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Instagram Stories currently have 500 million daily active users. Half a billion people — around one-and-a-half-Americas — use Instagram Stories every single day! And Stories keep growing, both in their popularity and in their functionality. So in this post, we’re going to cover some fun tricks, tips and hacks your can use to take your Instagram stories to the next level. If you’re not already posting Instagram Stories on a regular basis, check out Episode 3 of my podcast Step Up Your Social and get caught up on what they are and why you should be using them. That short podcast episode (all episodes of Step Up Your Social are short — ~10 minutes or less) is the 101. This post is the 202. So let's dig in! Instagram Stories: The basicsInstagram Stories launched in August 2016 — by October 2016 they already had 100 million daily active users!
 Want a deeper dive into all the changes and added tools that have been rolled out by Instagram over the years, both for Stories and in their primary feed? Check out my Evolution of Instagram. But needless to say, Instagram Stories is a vibrant platform and you should definitely be taking advantage of it. Here are some tips, tricks and hacks to get the most out of your Instagram Stories How to make instagram stories Several Ways to Create a New Story: Since Stories have become such a successful part of the platform, Instagram has made it all but impossible to miss them when logged into the app. Users’ Stories are spread out horizontally across the top of the screen, just below the Instagram logo. Your's is the first circle on the left. If you don’t have an active story, there will be a blue plus icon over your photo. Tap there to create a new Story. Stories last for 24 hours, so if you have made one in the past day, tapping here will show you your current story. You can also tap the plus button at the top of your profile or home page and then select Stories from the bottom menu choices. You can also swipe right anywhere in-app to create a new story. That's right, this is such a popular tool, Instagram — known for their obsession with simplicity — has given us numerous ways to get to the same place.  Spice it Up with Filters & Stickers Adding filters can make an otherwise run-of-the-mill Story feel special. Take for instance this fun shot of my Turkish carpet. With a few quick taps, I can easily add some fun flair. Once you’re on the Story creation screen, you can see a menu of filters in small circles at the bottom of the display. Tap on one, or swipe through to see different filters applied to your photo or video. Instagram cycles through filters often, so it’s worth scanning through to see if there’s anything new. This example was taken in June, so there were a bunch of cool Pride filters. Some filters like this one have different variations, which you can see directly above the filter list. Next, there’s the sticker library. These are meant to be placed over your content, and they’re incredibly diverse — GIFs, location, @mentions, #hashtags, donation requests, and more. To resize or move a sticker, just use two fingers to pinch or drag it, respectively. If you change your mind, drag it to the bottom of the screen, where a trash can will appear. Poof, it’s gone! Want a deeper dive into some of these fun sticker types? We’ll cover a few of the specific sticker types in more detail below. Sticker Quick Tips -Pinch and drag to resize and move stickers -Tap on a sticker to change what it does — feel free to experiment! -Change color of some stickers with a tap -Add a “sound on” button sticker to let viewers know to turn up the volume -Explore the deep GIF library to find something that fits your personality or mood -All text is customizable — from font, alignment, size, color, and more -Tap the squiggle to draw: change line styles & color, add arrows, erase, and undo/redo All of these powerful and fun tool are… literally at your fingertips.  Check Your Analytics Wondering who watched your Story and which Stories inspired actions on your account? Analytics aren't quite able to read minds, but they are definitely the next best thing. During the 24 hours your Story is live, you’ll notice in the bottom-left of the screen “Seen by x,” so you know how many people viewed your story. Tap here to see more detailed analytics of how your Story performed. On the analytics screen, you can see both who viewed your story and what actions they took (for example, if they skipped your story or watched the next one), Instagram will break that down for you. This can be helpful if you’re posting 20 times a day and want to know what’s connecting with your audience... and what isn't! Ok, now that we’re all caught up with the basics, so let’s talk hacks! 1. Increase Reach With The Location StickeR  Adding a location sticker doesn’t just let your viewers know where you are, it can also potentially extend your reach beyond your current followers. How you use the location sticker is up to you. You can be super specific — I’m at the WI capitol. You can be a bit vague — I’m in Madison, WI. Or you can be super vague — I’m in WI. There are 2 reasons to use location stickers: 1) It helps people know where you are. And 2) and this is the important one, it could dramatically increase your Story’s reach. There’s no surefire way to get one of your Stories added to a public Story* — which will definitely increase your reach — but not tagging your location guarantees that you WON’T be added to the public location’s story. *What do I mean by public Stories? When you search for any place on Instagram, you'll find a menu of images tagged in that location. You'll also find public Stories that Instagram is highlighting to give a fuller peak at the spot you are checking out.  And here’s something cool: Instagram is smart enough to know that the WI Capitol is in Madison and that Madison is in WI. So it’s possible you’ll wind up in the public Stories for all 3 of those places. Which is the main reason why specific location tagging is better than general location tagging. But any location tagging is better than none! Two quick notes on this — 1) not every story should be tagged by location. If you’re sharing a screenshot of one of your tweets, or posting a Game of Thrones meme that got you laughing, it’s okay to skip the location. And 2) — and this is a big one — you don’t actually have to be at a location to tag yourself there. Now of course I’m not telling you to lie to your audience. In fact I'm straight up telling you to NEVER lie to your audience. But if you took a bunch of pictures at an event last night and you we’re too busy to share them to your Stories in real time, you can post them the next day, and tag the location after the fact. Just search for the location within the search bar, select it, and voila. You’re tagged. You can then move that sticker around, make it bigger or smaller, or tap it to get different color formatting to better fit the feel of your story. 2. Increase Reach With Hashtags There’s a location sticker. There’s also a hashtag sticker. Use it! Just like you might be added to a public location’s Story when using the location sticker — thus increasing your potential reach — using a hashtag sets you up to potentially be added to a public hashtag’s Story. Now on a general Instagram post, you can use up to 30 hashtags. Stories won’t let you go that far, but it will allow you to use up to 10 hashtags. The more hashtags you use, the better chance you have of getting added to public Stories. You can only use the hashtag sticker once in a Story. But if it makes sense for you to add more, just pop on over to your text and start typing out relevant hashtags. IF IF IF you are going to do this — and of course you don’t have to add 10 #s in every post — consider stacking and then hiding them, so that it doesn’t make your Story look... gaudy.  Try this: Create each hashtag as a new piece of text, meaning that instead of just hitting space between tags, you hit done typing out tag one, and then start new text for tag number 2 and so on. Then, stack them. Literally put them all on top of each other. Which will look awful. But fear not. Once you've got your hashtags stacked, head back to your stickers and find yourself a sticker or GIF to stick on top of them. Then no one will see them except Instagram… which in this case is the only one who really matters! 3. Increase Reach With The Mention Sticker  There's a location and a hashtag sticker. There’s also a mention sticker. This sticker lets you tag someone(s) in your Story. This one won’t help you get into any public Stories, but it will give a public shoutout to the account(s) you are tagging, and just as important, it will send a notification to that account that you have tagged them in a Story. As I always say — don’t talk about anyone on the internet if you wouldn’t want them to know. And talking about someone on social without tagging them is like talking to them on the phone without first dialing their number. Without it, they might accidentally come upon your post, but a tag all but ensures they see it! Another reason to tag someone is that when you do so, they'll get the option to share your Story with their followers. So you give them a shoutout, and then they help you reach new audiences. Win-Win! Along with hoping your community shares your posts, definitely consider sharing relevant and interesting Stories from your audience that tag you. User generated content can be an amazing way to tell your brand’s story. And, something cool about sharing other people’s stories — it’s more like a quote tweet than a retweet. Meaning you don’t just have to share their Story as is. You essentially are sharing their Story as a sticker, so you can add your own location, mention and hashtag stickers to it as well as GIFs, text and more. Have fun with it!
The ability to share stories changed the whole concept of Instagram’s power of telling stories in real time. Take advantage of this tool, as it makes sense for you and your brand. 4. Get Engaging With StickerS  If you haven’t explored the loads of fun stickers available to you in Instagram Stories, you are missing out! Along with the ones we’ve already covered, and GIFs (which I love!), there are also some really cool engagement stickers built right into the platform. You can use stickers to solicit questions from your audience (which you can then answer in follow up Stories), take polls, quiz your audience… there’s even a countdown clock available to you if you have an exciting event taking place and want to build some excitement. Explore and get to engaging your audience with stickers. 5. Create Your Own StickerS Can’t quite find the perfect sticker for your story? Don’t sweat it: you can make your own. It’s surprisingly simple to do so.  Find a photo you like. Whether it’s in your browser or saved on your phone, either will work. In your browser, long tap the image until you see the option to save it. Once the image is saved to your photos, tap the Share button and then tap copy photo. Now, head back to your story. The copied image should pop up in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Tap on it and bang! You’re good to go. If you miss the pop up, don’t sweat it. Just open the keyboard, hit paste, and you’re back in business. That was the tip—here comes the hack! You can save transparent images (.png files) like a Polaroid frame and use these as stickers too. This way, it’s easy to get really creative with a few basic building blocks. Add these in the same way you added those previous stickers, and you’re in business. This is a super fun and interesting way to create your own content, and most importantly, to be able to do so in your own voice (and with your own colors and branding). 6. Add Any Instagram Post To Your Story  Did you know that you can add ANY public Instagram post — your own or anyone else’s — to your Stories? To do so is extremely simple: at the bottom of the post, next to the heart and comment icons, there’s a little paper airplane. Click it and you’ll see the option to “add to story.” Click that and whatever you were looking at will appear as a sticker in your Story. When I say “whatever you were looking at,” what I mean is that if it was an album, you can only add one image, and if it’s a video, you will only be adding a screenshot of the thumbnail associated with the video. But once you have the image in your Story, you can move it around, make it bigger or smaller and add all of the stickers, GIFs and text you want. And if you tap on the actual post, it will change the formatting from the clean image with a tag of who posted it, to an image that includes the handle and part of the post’s original text.  Here’s the coolest hack for this though — go to your GIF library and search “tap here.” You’ll have loads of options — pick one you like. Add your "tap here" sticker to your Story. When someone taps it, they’ll get a seemingly magic option to visit the original post. Here’s the thing — they would get that option whether or not you point them to tap there. Most folks just don’t realize that it's an option to click through. The built-in call-to-action makes it super easy to drive people from your Story to your original post (or anyone else’s). It's a big part of why more and more accounts are creating Stories from their posts. It’s a second audience you can engage around the same content, and you can potentially drive people back to the original content at the same time. I don’t recommend doing this for every one of your posts, but definitely a helpful tool for the posts you are particularly excited about. 7. Get Creative With Color When I am building a new Story that’s not based on a picture, I’ll sometimes just snap a photo while covering the camera so I can start with a black background. This works fine, but if you want a different color background, there’s actually a really easy way to create one.  Take any picture and then tap the pen tool. Select the first pen, pick your color of choice on the bottom and then hold your finger down on the screen. The whole background will become that color. If you want to add a transparent color over top of one of your pictures, you can do that too. Instead of selecting the first pen, select the second one, which looks more like a marker. Choose your color, hold down and you get a transparent overlay over top of your picture. Want to get really clever with either of these — create your solid or transparent color over top of a picture, and then use the eraser to remove color from the selected areas. That can create a very cool effect! 8. Keep The Story Going With IGTV If you have 10k+ followers, you can link a Story to an external link. This is a very powerful tool, but one that not a lot of users actually have access to. For those of us with less than 10,000 followers, you do still have one option for linking out from your Story — you can link it to an IGTV video that you have previously posted. IGTV, short for Instagram TV, allows you to post longer videos then you can post within Instagram proper. On Instagram, you are limited to one minute videos, but with IGTV, you can go up to 10 minutes (some bigger accounts can even go up to an hour). It can be a great way to repurpose videos that you created elsewhere but couldn’t post to Instagram because they were too long.  Once you have posted something to IGTV, you can link directly to the video through a Story. To do so, simply tap the link icon at the top of your story. You will then be able to select from any of your pre-published videos in IGTV. Then anyone seeing your Story can swipe up and get to your IGTV video. Like with the “Tap Here” hack, search the GIFs library for a “Swipe Up” call-to-action. so your audience realizes that your Story is intended to take them somewhere else to continue on in the fun! You can also share an IGTV directly to your Instagram Stories. To do so, simply select it and add it to your story like you would any public post. This will not show the entire IGTV, but will let people stream a few seconds of it and give folks an option to keep watching your full video at IGTV. 
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This one's a little complicated, so here’s a quick recap:
-Create a video story
-Select a sticker
-Tap and hold the sticker
-Scroll to a good spot
-Hit pin
Assuming your video isn’t too complicated for Instagram to handle, it should paste your sticker or text onto that spot in the video and then let it follow along throughout the duration of the video.
So in this example, I pinned a Like sticker to a little toy car. Let’s call it a Heart-Ford. (Fun pun to always remember the capital of Connecticut: the Heart Ford Connects a Cut 😂). Instead of the Like sticker just sitting in the corner, it zooms along with the car.
Pretty cool, right?
-Create a video story
-Select a sticker
-Tap and hold the sticker
-Scroll to a good spot
-Hit pin
Assuming your video isn’t too complicated for Instagram to handle, it should paste your sticker or text onto that spot in the video and then let it follow along throughout the duration of the video.
So in this example, I pinned a Like sticker to a little toy car. Let’s call it a Heart-Ford. (Fun pun to always remember the capital of Connecticut: the Heart Ford Connects a Cut 😂). Instead of the Like sticker just sitting in the corner, it zooms along with the car.
Pretty cool, right?
Bonus! Third Party Tools
Everything you've seen in this post can be created directly in Instagram. But if you want to take your Story game to the next level — or if you want to innovate some hacks of your own — feel free to try out some of these third-party apps.
These design tools are useful beyond Instagram, with templates and editing capabilities to make almost anything you need for your social media program.
Adobe Photoshop: The gold standard of image editing, Photoshop now has a great mobile-friendly version of the app
Adobe Spark: A browser-based editor with thousands of fun templates
Canva: Similar to Spark, Canva is a user-friendly, browser-based image editor
InShot: A powerful video editing tool with cool filters
These next 3 apps focus specifically on Stories, and each has a free or paid option, so you can take your content as far as you can imagine.
Over: Easy to edit templates for beautiful stories
Unfold: Story-editing tool with beautiful, designer-built templates
Instories: A personal favorite, this is imho the most fun story editor with dynamic and fluid titles and video frames that make your Stories look quite professional without much effort at all
Your Turn!
What are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications.
Or… show off what you’ve learned! Make a cool Instagram Story and use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
If you tag me in your Stories, you better believe I’m gonna share it! So hit me up!
Now what are you waiting for? Get out there and step up your Story game!
These design tools are useful beyond Instagram, with templates and editing capabilities to make almost anything you need for your social media program.
Adobe Photoshop: The gold standard of image editing, Photoshop now has a great mobile-friendly version of the app
Adobe Spark: A browser-based editor with thousands of fun templates
Canva: Similar to Spark, Canva is a user-friendly, browser-based image editor
InShot: A powerful video editing tool with cool filters
These next 3 apps focus specifically on Stories, and each has a free or paid option, so you can take your content as far as you can imagine.
Over: Easy to edit templates for beautiful stories
Unfold: Story-editing tool with beautiful, designer-built templates
Instories: A personal favorite, this is imho the most fun story editor with dynamic and fluid titles and video frames that make your Stories look quite professional without much effort at all
Your Turn!
What are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications.
Or… show off what you’ve learned! Make a cool Instagram Story and use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
If you tag me in your Stories, you better believe I’m gonna share it! So hit me up!
Now what are you waiting for? Get out there and step up your Story game!
There are hundreds of millions of pieces of content created for the internet every day Want to break through the noise? The best writing won't stop someone's thumbs from scrolling through their feed. You have to first nab them with an eye-catching pic. Then you might have a shot to keep their attention long enough to read about your new offer, hear your fundraising pitch, or learn more about whatever you're talking about.
My general go to stock image site for finding high quality, free* photos online is Unsplash. Unsplash refers to itself as "the internet's source of freely-usable images. Powered by creators everywhere." It's a website full of beautiful, interesting and dynamic photos from all over the world. Type in whatever you need in the search bar and get ready to scroll through countless wonderful photos, brilliantly capturing your subject matter.
But representation matters — especially to kids. Early impressions leave an indelible mark that shape what children imagine is possible. Think a picture is worth a thousand words? It’s probably closer to a a few million!
High-quality, representative stock photography is absolutely crucial for any business, whether you’re writing a blog post, creating a graphic or promoting an event.
I use Unsplash all the time. But sometimes I need photos more geared specifically towards diversity, intersectionality or multiculturalism. While scrolling Unsplash will typically get me where I need to be, there are other options out there that focus specifically on representing the under-represented through high-quality stock photography.
Here is a compilation of 10 free (or affordable) stock photo sites that go further than tossing a BIPOC cherry-on-top of a scoop of vanilla. You might even say these collections are pretty much the whole damn sundae.
*Quick caveat: I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not your lawyer. While many of these sites offer free stock photos for you to use, I'm not telling you what you can and can't do with them. If you're worried about what's okay or not, talk to a lawyer, read the fine print, or... you know... head to Google and read up.
My general go to stock image site for finding high quality, free* photos online is Unsplash. Unsplash refers to itself as "the internet's source of freely-usable images. Powered by creators everywhere." It's a website full of beautiful, interesting and dynamic photos from all over the world. Type in whatever you need in the search bar and get ready to scroll through countless wonderful photos, brilliantly capturing your subject matter.
But representation matters — especially to kids. Early impressions leave an indelible mark that shape what children imagine is possible. Think a picture is worth a thousand words? It’s probably closer to a a few million!
High-quality, representative stock photography is absolutely crucial for any business, whether you’re writing a blog post, creating a graphic or promoting an event.
I use Unsplash all the time. But sometimes I need photos more geared specifically towards diversity, intersectionality or multiculturalism. While scrolling Unsplash will typically get me where I need to be, there are other options out there that focus specifically on representing the under-represented through high-quality stock photography.
Here is a compilation of 10 free (or affordable) stock photo sites that go further than tossing a BIPOC cherry-on-top of a scoop of vanilla. You might even say these collections are pretty much the whole damn sundae.
*Quick caveat: I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not your lawyer. While many of these sites offer free stock photos for you to use, I'm not telling you what you can and can't do with them. If you're worried about what's okay or not, talk to a lawyer, read the fine print, or... you know... head to Google and read up.
1. #WOCinTech
This Flickr photo stream features hundreds of images of women of color working in tech. Everything is free under a Creative Commons license, so you won’t have to pay a cent.(That said, as is the case throughout this round-up, the above caveat applies.)
This Flickr photo stream features hundreds of images of women of color working in tech. Everything is free under a Creative Commons license, so you won’t have to pay a cent.(That said, as is the case throughout this round-up, the above caveat applies.)
2. CreateHER Stock
This authentic stock site is a finely-curated “for-us-by-us” set of lifestyle+business content featuring Black women. A subscription runs ~$10/month, but given that the pics are behind a paywall, you’ll have access to exclusive content (unlike some big box stock photos you see on every 3rd ad in your timeline).
This authentic stock site is a finely-curated “for-us-by-us” set of lifestyle+business content featuring Black women. A subscription runs ~$10/month, but given that the pics are behind a paywall, you’ll have access to exclusive content (unlike some big box stock photos you see on every 3rd ad in your timeline).
3. Pexels
Pexels is a well-known free stock site, granted, but it's included here to point out their solid suggestions engine. Try searching for “Black people” in Pexels and not only do you get accurate results, but Pexels will suggest related tags, making it easy to hone in on exactly who you’re looking for.
Pexels is a well-known free stock site, granted, but it's included here to point out their solid suggestions engine. Try searching for “Black people” in Pexels and not only do you get accurate results, but Pexels will suggest related tags, making it easy to hone in on exactly who you’re looking for.
