Posts By :

Susan Rapaglia

What is Instagram’s Most Valuable Engagement

What is Instagram’s Most Valuable Engagement 1200 800 Susan Rapaglia


Who is the MVE (aka Most Valuable Engagement) in the Instagram game? It’s not all about the likes anymore!

Gone are the days when a double tap on your post was the only measure of Instagram success. Today, there are a number of Instagram metrics you should be focused on to gauge whether your audience is engaged, your posts are resonating and, of course, if you are playing to the ever-elusive Instagram algorithm.

According to Instagram itself, the most important engagements that will affect your account’s ranking are comments, likes, saves, reshares, and views for videos.

  1. Comments: If your post incites a comment from a follower, Instagram can be pretty sure the follower was interested in your content and found it TIMELY and RELEVANT.
  2. Saves: Dubbed the “SUPER LIKE” by James Nord (Fohr), a save is a very, very clear indicator of high-quality content. Now, you can’t actually see who saves your post, but racking up this type of engagement will really help your feed visibility and can even land you on the Explore page!
  3. Likes: We’ve been waiting for almost two years to see our like counts disappear. Who knows if or when Instagram will actually pull the trigger on this move, but for now, likes do still play into the Instagram algorithm. There is also a ‘herd mentality’ of sorts when it comes to likes. Seeing a large number of likes on a post can inspire a follower to stop, look and like your post for that reason alone.
  4. Shares: When a viewer reshares your post onto their stories it does two important things. 1) Tells Instagram that your post was quality and relevant enough for you to share with your network and 2) it spreads your content to new potential followers (aka customers) *We must note that Instagram has stopped some users from resharing posts to stories as a test. We have not seen this happening personally, but some users in some countries have been a part of the test. Who knows if this will roll out to more users…

For the average business user, mastering the Instagram algorithm can seem daunting. But with a little prep and planning—and patience—you can see improvements in your overall engagement. Our biggest tips: Stay consistent, stay real and stay fresh! If you need more specific recommendations or social media help, we’d love to chat! Hit us up at [email protected] to get the conversation started!

woman pouring Brizo Everything dressing on a bowl of burrata and bread.

BRIZO DRESSING: Delicious Graphic Design

BRIZO DRESSING: Delicious Graphic Design 1080 720 Susan Rapaglia


BRIZO just took a DNA test, turns out it’s 100 per-cent de-lish. Plus it’s certified vegan, zero sugar, keto + paleo friendly…

BRIZO Everything Dressing is a family-owned, women-run business that has a product our team is in love with. Their dressings—mild and spicy variations of the dressing—are made ever so simply with extra virgin olive oil (or EVOO for you culinary folks out there), lemon, and an herb/spice blend. 

After working with the brand for a few months, the opportunity to revamp their label and work in a fun graphic element to their social media arose. Needless to say we jumped at the opportunity to give them a fresh and new design as they were preparing to participate in Expo East 2019. Our account management team and graphic designer put their heads together to create a label that was as simple, beautiful as the product that it holds, but one that would stand out on the shelves of popular retailers like Jimbos, Hensons amongst others.

DO YOU JUDGE A PRODUCT BY IT’S LABEL?

The BRIZO bottle label was crafted to reflect the personality of the product itself. Coast Creative worked to tie in the brand’s fun, natural, vibrant, carefree personality into the design, and we’re pretty happy with the results. Additionally, light colors were used to reflect the lightness of the product’s ingredients. The EVOO, citrus, and herbs are all simple elements that shine on their own. Keeping the design natural, simple, light and airy were intended to instill a feeling in buyers where they could experience the product before even tasting it. You know, that whole “eat with your eyes thing.”

BRANDING IN ACTION

The new labels were launch in September of this year, just in time for the Brizo team to strut their newly branded stuff at EXPO 2019 and test the effectiveness of the new design. 

