located at the extreme upper left hand side of your device screen. You are now looking at the page where you’ve been editing and making changes to the photo or video you are trying to post.
  9. Click once more the Back arrow until a pop-up prompt will appear. It will ask you to “Save as draft?”. Down below the prompt are options to Discard or Save Draft.
  10. Tap on Save Draft. And there you go, you now have saved a draft in your Instagram.

Seeing Drafts on Instagram

Whatever you have saved on your drafts will stay there for as long as you delete or post them. Any time you decide to have it taken down or posted anyway, you can do so. The struggle normally comes when you are trying to look for it and you can’t. Not that you can’t do it, but you can’t just find it. This is intended to help you through. Yes, it may sound easy to find but when you don’t know what to do, it can start to become a problem. Should you be in such a situation as of this time, this one’s for you.

  1. Launch Instagram as you normally do. When you’re logged in already, there is no need for you to input your username and password. Otherwise, just type it down.
  2. Now, on your Dashboard, click on the plus (+) sign located at the upper right hand corner of your phone screen, just right before the Instagram message icon.
  3. To select Post from your existing list, tap on Drafts located right next to your Photo Gallery. It will show you all the drafts you have written and saved.
  4. Now pick the desired draft by tapping it. Then click the Forward arrow you can see at the extreme upper right hand corner of your device screen. You can tell if you already have picked a draft, when it is highlighted (gray) in color, different from all the other drafts present in the storage.
  5. You will now be shown the page where you can share the Instagram post. This is where you Publish your post just like when you do it regularly.
  6. When your post is successfully published, you can no longer find it in Drafts as it automatically removes itself. Should you wish to create another one, go back to the above steps in Saving Drafts in Instagram and repeat the process.

 

Deleting Drafts On Instagram

Should it come to the point where you need to clear up your Drafts on Instagram, this can be quickly done, just the same. Just when you create it, there are just a few steps you can follow to succeed in cleaning up your Drafts storage.

  1. Tap on the Instagram icon to launch the app and login using your credentials.
  2. Click on the plus (+) icon you can see on the top right side before the IG Message icon.
  3. This will bring you to the Tab where your drafts or unposted content have been saved. Should you want to delete it one by one, tap on the first draft that you want removed. Then at the lower left side of your screen, just below the camera icon, click on Manage.
  4. A pencil icon will show up top at the right side. Tap on that icon.
  5. A checkmark will replace it afterwards. Click on it.
  6. A prompt will show up. It will ask you to “Discard draft?” Then you decide whether you will Cancel or Discard it anyway.
  7. Tap on Discard. The draft will now be deleted. Repeat the process should you want to delete the rest of your drafts. Also, you can delete it altogether. Instead of clicking on just one draft, you can tick all that’s in there.

 

 

 

 

News, PR and SEO, Social Media

Have we seen the death of organic social media marketing?

The number of users viewing organic social media content – the posts that are shared for free to a feed – has dramatically plummeted in recent years. This has led to organic content for business marketing purposes being proclaimed ‘dead’, forcing marketers to abandon organic strategies in favour of paid social media advertising.

However, according to Ben Luff, Social Media Manager at integrated marketing agency PMW, organic social media marketing should still play an important role in any business’s social strategy. Ben explains how and why organic social media has changed in recent years.

“First thing’s first, it’s not all doom and gloom. The good news is organic content isn’t dead – it’s just changed a lot,” said Ben. “It used to be about optimising organic content: researching hashtags and finding the best time in the day to post, based on when audiences were most active. Brands and social media marketers had no problems reaching a high proportion of their followers and getting plenty of engagement on free posts.”

In the past, everyone who followed a brand would receive that company’s posts on their feed. When these users interacted with a post (with likes, comments, and shares) the post would also be seen by their followers, allowing for a ripple effect of new people discovering a brand. These days, according to research carried out by social media management platform Hootsuite, a Facebook post will only reach 5.5% of a company’s followers – even less for brands that have a large number of followers.1 A dramatic decline from the early days of social media marketing.

What’s behind this change?

Ben explains:

“Around 2015, the major social media platforms began using enhanced relevancy algorithms, which prioritise content from a user’s friends and family. This pushed brand content down, meaning companies saw their engagement statistics tank. If you’re not seeing results from your organic content, you can’t just keep posting the same things and hoping it will get better. You need to change your tactics.”

What can brands do to increase their social media reach?

“Two things,” says Ben. “Prioritise authenticity in organic content, and invest in paid advertising – don’t worry, it doesn’t have to break the bank. Although organic content often doesn’t get the reach it used to, it’s still important for businesses to keep their social media feeds up to date.

“An active social media page shows those who have just discovered a brand that the company is in business and cares about connecting with its customers. For small to medium businesses, posting two to three times a week is enough.”

What’s type of content businesses should post?

Ben advises:

“Consumers value authenticity, so leave the sales pitch at the door. Showcase your brand’s personality, get your staff involved and provide value to your customers through informational videos, competitions, and entertaining challenges. When you share a post, platforms like Instagram will show it to a small test audience. The more engagement a post gets from the test audience, the more the algorithm will promote it, both to your brand’s followers, and to new audiences.

“Following the huge popularity of TikTok, the algorithms for other social media platforms have begun to follow suit and prioritise video content. A recent study by social media software company Emplifi found that businesses increased their organic reach on Facebook by an average of 135% just by posting a video instead of a photo.2 Make sure you take advantage of this.”

And, Ben says, businesses shouldn’t be reluctant to build their social media presence and gain momentum using paid social media advertising.

“Most social media marketers now include paid posts in every campaign they run. These ads can be highly targeted to any demographic, and are extremely effective. Advertised posts get pushed out to a wider audience than organic posts, and are great for reaching potential new customers, so they are an excellent tool for quickly building awareness of a brand among its target audience, as well as driving click-throughs to a brand’s website.

“It’s not necessary to spend a fortune. A little can go a long way, and because you can target any audience with laser accuracy, it can yield a very high return on your investment. In the current social media landscape, making this investment really does make sense.

“Ultimately, a great social media marketing strategy is authentic, uses video content to its advantage, and isn’t afraid to enlist the help of paid social media advertising to reach new audiences.”

1 Hootsuite Digital in 2020 study – https://www.hootsuite.com/resources/digital-2020?path=pages%2Fdigital-in-2019#accordion-148291

 

2 Emplifi study Native Facebook Videos Get More Reach Than Any Other Type of Post (emplifi.io)