4. nappy.co
Search “coffee” on your standard stock site. While the latte might be brown, the hands holding it rarely are. Nappy refers to itself as providing "Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people. For free." I can't really sum it up better than that.
Search “coffee” on your standard stock site. While the latte might be brown, the hands holding it rarely are. Nappy refers to itself as providing "Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people. For free." I can't really sum it up better than that.
5. Picnoi
Picnoi is a hand-picked collection teeming with great shots of hip, young Black & Brown folks. You can also browse their co-op's collection directly in Unsplash.
Picnoi is a hand-picked collection teeming with great shots of hip, young Black & Brown folks. You can also browse their co-op's collection directly in Unsplash.
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6. Body Liberation Stock
Intersectionality can be particularly difficult to find represented on stock photo sites. Body Liberation Stock is an impressive stash of shots depicting body-positivity in folks from all walks of life.
Intersectionality can be particularly difficult to find represented on stock photo sites. Body Liberation Stock is an impressive stash of shots depicting body-positivity in folks from all walks of life.
7. The Gender Spectrum Collection
From Vice, these photos are intended to articulate the complexity of people not necessarily defined by their gender. You’ll find a solid variety of non-binary and trans people at work, school, and off the clock.
From Vice, these photos are intended to articulate the complexity of people not necessarily defined by their gender. You’ll find a solid variety of non-binary and trans people at work, school, and off the clock.
8. Disabled And Here
This is a wonderful reclamation for disabled BIPOC. In a unique—and incredibly vulnerable feature—this collection features interviews with each model, engendering a true intimacy rarely felt in stock photos.
This is a wonderful reclamation for disabled BIPOC. In a unique—and incredibly vulnerable feature—this collection features interviews with each model, engendering a true intimacy rarely felt in stock photos.
9. TONL
Intended for editorial use, TONL feels like an enlightened version of Adobe Stock. If you’re looking for exceptionally high-quality and exclusive imagery, you can pay as you go (~$2/pic). The content curation will save you hours of scrolling those big name free sites.
Intended for editorial use, TONL feels like an enlightened version of Adobe Stock. If you’re looking for exceptionally high-quality and exclusive imagery, you can pay as you go (~$2/pic). The content curation will save you hours of scrolling those big name free sites.
10. Salam Stock
A lot of stock sites can really miss the mark when trying to depict modern Muslim life. Salam Stock remedies that with a hefty collection that includes free and paid plans.
A lot of stock sites can really miss the mark when trying to depict modern Muslim life. Salam Stock remedies that with a hefty collection that includes free and paid plans.
Those are a few diversity-first stock photo sites I've found helpful over the years. Do you have any to add to the list? I'd love to hear about them. Share them in the comments or slide on over to my DMs.
I'd love to see how you put these new resources to use. Tag me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook when you post your awesome, new, diverse content.
Have fun!
I'd love to see how you put these new resources to use. Tag me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook when you post your awesome, new, diverse content.
Have fun!
This post was last updated fall 2020.
You know the old saying that the only constant is change?
Well, that never been more true than when talking about social media.
You go to bed understanding exactly how a platform works — you wake up to find that everything has changed. There are new features, but also missing features, and moved features, and some features that are still there but no longer work. Arggghhh. It’s enough to make you logoff and go refill your coffee. But when it comes to the big platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit… they know you’ll be back. So you just have to sit back down, pound that coffee, and get used to their radical new designs.
It’s been just shy of 10 years since Instagram was first launched in the app store. In a lot of ways, Instagram today is still very similar to the platform it was way back then (ten years is a lifetime in tech!). But while Instagram might feel pretty similar day in and day out, they’ve actually been rolling out new products and features pretty consistently year after year.
They have also hit some pretty big milestones along the way.
So let’s dig in and breakdown some of those key new features and major milestones in this Evolution of Instagram.
Well, that never been more true than when talking about social media.
You go to bed understanding exactly how a platform works — you wake up to find that everything has changed. There are new features, but also missing features, and moved features, and some features that are still there but no longer work. Arggghhh. It’s enough to make you logoff and go refill your coffee. But when it comes to the big platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit… they know you’ll be back. So you just have to sit back down, pound that coffee, and get used to their radical new designs.
It’s been just shy of 10 years since Instagram was first launched in the app store. In a lot of ways, Instagram today is still very similar to the platform it was way back then (ten years is a lifetime in tech!). But while Instagram might feel pretty similar day in and day out, they’ve actually been rolling out new products and features pretty consistently year after year.
They have also hit some pretty big milestones along the way.
So let’s dig in and breakdown some of those key new features and major milestones in this Evolution of Instagram.
Instagram Launches — October 2010
The year was 2010. The Social Network was in theaters. Moves Like Jagger was on the radio. Lost was wrapping up its final season, disappointing millions of fans all over the world. And Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were rolling out Burbn, a mobile check-in app that was essentially a clone of Foursquare. Kevin and Mike realized they had a problem. So they did what anyone in their position — who had already raised a half a million dollars in funding — would do and they pivoted.
And thus Instagram was born. For those wondering, the name Instagram came from combining Instant (as in instant camera) and telegram.
At the time, you had to access Instagram through a mobile device. Ten years later, that’s still the case. (It’s actually not, but it still feels that way.)
And thus Instagram was born. For those wondering, the name Instagram came from combining Instant (as in instant camera) and telegram.
At the time, you had to access Instagram through a mobile device. Ten years later, that’s still the case. (It’s actually not, but it still feels that way.)
Instagram Incorporates Hashtags — January 2011
In 2007, a bunch of Twitter users inadvertently invented the hashtag as a way to more easily connect and converse at a conference.
Twitter leadership thought it was a “thing for nerds,” but alas, the hashtag was born.
Hashtags were eventually incorporated into Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and Google+ and of course, Instagram, where they made their debut in January 2011. (They have also FINALLY made their way to LinkedIn, which in the words of Verge reporter Casey Newton, is just “Facebook in slow motion.”)
Twitter leadership thought it was a “thing for nerds,” but alas, the hashtag was born.
Hashtags were eventually incorporated into Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and Google+ and of course, Instagram, where they made their debut in January 2011. (They have also FINALLY made their way to LinkedIn, which in the words of Verge reporter Casey Newton, is just “Facebook in slow motion.”)
Instagram Is Acquired By Facebook — April 2012
Mark Zuckerberg paid a billion dollars to buy Instagram, despite the fact that they had no revenue stream and were only 13 employees strong.
At the time, people panned the purchase. But not today! With over a billion active users, and long serving as Facebook’s primary growth platform for young people, that billion dollars now looks like a heck of a steal.
At the time, people panned the purchase. But not today! With over a billion active users, and long serving as Facebook’s primary growth platform for young people, that billion dollars now looks like a heck of a steal.
Instagram Rolls Out Explore — June 2012
If you like logging onto Instagram, checking in on your friends and the few select brands you follow, and then getting out, you were good to go from day one.
But if you are looking for new accounts to follow or interesting content to peruse, well Instagram wasn’t really built for that. Until June of 2012 that is, when they rolled out Explore.
Explore let’s you rove around Instagram in a new way, not just by username or hashtag, but also by content suggestion, curated specifically for you.
But if you are looking for new accounts to follow or interesting content to peruse, well Instagram wasn’t really built for that. Until June of 2012 that is, when they rolled out Explore.
Explore let’s you rove around Instagram in a new way, not just by username or hashtag, but also by content suggestion, curated specifically for you.
Milestone: Instagram Hits 100 Million Monthly Active Users — February 2013
Instagram picked up 100k users in the first week following their launch. It only took them a few months to get to a million users. It was six more months before they hit five million users and another three months before they hit ten million users.
They launched in October 2010. It took them less than 2.5 years to add that ninth digit to their user-base. By early February 2013, they already had more users than any European country had citizens.
Not bad for a platform that had just 13 employees a short ten months ago!
They launched in October 2010. It took them less than 2.5 years to add that ninth digit to their user-base. By early February 2013, they already had more users than any European country had citizens.
Not bad for a platform that had just 13 employees a short ten months ago!
Instagram Adds 15-Second Video Sharing — June 2013
If you are an active user of Instagram, you might not even realize that there was once a time you could only upload images to the platform. But for their first few years of existence, there was no video to be seen in Instagram.
That changed in June 2013 when they rolled out the option to upload videos of up to 15 seconds in length. (Note: at the time of this writing, that’s the length limit of videos shared to TikTok — it will be interesting to see if they too “evolve.”)
That changed in June 2013 when they rolled out the option to upload videos of up to 15 seconds in length. (Note: at the time of this writing, that’s the length limit of videos shared to TikTok — it will be interesting to see if they too “evolve.”)
Instagram Incorporates Ads — October 2013
Despite paying a billion dollars to acquire Instagram, Facebook held off on monetizing the platform via ads for a full year-and-a-half.
Presumably, there was a lot of work to do on the backend to enable their ads program to synchronize with Facebook’s pre-existing advertising platform.
While the initial ad rollout was limited to sponsored posts, it set the stage for Instagram becoming a product with an estimated standalone value of $100 billion.
Presumably, there was a lot of work to do on the backend to enable their ads program to synchronize with Facebook’s pre-existing advertising platform.
While the initial ad rollout was limited to sponsored posts, it set the stage for Instagram becoming a product with an estimated standalone value of $100 billion.
Instagram Enables Direct Messaging — December 2013
Instagram is a primarily public platform, as opposed to Facebook which for individual users tends to default to content being shared only with friends.
So while you could tag your friends in posts and comment on their content, you were doing so for the world to see. But those were pretty much your only options.
That changed in December 2013 when Instagram rolled out Direct Messaging.
Now you could have private conversations with friends, without ever having to leave Instagram.
So while you could tag your friends in posts and comment on their content, you were doing so for the world to see. But those were pretty much your only options.
That changed in December 2013 when Instagram rolled out Direct Messaging.
Now you could have private conversations with friends, without ever having to leave Instagram.
MILEstone: Instagram Hits 200 Million Monthly Active Users — March 2014
While the first 100 million users took 2.5 years to acquire, the next 100 million joined in on the fun in just 13 months.
By March 2014, Instagram had a bigger user-base than the population of Russia, Mexico or really any country in the world save for a few.
Those 15-second videos really made an impression!
By March 2014, Instagram had a bigger user-base than the population of Russia, Mexico or really any country in the world save for a few.
Those 15-second videos really made an impression!
Instagram Expands Video from 15 to 60 Seconds — March 2016
If 15 seconds of video is good, 60 seconds of video must be better, right?!
As of March of 2016, you could start uploading videos to Instagram that were up to 60 seconds in length.
Still not long enough to play the full version of that new song you just wrote, but at least now you can get through the whole refrain!
As of March of 2016, you could start uploading videos to Instagram that were up to 60 seconds in length.
Still not long enough to play the full version of that new song you just wrote, but at least now you can get through the whole refrain!
MILESTONE: Instagram Hits 500 Million Monthly Active Users — June 2016
Instagram just keeps on growing. By June of 2016 they had 500 million monthly active users. Which, just to stay on theme, made their “population” bigger than any country in the world except for China or India.
Instagram Introduces Stories! — August 2016
There’s an old adage in the social media world: when a platform becomes popular, Facebook will aim to own it or clone it.
While they managed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp (as well as a slew of other companies that aren’t quite household names), a couple of the big players eluded them.
They desperately wanted Twitter. But Twitter wouldn’t sell. So in short order, Facebook introduced hashtags, verified accounts, trending content (now defunct) and a bunch of other features that were all “inspired” by Twitter. (Ie: they couldn't own it, so they went to work trying to clone it.)
But Facebook’s appetite to consume Twitter was nothing compared to the newer kid on the block, Snapchat.
Snapchat, launched in 2011, was immediately popular with the youth, a demographic that Zuck knew he needed to keep satisfied and clicking if he wanted to remain at the head of the social media table.
In 2013, just two-years after launch, he offered $3 billion to buy them out. They refused. Facebook reportedly tried again shortly before Snap went public. He was again rebuffed.
That second attempt happened in 2016. Coincidently, that’s the same year that all the primary platforms in the Facebook universe (that’s Facebook itself, Messenger, WhatsApp and of course Instagram) rolled out Stories.
Stories are ephemeral content (they disappear after 24 hours) that are intended to be less perfectly quaffed, more fun and allow a user to post as often as they want throughout the day without worrying about bothering the almighty algorithm.
While Snapchat is still doing its thing, there’s no doubt that the rollout of Stories slowed their growth considerably.
While they managed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp (as well as a slew of other companies that aren’t quite household names), a couple of the big players eluded them.
They desperately wanted Twitter. But Twitter wouldn’t sell. So in short order, Facebook introduced hashtags, verified accounts, trending content (now defunct) and a bunch of other features that were all “inspired” by Twitter. (Ie: they couldn't own it, so they went to work trying to clone it.)
But Facebook’s appetite to consume Twitter was nothing compared to the newer kid on the block, Snapchat.
Snapchat, launched in 2011, was immediately popular with the youth, a demographic that Zuck knew he needed to keep satisfied and clicking if he wanted to remain at the head of the social media table.
In 2013, just two-years after launch, he offered $3 billion to buy them out. They refused. Facebook reportedly tried again shortly before Snap went public. He was again rebuffed.
That second attempt happened in 2016. Coincidently, that’s the same year that all the primary platforms in the Facebook universe (that’s Facebook itself, Messenger, WhatsApp and of course Instagram) rolled out Stories.
Stories are ephemeral content (they disappear after 24 hours) that are intended to be less perfectly quaffed, more fun and allow a user to post as often as they want throughout the day without worrying about bothering the almighty algorithm.
While Snapchat is still doing its thing, there’s no doubt that the rollout of Stories slowed their growth considerably.
Milestone: Instagram Stories Hits 100 Million Daily Active Users — October 2016
Instagram Stories were popular almost immediately. They rolled out in August 2016 and by October of that year they already had 100 million daily active users. That’s 100 million people who were using Stories. Every. Single. Day!
Instagram Stories Launches Boomerang — November 2016
At first, Instagram Stories only allowed users to share pictures or short videos taken in real time. Then they expand that to allow you to share pictures and videos you had shot within the last 24 hours. That limitation quickly went away as well, as Instagram enabled the ability for users to share anything on their phone roll (well any photo or any video up to 15 seconds in length).
But Stories also quickly started rolling out fun filters and camera tricks (very similar to Snapchat, who had been providing such offerings for quite some time).
One early and popular such feature was Boomerang — which enables a user to take a short video which is then popped it back and forth, like a boomerang.
While they aren’t as popular today as they were when they first rolled out, you would have a hard time spending 10 or 15 minutes scrolling through IG Stories without coming across at least a couple such clips.
But Stories also quickly started rolling out fun filters and camera tricks (very similar to Snapchat, who had been providing such offerings for quite some time).
One early and popular such feature was Boomerang — which enables a user to take a short video which is then popped it back and forth, like a boomerang.
While they aren’t as popular today as they were when they first rolled out, you would have a hard time spending 10 or 15 minutes scrolling through IG Stories without coming across at least a couple such clips.
Instagram Enables Albums — February 2017
From 2010 until early 2017, you could only share one piece of content to your Instagram timeline at a time.
That changed in February 2017 when Instagram rolled out Albums. Albums made it possible to share up to ten pieces of content at once. (You can mix and match photos and videos in a single album.)
This made it easier to share bigger stories to the timeline without having to pump out a bunch of separate and disjointed posts.
Learn more about Albums, and how to use them, with this explainer piece I made when they first launched using... what else? An Instagram Album!
That changed in February 2017 when Instagram rolled out Albums. Albums made it possible to share up to ten pieces of content at once. (You can mix and match photos and videos in a single album.)
This made it easier to share bigger stories to the timeline without having to pump out a bunch of separate and disjointed posts.
Learn more about Albums, and how to use them, with this explainer piece I made when they first launched using... what else? An Instagram Album!
Milestone: Instagram Stories Hits 200 Million Daily Active Users — April 2017
Less than a year after being introduced, Instagram Stories had already hit 200 million daily active users.
Milestone: Instagram Hits 800 Million Monthly Active Users — September 2017
And just a few months after that, Instagram as a platform hit 800 million active users.
Instagram Gets Engaging With Their First Interactive Sticker — October 2017
Instagram has rolled out loads of fun features to Stories over the years, but it was in October 2017 that they rolled out their first interactive stickers with the introduction of the poll sticker.
You could use it to have people weigh in on a simple multiple choice question of your liking (simple because you were — and are — limited to only two answer choices). Once a user votes, they can see the breakdown of how everyone else has voted.
Like with all Stories, those containing polls still disappear after 24 hours. But it was the first of many stickers that Instagram Stories would offer intended to help bring your audience into the conversation.
You could use it to have people weigh in on a simple multiple choice question of your liking (simple because you were — and are — limited to only two answer choices). Once a user votes, they can see the breakdown of how everyone else has voted.
Like with all Stories, those containing polls still disappear after 24 hours. But it was the first of many stickers that Instagram Stories would offer intended to help bring your audience into the conversation.
Instagram Lets Us Keep Our Stories With Highlights — December 2017
It didn’t take long for Instagram to realize that people were putting a lot of time and effort into their Stories, and that while some should just go ahead and disappear after 24 hours, it would be nice if users could keep some of them around.
And with that was born Highlights. (I’ve always thought this feature would have been called Albums, if Instagram hadn’t already used that name on a product less deserving of it).
Highlights are very important — first of all, they let you keep select Stories public indefinitely.
But even more importantly, they let you flesh out your account’s profile page, which has always been quite limited.
For your Instagram profile, you get a pic, a short bio, a location and a link to a website (the only active link you can use on the entire platform!). Now suddenly, if you choose to use them, the next thing someone sees while looking at your profile, after your photo and brief bio, is your Highlights. So if used well, they can really do a lot to help you tell your story in a more in-depth and relevant way for your audience.
Let’s say you own a restaurant. You might have one Highlight for salads, another for entrees, a third for desserts and a fourth showcasing the awesome artisanal cocktails you create in house.
Or let’s say you run a boutique. You could have a Highlight for hats, another for skirts, one for accessories, and one for handbags.
Highlights are a great way to show your audience what you do in a way that simply isn’t possible through the limitations offered in the Instagram profile section.
And with that was born Highlights. (I’ve always thought this feature would have been called Albums, if Instagram hadn’t already used that name on a product less deserving of it).
Highlights are very important — first of all, they let you keep select Stories public indefinitely.
But even more importantly, they let you flesh out your account’s profile page, which has always been quite limited.
For your Instagram profile, you get a pic, a short bio, a location and a link to a website (the only active link you can use on the entire platform!). Now suddenly, if you choose to use them, the next thing someone sees while looking at your profile, after your photo and brief bio, is your Highlights. So if used well, they can really do a lot to help you tell your story in a more in-depth and relevant way for your audience.
Let’s say you own a restaurant. You might have one Highlight for salads, another for entrees, a third for desserts and a fourth showcasing the awesome artisanal cocktails you create in house.
Or let’s say you run a boutique. You could have a Highlight for hats, another for skirts, one for accessories, and one for handbags.
Highlights are a great way to show your audience what you do in a way that simply isn’t possible through the limitations offered in the Instagram profile section.
Instagram Stories Get Active With GIFs — January 2018
I’m not gonna lie — I’m one of those people that’s reluctant to update the iOS on my phone for fear of messing with something that’s not broken.
I was probably a year behind the current iOS when Instagram Stories introduced GIF stickers (GIFs are short videos that play on repeat) and I was so anxious to get access to them, I updated my phone.
My phone was fine, but alas, it was months before the amazing GIF library found its way into my account. Why? That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Instagram and Facebook don’t typically rollout new features to everyone all at once.