“When we launched this year at Expo East 2019, with the new labels, everyone who came up to us, had something positive to say about our packaging. They would say how it was the first thing that reeled them into our booth, then they would try BRIZO, love it and say “this really is an everything dressing, just like it says right here on the bottle, what a great concept!”. The importance of packaging in the CPG – Food & Beverage industry is huge. The right packaging is what creates curiosity in a consumer to make the move, rather than walking by, stopping and picking up a bottle to read more, and hopefully take home & become a fan.” – HAYLEY, BRIZO EVERYTHING DRESSING

In tandem with EXPO 2019, Brizo’s Coast Creative account team began working on a new social media strategy that would 1) introduce current and potential clients to the new look 2) enhance and solidify the brand personality 3) illustrate important product details including uses, ingredients and new locations (including their move to AMAZONPrime!). Not only was the new look well-received, it was pretty fun to work on.

THE RESULTS: FUN, BRIGHT & REFLECTIVE OF AN AMAZING NEW PRODUCT

An example of the old Brizo Everything Dressing bottle next to a plate of spinach and toasts.
ORIGINAL LABEL
Newly redesigned Brizo Everything Dressing labels on a cutting board
UPDATED LABEL
Male and female coworkers smiling at each other from across their desks.

Presence Checklist for Small Business Owners (Part 2)

Presence Checklist for Small Business Owners (Part 2) 1200 800 Susan Rapaglia

The Good News? You’re Halfway There!

The Benefit of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful and free online tool you can (and should) connect to your website. It can help you analyze how many people are visiting your website each day, at what stage of the purchasing process website visitors are dropping off, what websites and social media platforms are doing best at referring readers over to your site and so much more. Having this data gives you tangible information that can go a long way in helping you to make decisions that grow your business.

To get started with Google Analytics, visit their information page on this topic here.

For a more in-depth explanation of key Google Analytics metrics we think you should understand, check out our earlier blog post. 

Want to build an optimized, beautiful website but not sure where to start? We’re here to help! Reach out to us–we’d love to learn about your business, understand your short-term business goals and long term vision and build you a high-quality website.

Get Your Free Google My Business Listing 

Free? Oh yes, free! If you have a physical location for your business, or travel to where your customers are, sign up to get a free Google My Business listing. 

This tool allows you to manage how people see your business information, and can help you appear when someone is searching for your type of business nearby. You’re able to add your business name, hours, location, contact information and a menu if relevant to your business, as well as the ability to respond to reviews. 

For a deeper dive into Google My Business, check out this blog post.

Make Your Branding Cohesive

First, let’s talk about what branding is—because it’s not simply a “cool” logo. Branding refers to any touchpoint with your business: everything your brand does, and what it stands for, how it operates, what you produce and how someone would describe your brand to someone who’s never heard of you before. Your branding identity is a visual representation of your brand: the color palette you choose, fonts and logo design, etc.

These are inherently tied together but having a clear idea of what your brand is, and essentially why you believe your products and/or services will be sought after and valued, can help tremendously in designing your brand identity.

Again, if you have no experience in graphic design, don’t have a clue how to translate your brand to its visual representation or are planning on using Microsoft Word to create your brand identity, we would very kindly urge you to please don’t DIY this. 

How potential customers perceive your brand is extremely important and having a quality logo, signage, marketing material, packaging etc. goes a long way toward establishing the credibility of your business. This is one area that’s really important to invest in.

Lead Capture Mechanism (Build That Email List!)

When all else fails, (i.e. if your social media accounts get hacked and you lose all the content you’ve been working so hard on), your email newsletter is an excellent way to reach out to your customers and keep them engaged. By having an email capture pop-up on your site or exchanging quality content for a site visitor’s email you can gauge interest in the content you’re creating and products and/or services that you’re providing. 

Tip: Consistency is key when sending out your email newsletters. It by no means has to be a weekly occurrence, but by sending out emails that provide helpful, interesting and engaging content to your list at a cadence they can rely on, you will build trustworthiness and rapport among customers that already have shown initial interest in your product and/or service.

The Power of Social Platforms

Social media is where your customers hang out, find inspiration and share information with each other. According to statista.com, in the United States “an estimated 244 million people used social media in 2018.” Worldwide, that number is around 2.34 billion and is expected to grow to around 2.95 billion by 2020. 

