Are Hashtags Still Relevant? A Social Media Manager's Perspective on Navigating Instagram's Discoverability Landscape

One of the frequently asked questions I get every time the Q&A part of a presentation happens always includes hashtags and their relevancy. The ideal number of hashtags is constantly changing but what I am finding interesting lately is how search words are being implemented more and more into Instagram.

About a month ago, I was posting to clients' feeds and inserting the hashtags, and I got a warning from Instagram that I had reached the hashtag limit, but I had only typed 5 in. It is very interesting to me, which makes me believe more and more that the future of getting discovered and searched involves implementing more search words into your posts.

Adapting to Instagram's Search Revolution:

Instagram's focus on improving search functionality and refining its algorithm has been evident. With features like keyword search and Explore tab enhancements, the platform has taken steps towards offering users a more personalized and expansive content discovery experience.

For years, hashtags have been our go-to strategy for boosting visibility and fostering engagement. They've been instrumental in helping us categorize content, reach broader audiences, and cultivate communities around shared interests.

Finding Harmony Between SEO and Hashtags:

While Instagram SEO represents a paradigm shift in how content is discovered on the platform, it doesn't spell the end of hashtags. Instead, it introduces a new dimension to our approach that complements rather than replaces our tried-and-tested hashtag strategies.

Here's how I'm navigating the intersection of Instagram SEO and hashtags:

1. Strategic Keyword Integration: I'm embracing Instagram SEO by strategically incorporating relevant keywords into captions, bios, and content descriptions. This helps align our content with user search queries on the explore tab and improve its discoverability.

2. Harnessing the Power of Hashtags: Hashtags remain integral to our content strategy. I am currently in a test phase; I have not been using hashtags on Maven & Muse Media posts but continue to use them on clients' feeds to target specific communities, amplify reach, and foster engagement. The sweet spot is combining keyword optimization with strategic hashtag usage, which is maximizing content's visibility and appeal.

3. Content Relevance as a guiding force: Instagram SEO and hashtags prioritize content relevance. I'm focused on delivering content that resonates with the audience's interests and preferences. By staying true to the business's brand voice and consistently delivering value, we increase the chances of appearing in search results and users' feeds.

Striking the Right Balance:

Balance is critical in our journey to navigate Instagram's evolving discoverability landscape. We don't view Instagram SEO and hashtags as competing strategies but rather as complementary tools in our toolkit.

Here are some actionable insights from our experience:

1. Stay Updated: Keep up to date on Instagram's updates and changes in search functionality to adapt your strategy accordingly. Subscribing to the Maven Movement email is a great way to begin.

2. Experiment: Testing is one of the things you need to get used to doing when it comes to marketing. Try different keyword combinations and hashtag sets that apply to you, gauge their effectiveness, and refine your approach.

3. Measure and Adjust: Use Instagram analytics to track the performance of your content, paying attention to engagement metrics, audience demographics, and trends in keyword searches and hashtag usage. If you aren’t, it’s time to become besties with your analytics and check in with them at least weekly.

My goal remains unchanged: to help you authentically connect with your community and drive meaningful engagement. When you embrace both Instagram SEO and hashtags, we're navigating the ever-changing landscape of discoverability and unlocking new opportunities for growth and connection on the platform. If you’ve hit your social media posting limit and want some fresh ideas let’s chat.

Marketing Lessons from 90s Country Songs: Crafting Compelling Campaigns with Heartfelt Storytelling

You start scrolling your way, I start scrolling mine, and we meet in the middle. 

I have a secret: on days when inspiration and words aren't flowing, I turn on a 90s Country playlist.

Why 90's Country, you ask—well, it's because marketing is all about feelings and storytelling.

And no one does feelings, feelings, and storytelling better than 90's country songs.

The future of marketing is getting back to relating to someone's heart. The content that is performing well right now as I write this is uncurated and real.

WHY?

Because it's relatable and attainable- it speaks to someone's heart and creates a feeling.

Together, let's analyze 90s country songs that can offer insights into various aspects of marketing, including messaging, branding, storytelling, and emotional appeal. Here are some lessons we can learn.

1. Emotional Connection: 90s country songs often emphasize storytelling and evoke strong emotions. Similarly, effective marketing campaigns should aim to create emotional connections with the audience, whether it's through nostalgia, empathy, or shared values.