But suffice to say, I eventually got them and two plus years on, the novelty has still not worn off. Not even a little bit! 😉
I was probably a year behind the current iOS when Instagram Stories introduced GIF stickers (GIFs are short videos that play on repeat) and I was so anxious to get access to them, I updated my phone.
My phone was fine, but alas, it was months before the amazing GIF library found its way into my account. Why? That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Instagram and Facebook don’t typically rollout new features to everyone all at once.
But suffice to say, I eventually got them and two plus years on, the novelty has still not worn off. Not even a little bit! 😉
Instagram Stories Introduces Type Mode — February 2018
Instagram Stories was initially limited to sharing real-time photos or videos. But right from the beginning you could type or draw on top of them.
Well in February 2018, Instagram Stories rolled out Type Mode, enabling the option to share JUST text, without any associated media.
While it might not be the most engaging kind of content to share, there are certain times when all you need is text, and it’s nice to have the option.
Well in February 2018, Instagram Stories rolled out Type Mode, enabling the option to share JUST text, without any associated media.
While it might not be the most engaging kind of content to share, there are certain times when all you need is text, and it’s nice to have the option.
Music Comes to Instragram Stories — June 2018
This one is controversial y’all.
In June 2018, Instagram Stories partnered with Spotify to enable the sharing of short clips of songs directly into a Story.
That part is is simple enough. But do a Twitter search for “why can’t I share music on Instagram?,” scroll through the endless steam of angry, frustrated or just plain sad users, and you’ll see where the controversy lies.
Because here’s the thing: only personal accounts can share music, not business accounts (more on that in a bit). But really, even that isn’t exactly true! Sometimes business accounts can share music, usually however they can’t. Or that’s my experience anyway.
Why? Because Instagram is a website and there are glitches. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In June 2018, Instagram Stories partnered with Spotify to enable the sharing of short clips of songs directly into a Story.
That part is is simple enough. But do a Twitter search for “why can’t I share music on Instagram?,” scroll through the endless steam of angry, frustrated or just plain sad users, and you’ll see where the controversy lies.
Because here’s the thing: only personal accounts can share music, not business accounts (more on that in a bit). But really, even that isn’t exactly true! Sometimes business accounts can share music, usually however they can’t. Or that’s my experience anyway.
Why? Because Instagram is a website and there are glitches. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Instagram Stories Hits 400 Million Daily Active Users — June 2018
By June of 2018, Instagram Stories — less than two years after their rollout — had more daily users than there are people in the United States (or again, any other country on the planet save for India or China).
Not bad for a product that was initially designed simply to slow down a competitor!
Not bad for a product that was initially designed simply to slow down a competitor!
Instagram Doubles Down on Video With IGTV — June 2018
Facebook has been extremely invested in video for quite some time. So it is no surprise that Instagram would find ways to allow users to share videos longer than one minute.
In June 2018 they rolled out IGTV, short for Instagram Television (yup) enabling users to share videos ranging from 61 seconds up to ten minutes. Some accounts could go as long as an hour, but in my experience, most are limited to ten minutes.
The IGTV rollout was extremely flawed from the outset and widespread use has been so limited that they actually rolled it off into a standalone app where it could sit quietly and not bother anyone.
You can still watch users IGTVs (two points to anyone who knows who to do so!), but mostly it serves as a tool to let people trying to upload longer videos to be able do so. Of course if you do so, people can watch the first minute of your video in their feed, but then they have to switch over to the IGTV version to continue.
The biggest mistake Instagram made with IGTV bar-none (in my opinion of course) was limiting IGTV search to only apply to the handle of the user who uploaded the piece, and not to the accompanying descriptive text.
I’m clearly a huge social media nerd — when a platform rolls out a new product or feature, I’m going to try it. When IGTV launched, I quickly headed to the search bar and searched for bluegrass (I’m a bluegrass musician and fan). What did I find: content from a bank in Kentucky… and not much else. Because the search term only applied to the name of the sharing accounts, despite the fact that just like with any other post, you could describe the video you were sharing with accompanying text. Hell, you could even use hashtags, but since they were unsearchable, they were completely worthless.
For example, lets say Del McCoury or Punch Brothers upload a video to IGTV, and introduce it as their "new bluegrass track," I still couldn’t find it by searching bluegrass, because their name doesn’t have bluegrass in it. They could even tag it as #bluegrass and still nothing! Pretty silly, don’t you think?!
In June 2018 they rolled out IGTV, short for Instagram Television (yup) enabling users to share videos ranging from 61 seconds up to ten minutes. Some accounts could go as long as an hour, but in my experience, most are limited to ten minutes.
The IGTV rollout was extremely flawed from the outset and widespread use has been so limited that they actually rolled it off into a standalone app where it could sit quietly and not bother anyone.
You can still watch users IGTVs (two points to anyone who knows who to do so!), but mostly it serves as a tool to let people trying to upload longer videos to be able do so. Of course if you do so, people can watch the first minute of your video in their feed, but then they have to switch over to the IGTV version to continue.
The biggest mistake Instagram made with IGTV bar-none (in my opinion of course) was limiting IGTV search to only apply to the handle of the user who uploaded the piece, and not to the accompanying descriptive text.
I’m clearly a huge social media nerd — when a platform rolls out a new product or feature, I’m going to try it. When IGTV launched, I quickly headed to the search bar and searched for bluegrass (I’m a bluegrass musician and fan). What did I find: content from a bank in Kentucky… and not much else. Because the search term only applied to the name of the sharing accounts, despite the fact that just like with any other post, you could describe the video you were sharing with accompanying text. Hell, you could even use hashtags, but since they were unsearchable, they were completely worthless.
For example, lets say Del McCoury or Punch Brothers upload a video to IGTV, and introduce it as their "new bluegrass track," I still couldn’t find it by searching bluegrass, because their name doesn’t have bluegrass in it. They could even tag it as #bluegrass and still nothing! Pretty silly, don’t you think?!
Milestone: Instagram Hits 1 Billion Monthly Active Users — June 2018
Despite IGTV not giving them the bump they surely hoped for, less than eight years after launching, Instagram did what few have done before — they hit the billion active user mark.
Quite a feat for a company whose initial launch was just a knockoff of Foursquare!
Quite a feat for a company whose initial launch was just a knockoff of Foursquare!
Milestone: Instagram Stories Hits 500 Million Daily Active Users — January 2019
And not too long after that, Instagram Stories hit the 500 million daily active user mark. Expect this number to continue rising in the coming years.
While Instagram didn’t invent the concept of ephemeral content, they have certainly perfected it. This is one feature that I don’t think will be going away anytime soon.
While Instagram didn’t invent the concept of ephemeral content, they have certainly perfected it. This is one feature that I don’t think will be going away anytime soon.
Instagram Adds Reels in response to growth from rival tiktok
Stories was Facebook's response to Snapchat. So when TikTok raged onto the scene in the summer of 2020, it was clear that Facebook would have to respond. They initially created a standalone app called Lasso, mimicking many of features of TikTok. But that app was shut down before anyone had really even heard of it. (Honestly, had you heard of it?)
When that didn't work, they decided to stuff the complexity of an entire other social channel directly into Instagram. After all, it worked with Stories - why not try again?!
Thus Reels was born.
Reels hasn't seen the same kind of fast usership growth as Stories, mostly because it's more complicated to use than Stories and doesn't do as good a job at actually solving a problem for users.
Stories enabled users to worry less about creating a perfect take before sharing a picture or video. Reels... kinda does the opposite. Videos have to be a very specific amount of time (15 or 30 seconds) and have to tell an entire story in a way that Stories didn't require. Stories can run together to show the happening of an evening or a campaign. Reels standalone and have to start and conclude, while ensuring something interesting happens in a very short and concrete amount of time.
There's clearly an appetite for creating and consuming such content (see: the explosive growth of TikTok!) but it doesn't naturally compute than everyone on Instagram is going to take the time or effort to join in on the content creation.
That said in November of 2020, Instagram rolled out a massive redesign of the app, placing Reels front and center (it literally took the place of the button that, since day one, was used to create a post!). So clearly Instagram is invested in its success.
Side note: this redesign also added a shopping tab, as Instagram continues to invest in the ecommerce side of social.
Whether or not Reels can ever claim the kind of standalone success as Stories is to be determined, but it's clear that Instagram will continue to invest heavily in this internal spinoff. And as long as the political future of TikTok continues to remain murky, that decision from Zuck and co. makes sense.
When that didn't work, they decided to stuff the complexity of an entire other social channel directly into Instagram. After all, it worked with Stories - why not try again?!
Thus Reels was born.
Reels hasn't seen the same kind of fast usership growth as Stories, mostly because it's more complicated to use than Stories and doesn't do as good a job at actually solving a problem for users.
Stories enabled users to worry less about creating a perfect take before sharing a picture or video. Reels... kinda does the opposite. Videos have to be a very specific amount of time (15 or 30 seconds) and have to tell an entire story in a way that Stories didn't require. Stories can run together to show the happening of an evening or a campaign. Reels standalone and have to start and conclude, while ensuring something interesting happens in a very short and concrete amount of time.
There's clearly an appetite for creating and consuming such content (see: the explosive growth of TikTok!) but it doesn't naturally compute than everyone on Instagram is going to take the time or effort to join in on the content creation.
That said in November of 2020, Instagram rolled out a massive redesign of the app, placing Reels front and center (it literally took the place of the button that, since day one, was used to create a post!). So clearly Instagram is invested in its success.
Side note: this redesign also added a shopping tab, as Instagram continues to invest in the ecommerce side of social.
Whether or not Reels can ever claim the kind of standalone success as Stories is to be determined, but it's clear that Instagram will continue to invest heavily in this internal spinoff. And as long as the political future of TikTok continues to remain murky, that decision from Zuck and co. makes sense.
What's Next?
The above list of product rollouts and milestones is far from exhaustive. Very far in fact!
Despite Instagram retaining its simplicity year after year, it is actually constantly changing.
If I wanted to make this post twice as long, I easily could have done so! But for your sake and mine, I’m not going to do that.
That said, here are a few highlights we didn’t cover, but that are worth noting.
February 2016: Since Instagram has always been a mobile-first platform, it has bothered people to no end that you couldn’t login to more than one account at a time. Back at the beginning, if you wanted to share content from more than one account, you had to logout of one and login to the other to do so. In 2016, they added the option to be logged into five accounts at once (but no more). This was a much appreciated feature for anyone who works in social media!
March 2016: Instagram switches its feed from chronological, where you see whatever was posted most recently by anyone you follow, to algorithmic, where Instagram determines what content you see and in what order, based on what they think you will like.
May 2016: Instagram introduced a business account, which looks and feels identical to a regular account but comes with a few extra tools, the most important being analytics!
July 2016: They began to enable the ability to better moderate comments on your threads.
January 2018: Instagram added an “Archive,” storing all of your Stories even after they have disappeared. They are only visible to you, unless you have them shared in a Highlight. But with the Archive, you can go back and add old Stories to Archives, even if they’ve already disappeared from your profile.
September 2018: Instagram’s founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, resigned from the company. Notice how closely this follows the rollout of IGTV. Wonder if they’re related? #JustSaying
October 2019: Instagram removed the “Following” activity tab, which let you see the activity of the people you were following, breaking the hearts of exes and creeps everywhere!
This post could go on and on. But we’ll stop here.
What have been your favorite features Instagram has rolled out over the years? Are there any you wish they would retire from the platform?
Have their been any changes that you think should have been on this list but weren’t? Share them in the comments or hit me up on social.
In case it’s not obvious, I never get tired of talking about this stuff!
I hope this post was as helpful for you to read as it was for me to write.
If you enjoyed it, connect with me on Instagram (@jlemonsk). I regularly share platform updates, tricks, tips, hacks and the like. As well as the occasional pictures of my kids and my cat. (You know, all the good stuff!).
See you there.
Despite Instagram retaining its simplicity year after year, it is actually constantly changing.
If I wanted to make this post twice as long, I easily could have done so! But for your sake and mine, I’m not going to do that.
That said, here are a few highlights we didn’t cover, but that are worth noting.
February 2016: Since Instagram has always been a mobile-first platform, it has bothered people to no end that you couldn’t login to more than one account at a time. Back at the beginning, if you wanted to share content from more than one account, you had to logout of one and login to the other to do so. In 2016, they added the option to be logged into five accounts at once (but no more). This was a much appreciated feature for anyone who works in social media!
March 2016: Instagram switches its feed from chronological, where you see whatever was posted most recently by anyone you follow, to algorithmic, where Instagram determines what content you see and in what order, based on what they think you will like.
May 2016: Instagram introduced a business account, which looks and feels identical to a regular account but comes with a few extra tools, the most important being analytics!
July 2016: They began to enable the ability to better moderate comments on your threads.
January 2018: Instagram added an “Archive,” storing all of your Stories even after they have disappeared. They are only visible to you, unless you have them shared in a Highlight. But with the Archive, you can go back and add old Stories to Archives, even if they’ve already disappeared from your profile.
September 2018: Instagram’s founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, resigned from the company. Notice how closely this follows the rollout of IGTV. Wonder if they’re related? #JustSaying
October 2019: Instagram removed the “Following” activity tab, which let you see the activity of the people you were following, breaking the hearts of exes and creeps everywhere!
This post could go on and on. But we’ll stop here.
What have been your favorite features Instagram has rolled out over the years? Are there any you wish they would retire from the platform?
Have their been any changes that you think should have been on this list but weren’t? Share them in the comments or hit me up on social.
In case it’s not obvious, I never get tired of talking about this stuff!
I hope this post was as helpful for you to read as it was for me to write.
If you enjoyed it, connect with me on Instagram (@jlemonsk). I regularly share platform updates, tricks, tips, hacks and the like. As well as the occasional pictures of my kids and my cat. (You know, all the good stuff!).
See you there.
One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn't showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.
The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we'll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.
Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.
Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit.
Or scroll down and listen to them both below.
The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we'll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.
Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.
Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit.
Or scroll down and listen to them both below.
Full Episode Transcript
\Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.
Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.
The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.
This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.
To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!
He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.
Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”
Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.
So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.
So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:
First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.
On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.
On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.
Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.
You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!
So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.
Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:
Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.
Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.
Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and price!
Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.
While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.
Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL
But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.
Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.
In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!
PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.
The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.
This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.
To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!
He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.
Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”
Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.
So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.
So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:
First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.
On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.
On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.
Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.
You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!
So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.
Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:
Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.
Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.
Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and price!
Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.
While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.
Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL
But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.
Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.
In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!
PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
So Much Better by Evan olson (Original Version)
Better Than (Reply All Version)
I LOVE Twitter lists. They are an amazing listening tool, helping to bring order and clarify to the chaos that is the Twittersphere.
You can use them to easily simplify who you are following at any given moment on Twitter. While I follow many accounts, there are times where I ONLY want to know what a few of them are saying. So I have a Twitter list just for them.
I love them so much, the second episode of my podcast, #StepUpYourSocial, was about how, when and why to use them. (You can listen to that episode at stepupyoursocial.com or wherever you stream podcasts).
Whenever I run trainings on Twitter, I always highly recommend that people utilize this amazing tool.
I even include it on my list of free tools you should be using but probably aren’t and recommend that even if your brand isn’t on Twitter, you have an account you can use to build lists and monitor your competitors, customers, influencers, etc. just as a way to keep tabs on your field.
So yeah, I’m a fan.
There are two types of lists: public and private.
Public lists can be followed by anybody and they are visible through your profile. And whenever you add someone to such a list, they get a notification. They are public.
Private lists on the other hand exist only for you. No one will ever know that such a list exists. No one can follow it or even find it unless they are logged in as you. And of course no one knows when you add them to it. They are private.
But here’s the thing — nothing online is ever actually private.
When I build private lists for political campaigns, I also give them overly-guarded innocuous names like “interesting” or “other campaigns.” I would never call them “competition,” “the enemy,” or, as we’ll soon see, “haters.”
Likewise, when I work with businesses or nonprofits on developing their own listening tools or prepping them for crisis management, I always push them to do the same. Don’t call the trolls “trolls.” Call them “interesting accounts,” or “people to follow.”
Why? you might ask. These are private lists. No one will ever know that they exist.
Well, that’s true. Right up until it’s not.
I was (and am) always afraid of hacking. I have run very large Twitter accounts and you never know what’s going to happen. If heaven forbid someone hacked into one of those accounts, it would be awful. Because they could post whatever they wanted.
But there would be nothing incriminating or embarrassing in those accounts for them to find. Because our campaign doesn’t have “enemies” or “haters.” It has “accounts to follow” or “notables.” It would have to be a pretty quiet news day for that story to get written.
Well as it turns out, my caution was extremely valid. Because Vice just reported on a bug that led to people being notified when they were added to... private lists. 😳 😳 😳
The bug was first noticed when a Vice reporter was added to a PRIVATE list called… you guessed it… “haters.”
Who’s fault was this? Twitter’s of course!
Who’s problem is it though (should it happen to you)? Yeah, YOU know.
I always advise that you never put anything in writing you aren’t prepared to see in the paper. But that advice definitely goes beyond writing.
Being in a sketchy Facebook Group — even if it’s a secret Group — can still come out. Having a secondary account you use online to talk about how hot or awesome you are… is stupid. And risky!
And labeling Twitter lists, even private ones, with any name that would embarrass you were it to come out — is just a bad idea.
Be smart out there y’all! The internet is our permanent record.
You can use them to easily simplify who you are following at any given moment on Twitter. While I follow many accounts, there are times where I ONLY want to know what a few of them are saying. So I have a Twitter list just for them.
I love them so much, the second episode of my podcast, #StepUpYourSocial, was about how, when and why to use them. (You can listen to that episode at stepupyoursocial.com or wherever you stream podcasts).
Whenever I run trainings on Twitter, I always highly recommend that people utilize this amazing tool.
I even include it on my list of free tools you should be using but probably aren’t and recommend that even if your brand isn’t on Twitter, you have an account you can use to build lists and monitor your competitors, customers, influencers, etc. just as a way to keep tabs on your field.
So yeah, I’m a fan.
There are two types of lists: public and private.
Public lists can be followed by anybody and they are visible through your profile. And whenever you add someone to such a list, they get a notification. They are public.
Private lists on the other hand exist only for you. No one will ever know that such a list exists. No one can follow it or even find it unless they are logged in as you. And of course no one knows when you add them to it. They are private.
But here’s the thing — nothing online is ever actually private.
When I build private lists for political campaigns, I also give them overly-guarded innocuous names like “interesting” or “other campaigns.” I would never call them “competition,” “the enemy,” or, as we’ll soon see, “haters.”
Likewise, when I work with businesses or nonprofits on developing their own listening tools or prepping them for crisis management, I always push them to do the same. Don’t call the trolls “trolls.” Call them “interesting accounts,” or “people to follow.”
Why? you might ask. These are private lists. No one will ever know that they exist.
Well, that’s true. Right up until it’s not.
I was (and am) always afraid of hacking. I have run very large Twitter accounts and you never know what’s going to happen. If heaven forbid someone hacked into one of those accounts, it would be awful. Because they could post whatever they wanted.
But there would be nothing incriminating or embarrassing in those accounts for them to find. Because our campaign doesn’t have “enemies” or “haters.” It has “accounts to follow” or “notables.” It would have to be a pretty quiet news day for that story to get written.
Well as it turns out, my caution was extremely valid. Because Vice just reported on a bug that led to people being notified when they were added to... private lists. 😳 😳 😳
The bug was first noticed when a Vice reporter was added to a PRIVATE list called… you guessed it… “haters.”
Who’s fault was this? Twitter’s of course!
Who’s problem is it though (should it happen to you)? Yeah, YOU know.
I always advise that you never put anything in writing you aren’t prepared to see in the paper. But that advice definitely goes beyond writing.
Being in a sketchy Facebook Group — even if it’s a secret Group — can still come out. Having a secondary account you use online to talk about how hot or awesome you are… is stupid. And risky!