With nearly a third of the world’s population on social platforms today, why pass up on this dynamic opportunity to connect with your customers? Instagram, as we say, is “2019’s version of a first impression.” Using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms to meet your customers where they are gives you an opportunity to learn about what they’re interested in, what problems they need solutions to and what content they love in a really organic format. 

Get started on Instagram today with these tips on building your audience, executing your aesthetic, and using the platform strategically…never post just to post! 

Tip: “Influencers,” aka people with a large social following who visit your business, try out a product or service, and share their experience, can truly step up your business’ growth. You can tap into their loyal and engaged fan

The Case For High Quality Visuals—Schedule a PROFESSIONAL Photo Shoot

Smartphone snaps are not going to cut it, especially in today’s competitive social landscape. Resolution will never be as clear as a photo taken on a DSLR camera shot on RAW. Again, visuals are everything and you don’t want to cut corners here. Do some research and find a photographer who specializes in brand photography, product or food photography, whatever relates to your business…because there’s nothing more painful than a beautiful website with blurry, pixelated images dispersed throughout. 

Consistency in coloration, setting and a variety of shots is so, so important. We recommend you have a minimum of 20 unique shots for your website. These images can also be repurposed for social media, newsletters, etc. so it’s well worth the investment.

Reputation is Everything

If you’ve signed up for Google My Business, have a Yelp Business account or something similar, maintain your presence on these accounts by taking the time to respond to feedback from customers. Whether it’s a positive or negative review, responding shows both your customers and potential customers that you are invested in your business and interested in providing the best possible experience, even after the business transaction is over. 

DO NOT allow negative reviews to pile up, these can sink your business and leave you looking like you don’t care about your customers. 

Tip: Schedule time in 2-3 times a week to check your review platforms and respond to customers in a timely manner. Receiving notifications on your phone or computer about reviews is a good way to keep on top of customer feedback.

In Real Life: Collaborate With Your (Biz) Community

Still struggling to get the word out about your business? Teaming up with another business locally that aligns with yours can be a mutually beneficial way to grow awareness for your brand. Place your products in a coffee shop, offer a workshop at a local co-working space, attend networking events and share your story with the audience. 

There’s lots of ways to build relationships locally that can help others to be advocates for your brand. Take the time to get out and do the work. You’ll never know where opportunity can present itself (hint–everywhere). Research local business networking chapters to find your niche, or check out the countless groups on Meetup.com.

Bonus: Set Aside an Advertising Budget

You’ve put in all the work, checked off all the boxes. Let search engines and social platforms do some work for you by advertising your product or service to potential customers. Our Digital Project Manager, Max Pete, recommends a budget of $250-$500 to start with an advertising campaign. 

Don’t know where to start with advertising? Read this five minute piece on how to create impactful Google Ads without spending more money. 

Feeling overwhelmed? We offer digital advertising as part of our scalable services targeted to your unique business. Reach out to us for more information, we’d love to chat!

Thanks for coming to our Ted Talk 😉

Presence Checklist for Small Business Owners (Part 1)

Presence Checklist for Small Business Owners (Part 1) 150 150 Susan Rapaglia

Take a deep breath and just start!

When you’re building your business, it’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day stressors of making it work. Nevertheless, it’s vital that you take a step back and look at the whole picture—which should include a solid digital presence. Here at Coast Creative, most of what we do lives in the digital world, so we’ve created a pretty solid checklist for new clients. And that’s what we’re sharing today!

Your presence on the web could be the difference between customers pouring through your doors and having to shutter them for good. So take a deep breath and see how many of these line items you can check off. 

Based on our experience, for small business owners in this day and age, we highly recommend you have:

  1. A High-Quality Website (user experience, copy + visuals, SEO)
  2. Google Analytics
  3. Google My Business Listing (for brick-and-mortar stores or if you travel to your customers)
  4. Cohesive Branding
  5. A Lead Capture Mechanism (Email Sign-up)
  6. A Social Media Presence (Build Your Community)
  7. High-Quality Visual Content
  8. Reputation Management
  9. IRL (In Real Life): Community events & Collaborations

     Bonus: Ad Spend budget

Why Do I Need a Website?

