May 2013

Top Ways Brands are Utilizing Social Media

in Internet Marketing / Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

If you want your business to be successful, increasing engagement with fans through social media is crucial. These articles on the updates to Instagram along with insight into how other brands are doing social media right provide the perfect foundation for increasing your brand’s online influence.

Instagram’s New Tagging Feature is Huge for Brands

Instagram has introduced a feature Facebook users are familiar with: the ability to tag photos. With “Photo's of You” users have the ability to tag photos with any other instagram user, business or product. This is big for brands as they can curate the photos tagged with their name, showcase the best photos on their stream, and tag their photos to show on other users stream. Entrepreneur.com believes that “this adds a new level of consumer reach — the feature aims to compel users to interact directly with the brands and businesses they follow.” Brands will also be able to post the same photo in a number of relevant streams, multiplying their reach with a single tag and attract fans from a wider audience.

Why Victoria's Secret is Winning at Social Media -- While Other Brands Fail

When it comes to social media, Victoria's Secret is proving quantity is as important as quality. According to Expion, a social media marketing management company, 87% of the top posts on Facebook between January 1st- March 31% were made by Victoria's secret, Walmart and Burberry. Although Victoria's Secret's scantily clad models may have something to do with their popularity, their success is largely due to product focused posts that centered on major holidays. Walmart employed a similar tactic and posted seasonal deals, in addition to humorous photos of animals the internet can't get enough of. Burberry had the highest engagement out of the top 100 brands, but Victoria's Secret beat them from the top spot by posting twice as much. The key to social media popularity is regular engagement with fans, so posting has to be both relevant and consistent.

Five Companies that Mastered Social Media's Branding Potential

Many companies struggle with finding a way to get consumers to connect with their products on social media – there's only so many ways you can talk about tampons or household appliances after all. But big brands are finding that the easiest way to be successful on social media is to allow the fans to lead the conversation. Fastcodesign.com suggests three steps to online success: Go where the people are, Have a legitimate purpose, and Be real. Consumers look to social media to find the human behind the company and find something outside of product promotion. Pepsi found that connecting to causes that supported their core values was a way to be real while encouraging fans to take action. They made their platform online more about ideas than soda, by “shifting branding focus to funding causes for social good”. This encourages fans to interact online by voting and forms a connection in the consumers mind with doing good and drinking Pepsi.

Image source: Jason A. Howie

How To Optimize Your Facebook Cover Photo

in Social Media  by iqmadmin 0 comments

The cover photo on Facebook pages is an excellent opportunity for brands to personalize their pages and advertise their services. Chris, our social media manager, noticed a problem with cover photos recently – namely with the way they're showing up in the newsfeed. Since Facebook changed the feeds users can see, page cover photos are shown in two instances: as a suggested page via paid advertising and when a friend likes a page. Facebook crops the image in different ways depending on the reason they're being shown in the newsfeed. Unfortunately, Facebook crops only certain areas, regardless of whether the important stuff is in those areas. So the text or product you picked especially to represent your brand? It's been cut in half or, worse, not included at all.

 

For example, here's how one brand's, Snow Lizard, cover photo appears on their page:

facebook_img

And here's how it looks in the newsfeed as a suggested page:

facebook_img2

The most important part of Snow Lizard's cover photo, the product, is cut off. Not to mention, the suggested page version of their cover photo doesn't tell audiences anything about Snow Lizard as a company. So how do you make sure your cover photo will be cropped correctly no matter what?

 

Fortunately for us (and you!), iQuarius is a full service media agency, so Chris was able to talk to Georgette, our interactive designer, and figure out a solution. The best practice is to create a 851x315 cover photo, as those are the exact dimensions of the space. Of course, Facebook is still going to crop your photo in the newsfeed. You then have to make sure that the most important part of your cover photo is in the “safe area”. The safe space is the area on the cover photo that is always included when your cover photo is cropped.

 

When done incorrectly, the most important information will not fit into the safe area:

safe_are_img

According to Facebook’s rule, text on a cover photo most only take up 20%. The text on this image is too big and not properly located. The cropped image would feature dismembered bodies and other floating body parts -- not the image anyone want’s associated with their brand!

 

By choosing a better suited, correctly sized image and relocating the text, the important information fits into the safe area:

safe_area_img2

If Snow Lizard had implemented these tips, their suggested page would look like this:

much_better

Much better, right?

 

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