And labeling Twitter lists, even private ones, with any name that would embarrass you were it to come out — is just a bad idea.
Be smart out there y’all! The internet is our permanent record.
The Episode:
Full Episode Transcript, Along With Links to All Mentioned Free digital tools:
Facebook loves video and really wants you to share videos to the platform. When you do so, they reward you with views. But here’s a scary statistic: around 85% of Facebook video is watched… without sound. So what are you to do? Hone in on your acting skills? Stockpile posters and write out the accompanying text? I won’t tell you NOT to do either of those. But there’s a far simpler option available to you built right into Facebook.
Once you've added your video to Facebook, but before you've posted it, you’ll see a menu on the right side of your post. (This only works on your computer, not on mobile.) You’ll see an option to replace your thumbnail. You can either select another moment from the video or upload something you created. In other word, good news: you'll never again have to start off you video with an awkward open-mouth shot. Then below that, you’ll have the option to add subtitles and captions. Select that, pick your language, and Facebook will auto-create subtitles for your video. Assuming your video isn’t too long, it should only take a few moments for them to do so. Once they've been created, you can go through and edit them to make sure they are perfect. Then you can add them to your video and voila, instead of speaking to the 15% of your audience who DO listen with the sound on, now you can now speak to all 100% of them.
It’s worth mentioning this also works with live videos. But only after the fact. Once your video has been posted to your page, click the top right icon to edit it and you’ll get the same option to customize your thumbnail and to create subtitles.
So that’s one free digital tool you should DEFINITELY be using, but probably aren’t.
In this episode, I’m going to run through a bunch more. Let’s dig in.
Let me clarify that, per the title of the episode, every tool I am mentioning today is free. But it’s worth noting that many of them have premium versions you can pay for. But not one of these awesome digital tools requires a credit card to start using.
So let’s get into some more free tools you should be using.
In previous episodes of Step Up Your Social, we’ve covered Google Alerts, Facebook Pages to Watch (both in episode 10) and Twitter lists (in episode 2). Those are three killer, free listening tools. Let’s add one more to the list.
Feedly. Feedly is an RSS tool. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.) Instead of having to jump all over the internet, looking at countless news sources and blogs, you can create a free Feedly account and then subscribe to as many publications as you want. You can bundle your publishers by category and then, whenever you are looking to catch up with the news — or importantly, wherever you know you need to share something on social but are not sure what — you can head to Feedly and see all the content that every publication or blog you follow has posted. You can even break down content by category, so you can just see what’s going on in the world of Facebook, or email marketing, or minor league baseball or whatever. Instead of searching the internet for relevant news, use Feedly to create a pipeline to bring all that relevant news directly to you.
Next up, let’s look at two powerful apps owned by Instagram.
There are no shortage of free photo and video apps or tools in the app store. But these two are owned by Instagram, so you know they must be good.
The first is called Layout, and it lets you take multiple pictures and lay them out as you want. You can easily drag and drop to switch pics or to change the size of one image or another. It's very easy to use.
The second is called Hyperlapse. I really love this one. It’s just a simple camera app, but it lets you create videos that can be sped up as desired. You have to take the video in the app for it to work, but once you’re done filming, you can speed up the video from 2x up to 12x speed. So let’s say you stick your phone in a tripod and film you and your team setting up for an event. You can take that footage, speed it up by a factor of 12 and suddenly your 15 minute set-up can be viewed in under a minute. Very powerful storytelling tool for the right situation! Quick caveat: for obvious reasons, it will record video without sound. If you want, you can add sound in after the fact. But the app will not capture any audio accompanying your video.
I don’t refer to many digital tools as magic, but this next one really kinda is. It’s called Remove.bg (as in remove background). And that’s exactly what it does. Caveat: it only works for people, not things.
You can use this tool on your computer or phone by visiting Remove.bg. Upload a photo and then tell it to remove background. It will take about 4 seconds and then, just like that, you'll have the person (or people) in your photo captured against a transparent background. In my experience, they aren’t 100% accurate. They’re only about… 97% or so. Not bad for a free tool and four seconds! You can then erase anything they missed or add back anything you want to keep.
Then you can export that file and upload it somewhere else to edit it, or just add a background to it right through their site. You can upload your own background files, or select from their photo library.
Anyone with any Photoshop experience can do this same thing. But not as quickly as remove.bg. And probably not for free!
Speaking of graphic design, there are a million free tools out there that will help you design better graphics, add logos to your pictures and do plenty of other basic graphic design work without having to invest years into learning Photoshop. But Canva was the originator of the field and they are still the go to for all my “graphic designs for dummies” needs.
They're free to use, but they do offer a premium version that adds perks like letting you store your brand’s colors and create more advanced file storage systems. You should also know that despite having an endless amount of pictures, icons and pre-made templates to pull from, a bunch are free but many are not. So be aware that you aren’t building something you love using a paid pic or icon, unless you are prepared to pull out your credit card. That said, most assets can be bought for just $1, so you don’t have to worry about breaking your budget.
Another great thing about Canva is that it's all web based. So you can login on your computer, start a design. Then head to your Canva app and keep working on the go.
It’s also worth noting that Canva.org offers free premium options for nonprofits.
And since we’re talking about stock photos, my go to stock photo source these days is Unsplash. You can search the site by keyword, find beautiful, high quality photos that you can then use for free. They request, but don’t require, giving credit to the photographer.
I will add that I’m not a lawyer and there are some fine print things that might affect you and your brand. If you have a lawyer, ask them to vet the language per your needs. If you don’t, head to Google and get lots of different takes on what you can and what you can’t do with “free” stock images.
I’m going to close my list with two quick writing assistance tools. The first is Grammarly, a free extension you can add to your browser (and your phone as well, though I’ve stuck with just using it on my computer). It’s essentially spellcheck for everything you do online. It won’t make you a better writer per se, but it will help ensure you don’t embarrass yourself with typos, missing commas or by using the wrong your.
The second one is called Hemingway App. This one may actually make you a better writer.
Copy and paste your text into Hemingway App and it will flag sentences that are hard to read, words that you can simplify, overuse of the passive voice and anything else keeping you from writing more like Ernest Hemingway.
So that’s my list. I’d love to hear any tools that you use that I didn’t include. Share them in the comments, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn at Reverbal Communications or tweet at me using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
As always, if this was helpful to you, I’d really appreciate a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and will go a long way towards helping us reach a larger audience.
Once you've added your video to Facebook, but before you've posted it, you’ll see a menu on the right side of your post. (This only works on your computer, not on mobile.) You’ll see an option to replace your thumbnail. You can either select another moment from the video or upload something you created. In other word, good news: you'll never again have to start off you video with an awkward open-mouth shot. Then below that, you’ll have the option to add subtitles and captions. Select that, pick your language, and Facebook will auto-create subtitles for your video. Assuming your video isn’t too long, it should only take a few moments for them to do so. Once they've been created, you can go through and edit them to make sure they are perfect. Then you can add them to your video and voila, instead of speaking to the 15% of your audience who DO listen with the sound on, now you can now speak to all 100% of them.
It’s worth mentioning this also works with live videos. But only after the fact. Once your video has been posted to your page, click the top right icon to edit it and you’ll get the same option to customize your thumbnail and to create subtitles.
So that’s one free digital tool you should DEFINITELY be using, but probably aren’t.
In this episode, I’m going to run through a bunch more. Let’s dig in.
Let me clarify that, per the title of the episode, every tool I am mentioning today is free. But it’s worth noting that many of them have premium versions you can pay for. But not one of these awesome digital tools requires a credit card to start using.
So let’s get into some more free tools you should be using.
In previous episodes of Step Up Your Social, we’ve covered Google Alerts, Facebook Pages to Watch (both in episode 10) and Twitter lists (in episode 2). Those are three killer, free listening tools. Let’s add one more to the list.
Feedly. Feedly is an RSS tool. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.) Instead of having to jump all over the internet, looking at countless news sources and blogs, you can create a free Feedly account and then subscribe to as many publications as you want. You can bundle your publishers by category and then, whenever you are looking to catch up with the news — or importantly, wherever you know you need to share something on social but are not sure what — you can head to Feedly and see all the content that every publication or blog you follow has posted. You can even break down content by category, so you can just see what’s going on in the world of Facebook, or email marketing, or minor league baseball or whatever. Instead of searching the internet for relevant news, use Feedly to create a pipeline to bring all that relevant news directly to you.
Next up, let’s look at two powerful apps owned by Instagram.
There are no shortage of free photo and video apps or tools in the app store. But these two are owned by Instagram, so you know they must be good.
The first is called Layout, and it lets you take multiple pictures and lay them out as you want. You can easily drag and drop to switch pics or to change the size of one image or another. It's very easy to use.
The second is called Hyperlapse. I really love this one. It’s just a simple camera app, but it lets you create videos that can be sped up as desired. You have to take the video in the app for it to work, but once you’re done filming, you can speed up the video from 2x up to 12x speed. So let’s say you stick your phone in a tripod and film you and your team setting up for an event. You can take that footage, speed it up by a factor of 12 and suddenly your 15 minute set-up can be viewed in under a minute. Very powerful storytelling tool for the right situation! Quick caveat: for obvious reasons, it will record video without sound. If you want, you can add sound in after the fact. But the app will not capture any audio accompanying your video.
I don’t refer to many digital tools as magic, but this next one really kinda is. It’s called Remove.bg (as in remove background). And that’s exactly what it does. Caveat: it only works for people, not things.
You can use this tool on your computer or phone by visiting Remove.bg. Upload a photo and then tell it to remove background. It will take about 4 seconds and then, just like that, you'll have the person (or people) in your photo captured against a transparent background. In my experience, they aren’t 100% accurate. They’re only about… 97% or so. Not bad for a free tool and four seconds! You can then erase anything they missed or add back anything you want to keep.
Then you can export that file and upload it somewhere else to edit it, or just add a background to it right through their site. You can upload your own background files, or select from their photo library.
Anyone with any Photoshop experience can do this same thing. But not as quickly as remove.bg. And probably not for free!
Speaking of graphic design, there are a million free tools out there that will help you design better graphics, add logos to your pictures and do plenty of other basic graphic design work without having to invest years into learning Photoshop. But Canva was the originator of the field and they are still the go to for all my “graphic designs for dummies” needs.
They're free to use, but they do offer a premium version that adds perks like letting you store your brand’s colors and create more advanced file storage systems. You should also know that despite having an endless amount of pictures, icons and pre-made templates to pull from, a bunch are free but many are not. So be aware that you aren’t building something you love using a paid pic or icon, unless you are prepared to pull out your credit card. That said, most assets can be bought for just $1, so you don’t have to worry about breaking your budget.
Another great thing about Canva is that it's all web based. So you can login on your computer, start a design. Then head to your Canva app and keep working on the go.
It’s also worth noting that Canva.org offers free premium options for nonprofits.
And since we’re talking about stock photos, my go to stock photo source these days is Unsplash. You can search the site by keyword, find beautiful, high quality photos that you can then use for free. They request, but don’t require, giving credit to the photographer.
I will add that I’m not a lawyer and there are some fine print things that might affect you and your brand. If you have a lawyer, ask them to vet the language per your needs. If you don’t, head to Google and get lots of different takes on what you can and what you can’t do with “free” stock images.
I’m going to close my list with two quick writing assistance tools. The first is Grammarly, a free extension you can add to your browser (and your phone as well, though I’ve stuck with just using it on my computer). It’s essentially spellcheck for everything you do online. It won’t make you a better writer per se, but it will help ensure you don’t embarrass yourself with typos, missing commas or by using the wrong your.
The second one is called Hemingway App. This one may actually make you a better writer.
Copy and paste your text into Hemingway App and it will flag sentences that are hard to read, words that you can simplify, overuse of the passive voice and anything else keeping you from writing more like Ernest Hemingway.
So that’s my list. I’d love to hear any tools that you use that I didn’t include. Share them in the comments, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn at Reverbal Communications or tweet at me using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
As always, if this was helpful to you, I’d really appreciate a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and will go a long way towards helping us reach a larger audience.
The episode:
The transcript, along with links and screenshots:
Last week, a “YouTube Star” named Drew Gooden tweeted “Excuse me @Delta but this is outrageous. I just got sucked through the toilet hole in one of your aircrafts and am now hurtling through the sky, can I get my money back? This never happens on Southwest.”
Obviously this is a ridiculous tweet, intended for comedic purposes. But the person handling customer service for Delta that day, who was clearly in dire need of a few pots of coffee, apparently didn’t read beyond the first line before responding “Hello Drew, I am sorry to learn of this, can you provide more detail to what occurred. HBB.”
Drew promptly responded “got sucked through toilet hole.”
Let’s take a step back and think about how this happened.
Now what the airlines lack in legroom, they more than make up for in social media budgets. Who amongst hasn’t used social media to reach out to an airline to complain about something, only to be met with a pseudo-personalized response — replete with an employee’s first name or initials — only to be informed they can’t actually help us with our problem but that they hope we have a nice flight (even though we’re writing to ask why our flight has been delayed 18 hours, with no end in sight!).
But still, they are paying people to monitor their channels, and provide quick responses to any and every query sent their way, including paying HBB to respond to Drew when he complains about being sucked out of one of their toilet holes.
What’s the lesson from this ridiculous exchange: social listening is good. But only, if you are actually hearing what your audience is saying.
Now this podcast exists to share quick, actionable tips to help you step up your social. In this episode, we’re going to look at 6 more times the airlines blew it on social media, and talk about what we can learn from their collective mistakes. Let’s let their fails become our best practices.
So without further ado:
Social Fail Number 2: The lesson here is the same as in the previous example, but it’s too good not to also share.
When American Airlines merged with US Airways, they created the world’s largest airline. Twitter user Mark Murphy tweeted his congrats. And this new mega-airline was quick to reply, thanking him for his support.
The problem: Mark’s congratulatory tweet actually read: “Congrats to @americanair and @usairways on creating the largest, shittiest airline in the world.”
So yeah, the airline was listening, but they weren’t actually hearing.
Social Fail Number 3: During the 2014 World Cup, the US was playing Ghana. When the US men’s team scored their second (game-winning) goal, Delta was excited to share the news with its fans. Smart. Delta serves an international audience of people who like to travel. Why wouldn’t they want to show their audience that they are in on the fun?
To represent the US, they used an image of the Statue of Liberty. To represent Ghana, they used an image of a giraffe. The problem? There are no giraffes in Ghana.
What can we learn from this mistake? Don’t make assumptions. Five minutes on Wikipedia could have prevented years of embarrassment for a brand that was trying to show they were with it, and instead showed how little they understood the world they were trying to connect.
Now what the airlines lack in legroom, they more than make up for in social media budgets. Who amongst hasn’t used social media to reach out to an airline to complain about something, only to be met with a pseudo-personalized response — replete with an employee’s first name or initials — only to be informed they can’t actually help us with our problem but that they hope we have a nice flight (even though we’re writing to ask why our flight has been delayed 18 hours, with no end in sight!).
But still, they are paying people to monitor their channels, and provide quick responses to any and every query sent their way, including paying HBB to respond to Drew when he complains about being sucked out of one of their toilet holes.
What’s the lesson from this ridiculous exchange: social listening is good. But only, if you are actually hearing what your audience is saying.
Now this podcast exists to share quick, actionable tips to help you step up your social. In this episode, we’re going to look at 6 more times the airlines blew it on social media, and talk about what we can learn from their collective mistakes. Let’s let their fails become our best practices.
So without further ado:
Social Fail Number 2: The lesson here is the same as in the previous example, but it’s too good not to also share.
When American Airlines merged with US Airways, they created the world’s largest airline. Twitter user Mark Murphy tweeted his congrats. And this new mega-airline was quick to reply, thanking him for his support.
The problem: Mark’s congratulatory tweet actually read: “Congrats to @americanair and @usairways on creating the largest, shittiest airline in the world.”
So yeah, the airline was listening, but they weren’t actually hearing.
Social Fail Number 3: During the 2014 World Cup, the US was playing Ghana. When the US men’s team scored their second (game-winning) goal, Delta was excited to share the news with its fans. Smart. Delta serves an international audience of people who like to travel. Why wouldn’t they want to show their audience that they are in on the fun?
To represent the US, they used an image of the Statue of Liberty. To represent Ghana, they used an image of a giraffe. The problem? There are no giraffes in Ghana.
What can we learn from this mistake? Don’t make assumptions. Five minutes on Wikipedia could have prevented years of embarrassment for a brand that was trying to show they were with it, and instead showed how little they understood the world they were trying to connect.
Social Fail Number 4: This one isn’t actually from an airline. It’s from an airport. But it still made our list.
In 2013, Luton Airport in London posted a photo of a recent incident from Chicago in which a plane had skidded of a runway, promising that “Because we are such a super airport… this is what we prevent you from when it snows… Weeeee :)”
In 2013, Luton Airport in London posted a photo of a recent incident from Chicago in which a plane had skidded of a runway, promising that “Because we are such a super airport… this is what we prevent you from when it snows… Weeeee :)”
Let’s start with the fact that this is just bad writing. But convulsion aside, the real problem with this post is that they were using a plane crash as a punchline, despite the fact that a six year old boy had died in the incident.
Even if your brand’s voice is bold and irreverent, know when it’s appropriate to make jokes about incidents involving dead kids? Umm, let’s go with never. Sound good?
For Social Fail Number 5: let’s start with the lesson and then move backwards. Contests and hashtags can be great ways to drum up User Generated Content and to encourage your audience to sing your praises to their communities. But they aren’t magic, and if you are struggling with a PR crisis, they can often create more harm than good.
This is a lesson that Qantas Airways learned the hard way.
Qantas wanted to drum up some online excitement for their brand, so they decided to give away a first class gift package by having people tell them about their “dream luxury inflight experience” using the hashtag #QantasLuxury.
The responses came streaming in. But they weren’t what Qantas had in mind.
Here are just a few examples:
This is not the story that Qantas wanted their audience to share with their networks. But even an intern should have foreseen that you can’t use a hashtag to solve a PR problem. A hashtag is offering the floor to your community. And if you think their stories MIGHT be more problematic than positive, maybe find another outreach approach.
Social Fail Number 6 was a famous one — United Airlines overbooked a flight and instead of raising the incentives until someone volunteered to leave the plane, they opted instead to violently drag a man — a doctor in fact — off of their plane. Someone shot a video of the brutal altercation and of course it went viral.
So I guess the lesson here is don’t be a jerk to your customers. But actually, I’m including this one on the list for a different reason.
As bad as the video was — and it was BAD — their real social media fail came from their response.
Bad things happen. An overzealous security guard or a stressed out flight attendant made a mistake and let their emotions get the better of them. Give it time and enough volume, it’s going to happen.
But when you inevitably make your apology, you better make it good. Needless to say, United blew that as well, or this issue wouldn’t have made today’s list.
A United exec put out a statement that essentially blamed the passenger, even though it was United who oversold the flight in the first place.
Additional apologies followed but it’s safe to say that this issue will stick with their brand for some time to come.
The lesson: if you are going to issue an apology, make it right the first time!
Which brings us to Social Fail Number 7, the final mistake on our list. This one is a doozy, and it’s — to put it mildly — NSFW (Not Suitable For Work).
In April, 2014, a Twitter user, Elle, tweeted her frustration with US Airways regarding an issue with her flight.
Five hours later, US Airways responded to let her know they were sorry.
Elle didn’t accept their apology. “Yeah, you seem so very sorry. So sorry, in fact, that you couldn’t be bothered to address my other tweets.”
US Airways responded with the following: “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up.”
Accompanying this tweet was almost definitely the most explicit, shocking and inappropriate image every tweeted out by a Fortune 500 company, if not by any company ever!
It’s so NSFW I won’t even describe it here, other than to say it involved a toy airplane.