A website is essentially your online store, a one-stop shop for all information about your business. If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar business, a website is even more necessary. You can make online sales, gather emails from interested customers and follow up with them later on, and write a blog that provides readers with quality information that can help them in their purchase decision-making process. There’s a lot more capabilities that come with having a website, in addition to providing a professional and authoritative online presence for your business.

What distinguishes a high-quality website?

To build a website that engages and excites your visitors, you need to think about the user experience, writing clear and concise copy, and including at least 15 to 20 unique, high resolution images specific to your brand/business (more on this later).

Breaking this down further, you should ask yourself:

  • What action(s) do I want visitors to take?
  • What should my tone be? Playful, authoritative, casual? What language represents my business and what doesn’t?
  • What must anyone understand about my business when they visit my website?
  • Is there a clear path to the end goal of having a visitor complete a purchase, sign-up for your newsletter, schedule a consultation or reach out for more information?

You should take the time to write out all the information you’d like to have included on the website. This should be done before design to help you understand how many pages you need, what information is most important and where you should place it, etc. And if you’re not a writer…don’t attempt to write all the final website copy yourself.

Being able to concisely and compellingly share your story and information about your products and/or services is HUGE.

Professional copywriters are great at what they do and trained to write persuasively using long-established copy techniques. If you know you’re not a writer, do some research and find someone who can help you reach that end-goal of launching your website with confidence.

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what’s not as important. But knowing what is can help you establish hierarchy on your site, from header font sizes and capitalization to a clean minimal footer with only the essential business information included. Picture a funnel and think about building your pages that way to create a website that’s visually appealing, intuitive and not jarring to your site visitors.

“Read Now”

Distributing call-to-action buttons throughout the website is a great way to give visitors opportunities to complete actions that lead them toward becoming actively interested in your product or service, willing to exchange personal information (i.e. an email address) in exchange for downloadable content, and ultimately purchasing a product or getting in contact with you to use your services.

Tip: Never include different call-to-actions simultaneously next to each other on the page. If they are the same action, i.e. “Reserve Now” right next to each other, that’s ok. Don’t have your visitors choose between two actions–that leads to confusion and non-action.

Search Engine Optimization Steps to Consider

Add a Meta-Description To Each Page: This should be a short sentence using the same keyword as the title of the page you’re working on, but it should not say exactly the same thing as what’s in that page’s content.

One Keyword Per Page (except on your home page): Optimize your website by including keywords throughout your site content so search engines can “crawl” it, or read and understand the contents of your site more easily. This will help your site to rank when someone is using those keywords to search.

To learn more, read this blog post on optimizing the most critical parts of your website from one of our favorite marketing resources, HubSpot.

Tip: Try to have at least 500 words per page as it applies to ensure you are providing enough quality content for both users and search engines to understand. Don’t write just to write. Make sure your content is helpful and engaging, first and foremost.

Thinking about where to build your website? For more information on the difference between popular website design platforms Squarespace and WordPress, check out our blog post.

Don’t worry, we’ve got the rest of the list coming soon! Stay tuned and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram to get the latest. 

CCxUGC Series: Why We Love User-Generated Content

CCxUGC Series: Why We Love User-Generated Content 1200 731 Susan Rapaglia

User-Generated Content Turns Customers into Advocates

User-generated content aka “UGC” is the social equivalent of word of mouth and an invaluable marketing tool. For that reason, we’ve created a series of blog posts to better explain the purpose of UGC, how to inspire your audience to give you more and how to properly track these efforts. In this post, the first of our CCxUGC Series, we’re focusing on WHY user-generated content is such an important part of one’s social strategy.

Let us start by saying that you don’t need Kim Kardashian on payroll to see the benefits of user posts—unless you have a spare half million laying around then by all means call Kimmy. Powerful UGC is created everyday by @averagejoeconsumer, and you’d be crazy not to start leveraging it asap!

Here’s What UGC Does to Your Social Strategy

IT INSTILLS TRUST

Consumers are increasingly wary of advertisements. Not surprisingly, the average consumer is less likely to trust what a brand says about their own product than what another consumer has to say. At it’s essence, organic user-generated content (ie content created by an influencer) is essentially a stamp of approval to that person’s network.