The tweet was deleted within an hour, but it is still very much lives on via screenshots all over the internet (even though I kinda wish it didn’t).
So here’s the lesson: don’t put anything on the internet, whether in a DM, a secret Facebook group or certainly not in response to a customer, if you aren’t prepared to see it quoted or screenshot across the internet.
Also, trust the people you have helping you manage your social accounts. Like, really.
Special thanks to Tre Temperilli for providing research assistance for this episode.
If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving it a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and can go a long way towards helping grow our audience.
Thank you and be smart out there.
Even if your brand’s voice is bold and irreverent, know when it’s appropriate to make jokes about incidents involving dead kids? Umm, let’s go with never. Sound good?
For Social Fail Number 5: let’s start with the lesson and then move backwards. Contests and hashtags can be great ways to drum up User Generated Content and to encourage your audience to sing your praises to their communities. But they aren’t magic, and if you are struggling with a PR crisis, they can often create more harm than good.
This is a lesson that Qantas Airways learned the hard way.
Qantas wanted to drum up some online excitement for their brand, so they decided to give away a first class gift package by having people tell them about their “dream luxury inflight experience” using the hashtag #QantasLuxury.
The responses came streaming in. But they weren’t what Qantas had in mind.
Here are just a few examples:
- Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire
- #QantasLuxury is a massive executive bonus while your workers starve and your former customers choke
- Flights that leave on schedule because Management doesn’t arbitrarily shut down the airline #QantasLuxury
- #qantasluxury having a skybed so “superior in its class” you have to be under 5 foot to be able to use it with your legs straight.
- #qantasluxury – is not being told you can apply for refund online & finding out they only refund via a phone # that no one answers for 4hrs
This is not the story that Qantas wanted their audience to share with their networks. But even an intern should have foreseen that you can’t use a hashtag to solve a PR problem. A hashtag is offering the floor to your community. And if you think their stories MIGHT be more problematic than positive, maybe find another outreach approach.
Social Fail Number 6 was a famous one — United Airlines overbooked a flight and instead of raising the incentives until someone volunteered to leave the plane, they opted instead to violently drag a man — a doctor in fact — off of their plane. Someone shot a video of the brutal altercation and of course it went viral.
So I guess the lesson here is don’t be a jerk to your customers. But actually, I’m including this one on the list for a different reason.
As bad as the video was — and it was BAD — their real social media fail came from their response.
Bad things happen. An overzealous security guard or a stressed out flight attendant made a mistake and let their emotions get the better of them. Give it time and enough volume, it’s going to happen.
But when you inevitably make your apology, you better make it good. Needless to say, United blew that as well, or this issue wouldn’t have made today’s list.
A United exec put out a statement that essentially blamed the passenger, even though it was United who oversold the flight in the first place.
Additional apologies followed but it’s safe to say that this issue will stick with their brand for some time to come.
The lesson: if you are going to issue an apology, make it right the first time!
Which brings us to Social Fail Number 7, the final mistake on our list. This one is a doozy, and it’s — to put it mildly — NSFW (Not Suitable For Work).
In April, 2014, a Twitter user, Elle, tweeted her frustration with US Airways regarding an issue with her flight.
Five hours later, US Airways responded to let her know they were sorry.
Elle didn’t accept their apology. “Yeah, you seem so very sorry. So sorry, in fact, that you couldn’t be bothered to address my other tweets.”
US Airways responded with the following: “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up.”
Accompanying this tweet was almost definitely the most explicit, shocking and inappropriate image every tweeted out by a Fortune 500 company, if not by any company ever!
It’s so NSFW I won’t even describe it here, other than to say it involved a toy airplane.
The tweet was deleted within an hour, but it is still very much lives on via screenshots all over the internet (even though I kinda wish it didn’t).
So here’s the lesson: don’t put anything on the internet, whether in a DM, a secret Facebook group or certainly not in response to a customer, if you aren’t prepared to see it quoted or screenshot across the internet.
Also, trust the people you have helping you manage your social accounts. Like, really.
Special thanks to Tre Temperilli for providing research assistance for this episode.
If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving it a review wherever you stream podcasts. It will only take you a moment and can go a long way towards helping grow our audience.
Thank you and be smart out there.
There are three primary reasons you should be blogging to grow your brand:
1) It's great for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
2) It positions you as an expert in your field
3) It creates endless bridges between your social media and your website
In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we dig into all three of these reasons, as well as how to approach creating content, the difference between timely and evergreen content... and a whole lot more!
Tune in today right here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
1) It's great for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
2) It positions you as an expert in your field
3) It creates endless bridges between your social media and your website
In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we dig into all three of these reasons, as well as how to approach creating content, the difference between timely and evergreen content... and a whole lot more!
Tune in today right here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
A supporter spotlight is an opportunity for you to shine a light on one of your supporters and talk about how great they are. It can be a blog or a Facebook post, a short video on Instagram or whatever else makes sense for your brand. The primary thing is that you are shouting someone important to your brand.
And support spotlights are win-win-win.
In this episode, we'll cover the what, the how and the why. Listen now below, or wherever you stream podcasts.
And support spotlights are win-win-win.
In this episode, we'll cover the what, the how and the why. Listen now below, or wherever you stream podcasts.
Full Episode Transcript
Supporter spotlights are win-win-win.
Before we delve into our 3 wins, let’s real quick define the term “supporter.”
A supporter isn’t someone who buys your products — it’s someone who waits in line to be the first one to buy your product. Or regularly tweets or posts about themselves using your product.
It’s not the person who donates to your organization, but the person who calls on all their friends to do the same.
It’s not the person who comes to your event. But the person who shows up early and stays late to help set-up and tear-down.
Put shortly — your supporters are the people without whom your brand couldn’t exist.
A supporter spotlight is quite simply an opportunity for you to shine a light on one of your supporters and talk about how great they are. It can be a blog or a Facebook post, a short video on Instagram or whatever else makes sense for your brand. The primary thing is that you are shouting someone important to your brand.
So that’s the what. Now let’s talk about the why and breakdown the 3 wins involved in a supporter spotlight.
Win 1 — you are showing the world that your company or organization is bigger than just you and your paid staff.
There are people — not motivated by a paycheck — who care about you, your product or your mission.
Introduce these people to your audience. In the process you’ll inspire other members of your audience to want to dig deeper and learn more about what makes you, your product or your service so special. I mean after all, someone got up at 3am to buy that thing you sell. It must be pretty amazing!
Win 2 — This one is the most obvious. A supporter spotlight is literally a digital thank you. If your supporters are awesome, and treat you right, why wouldn’t you want to give them a shoutout for being so great.
Win 3 — This is the one that can really help you move the needle.
When you write up your supporter spotlight — you want to make it not just about how great your supporter is generally. You want to make it about why your supporter loves your brand the way they do.
Let’s say you’re a nonprofit that focuses on planting trees and gardens in urban areas. There are a lot of reasons someone might be excited about your work. Maybe it’s the after school programs you run. Maybe it’s the environmental component of your work. Maybe it’s the fact that you are beautifying the city by turning brown lots into community gardens.
When you write up your post thanking your support for being so great — clarify what it is that he or she loves about your work. And be specific. Because invariably, that person is going to share your supporter shoutout with his or her own audience. And guess what — if that person loves that you have an after school program for kids — that person probably has a lot of friends in their network that also have kids. And those people MAY have heard of you, but now you are providing this supporter an opportunity to introduce you and your brand directly to his or her friends and family… in your own words! You are talking about how great you are, but from the perspective of someone who already loves you and your work!
When I served as the digital director on a governor’s race, we did 45 such supporter spotlights throughout the final 30 days of the campaign. In every one, we introduced the supporter we were spotlighting, talked about where they lived and what their role was in the campaign. Then we talked about what got them excited about the candidate.
If they were a teacher, and liked that the candidate had a great education policy, we talked about that. If they were a nurse, and they were excited about the candidate’s healthcare plan, we talked about that. If they were in a union, and liked the candidate’s union stance, that was the focus of the post.
So when we shared our supporter spotlight, we were showing the world that the campaign was bigger than simply the candidate and his staff (win 1). We were thanking the people who had been working tirelessly to help get us to election day (win 2). And we were talking about why our supporters was so passionate about the candidate in a way that we knew would resonate with their own personal communities (win 3).
We knew that the teacher would have lots of teacher friends, the nurse lots of nurse friends, the union member… you get the idea. So when they invariably shared our spotlight, that allowed us to reach directly out to their friends and networks, talking about how great we were on an issue that we already knew was near and dear to their heart.
Win. Win. Win.
So find the people who help keep your brand going and thank them. It’s the least you can do! And you’ll probably grow your brand in the process!
Before we delve into our 3 wins, let’s real quick define the term “supporter.”
A supporter isn’t someone who buys your products — it’s someone who waits in line to be the first one to buy your product. Or regularly tweets or posts about themselves using your product.
It’s not the person who donates to your organization, but the person who calls on all their friends to do the same.
It’s not the person who comes to your event. But the person who shows up early and stays late to help set-up and tear-down.
Put shortly — your supporters are the people without whom your brand couldn’t exist.
A supporter spotlight is quite simply an opportunity for you to shine a light on one of your supporters and talk about how great they are. It can be a blog or a Facebook post, a short video on Instagram or whatever else makes sense for your brand. The primary thing is that you are shouting someone important to your brand.
So that’s the what. Now let’s talk about the why and breakdown the 3 wins involved in a supporter spotlight.
Win 1 — you are showing the world that your company or organization is bigger than just you and your paid staff.
There are people — not motivated by a paycheck — who care about you, your product or your mission.
Introduce these people to your audience. In the process you’ll inspire other members of your audience to want to dig deeper and learn more about what makes you, your product or your service so special. I mean after all, someone got up at 3am to buy that thing you sell. It must be pretty amazing!
Win 2 — This one is the most obvious. A supporter spotlight is literally a digital thank you. If your supporters are awesome, and treat you right, why wouldn’t you want to give them a shoutout for being so great.
Win 3 — This is the one that can really help you move the needle.
When you write up your supporter spotlight — you want to make it not just about how great your supporter is generally. You want to make it about why your supporter loves your brand the way they do.
Let’s say you’re a nonprofit that focuses on planting trees and gardens in urban areas. There are a lot of reasons someone might be excited about your work. Maybe it’s the after school programs you run. Maybe it’s the environmental component of your work. Maybe it’s the fact that you are beautifying the city by turning brown lots into community gardens.
When you write up your post thanking your support for being so great — clarify what it is that he or she loves about your work. And be specific. Because invariably, that person is going to share your supporter shoutout with his or her own audience. And guess what — if that person loves that you have an after school program for kids — that person probably has a lot of friends in their network that also have kids. And those people MAY have heard of you, but now you are providing this supporter an opportunity to introduce you and your brand directly to his or her friends and family… in your own words! You are talking about how great you are, but from the perspective of someone who already loves you and your work!
When I served as the digital director on a governor’s race, we did 45 such supporter spotlights throughout the final 30 days of the campaign. In every one, we introduced the supporter we were spotlighting, talked about where they lived and what their role was in the campaign. Then we talked about what got them excited about the candidate.
If they were a teacher, and liked that the candidate had a great education policy, we talked about that. If they were a nurse, and they were excited about the candidate’s healthcare plan, we talked about that. If they were in a union, and liked the candidate’s union stance, that was the focus of the post.
So when we shared our supporter spotlight, we were showing the world that the campaign was bigger than simply the candidate and his staff (win 1). We were thanking the people who had been working tirelessly to help get us to election day (win 2). And we were talking about why our supporters was so passionate about the candidate in a way that we knew would resonate with their own personal communities (win 3).
We knew that the teacher would have lots of teacher friends, the nurse lots of nurse friends, the union member… you get the idea. So when they invariably shared our spotlight, that allowed us to reach directly out to their friends and networks, talking about how great we were on an issue that we already knew was near and dear to their heart.
Win. Win. Win.
So find the people who help keep your brand going and thank them. It’s the least you can do! And you’ll probably grow your brand in the process!
Instagram Stories just keep getting more popular. Over 500 million people now use them every... single... day!
And their functionality keeps growing as well.
In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we cover ten tips, tricks, hacks and strategies that you should be using to take your Instagram Story game to the next level.
We cover:
We want to hear them!
Share them in the comments, hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, or share them online them using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
And their functionality keeps growing as well.
In this episode of #StepUpYourSocial, we cover ten tips, tricks, hacks and strategies that you should be using to take your Instagram Story game to the next level.
We cover:
- Growing your reach by tagging location, hashtags and other accounts
- Using Stories to create and foster User Generated Content
- Using stickers to directly engage your audience
- Increasing a post's reach by sharing it to your Stories
- Creating solid and transparent overlays
- Linking your Story to additional content
- Creating drop shadow text
- Getting your stickers, gifs or text to move along with your video
- And a whole lot more!
We want to hear them!
Share them in the comments, hit us up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, or share them online them using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
Full Episode Transcript
In episode 3, we did a “deep dive into instagram stories.” But stories keep on growing, both in their popularity and in their functionality. So today we’re going to cover some fun tricks and hacks to take your Instagram stories to the next level.
If you’re not already posting stories on a regular basis, head back to episode 3 and get caught up on what they are and why and how you should be using them.
And now let’s dig in!
1) Use the location sticker to say where you are. You can be super specific — I’m at the WI capitol. You can be a bit vague — I’m in Madison, WI. Or you can be super vague — I’m in WI.
There are 2 reasons to use location stickers: first, it helps people know where you are. And 2) and this is the important one, it could dramatically increase your story’s reach. There’s no surefire way to get one of your stories added to a public story — which will definitely increase your reach — but not tagging your location guarantees that you WON’T be added to the public location’s story.
And here’s something cool: Instagram is smart enough to know that the WI Capitol is in Madison and that Madison is in WI. So it’s possible you’ll wind up in the public stories for all 3 of those places. Which is the main reason why specific location tagging is better than general location tagging. But any location tagging is better than none!
Two more notes on this — one) not every story should be tagged by location. If you’re sharing a screenshot of one of your tweets, or posting a Game of Thrones meme that got you laughing, it’s okay to skip the location. And 2 — and this one’s a big one — you don’t actually have to be at a location to tag yourself there. Now of course I’m not telling you to lie to your audience. But if you took a bunch of pictures at an event last night and we’re too busy to share stories in real time, you can post them the next day, and tag the location after the fact. Just search for the location within the search bar, select it, and voila. You’re tagged.
You can then move that sticker around, make it bigger or smaller, or click it to get different color formatting to better fit the feel of your story.
2) There’s a location sticker. There’s also a hashtag sticker. Use it! Just like you might be added to a public location’s story, thus increasing your story’s reach, using a hashtag sets you up to potentially be added to a public hashtag’s story.
Now on a general Instagram post, you can use up to 30 hashtags. Stories won’t let you go that far, but it will allow you to use up to 10 hashtags. The more hashtags you use, the better chance you have of getting added to that public story.
Now it will only let you use the hashtag sticker once in a story. But if it makes sense for you to add more, just pop on over to your text and start typing our relevant hashtags.
IF you are going to do this — and of course you don’t have to go for 10 in every post, consider stacking and then hiding them, so that it doesn’t make your story look gaudy. To do that, create each hashtag as a new piece of text, meaning that instead of just hitting space between tags, you hit done after each one, and then start new text for tag number 2 and so on. Then you can stack them, literally put them all on top of each other. Which will look awful. But fear not, head back to your stickers and find yourself a sticker or a gif to stick on top. Then no one will see them except instagram… which is the only one who matters here!
3) There’s a location and a hashtag sticker. There’s also a mention sticker. This lets you tag someone in your picture, or any relevant public account you want. This one won’t help you get into any public stories, but it will give a public shoutout to the account you are tagging, and just as important, it will send a notification to that account that you have tagged them in a story.
As I always say — don’t talk about anyone on the internet if you wouldn’t want them to know. And talking about them without tagging them is like talking to them on the phone without first dialing their number. Without it, they might accidentally come your post, but a tag all but ensures they see it!
4) Another reason to tag someone is that when you do, they then get the option to share your story with their followers. So you give them a shoutout, and then they help you reach new audiences. win-win!
Along with hoping your community shares your posts, definitely consider sharing relevant and interesting stories that tag you. User generated content can be an amazing way to tell your brand’s story.
And, something cool about sharing other people’s stories — it’s more like a quote tweet than a retweet. Meaning you don’t just have to share their story as is. You essentially are sharing their story as a sticker, meaning you can add your own location, mention and hashtag stickers to it, gifs, text and more.
The ability to share stories changed the whole concept of instagram’s power of telling stories in real time. Take advantage of this tool, as makes sense for you and your brand.
5) If you haven’t explored the loads of fun stickers available to you, you are missing out! Along with the ones we’ve already covered, and gifs (which I love!), there are also some really cool engagement stickers built right into the platform.
You can solicit questions from your audience (which you can then answer in follow up stories), take polls, quiz your audience… there’s even a countdown clock available to you if you have an exciting event taking place and want to build some excitement.
6) Did you know that you can add any Instagram post, your own or anyone else’s, to your stories? To do so is extremely simple — at the bottom of the post, next to the heart and comment icons, there’s a little paper airplane. Click it and you’ll see the option to “add to story.” Click that and whatever you were looking at will appear as a sticker in your story. When I say “whatever you were looking at,” what I mean is that if it was an album, you can only add one image, and if it’s a video, you will only be adding a screenshot of the thumbnail associated with the video.
But once you have the image in your story, you can move it around, make it bigger or smaller and add all of the stickers, gifs and text you want. And if you click on the actual post, it will change the formatting from the clean image with a tag of who posted it, to an image that includes the handle and part of the post’s original text.
Here’s the coolest hack for this though — go to your gif library and search “tap here.” You’ll have loads of options — pick one you like. Add your tap here sticker to your story. When someone clicks it, they’ll get a seemingly magic option to visit the original post. Here’s the thing — they would get that option whether or not you point them to tap there. Most folks just don’t realize it. So the built-in call-to-action makes it super easy to drive people from your story to your original post (or anyone else’s). It a big part of why more and more accounts are creating stories from their posts. It’s a second audience you can engage around the same content, and you can potentially drive people back to the original. I don’t know that you should do this for every post, but maybe the one’s you are particularly excited about.
7) When I am building a new story that’s not based on a picture, I’ll sometimes just snap a photo while covering the camera. So I get a black background. Which works fine. But if you want a different color background, there’s actually a really easy way to create one.
Take a picture — of whatever’s in front of you — and then click the pen tool. Select the first pen, pick your color of choice on the bottom and then hold your finger down on the screen. The whole background will become that color.
If you want to add a transparent color over top of one of your pictures, you can do that too. Instead of selecting the first pen, select the second one, which looks more like a marker. Choose your color, hold down and you get a transparent overlay over top of your picture.
Want to get really clever with either of these — create your solid or transparent color over top of a picture, and then use the eraser to remove color from the selected areas. That can create a very cool effect!
8) If you have 10k followers, you can link a story to an external link. Which is a very powerful tool, but one that not a lot of users actually have access to.
So for those of you with less than 10,000 followers, you can’t link to an external source. But you do have one option for linking your story — you can link it to an IGTV video that you have posted previously.
IGTV, short for Instagram TV, allows you to post longer videos then you can post within Instagram proper. In Instagram, you are limited to one minute videos. But with IGTV, you can go up to 10 minutes, and some bigger accounts can even go up to an hour.
It can be a great way to repurpose videos that you created elsewhere but couldn’t post to Instagram because they were too long.
And once you have posted those longer videos, you can link directly to them through a story. To do so, simply click the link icon at the top of your story. You will then be able to select from any of your pre-published videos in IGTV. Then anyone seeing your story can swipe up and get to your IGTV video.