IT IS FREE 

Creating content is time consuming and usually has a price tag. So why not leverage all the free content you can get? And when they’re inspired, it’s amazing what the “average” Instagram user can come up with. When you really keep an eye on brand mentions (tags, hashtags, locations), you will be surprised at how many people post about their business/brand/product interactions.

IT STRENGTHENS BONDS

Sharing someone’s post is essentially a public shout out and validation of them as an Instagrammer. For better or worse, people love to see their images shared on professional profiles (cough, cough ego). Even without a #repost, commenting on posts that mention your brand can give customers the warm and fuzzies. While it’s a small act, it creates a closer bond and builds the all-important brand loyalty.

IT IS UNIQUE TO YOU

For the most part, each user post is a piece of branded content that is unique to your brand. Competitors can’t directly replicate it and it can’t be manufactured in a studio.

Stay tuned for our next CCxUGC topic on how to get/inspire more user-generated photos on social media.

Our Vacation Policy: Unlimited-Ish

Our Vacation Policy: Unlimited-Ish 1000 668 Susan Rapaglia


Why We Chose A Vacation Policy That Tells Staff to Just Go

Raise your hand if you’ve sat at your desk dreaming of a vacation. (FYI, we’re raising our hands.) When we launched Coast Creative, we didn’t even have to discuss the vacation policy. We all just knew that it was: “Take It.” While we normally share our facts and findings as it relates to marketing, Earth Day inspired us to share about our wanderlusting team of creatives.

We believe life is far too short and far too interesting to limit annual time off to 2 weeks—give or take. Call it what you will—unlimited vacation days, flexible vacation policy, etc—we see this as something that benefits creativity and focuses on what’s important aka team accomplishments. Actually, The Muse summarized our thoughts on the matter perfectly:  We are working to create “a results-driven culture of trust.”

Our Big 3 “Why’s” for Unlimited-Ish Vacation

The Owners

Vincent, Tony and Jonathan all love to travel. And they’ve all done it quite extensively, including months spent abroad for both Vinny and Tony. All three knew they wanted to continue to have the opportunity to have those experiences with this new company, and were determined to offer the same to all of their team members.

And it’s not just talk. In late 2018, our co-president Tony tested the vacation policy by spending two months working remotely while traveling throughout Australia and New Zealand.

The Creativity

We simply don’t believe that creativity is a 9-5 job. Sometimes you’re in the zone for hours and sometimes you need to take a break (or 4). By giving our staff more flexibility in where, how and when they work, they are able to deliver the best product to our clients.

The Balance

Work/Life balance is quite the buzzword, but we genuinely see it as one of the most important things we could do for our team. People want to travel, people need to visit family in other parts of the country, friends get married … life happens and work shouldn’t always come first. By providing staff the chance to take long weekends (working remotely most times) and travel without stressing about “using their vacation days” we believe they are better able to create a life that serves them both professionally and personally. And in our minds a burnt out/checked out employee is more detrimental to our success than a staff member who has taken a few extra days off.

… A Few Final Thoughts

We’ve based time off on trusting our employees to work when they need to and take the time off that they need to. And so far, it’s working well for us. Like most things in a startup, we are constantly changing and evolving and working to improve our process. We’re sure we will make slight adjustments to how our staff works. But we can tell you one thing, when it comes to pushing our team members to get out there and #exploremore, we are all in.


Our Vacation Policy In Action

Andrew, VP Finance

📸 Torres Del Paine, Chile

Eveline, Account Coordinator

📸 Chichen Etza, Mexico

Vincent, CEO

📸 Zion National Park, Utah

Tony & Susan, President & VP Marketing

📸 Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

Lauren, Account Manager

📸 San Francisco, California

Jesse, Account Manager

📸 Kauai, Hawaii

Lura, Account Manager

📸 Asakusa, Japan

Instagram for Business: Are You Checking Insights?

Instagram for Business: Are You Checking Insights? 800 533 Susan Rapaglia

Instagram Insights are Really Insights into Your Business

As Instagram continues to evolve as a business platform, we’ve kept a watchful eye on not only the new content features, but also its reporting and analytics capabilities. Many of us who have converted to a business account have first grappled with the potential trade off:  Will more insights and business tools be a trade off for our current ability to connect with users/followers?

To be honest, our team has long suspected Instagram will slowly reduce the amount of organic engagement and exposure a business profile can enjoy without participating in some form of advertising. It’s exactly what happened to Facebook, so why wouldn’t they do the same for the most engaging social platform of 2019?

Here’s the good news:  Up to now, we haven’t seen any major engagement restrictions for business accounts. (We’ve been frustrated by the “algorithm” changes like the rest of the world, but it’s nothing that was tied directly to business profiles). In fact, Instagram business accounts are enjoying more reporting and tracking insights than ever before.

Take Notice to These Instagram Insights

Profile Visits

Pretty straightforward on this one. It’s important that you check month over month your profile visits. Of course, special events or promotions can cause some serious fluctuation, but otherwise you’re looking out for a nice incline of more profile visits each month. It’s a numbers game at this point. The more eyes on your Instagram profile, the more conversions (be it calls, clicks, purchases) that you should see.

Email/Phone/Text/Get Direction AND Website Clicks

Like a goal conversion on your website, these actions indicate some pretty clear intentions and interest from your audience. Depending on your business, these numbers can vary drastically and should be reflective of your goals. Are you a restaurant/bar/cafe? Directions should be your #1 insight, as that’s a good sign they were a real, interested future customer. Do you sell e-commerce? You probably guessed it, but website clicks would be your most important action-related insight.

Reach Over Instagram

Instagram offers you both, but if you ask us, reach is more important and the stat you should key into. Instagram considers “Reach” to be the number of unique accounts/users that have seen your post in the given week. “Impressions” by comparison are the total number of times your posts have been seen that week. While together they are a great metric of your overall presence, we like Instagram Reach because it is more focused on the discovery of your page, and views by different people. And if you’re tracking growth, growth in reach would be most valuable.

Follower Location

This statistic is two-fold in our opinion. First, if you are a brick and mortar location, you want to be sure that you’re followers are relevant and can take the desired action of walking into your place of business. That’s not to say you don’t want to be followed by people from all over the country, but as you execute a growth strategy it’s most effective to have relevant local followers for a business with localized operations. The second piece of this statistic is relevant to businesses that benefit from filter markets. A boutique hotel would likely know their filter markets before executing on Instagram, and with this statistic they can better understand their actual social presence there.

Like all reporting statistics, the point is to analyze and then use the information to better your business, refine your marketing or identify opportunities. Using the boutique hotel example above, the business could take stock of their current position and filter markets and use targeted social and digital advertising to improve their presence.

There is a lot to learn about your business via Instagram. As part of our social media services, Coast Creative tracks all of these statistics (and plenty more) in order to gauge performance and create ROI-driven social media strategies. If you are interested in learning more, just give it a little CLICK CLICK right here!

Google Analytics: To Know It Is To Love It

Google Analytics: To Know It Is To Love It 800 533 Susan Rapaglia

3 Key Metrics We Think You Should Know

Oh Google Analytics, how we love you. How could we not love a tool that offers awesome insights into your online presence and is FREE! Much more than a conversion platform, Google Analytics (GA) offer plenty of equally, if not more useful tools to help you assess the health of your website and business.

In addition to the popular GA stats—like site visits—there are 4 other key metrics that we think all business owners should know (and check regularly!):

Acquisition Source/Medium

Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium
On the Acquisition Overview page you’ll find a quick snapshot of your bounce rate. There’s not much else to say here other than you should keep an eye on this value pretty regularly. A “target range” can vary depending on your website and industry, but typically you want to stay in the  40-60% bounce rate range. Anything below that is great! Above a 60% bounce rate probably calls for some additional research as to why the value is so high. We like to compare the bounce rate month to month as well as the rate compared to the previous year. 

*Extra Credit: According to Google Analytics, the bounce rate is the percentage of visits in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without browsing any further.