Consider searching through the gifs library for one that creates a call to action to swipe up to help your audience realize that your story is intended to take them somewhere.
9) Here’s a fun hack — while Instagram offers a handful of cool fonts, they don’t provide many options in terms of formatting your text. But want to create a drop shadow effect? Doing so is really easy! Create your text, ideally not changing the size at all (you can change color and placement, but if you change size you are going to struggle to get the drop shadow text to match perfectly). Once you have it exactly how you want it, create it again with a different color. Then place one of the texts on top of the other, but just slightly off, enough to create your own… wait for it… drop shadow.
Want to see an example of this in action. Head over to my Instagram account — I’m @jlemonsk — and then check out my story highlight titled IG updates. Whenever I create a story about a new Instagram feature, hack or strategy, I add it to that highlight. Scroll through and you’ll find one that shows this drop shadow hack in action.
10) I saved this next one for last because it is just so freaking awesome! Want to add a sticker, text or a gif to a video and have it follow along with the video, rather than just remaining static in one spot? Doing so is actually quite easy! Create a video story (either take a new video in the app, or add in a video that’s already on your phone). Then select the sticker or gif you want, or type in the text. Now, while the video is playing in the background, hold your finger down on the sticker or text.
You’ll then get a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen. That scrollbar will let you move through the video at your own speed. Get to a spot that works for you and then move and/or resize the sticker until you have it where you want it. Then hit pin. Assuming your video isn’t too complicated for Instagram to handle, it should paste your sticker or text onto that spot in the video and then let it follow along throughout the duration of the video.
So for example, instead of your train sticker just sitting in the top corner of your video, you can pin it to the front of the train and as the train moves through your video, your sticker will move through with it.
Pretty cool, right?
Your turn — what are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications. Or share it online using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
And if you tag me in your stories, you better believe I’ll gonna share it! So hit me up!
Now what are you waiting for. Get out there and step up your story game!
If you’re not already posting stories on a regular basis, head back to episode 3 and get caught up on what they are and why and how you should be using them.
And now let’s dig in!
1) Use the location sticker to say where you are. You can be super specific — I’m at the WI capitol. You can be a bit vague — I’m in Madison, WI. Or you can be super vague — I’m in WI.
There are 2 reasons to use location stickers: first, it helps people know where you are. And 2) and this is the important one, it could dramatically increase your story’s reach. There’s no surefire way to get one of your stories added to a public story — which will definitely increase your reach — but not tagging your location guarantees that you WON’T be added to the public location’s story.
And here’s something cool: Instagram is smart enough to know that the WI Capitol is in Madison and that Madison is in WI. So it’s possible you’ll wind up in the public stories for all 3 of those places. Which is the main reason why specific location tagging is better than general location tagging. But any location tagging is better than none!
Two more notes on this — one) not every story should be tagged by location. If you’re sharing a screenshot of one of your tweets, or posting a Game of Thrones meme that got you laughing, it’s okay to skip the location. And 2 — and this one’s a big one — you don’t actually have to be at a location to tag yourself there. Now of course I’m not telling you to lie to your audience. But if you took a bunch of pictures at an event last night and we’re too busy to share stories in real time, you can post them the next day, and tag the location after the fact. Just search for the location within the search bar, select it, and voila. You’re tagged.
You can then move that sticker around, make it bigger or smaller, or click it to get different color formatting to better fit the feel of your story.
2) There’s a location sticker. There’s also a hashtag sticker. Use it! Just like you might be added to a public location’s story, thus increasing your story’s reach, using a hashtag sets you up to potentially be added to a public hashtag’s story.
Now on a general Instagram post, you can use up to 30 hashtags. Stories won’t let you go that far, but it will allow you to use up to 10 hashtags. The more hashtags you use, the better chance you have of getting added to that public story.
Now it will only let you use the hashtag sticker once in a story. But if it makes sense for you to add more, just pop on over to your text and start typing our relevant hashtags.
IF you are going to do this — and of course you don’t have to go for 10 in every post, consider stacking and then hiding them, so that it doesn’t make your story look gaudy. To do that, create each hashtag as a new piece of text, meaning that instead of just hitting space between tags, you hit done after each one, and then start new text for tag number 2 and so on. Then you can stack them, literally put them all on top of each other. Which will look awful. But fear not, head back to your stickers and find yourself a sticker or a gif to stick on top. Then no one will see them except instagram… which is the only one who matters here!
3) There’s a location and a hashtag sticker. There’s also a mention sticker. This lets you tag someone in your picture, or any relevant public account you want. This one won’t help you get into any public stories, but it will give a public shoutout to the account you are tagging, and just as important, it will send a notification to that account that you have tagged them in a story.
As I always say — don’t talk about anyone on the internet if you wouldn’t want them to know. And talking about them without tagging them is like talking to them on the phone without first dialing their number. Without it, they might accidentally come your post, but a tag all but ensures they see it!
4) Another reason to tag someone is that when you do, they then get the option to share your story with their followers. So you give them a shoutout, and then they help you reach new audiences. win-win!
Along with hoping your community shares your posts, definitely consider sharing relevant and interesting stories that tag you. User generated content can be an amazing way to tell your brand’s story.
And, something cool about sharing other people’s stories — it’s more like a quote tweet than a retweet. Meaning you don’t just have to share their story as is. You essentially are sharing their story as a sticker, meaning you can add your own location, mention and hashtag stickers to it, gifs, text and more.
The ability to share stories changed the whole concept of instagram’s power of telling stories in real time. Take advantage of this tool, as makes sense for you and your brand.
5) If you haven’t explored the loads of fun stickers available to you, you are missing out! Along with the ones we’ve already covered, and gifs (which I love!), there are also some really cool engagement stickers built right into the platform.
You can solicit questions from your audience (which you can then answer in follow up stories), take polls, quiz your audience… there’s even a countdown clock available to you if you have an exciting event taking place and want to build some excitement.
6) Did you know that you can add any Instagram post, your own or anyone else’s, to your stories? To do so is extremely simple — at the bottom of the post, next to the heart and comment icons, there’s a little paper airplane. Click it and you’ll see the option to “add to story.” Click that and whatever you were looking at will appear as a sticker in your story. When I say “whatever you were looking at,” what I mean is that if it was an album, you can only add one image, and if it’s a video, you will only be adding a screenshot of the thumbnail associated with the video.
But once you have the image in your story, you can move it around, make it bigger or smaller and add all of the stickers, gifs and text you want. And if you click on the actual post, it will change the formatting from the clean image with a tag of who posted it, to an image that includes the handle and part of the post’s original text.
Here’s the coolest hack for this though — go to your gif library and search “tap here.” You’ll have loads of options — pick one you like. Add your tap here sticker to your story. When someone clicks it, they’ll get a seemingly magic option to visit the original post. Here’s the thing — they would get that option whether or not you point them to tap there. Most folks just don’t realize it. So the built-in call-to-action makes it super easy to drive people from your story to your original post (or anyone else’s). It a big part of why more and more accounts are creating stories from their posts. It’s a second audience you can engage around the same content, and you can potentially drive people back to the original. I don’t know that you should do this for every post, but maybe the one’s you are particularly excited about.
7) When I am building a new story that’s not based on a picture, I’ll sometimes just snap a photo while covering the camera. So I get a black background. Which works fine. But if you want a different color background, there’s actually a really easy way to create one.
Take a picture — of whatever’s in front of you — and then click the pen tool. Select the first pen, pick your color of choice on the bottom and then hold your finger down on the screen. The whole background will become that color.
If you want to add a transparent color over top of one of your pictures, you can do that too. Instead of selecting the first pen, select the second one, which looks more like a marker. Choose your color, hold down and you get a transparent overlay over top of your picture.
Want to get really clever with either of these — create your solid or transparent color over top of a picture, and then use the eraser to remove color from the selected areas. That can create a very cool effect!
8) If you have 10k followers, you can link a story to an external link. Which is a very powerful tool, but one that not a lot of users actually have access to.
So for those of you with less than 10,000 followers, you can’t link to an external source. But you do have one option for linking your story — you can link it to an IGTV video that you have posted previously.
IGTV, short for Instagram TV, allows you to post longer videos then you can post within Instagram proper. In Instagram, you are limited to one minute videos. But with IGTV, you can go up to 10 minutes, and some bigger accounts can even go up to an hour.
It can be a great way to repurpose videos that you created elsewhere but couldn’t post to Instagram because they were too long.
And once you have posted those longer videos, you can link directly to them through a story. To do so, simply click the link icon at the top of your story. You will then be able to select from any of your pre-published videos in IGTV. Then anyone seeing your story can swipe up and get to your IGTV video.
Consider searching through the gifs library for one that creates a call to action to swipe up to help your audience realize that your story is intended to take them somewhere.
9) Here’s a fun hack — while Instagram offers a handful of cool fonts, they don’t provide many options in terms of formatting your text. But want to create a drop shadow effect? Doing so is really easy! Create your text, ideally not changing the size at all (you can change color and placement, but if you change size you are going to struggle to get the drop shadow text to match perfectly). Once you have it exactly how you want it, create it again with a different color. Then place one of the texts on top of the other, but just slightly off, enough to create your own… wait for it… drop shadow.
Want to see an example of this in action. Head over to my Instagram account — I’m @jlemonsk — and then check out my story highlight titled IG updates. Whenever I create a story about a new Instagram feature, hack or strategy, I add it to that highlight. Scroll through and you’ll find one that shows this drop shadow hack in action.
10) I saved this next one for last because it is just so freaking awesome! Want to add a sticker, text or a gif to a video and have it follow along with the video, rather than just remaining static in one spot? Doing so is actually quite easy! Create a video story (either take a new video in the app, or add in a video that’s already on your phone). Then select the sticker or gif you want, or type in the text. Now, while the video is playing in the background, hold your finger down on the sticker or text.
You’ll then get a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen. That scrollbar will let you move through the video at your own speed. Get to a spot that works for you and then move and/or resize the sticker until you have it where you want it. Then hit pin. Assuming your video isn’t too complicated for Instagram to handle, it should paste your sticker or text onto that spot in the video and then let it follow along throughout the duration of the video.
So for example, instead of your train sticker just sitting in the top corner of your video, you can pin it to the front of the train and as the train moves through your video, your sticker will move through with it.
Pretty cool, right?
Your turn — what are some of your favorite strategies, tricks or hacks that you have been using to step up your Instagram story game? I want to hear about them. Hit me up on Instagram (again, I’m @jlemonsk), or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn where I’m Reverbal Communications. Or share it online using the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
And if you tag me in your stories, you better believe I’ll gonna share it! So hit me up!
Now what are you waiting for. Get out there and step up your story game!
Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly?
Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature.
So let’s dig into Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.”
Afterward, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet, including mailing lists, other social channels and the almighty Google Alerts.
Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature.
So let’s dig into Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.”
Afterward, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet, including mailing lists, other social channels and the almighty Google Alerts.
Full Episode Transcript
Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly? Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature. So let’s dig in to Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.” Afterwards, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet. But first up: Pages to Watch.
To access this great feature, go to your brand’s Facebook page. At the top, you will see a menu bar including the following items: Page, Inbox, Notifications and then Insights. Click there. If you haven’t been to your insights yet, you are missing out on a ton of valuable information. We’ll do some more deep dives into Facebook Insights down the road. But for now, let’s just stick to this particular tool.
Once you’ve clicked Insights, you’ll be on the “overview” page. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a section called “pages to watch.”
If you have never been there before, chances are Facebook has auto-populated the section with pages they think you might want to watch. If they guessed right, great. If not, simply hover over the number on the left and you can delete it from your list.
To add new pages, click the option to “add pages.”
Once you have your pages set up, you’ll see some very basic data: the name of the page, it’s total page Likes, the percent it grew from last week, how many times they posted this week and what their engagement this week has been. None of those data points are all that useful. BUT, if you click on the name of any of the pages, something interesting happens.
Facebook opens up a pop-up box and shows you that page’s top content from the past week. Top content in this case means that it had the highest combination of reach and engagement of anything that page posted this past week. And you can scroll down and see all of their content from the week, ordered by how popular it was for their audience.
Quite a feature, right?!
Bear in mind, when you follow a page, they have no way of knowing you are doing so. So if you want to know what is working for your competitors, without having to continuously go back to their page and scroll through their feed, you can just pop on over here every couple of days and easily keep tabs on them.
If you see that several of your competitors are sharing an article or a meme and it is resonating with their audiences… well don’t steal their content. But definitely do be inspired by it!
The content that is working for your competitors will probably also work for you. Follow along, learn, and create your own content accordingly.
And here’s the thing, while of course you should be watching your competitors, don’t limit yourself to them. Follow influencers in your field, relevant journalists or publications, even high value customers if you they are using brand pages.
Figure out who’s success you most want to track, and then spend a few minutes setting up your Facebook Pages to Watch. It will be an amazing tool you can use indefinitely moving forward.
While we’re on the topic of tracking your competitors, influencers, high-value customers and the like, let’s cover a few ways to do so outside of Facebook.
First of all, if the people you want to follow have public mailing lists, sign up! There’s no better way to know what they are excited about, then to see what they are sharing with the people they care about most. It probably goes without saying, but you might not want to use your company or organization’s branded email to sign up for a competitor’s email list. So use your gmail address, or create something new specifically for this purpose. While it might seem weird to be on their list, don’t forget, unless they are limiting sign-up (and this is important: don’t lie in any way to get on their list!) they know that their list is public. And chances are, if you have an email, they’re on it! As far as influencers and relevant journalists go, you can use your branded email or not. Your call.
In episode two of this podcast, we covered the power and the importance of twitter lists. Twitter lists are a great way to follow relevant accounts. And you can use private lists to do so under-the-radar, even if your brand isn’t using Twitter as an outreach and communications tool. Go back and listen to that episode for more.
There are also plenty of third party tools out there that will track keyword mentions and send you alerts when those keywords pop up online. Some are free, most are not. But one powerful one that is free is google alerts. If you haven’t set up google alerts yet, you should do so immediately.
To do so go to google.com/alerts. Once there you can put in some relevant keywords and let google know that you want to receive email alerts whenever those words are used online. It’s important to know that google alerts don’t track content from social media platforms, so don’t expect to see Facebook or Twitter mentions on there.
But if someone mentions you or your brand in a blog post, or on their website, Google will usually catch it and send you an alert.
And here’s the thing, you can select if you want google to send you an alert as a mention happens, or to instead send you a daily or weekly digest of all mentions. For your brand, you should get those alerts as they happen. Unless people are talking about your brand numerous times a day, you want to know you’ve been mentioned as soon as possible. But if you also want to use them to track competitors, industry keywords, influencers and the like, you might not need them rolling in as they happen and you can opt to receive those alerts as part of a daily or even weekly round-up. The choice is yours.
One other cool thing you can do with google alerts is set them up for high value clients so that if that client gets an award or someone writes a story about them, you can be amongst the first to reach out and congratulate them. Alternately, you can let them know if you find something problematic that they might want to deal with
The tools are out there for you to keep tabs on the internet. The set up is relatively simple and the rewards can be immense.
So I’ll finish this episode with the same question I started it with: Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well? Turns out, you do! You just have to take a moment and set it up.
To access this great feature, go to your brand’s Facebook page. At the top, you will see a menu bar including the following items: Page, Inbox, Notifications and then Insights. Click there. If you haven’t been to your insights yet, you are missing out on a ton of valuable information. We’ll do some more deep dives into Facebook Insights down the road. But for now, let’s just stick to this particular tool.
Once you’ve clicked Insights, you’ll be on the “overview” page. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a section called “pages to watch.”
If you have never been there before, chances are Facebook has auto-populated the section with pages they think you might want to watch. If they guessed right, great. If not, simply hover over the number on the left and you can delete it from your list.
To add new pages, click the option to “add pages.”
Once you have your pages set up, you’ll see some very basic data: the name of the page, it’s total page Likes, the percent it grew from last week, how many times they posted this week and what their engagement this week has been. None of those data points are all that useful. BUT, if you click on the name of any of the pages, something interesting happens.
Facebook opens up a pop-up box and shows you that page’s top content from the past week. Top content in this case means that it had the highest combination of reach and engagement of anything that page posted this past week. And you can scroll down and see all of their content from the week, ordered by how popular it was for their audience.
Quite a feature, right?!
Bear in mind, when you follow a page, they have no way of knowing you are doing so. So if you want to know what is working for your competitors, without having to continuously go back to their page and scroll through their feed, you can just pop on over here every couple of days and easily keep tabs on them.
If you see that several of your competitors are sharing an article or a meme and it is resonating with their audiences… well don’t steal their content. But definitely do be inspired by it!
The content that is working for your competitors will probably also work for you. Follow along, learn, and create your own content accordingly.
And here’s the thing, while of course you should be watching your competitors, don’t limit yourself to them. Follow influencers in your field, relevant journalists or publications, even high value customers if you they are using brand pages.
Figure out who’s success you most want to track, and then spend a few minutes setting up your Facebook Pages to Watch. It will be an amazing tool you can use indefinitely moving forward.
While we’re on the topic of tracking your competitors, influencers, high-value customers and the like, let’s cover a few ways to do so outside of Facebook.
First of all, if the people you want to follow have public mailing lists, sign up! There’s no better way to know what they are excited about, then to see what they are sharing with the people they care about most. It probably goes without saying, but you might not want to use your company or organization’s branded email to sign up for a competitor’s email list. So use your gmail address, or create something new specifically for this purpose. While it might seem weird to be on their list, don’t forget, unless they are limiting sign-up (and this is important: don’t lie in any way to get on their list!) they know that their list is public. And chances are, if you have an email, they’re on it! As far as influencers and relevant journalists go, you can use your branded email or not. Your call.
In episode two of this podcast, we covered the power and the importance of twitter lists. Twitter lists are a great way to follow relevant accounts. And you can use private lists to do so under-the-radar, even if your brand isn’t using Twitter as an outreach and communications tool. Go back and listen to that episode for more.
There are also plenty of third party tools out there that will track keyword mentions and send you alerts when those keywords pop up online. Some are free, most are not. But one powerful one that is free is google alerts. If you haven’t set up google alerts yet, you should do so immediately.
To do so go to google.com/alerts. Once there you can put in some relevant keywords and let google know that you want to receive email alerts whenever those words are used online. It’s important to know that google alerts don’t track content from social media platforms, so don’t expect to see Facebook or Twitter mentions on there.
But if someone mentions you or your brand in a blog post, or on their website, Google will usually catch it and send you an alert.
And here’s the thing, you can select if you want google to send you an alert as a mention happens, or to instead send you a daily or weekly digest of all mentions. For your brand, you should get those alerts as they happen. Unless people are talking about your brand numerous times a day, you want to know you’ve been mentioned as soon as possible. But if you also want to use them to track competitors, industry keywords, influencers and the like, you might not need them rolling in as they happen and you can opt to receive those alerts as part of a daily or even weekly round-up. The choice is yours.
One other cool thing you can do with google alerts is set them up for high value clients so that if that client gets an award or someone writes a story about them, you can be amongst the first to reach out and congratulate them. Alternately, you can let them know if you find something problematic that they might want to deal with
The tools are out there for you to keep tabs on the internet. The set up is relatively simple and the rewards can be immense.
So I’ll finish this episode with the same question I started it with: Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well? Turns out, you do! You just have to take a moment and set it up.
I don't know about you, but I use Apple Notes constantly. I love them for a bunch of reasons, but primarily: they are always with me. And I mean always.
I can jot something down in Notes when at my computer, and through the magic of the iCloud, my Notes are there waiting for me on my iPhone or iPad whenever I need them. And vice versa of course.
Not only that, you can use shared Notes just like you use Google Docs, shared between people.
I can jot something down in Notes when at my computer, and through the magic of the iCloud, my Notes are there waiting for me on my iPhone or iPad whenever I need them. And vice versa of course.