Pages Per Session

Similar to bounce rate, it’s a good idea to compare “Pages Per Session” values to the previous month and year to monitor growth. Another helpful piece of insight is on the Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels page where you can see the pages per session breakdown per channel. This is a great way to analyze visitor engagement depending on the channel they used to get to your website. While the length of time and pages search will vary on industry, most businesses are looking for their website visitors to stay engaged and move around the site towards a specific goal—contact forms, shopping pages, etc. 

Device Type and Behavior

Audience > Mobile > Overview
Here you can find a breakdown of the types of devices visiting your website: desktop, mobile or tablet. You can get even more specific (down to device name) in the “Devices” section, but  we find that the Overview page usually does the trick. Make sure to check crucial metrics like bounce rate and pages per session per devices. A low bounce rate for desktop and tablet, but high rate on mobile likely indicates a design/responsive issue that’s preventing users from exploring your site from their smartphone. As we become more and more “mobile first” it’s really important that you’re optimized for all device types.

This was definitely a quick and dirty intro into important Google Analytics metricsThe list could go on and on. Every tool in Google Analytics serves a valuable purpose, but for those just learning the ropes it’s best to start with the most important.

Cohesive Quality: Create an Instagram Aesthetic

Cohesive Quality: Create an Instagram Aesthetic 1798 1148 Susan Rapaglia

Agree or Disagree:
Your Instagram Feed Is As Important as Your Website Homepage

Say hello to 2019’s version of the first impression. Like it or not, it’s not just important, but imperative that your Instagram profile aesthetic matches your brand in both style and quality. As more people than ever take to Instagram to find and research businesses, now’s the time to dedicate some resources to crafting your “Instalook” … or finding some nice people to help you do so 😉

Fear not, as part of our Coast Creative social media marketing services we work closely with companies of all industries to find an aesthetic (think mood, color scheme, etc) that properly represents one’s brand. Here’s a few of our top Instagram tips for a feed that will convert.

Executing Your Instagram Aesthetic

One of the easiest ways to create a cohesive look/feel to your Instagram feed is to edit your photos with similar filters and colors. Below are a few great apps that can help create some harmony amongst your photos.

VSCO

This beautiful app has a plethora of filters and variables that you can use to customize the color, hue, saturation, and light in each photo. VSCO also has a huge community of users whose public profiles you can browse for inspiration.

Snapseed

You can easily save, share, and edit your favorite photos with Snapseed’s variety of editing tools and filters. The sliders and customizable focus features allow you to edit with precision, and the special effects and filter combinations can help give your Instagram feed a little something extra.

Instagram

While there are some great photo editing apps out there, the selection of filters on Instagram work great, too. The key to executing a beautiful Instagram aesthetic is consistently using the same filters and settings, no matter which app you use for your photo editing.

Lightroom Mobile

While Lightroom (part of the Adobe fam) can be daunting and more technical than other photo editing apps, it’s common for Instagram personalities to now sell their photography presets for Lightroom. Upon purchasing, you simply download Lightroom Mobile (yes, there is a free version), upload the presets and your future photo editing is as easy as one click!

Planning Your Instagram Feed

After editing comes planning. In order to create an aesthetically pleasing visual feed that flows seamlessly and works cohesively, you must plan!

There’s no “I” in photo! Instagram photos work best as a team. The three apps below help you plan and curate your feed by mimicking your Instagram grid. Plan out a week (or a month for you overachievers) at a time and be careful to place photos in a way that makes your overall feed visually pleasing:

Planoly

One of the most effective Instagram planners on the market. This handy tool allows you to organize posts, write captions, create sets of hashtags, and even pull in “reposts” from other Instagram URLs in one spot. With the scheduling ability and mobile app to remind you of your posts, your feed will never skip a beat.

Preview

Say goodbye to posting and deleting photos because they didn’t align with your feed! With this free app, you can load your photos onto a grid that mimics the look of your Instagram feed. Once you’ve uploaded your current photos, it’ll be easier to add photos to the grid to see if they harmonize with your feed before you post.

Unum

Like the Preview App, Unum allows you to plan out the aesthetics of your feed without actually posting them to Instagram. With fun features like “Live Mode” that allow you to shift photos straight from your Instagram feed, this app is popular among all kinds of creators and Instagram junkies.

Chat with us about our Instagram strategy or growth services. Call (858) 859-2378!

Maximize Your Instagram Strategy

Maximize Your Instagram Strategy 1600 1066 Susan Rapaglia

With over 500 million daily active users—a number that steadily growing—Instagram is a place your business (most likely) needs to be. In order to get the most out of your time (and money) spent on this addictive platform, it’s imperative your business has a strong and consistent Instagram advertising strategy in place.

Social media advertising and Instagram advertising is an area we’ve spent a lot of time in. So, we decided to share a few of the most effective tactics that you can use on your Instagram marketing and ad strategy!

1. Be a User

(As in User-Generated Content, of course)

One of the best parts about having a loyal following is that your customers become your advertisers. When they organically post about your business on their page, it’s seen as a digital endorsement. Don’t let this valuable user-generated content (UGC) slip by and don’t miss the opportunity to get fresh content without any of the heavy lifting (ie professional or on-the-fly photo shoots). Lastly, customers love to see their images shared on other profiles. They’re one step closer to Insta-fam. Just don’t forget to give them credit with an @!

*This works for both your Instagram feed and on Instagram Stories.

For a great UGC example, check out Crayola https://www.instagram.com/p/BsQeTTMg0m2/

2. Create the Content YOUR Users Love

Balance content to portray your brand and reflect your followers.

Sounds simply enough, but you would be surprised by how many brands miss the mark. One of the most important strategies for Instagram is to create and share content that your fans care about. If your business, for example, is in the health industry then it’s pretty safe to assume your fans are into health-related topics. Topics found on your feed should probably be a nice balance of promoting your business’ products/services plus eating tips, fitness posts, mental wellness etc. Stay true to who you are and what you’re about and create content around that.

3. Turn Customers Into Insta-Models

Make your customers and followers your digital advocates.

Similar to what we said about user generated content, we love to take customers and turn them into Insta-models. Real people, really using your product is an incredibly powerful tool on this social platform. Photos + captions and video testimonials are just two ways to utilize your real customers in a social content strategy. And let’s be honest here, people LOVE to talk about themselves. So…give the people what they want

Here is a great example done by Nike https://www.instagram.com/p/Bntg5pxBcwU/

4. #Hashtag The Right Way

Avoid the shadowban while improving visibility.

If your brand isn’t using hashtags (and using them right), your photo’s overall impressions will be hindered. According to Simply Measured, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those with no hashtags.

We don’t just think it’s important to vary your choices and balance micro- and macro-hashtags, Instagram thinks so too. Have you heard of the Instagram Shadowban? Shadowban intentionally blocks an account’s post from being featured in hashtag searches when users deliberately use the same hashtags repeatedly. It’s easy to avoid this by only using the hashtags that are most relevant to your post and switching up your tags regularly.

5. Hop on the Carousel

Don’t skip out on Instagram’s Carousel feature.

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, ten pictures are worth … ummmm, math’s not our strong suit 😉 Instagram’s carousel feature is a super valuable tool for situations where one photo simply won’t do. It’s also idea for e-commerce brands who want to feature multiple angles of the same product, product bundles or new lines of products. Basically. Instagram carousel allows you to really show off your brand without oversaturating your feed with too much promotional content.

Adidas has some great examples of utilizing carousels. https://www.instagram.com/p/BmVTL67lCxZ/

6. Be Bossy!

Utilize Calls to Action (CTA’s)

It’s okay to tell your followers what to do. By that, we mean make sure that you’re using calls to action (CTAs) on your posts and stories. This can include telling viewers to like, tag, comment or check the “Link in Bio.” If your CTA’s are driving traffic to a third-party website—e-commerce brand promoting a product—make sure the CTA button is Shop Now.

Wrapping It Up

Now that you have a better idea of what Instagram marketing strategies are most effective, it is time to get to work! Just remember, the most important thing your brand can do is to connect with your audience on a meaningful level. Speak to them in a real way and they’ll start speaking back. Give it time and stay consistent!

If you’ve got questions or need some personalized strategy assistance, feel free to hit us up! [email protected].