Not only that, you can use shared Notes just like you use Google Docs, shared between people.
Sharing Apple Notes
The primary difference between Notes and Google Docs on your phone (in my experience)— Notes are much more seamless. You can practically see things happening in real time between devices, unlike with Google Docs where the phone lag-time can be significant.
To invite someone to collaborate with you on a Note, click the "add a person" button, which looks like this:
To invite someone to collaborate with you on a Note, click the "add a person" button, which looks like this:
You can then add people via email, text message, AirDrop or by sending them the link in the platform of your choice. You'll know it's a shared note from this little icon:
And now, just like a Google Doc, anyone with access can add to, edit or delete items in your shared Notes.
Locking Apple Notes
Sometimes you want a safe space to put things in your phone where you know that no one can access them, even if you hand over your iPhone, iPad or computer.
Apple Notes is also the solution for this little problem.
Want to store passwords or... well, whatever... throw it in a note and then right click in on your computer or swipe left on your iOs device and you'll get the option to Lock the folder. When you do so, every time you want to access it, you'll have to input your device's password. Which is crazy convenient if you use fingerprint or face ID!
When a Note is locked, it will be designated by a little lock icon.
Apple Notes is also the solution for this little problem.
Want to store passwords or... well, whatever... throw it in a note and then right click in on your computer or swipe left on your iOs device and you'll get the option to Lock the folder. When you do so, every time you want to access it, you'll have to input your device's password. Which is crazy convenient if you use fingerprint or face ID!
When a Note is locked, it will be designated by a little lock icon.
This note is currently "unlocked." If it was locked, the lock icon would be closed.
Clean Up Your Notes Using Folders
I told you I use Notes a lot. And for a lot of different things in my life. So of course, I have a lot of different Notes.
Folders allow me to separate out my Notes by category. I have a folder for personal Notes, another for work Notes. You can have as many as you want, which makes for really quick and easy scrolling. And of course, if you can't find what you are looking for — like with anything else Apple — you can always search all your Notes by the search bar at the top.
You can also pin your primary Note to the top of your folder, to ensure easy access to your most important data.
Folders allow me to separate out my Notes by category. I have a folder for personal Notes, another for work Notes. You can have as many as you want, which makes for really quick and easy scrolling. And of course, if you can't find what you are looking for — like with anything else Apple — you can always search all your Notes by the search bar at the top.
You can also pin your primary Note to the top of your folder, to ensure easy access to your most important data.
Notes Have Great Formatting Options For Such a Simple Tool
You can create bullet points, numbered lists, and indent right as needed.
You can make text bold, italicized, underlined and all that fun stuff.
You can also add in tons of great tools, including tables:
You can make text bold, italicized, underlined and all that fun stuff.
You can also add in tons of great tools, including tables:
Sketches:
I'm a writer, not so much a painter □
You can even scan documents, or add in a photo or video directly into your Notes!
Didn't You Say Something About Checkable Bullet Points?
I sure did! Don't get me wrong — I LOVE all of the features I have laid out above. But the reason I'm writing this post is because I just learned something new about Notes and it's already helped me seriously step up my Note game.
We write ourselves lots of reminders: Buy milk. Email client. Finish report. Some of these are one-off tasks. But many of them are recurring.
For years, I've been deleting items that I finished, and rewriting them when it was time to do them again (pretty standard for a grocery list for example). Well no more!
With this one tiny hack, you can now write those tasks out once, and then select or unselect the accompanying bullet point, never having to write it out again.
Here's what this looks like:
We write ourselves lots of reminders: Buy milk. Email client. Finish report. Some of these are one-off tasks. But many of them are recurring.
For years, I've been deleting items that I finished, and rewriting them when it was time to do them again (pretty standard for a grocery list for example). Well no more!
With this one tiny hack, you can now write those tasks out once, and then select or unselect the accompanying bullet point, never having to write it out again.
Here's what this looks like:
You write your line item and then check or uncheck the bullet point as appropriate. This will change the way you grocery shop (it sure has for me) but also probably the way you run your business!
To access this feature, just click the checkmark in the circle icon:
To access this feature, just click the checkmark in the circle icon:
And voila.
Now add "share this blog post on your social channels" and then go ahead and take it off (after you've done so of course!).
In the mean time, check out more of my iOS tips and tricks.
Have any other iOS tips, tricks or hacks you think the people should know? Leave them in the comments or hit me up on social and let's share them with the world.
Now add "share this blog post on your social channels" and then go ahead and take it off (after you've done so of course!).
In the mean time, check out more of my iOS tips and tricks.
Have any other iOS tips, tricks or hacks you think the people should know? Leave them in the comments or hit me up on social and let's share them with the world.
Warren Buffett is a better writer than you for one simple reason: he knows his audience and he writes directly for them. Are you doing the same?
Don't write your content for "the world," rather write it for an individual. Don't try to make yourself *sound* smart. Try to make your reader *feel* smart.
This episode covers some takeaways from Social Media Marketing World 2019 and pulls from a great presentation given by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.
Don't write your content for "the world," rather write it for an individual. Don't try to make yourself *sound* smart. Try to make your reader *feel* smart.
This episode covers some takeaways from Social Media Marketing World 2019 and pulls from a great presentation given by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.
Full Episode Transcript
Last week, I attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. Throughout some upcoming episodes, I’ll be sharing a few takeaways from the massive conference, which played host to around 5000 social media and marketing professionals!
But today I want to talk about a presentation I saw by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.
While her session was called “How to write an email newsletter that people clear their schedules to read,” it could have just as easily been called — it’s time to focus less on the news of newsletter, and more on the letter.
I’m a huge email junky — along with writing email newsletters for my own business and my clients, I also read a lot of emails from brands, journalists, politicians and the like. And I mean a lot. In fact, email has become my primary method for keeping up with the news. I get daily or weekly emails from a ton of journalists and organizations, and let me tell you: there’s a huge difference between an email that was written for me, and one that was written for the world.
And that brings us to our title: Why Warren Buffett is a better writer than you. Warren Buffett is arguably the smartest person alive in his field. He could probably sit down and write his annual report ensuring that you couldn’t understand a word of it. He could use big words, tech jargon and language intended to make him sound smart, rather than to make you become smarter. But he understands that he doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone (at least not in his writing!). He uses his annual letter to convey a message and he wants to ensure that message is accessible to all. To do that, he has a trick. And it’s such a simple trick, you won’t believe it.
Rather than writing his annual letter to his stockholders, en masse, he writes it to his two sisters, Doris and Bertie. Now I’m sure that Doris and Bertie are very smart women. But they aren’t as smart at investing as Warren Buffett — no one is! When I say he writes it to them, I mean literally. He starts his letter “Dear Doris and Bertie.” He removes the line before sending it along, but the DNA of the letter is personal and real. He doesn’t want his sisters to feel dumb — he wants them to feel smart! And he writes accordingly.
Ann Handley talked about this concept at length during her session at social media marketing world and it really resonated with me — because it’s something I’ve recommend to my clients for years.
Along with working with nonprofits and business professionals (as well as solopreneurs, bands, artists, authors and all kids of other brands!) I do a lot of work with candidates and elected politicians. I was doing an audit and a training for a caucus a while back and I realized that a majority of the members of the caucus were regularly tweeting our press releases. No one on Twitter wants to read a press release. NOT EVEN THE PRESS!
I told them that before they sent any further communications, whether it be via Twitter, Facebook, email, anything… they should picture an actual constituent reading their content. Do you think that sweet grandpa you met last month while knocking doors is going to appreciate your press release? He isn’t! Take the message of the release and make it digestable to him. Is he going to know the terminology of laws and budgets and legalese? Maybe. But probably not! So write it for him. The goal is not to make yourself sound smart — the goal is to make your reader feel smart.
I tell all my clients to picture an actual customer before sending a post. I even had someone tell me they loved the idea so much, they wrote a customer’s name down on a post-it note and stuck it to their computer. This way, anytime they write anything, they force themselves to think of this specific person.
Warren Buffett is a better writer than you because he knows his audience — it’s his sisters. Become a better writer simply by focusing on an individual, rather than the world. Because even if your tweet or Facebook post goes viral, or your email gets forwarded on by Oprah and millions of people see it, it’s still being consumed by single individuals, one at a time.
Don’t think of your content as a megaphone, blasting everyone in the area with your knowledge, wisdom and wit. Rather think of it as a telephone, creating a connection between two people. Your writing will be better for it. And your audience will walk away with a much better understanding of your message. And isn’t that kinda the whole point?
But today I want to talk about a presentation I saw by Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes.
While her session was called “How to write an email newsletter that people clear their schedules to read,” it could have just as easily been called — it’s time to focus less on the news of newsletter, and more on the letter.
I’m a huge email junky — along with writing email newsletters for my own business and my clients, I also read a lot of emails from brands, journalists, politicians and the like. And I mean a lot. In fact, email has become my primary method for keeping up with the news. I get daily or weekly emails from a ton of journalists and organizations, and let me tell you: there’s a huge difference between an email that was written for me, and one that was written for the world.
And that brings us to our title: Why Warren Buffett is a better writer than you. Warren Buffett is arguably the smartest person alive in his field. He could probably sit down and write his annual report ensuring that you couldn’t understand a word of it. He could use big words, tech jargon and language intended to make him sound smart, rather than to make you become smarter. But he understands that he doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone (at least not in his writing!). He uses his annual letter to convey a message and he wants to ensure that message is accessible to all. To do that, he has a trick. And it’s such a simple trick, you won’t believe it.
Rather than writing his annual letter to his stockholders, en masse, he writes it to his two sisters, Doris and Bertie. Now I’m sure that Doris and Bertie are very smart women. But they aren’t as smart at investing as Warren Buffett — no one is! When I say he writes it to them, I mean literally. He starts his letter “Dear Doris and Bertie.” He removes the line before sending it along, but the DNA of the letter is personal and real. He doesn’t want his sisters to feel dumb — he wants them to feel smart! And he writes accordingly.
Ann Handley talked about this concept at length during her session at social media marketing world and it really resonated with me — because it’s something I’ve recommend to my clients for years.
Along with working with nonprofits and business professionals (as well as solopreneurs, bands, artists, authors and all kids of other brands!) I do a lot of work with candidates and elected politicians. I was doing an audit and a training for a caucus a while back and I realized that a majority of the members of the caucus were regularly tweeting our press releases. No one on Twitter wants to read a press release. NOT EVEN THE PRESS!
I told them that before they sent any further communications, whether it be via Twitter, Facebook, email, anything… they should picture an actual constituent reading their content. Do you think that sweet grandpa you met last month while knocking doors is going to appreciate your press release? He isn’t! Take the message of the release and make it digestable to him. Is he going to know the terminology of laws and budgets and legalese? Maybe. But probably not! So write it for him. The goal is not to make yourself sound smart — the goal is to make your reader feel smart.
I tell all my clients to picture an actual customer before sending a post. I even had someone tell me they loved the idea so much, they wrote a customer’s name down on a post-it note and stuck it to their computer. This way, anytime they write anything, they force themselves to think of this specific person.
Warren Buffett is a better writer than you because he knows his audience — it’s his sisters. Become a better writer simply by focusing on an individual, rather than the world. Because even if your tweet or Facebook post goes viral, or your email gets forwarded on by Oprah and millions of people see it, it’s still being consumed by single individuals, one at a time.
Don’t think of your content as a megaphone, blasting everyone in the area with your knowledge, wisdom and wit. Rather think of it as a telephone, creating a connection between two people. Your writing will be better for it. And your audience will walk away with a much better understanding of your message. And isn’t that kinda the whole point?
Step Up Your Social Ep. 8
Social media can be an overwhelming place, especially when you feel like you don't speak the language.
You’re scrolling through your social channels and you see a bunch of random letters tacked together — TIL, FWIW, IMHO — it can be hard to even know where to start.
So in this episode we cover a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!).
But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.
Any we missed? Tweet them at us using #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps!).
NOTE: This list was modified from a previous blog post I wrote which you can find here.
You’re scrolling through your social channels and you see a bunch of random letters tacked together — TIL, FWIW, IMHO — it can be hard to even know where to start.
So in this episode we cover a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!).
But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.
- AFAIK
- AMA
- BTW
- DM/PM
- FF
- FTW
- FWIW
- HT or H/T
- IIRC
- ICYMI
- IDK
- IRL
- MT
- NSFW
- PT
- ROFL
- SMH
- TBT/FBF
- TL;DR
- TFTF
- TFW
- TIL
- YMMV
Any we missed? Tweet them at us using #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps!).
NOTE: This list was modified from a previous blog post I wrote which you can find here.
Full Episode Transcript
Social media can feel like an overwhelming place, especially if you feel like you don’t speak the language. You’re scrolling through your social channels and you see a bunch of random letters tacked together — TIL, FWIW, IMHO — it can be hard to even know where to start.
So I put together a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is modified from a blog post I wrote a while back which you can find at bit.ly/suys-acronyms. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!). But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.
If you come across any others you aren’t sure about, Google can almost always provide an answer pretty quickly. But if you find yourself stumped, feel free to reach out on Twitter, Facebook (I’m at Reverbal Communications) or drop me an email at suys@reverbalcommunications.com and I’ll see if I can’t offer an assist.
Without further ado, here are some social media acronyms that you should know:
TFW you open a book and find the author’s signature in it.” In other words, it’s a nice feeling that everyone knows and you are currently enjoying. Lean into it!
Any that I missed? Share them on Facebook or Twitter using the #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps)!
So I put together a list of social media acronyms you should know. This list is modified from a blog post I wrote a while back which you can find at bit.ly/suys-acronyms. This list is neither meant to be exhaustive nor fully up-to-date (since internet language is constantly evolving!). But in the meantime, you should probably know all of these acronyms if you want to keep up with your customers and your audience.
If you come across any others you aren’t sure about, Google can almost always provide an answer pretty quickly. But if you find yourself stumped, feel free to reach out on Twitter, Facebook (I’m at Reverbal Communications) or drop me an email at suys@reverbalcommunications.com and I’ll see if I can’t offer an assist.
Without further ado, here are some social media acronyms that you should know:
- Let’s start with some obvious, but important ones that seem to confuse even pretty apt social media users: IG - Instagram, FB - Facebook, LI - LinkedIn and YT - YouTube
- AFAIK — As far as I know
- AMA — Ask Me Anything
- BTW — By the way, also pronounced b-t-dubs
- DM — Direct Message
- FF — Follow Friday
- FTW — For The Win
- FWIW — For What It's Worth
- HT or H/T — Hat Tip (or Heard Through)
- IIRC — If I recall correctly
- IM(H)O — In My (Humble) Opinion
- ICYMI — In Case You Missed It
- IDK — I Don’t Know
- IRL — In Real Life
- MT — Modified Tweet
- NSFW — Not Suitable For Work
- PT — Previous Tweet
- ROFL — Rolling On the Floor Laughing
- RT — Retweet
- SMH — Shaking My Head
- TBT — Throwback Thursday
- TL;DR — Too Long; Didn’t Read
- TFW — That Feeling When
TFW you open a book and find the author’s signature in it.” In other words, it’s a nice feeling that everyone knows and you are currently enjoying. Lean into it!
- TIL — Today I learned
- YMMV — Your mileage may vary
- TFTF — Thanks For The Follow
Any that I missed? Share them on Facebook or Twitter using the #StepUpYourSocial. In the meantime, HTH (Hope This Helps)!
Step Up Your Social Ep. 7 — Beware Engagement Bait... You Could Be Limiting Your Reach on Facebook
2/19/2019
Step Up Your Social Ep. 7
There are 5 keywords that, when used in a post on Facebook, automatically limit your post's reach. Facebook has labeled the tactic in question as "Engagement Bait."
While Engagement Bait first started being penalized in the Facebook algorithm over a year ago, Facebook just recently began applying their penalties to video content, as well as to text.
In this episode, we cover the what, the why and the how of Engagement Bait, as well as some tips for avoiding it.
While Engagement Bait first started being penalized in the Facebook algorithm over a year ago, Facebook just recently began applying their penalties to video content, as well as to text.
In this episode, we cover the what, the why and the how of Engagement Bait, as well as some tips for avoiding it.
Full Episode Transcript
Here in Madison, there’s a music venue that used to run this really clever ongoing campaign — they would give away a free pair of tickets to an upcoming concert. To enter, all you had to do was tag the person you would bring with you in the comments if you won. Then they randomly selected one lucky responder to nab a free pair of tickets to the show.
But really, the biggest winner in this contest was the venue.
The contest cost them 2 concert tickets, but hundreds of people were identifying and promoting the shows directly to their friends. And not just any friends, but the friends they most thought would want to go to the show. So while two people got to go for free, hundreds of potential fans were being tagged by friends and notified that a show they might be excited about was right around the corner.
And not only that, the Facebook algorithm would have been going nuts seeing all of this organic engagement the venue’s page was generating. Every time someone tagged a friend, they were micro-targeting one person, but also telling Facebook that this content was hot and they should show it to lots more people. As far as the venue was concerned, this was a win/win.
And all it cost them was a pair of concert tickets!
I used to see this tactic employed on my Facebook feed all the time. You probably did too. And then one day, it just stopped.
That’s because in late 2017, Facebook labeled this type of content as “engagement bait.” And they started penalizing it in the algorithm.
Because Facebook can’t actually know your intention when you share a post, they defined engagement bait pretty broadly as simply any post that mentions one of the 5 following words:
Like
Vote
Comment
Tag
Share
It didn’t matter the context, using one of these words simply caused Facebook to devalue your content in the algorithm. Meaning they literally showed your post to fewer people.
As a marketer, this might be annoying. As a user though, you can probably understand why they did this.
While I loved that the concert venue was giving away tickets (I even won a pair once!) the tactic of asking people to tag their friends can get get to be pretty spammy. Like this post if your an Aries doesn’t do much to create meaningful conversations or connections online.
When Facebook first announced the new rules around Engagement Bait, they only applied to the text in your post. Then they updated it to also apply to text in the comments (as lots of clever marketers would simply make their engagement request in the first comment rather than in the post itself).
And now, Facebook has finally made the final jump — they will also demote content that uses engagement bait words (like, vote comment, tag and share) within the audio of a video.
While this might seem frustrating, just remember, it is genuinely in Facebook’s interest that you enjoy the content you, and everyone else, sees in their feed. If not, you, and everyone else, will stop logging in. And then there will be no one to market too anyway!
You can still encourage engagement, you just can’t do so using 5 key words. Don’t ask people to “respond in the comments.” Just ask your question. Your users know how to respond. And don’t ask for the like — create content they will like without being prodded.
Of course you can ignore these rules all you want. But Facebook ultimately decides how many people will see your posts. So ignoring their rules means limiting your own reach. The choice is clear as far as I’m concerned.
Engagement is great! Engagement bait — not so much.
But really, the biggest winner in this contest was the venue.
The contest cost them 2 concert tickets, but hundreds of people were identifying and promoting the shows directly to their friends. And not just any friends, but the friends they most thought would want to go to the show. So while two people got to go for free, hundreds of potential fans were being tagged by friends and notified that a show they might be excited about was right around the corner.
And not only that, the Facebook algorithm would have been going nuts seeing all of this organic engagement the venue’s page was generating. Every time someone tagged a friend, they were micro-targeting one person, but also telling Facebook that this content was hot and they should show it to lots more people. As far as the venue was concerned, this was a win/win.
And all it cost them was a pair of concert tickets!
I used to see this tactic employed on my Facebook feed all the time. You probably did too. And then one day, it just stopped.
That’s because in late 2017, Facebook labeled this type of content as “engagement bait.” And they started penalizing it in the algorithm.
Because Facebook can’t actually know your intention when you share a post, they defined engagement bait pretty broadly as simply any post that mentions one of the 5 following words:
Like
Vote
Comment
Tag
Share
It didn’t matter the context, using one of these words simply caused Facebook to devalue your content in the algorithm. Meaning they literally showed your post to fewer people.
As a marketer, this might be annoying. As a user though, you can probably understand why they did this.
While I loved that the concert venue was giving away tickets (I even won a pair once!) the tactic of asking people to tag their friends can get get to be pretty spammy. Like this post if your an Aries doesn’t do much to create meaningful conversations or connections online.
When Facebook first announced the new rules around Engagement Bait, they only applied to the text in your post. Then they updated it to also apply to text in the comments (as lots of clever marketers would simply make their engagement request in the first comment rather than in the post itself).
And now, Facebook has finally made the final jump — they will also demote content that uses engagement bait words (like, vote comment, tag and share) within the audio of a video.
While this might seem frustrating, just remember, it is genuinely in Facebook’s interest that you enjoy the content you, and everyone else, sees in their feed. If not, you, and everyone else, will stop logging in. And then there will be no one to market too anyway!
You can still encourage engagement, you just can’t do so using 5 key words. Don’t ask people to “respond in the comments.” Just ask your question. Your users know how to respond. And don’t ask for the like — create content they will like without being prodded.
Of course you can ignore these rules all you want. But Facebook ultimately decides how many people will see your posts. So ignoring their rules means limiting your own reach. The choice is clear as far as I’m concerned.
Engagement is great! Engagement bait — not so much.
Step Up Your Social Ep. 6
You start a new Facebook brand page. It's only natural to invite everyone you know to like the page.
The problem is, you're actually hurting your page's future growth when you invite people who like you — but don't care about your brand — to like your Facebook brand page.
In this episode:
• We dive into the Facebook algorithm
• Talk about the difference between "good" and "bad" likes
• Cover helpful tips to grow your page with the right audience
• The importance of using a brand page for your page (as opposed to a personal account)
• And a whole lot more
The problem is, you're actually hurting your page's future growth when you invite people who like you — but don't care about your brand — to like your Facebook brand page.
In this episode:
• We dive into the Facebook algorithm
• Talk about the difference between "good" and "bad" likes
• Cover helpful tips to grow your page with the right audience
• The importance of using a brand page for your page (as opposed to a personal account)
• And a whole lot more
Step Up Your Social Ep. 5
Are you leaving low hanging fruit on the table? Are you missing opportunities to encourage your current customers, fans or audience to start conversations with you online, thus promoting your brand to their own networks in the process?
In this episode, we cover two inter-related topics: the importance of displaying your handles *everywhere* your audience is and the vital role that engagement plays in creating and managing a beneficial social media program.
Never forget — social media is not a tool to speak TO the people. It’s a tool to speak WITH the people. The goal is to have conversations and to build relationships.
In this episode, we cover two inter-related topics: the importance of displaying your handles *everywhere* your audience is and the vital role that engagement plays in creating and managing a beneficial social media program.
Never forget — social media is not a tool to speak TO the people. It’s a tool to speak WITH the people. The goal is to have conversations and to build relationships.
Full Episode Transcript
Step Up Your Social Ep. 4
If you run ads on Facebook without first building quality audiences, it's like you're standing in the street, throwing expensive flyers in the air, and hoping for the best.
Facebook offers you the opportunity to microtarget based on tons of different factors.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of microtargeting.
We will also cover the three different Facebook advertising audience types:
• Custom
• Lookalike and
• Saved
We'll cover what they are, how to build them, and why you should be using them to run ads on Facebook.
If you enjoy this this podcast, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in!
Facebook offers you the opportunity to microtarget based on tons of different factors.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of microtargeting.
We will also cover the three different Facebook advertising audience types:
• Custom
• Lookalike and
• Saved
We'll cover what they are, how to build them, and why you should be using them to run ads on Facebook.
If you enjoy this this podcast, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in!
Step Up Your Social Ep. 3
"Stories" are the Facebook response to Snapchat — fun, quirky bits of content that disappear after 24 hours.
Throughout the Facebook Universe — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, people are currently sharing over a billion stories every day!
Instagram Stories alone has over 400 million daily active users — more than twice as many as Snapchat.
Stories have all kinds of fun and interesting capabilities built directly into the platform.
In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we cover the what, the when and the how of Stories along with a bunch of tips, tricks and fun things you should try.
Listen today and let us know if you have any questions, or anything to add to the conversation around this fun topic!
Throughout the Facebook Universe — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, people are currently sharing over a billion stories every day!
Instagram Stories alone has over 400 million daily active users — more than twice as many as Snapchat.
Stories have all kinds of fun and interesting capabilities built directly into the platform.
In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we cover the what, the when and the how of Stories along with a bunch of tips, tricks and fun things you should try.
Listen today and let us know if you have any questions, or anything to add to the conversation around this fun topic!
Step Up Your Social Ep. 2
In episode 2 of #StepUpYourSocial, we tackle the important subject of Twitter lists.
One common complain about Twitter is that the platform can feel chaotic. Twitter lists are how you make order out of that chaos.
They serve as an amazing listening tool, whether or not your brand is active on Twitter.
Throughout the episode we cover:
The episode is available now. Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's right — we are now live across the podcast universe! Find us iTunes or the Google Play store, on Stitcher, Overcast, Spotify... If we aren't available yet in your podcast player of choice, let us know and we'll look into rectifying that.
That's for listening. Subscribe today and then get back to telling your story!
One common complain about Twitter is that the platform can feel chaotic. Twitter lists are how you make order out of that chaos.
They serve as an amazing listening tool, whether or not your brand is active on Twitter.
Throughout the episode we cover:
- How to build or subscribe to lists
- The types of lists you should be using
- The difference between public and private lists
- Using the free tool Tweetdeck to more easily build and manage your Twitter lists
- And much more.
The episode is available now. Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts. That's right — we are now live across the podcast universe! Find us iTunes or the Google Play store, on Stitcher, Overcast, Spotify... If we aren't available yet in your podcast player of choice, let us know and we'll look into rectifying that.
That's for listening. Subscribe today and then get back to telling your story!
Step Up Your Social Podcast, Episode 1
That's right! I've started a podcast.
It's called Step Up Your Social and it's intended to provide quick, actionable tips to help you master your social media. I plan on making these all "flash episodes," around 10 minutes long or less.
That way you can hop in, learn something quick and get right back to work!
Have a topic you want to hear me cover? Drop it in the comments, tweet it at me, or use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
In the inaugural episode, I discuss the difference between crossposting your comments and autoposting them.
One of those is good, the other is very, very bad.
Give a listen. And then get right back to telling your story!
It's called Step Up Your Social and it's intended to provide quick, actionable tips to help you master your social media. I plan on making these all "flash episodes," around 10 minutes long or less.
That way you can hop in, learn something quick and get right back to work!
Have a topic you want to hear me cover? Drop it in the comments, tweet it at me, or use the hashtag #StepUpYourSocial.
In the inaugural episode, I discuss the difference between crossposting your comments and autoposting them.
One of those is good, the other is very, very bad.
Give a listen. And then get right back to telling your story!
Wisconsinites went to the polls on Tuesday In droves. The final results of the election though do not fully reflect the will of the people.
There were five statewide races: Governor (with Lt. Gov on the same ticket), US Senator, Attorney General, Treasurer and Secretary of State. Democrats won all five races. This is the first time that’s happened since 1982.
Dems had unmistakable victories at the statewide level. As you look down the ballot though, the results tell a very different story.
There were five statewide races: Governor (with Lt. Gov on the same ticket), US Senator, Attorney General, Treasurer and Secretary of State. Democrats won all five races. This is the first time that’s happened since 1982.
Dems had unmistakable victories at the statewide level. As you look down the ballot though, the results tell a very different story.
US Congress
Wisconsin has eight Congressional seats all of which were up for election on Tuesday. Going into Election Day, Democrats controlled three of them and Republicans the remaining five. No seat flipped.
All told, Wisconsin Democratic Congressional candidates received 1,350,960 votes.
Wisconsin Republican Congressional Candidates received 1,171,456 votes.
[These numbers have been updated since original posting, as additional totals have been tallied and reported. See most up-to-date vote breakdown here.]
And yet, as mentioned, Dems got three out of eight seats.
That’s right, Dems got 53.5% of the vote, yet took only 37.5% of the seats.
All told, Wisconsin Democratic Congressional candidates received 1,350,960 votes.
Wisconsin Republican Congressional Candidates received 1,171,456 votes.
[These numbers have been updated since original posting, as additional totals have been tallied and reported. See most up-to-date vote breakdown here.]
And yet, as mentioned, Dems got three out of eight seats.
That’s right, Dems got 53.5% of the vote, yet took only 37.5% of the seats.
Infographic Created By Brian Evans @BriInWI
State Assembly
When we look at the State Assembly, which had every seat up for grabs this past Tuesday, that disparity becomes even more glaring.
While final numbers are still not fully available for all races, Democratic Assembly candidates appear poised to take right around 1.3 million votes to Republican Assembly candidates 1.1 million votes.
And yet Democrats walked away with only 36 seats, while Republicans took a staggering 63!
That means that Democrats won 54% of the vote and yet took only 36% of the seats.
While final numbers are still not fully available for all races, Democratic Assembly candidates appear poised to take right around 1.3 million votes to Republican Assembly candidates 1.1 million votes.
And yet Democrats walked away with only 36 seats, while Republicans took a staggering 63!
That means that Democrats won 54% of the vote and yet took only 36% of the seats.
Infographic Created By Brian Evans @BriInWI
A Flimsy Response to a Gerrymandered Map
Republican Speaker Robin Vos’s response to the imbalance of the map: “I do not like the fact that Madison and Milwaukee chose Gov. Evers and they’re the reason that he won. But in the process that we have, Madison and Milwaukee get the chance to vote. I don’t like the outcome all the time, but they have a fair chance.”
Speaker Vos is essentially arguing that Wisconsin should not have a popular vote (or popular representation), but rather that we need our very own electoral college to protect Wisconsin from its two largest cities.
But of course how a city votes is irrelevant (or should be!). It should be how the people vote. And his explanation doesn’t even come close to explaining the clear disparities at play. Of course Madison and Milwaukee have a large role in deciding our state’s leadership. The combined population of their two metro areas makes up over a third of the state’s population. That’s simply how representative democracy works. Or how it’s supposed to anyway.
Wisconsin went to the polls on Tuesday and now we find ourselves with a split government. But that’s not because of how the people voted, it’s because of how the maps were drawn.
Remember that the next time our minority-elected legislative government aims to make sweeping changes to our state — changes like curbing the authority of our newly-elected Governor, because a powerful Executive was good for Vos and Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald when that Executive was a Republican, but is a threat to their minority-rule now that he’s a Democrat.
Republicans couldn’t draw the statewide map to their benefit and every statewide race went to a Democrat. Despite winning sizable majorities in the popular vote for both Congress and the State Assembly, Democrats continue to find themselves in the minority of both bodies (for Congress, this only relates to the Wisconsin caucus, not the national map).
Partisan gerrymandering is undemocratic. Tuesday’s results show clear as day just how undemocratic.
Speaker Vos is essentially arguing that Wisconsin should not have a popular vote (or popular representation), but rather that we need our very own electoral college to protect Wisconsin from its two largest cities.
But of course how a city votes is irrelevant (or should be!). It should be how the people vote. And his explanation doesn’t even come close to explaining the clear disparities at play. Of course Madison and Milwaukee have a large role in deciding our state’s leadership. The combined population of their two metro areas makes up over a third of the state’s population. That’s simply how representative democracy works. Or how it’s supposed to anyway.
Wisconsin went to the polls on Tuesday and now we find ourselves with a split government. But that’s not because of how the people voted, it’s because of how the maps were drawn.
Remember that the next time our minority-elected legislative government aims to make sweeping changes to our state — changes like curbing the authority of our newly-elected Governor, because a powerful Executive was good for Vos and Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald when that Executive was a Republican, but is a threat to their minority-rule now that he’s a Democrat.
Republicans couldn’t draw the statewide map to their benefit and every statewide race went to a Democrat. Despite winning sizable majorities in the popular vote for both Congress and the State Assembly, Democrats continue to find themselves in the minority of both bodies (for Congress, this only relates to the Wisconsin caucus, not the national map).
Partisan gerrymandering is undemocratic. Tuesday’s results show clear as day just how undemocratic.
Work in politics? Want to?
Learn more about how I work with candidates, elected officials and political organizations today.
If you work with people, you should have a photo/media library. Period.
Taking pictures of your customers/fans/community will help you tell your story in real time. It will also help ensure you have great content to use for years to come.
There’s no shortage of stock photography on the internet, but none of it has your team members in it, or your customers wearing/using/engaging with your products, or events taking place in neighborhoods where you live.
You don’t need to be an amazing photographer to build a photo library, you just need to pull out your smartphone and start taking pictures. If you have multiple team members, you should all take photos regularly to ensure as many different shots as possible of any given event, sale, party, etc.
But that’s where things gets complicated. If several members of your team are taking photos, then those photos are spread out across several different phones and devices.
There are many services out there that aim to solve this problem. Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Photos… all of them can do it. But they are all clunky and slow, and therefore unlikely to be used regularly and reliably. And if you aren’t sharing all your photos, the system isn’t working.
Here’s the good news: If every member of your team uses at least one Apple product, Shared iCloud Drives are the simplest solution you can imagine to solve this annoying problem.
Adding photos to a Shared Drive takes three clicks of the screen. Literally. And then everyone with access will have all shared photos and videos right on their phones and other Apple devices.
To add a photo(s)/video(s) to a Shared Drive, simply open up the media on your phone you want to share.
Then click in the share box in the bottom left of the screen.
Taking pictures of your customers/fans/community will help you tell your story in real time. It will also help ensure you have great content to use for years to come.
There’s no shortage of stock photography on the internet, but none of it has your team members in it, or your customers wearing/using/engaging with your products, or events taking place in neighborhoods where you live.
You don’t need to be an amazing photographer to build a photo library, you just need to pull out your smartphone and start taking pictures. If you have multiple team members, you should all take photos regularly to ensure as many different shots as possible of any given event, sale, party, etc.
But that’s where things gets complicated. If several members of your team are taking photos, then those photos are spread out across several different phones and devices.
There are many services out there that aim to solve this problem. Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Photos… all of them can do it. But they are all clunky and slow, and therefore unlikely to be used regularly and reliably. And if you aren’t sharing all your photos, the system isn’t working.
Here’s the good news: If every member of your team uses at least one Apple product, Shared iCloud Drives are the simplest solution you can imagine to solve this annoying problem.
Adding photos to a Shared Drive takes three clicks of the screen. Literally. And then everyone with access will have all shared photos and videos right on their phones and other Apple devices.
To add a photo(s)/video(s) to a Shared Drive, simply open up the media on your phone you want to share.
Then click in the share box in the bottom left of the screen.
At this point you can email or text the photo, or you can share it to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. But don’t do any of that. Select the rainbow icon labeled iCloud Photo Sharing.
The name of my Shared Album is Reverbal Communications. Click next to Shared Album and you can add your media to any existing Shared Drive you're a part of, or you can create a new one.
Optionally: you can add text or message to accompany your photo. I highly recommend you do this, both for your own sake, and for the sake of your team members. Say where you were, what you were doing, who is in the photo(s)/video(s) and any other information your team should know.
You can add a message or a note for an individual piece of media, or a group of pictures/videos. Whatever you choose to share will be commented on individually or as a unit.
Optionally: you can add text or message to accompany your photo. I highly recommend you do this, both for your own sake, and for the sake of your team members. Say where you were, what you were doing, who is in the photo(s)/video(s) and any other information your team should know.
You can add a message or a note for an individual piece of media, or a group of pictures/videos. Whatever you choose to share will be commented on individually or as a unit.
Then just hit post and everyone in the Shared Drive will get a notification that there is new media in the Shared Drive.
When you open up the Shared Drive, you can toggle between Photos and People.
When you open up the Shared Drive, you can toggle between Photos and People.
To invite new people to the Drive, go to People and then click “Invite People.”
They can only accept your invitation if they have an iCloud enabled device (a Mac computer, phone or tablet). You can invite them through their email or phone number, so long as that contact info is associated with an iCloud account.
Shared Drives are a great tool for placing all media at the fingertips of everyone on your team. You can have as many as you want too, so maybe have one accessible to interns or revolving staffers, and another for senior staffers/stakeholders. Or you have different Shared Drives for different parts of your team. Whatever works for you and your organization.
Have questions? Hit me up. I’m here to help you and you team get started building your Digital Media Library.
Check out some other iPhone tips and tricks.
Have any favorite secret iOS tips, tricks, tools or hacks that you love? Share them in the comments!
Shared Drives are a great tool for placing all media at the fingertips of everyone on your team. You can have as many as you want too, so maybe have one accessible to interns or revolving staffers, and another for senior staffers/stakeholders. Or you have different Shared Drives for different parts of your team. Whatever works for you and your organization.
Have questions? Hit me up. I’m here to help you and you team get started building your Digital Media Library.
Check out some other iPhone tips and tricks.
Have any favorite secret iOS tips, tricks, tools or hacks that you love? Share them in the comments!
As of October 2020, Facebook has done away with Facebook Notes.
Getting Started With Facebook Notes
Ever wanted to spice up your Facebook post, but didn't know how?
With a Facebook Note, you can add a cover photo, as well as pictures and GIFs throughout your posts.
You can also format your text with bold and italics, bullet and numbered lists, hyperlinks and much more.
So instead of just another boring picture, your post can look like this:
With a Facebook Note, you can add a cover photo, as well as pictures and GIFs throughout your posts.
You can also format your text with bold and italics, bullet and numbered lists, hyperlinks and much more.
So instead of just another boring picture, your post can look like this:
If you have tuned out this news completely for Memorial Day weekend, congratulations!
If not, the biggest story in your varied timelines is probably about how the US is systematically removing children from their parents, many of whom came here seeking asylum (and all of whom came seeking a better life).
The parents are being given no information as to where their children are being taken or when — if ever — they will get to see them again. To make matters worse, we are now learning that the US has lost children (thousands of them 😞😱😡) that are supposed to be in the system, and that many of these children are getting sold to human traffickers.
This morning, Ivanka Trump tweeted a picture. The caption: “My ❤️! #SundayMorning”
If not, the biggest story in your varied timelines is probably about how the US is systematically removing children from their parents, many of whom came here seeking asylum (and all of whom came seeking a better life).
The parents are being given no information as to where their children are being taken or when — if ever — they will get to see them again. To make matters worse, we are now learning that the US has lost children (thousands of them 😞😱😡) that are supposed to be in the system, and that many of these children are getting sold to human traffickers.
This morning, Ivanka Trump tweeted a picture. The caption: “My ❤️! #SundayMorning”
While ordinarily, a picture like this would have gotten the Likes and the RTs rolling in, it could not have been more tone deaf to the world around it.
Ivanka is not just President Trump’s daughter, she is also a senior member of his administration.
A tweet does not live in a vacuum. A digital intern would have looked at this tweet and recommended to Ivanka she not post it, when the story of the weekend is lost children.
But post it she did. And so the Quote Tweets rolled in:
Ivanka is not just President Trump’s daughter, she is also a senior member of his administration.
A tweet does not live in a vacuum. A digital intern would have looked at this tweet and recommended to Ivanka she not post it, when the story of the weekend is lost children.
But post it she did. And so the Quote Tweets rolled in:
David Roberts — Writer for Vox
Patton Oswalt — Comedian, Actor, Michelle McNamara's Husband
West Wing Reports
Jess Dweck — TV Writer
As a general rule, pictures and videos of babies and puppies can be engagement gold. But while good content is important, it can't work without an awareness of context.
In other words: you can ignore the people; but rest assured, they are not going to ignore you.
In other words: you can ignore the people; but rest assured, they are not going to ignore you.
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