2. Authenticity: Many 90s country songs portray authentic, relatable everyday life experiences. Authenticity in marketing builds trust and credibility with consumers. Brands that convey honesty and sincerity in their messaging are more likely to resonate with their target audience.

3. Know Your Audience: Country music artists understood their audience well and crafted songs that spoke directly to their experiences and values. Similarly, successful marketing campaigns are tailored to resonate with specific target demographics, understanding their needs, preferences, and cultural context.

4. Brand Storytelling: Country songs are often rich in storytelling, painting vivid pictures of characters and situations. Effective marketing campaigns use storytelling to engage and captivate audiences, creating memorable brand narratives that consumers can connect with on a deeper level.

5. Simplicity and Clarity: Many 90s country songs convey their message with simple, straightforward lyrics that are easy to understand. In marketing, clear and concise messaging is key to effectively communicating a product's or service's benefits to consumers.

6. Universal Themes: Despite focusing on specific themes like love, heartbreak, and small-town life, 90s country songs often address universal human experiences. Similarly, successful marketing campaigns usually tap into universal themes and emotions that resonate across diverse audiences. The great philosopher Alison Krauss says best: "Old Mr. Webster could never define what's being said between your heart and mine."

7. Consistency: Country music artists often maintained a consistent image and sound throughout their careers, building a loyal fan base over time. Similarly, brands benefit from consistency in their messaging, visual identity, and customer experience, which helps to reinforce brand recognition and loyalty.

8. Adaptability: While rooted in tradition, country music evolved to stay relevant to changing audience tastes and cultural trends. Similarly, successful marketing strategies must adapt to new technologies, consumer behaviors, and market dynamics to effectively reach and engage target audiences. The times are changing in marketing. Gone are the days of the overly masculine "Buy this, it will change your life," and entering is the softness of the feminine and speaking to the heart. 

If you're feeling stuck, search for a 90s country playlist. Listen to a few songs and pay attention to the themes, stories, and strategies in the songs. Can you see what they are describing in your mind's eye while dancing around your kitchen? Try these valuable insights to craft compelling campaigns that resonate with consumers and drive meaningful connections with their brands. Like a timeless country ballad, the best marketing campaigns can touch hearts and stand the test of time.

And if you're still stuck, it's time for us to meet up. 

Ain't no scroll to a long- cause we meet in the middle. 

Why You Want To Focus Your Marketing On Where The People Are

Imagine Ariel from the Little Mermaid Singing, “I want to be where the people are…”  That song right now has so much context as we are sheltering in our homes.  

As humans, in general, we are programmed to be around people not isolated in our homes, and as business owners, most of us earn our living through in-person human interactions. 

In the last few weeks, we have been asked to shelter in place, practice social distancing, and modify our business to survive in a digital, little or zero actual human contact world.  I can see companies working hard to adapt to the future of a digital world. However, it can be frustrating when you work so hard on crafting the perfect social media posts, complete with a scroll stopping photo, and the catchy caption only to look at your analytics and see that it hasn’t reached anyone. Let alone the intended party of whom you posted to get in front of.

You are not alone in this. In the last few weeks, social media engagement for most industries on Facebook and Instagram has been down. When I first began to notice the dip, I deep dove into client analytics to see where if any traffic was coming from. The first steady stream of conversion was from their Pinterest accounts.

If your business hasn’t leveraged Pinterest yet or even has a presence, you are missing out on crucial conversion right now.  The migration of time spent off of Facebook has been happening for a few years now, but people are also spending less time on Instagram these days. There are a plethora of psychological hypotheses on this one, which is a topic for another time.

The other digital migration that has happened is people have been downloading the Tik Tok app like crazy.  Tik Tok is a great way to escape and watch short, somewhat mindless entertainment. If your business can maintain it entertainingly’s brand on Tik Tok, this is absolutely the time to download the app, create some content, and, if it’s well-received, begin to build a presence there. 

The point of all of this is to keep an eye on your website back end analytics because that golden nugget of data will tell you where exactly your people are.  And where your people are showing up is also where your business needs to be continuously digitally showing up. 

Without The Likes, How Will I Know How My Social Media Post Is Performing?

The news of Instagram removing likes is mainly old news now. When the news first broke that the likes were going away, I surveyed my stories asking how people felt about it. Were business owners ecstatic that the like factor was going away, or were they upset that the likes would no longer be visible? To my surprise, it was a 50/50 split on how they were feeling.

The buzz around the likes was happening as I was sitting down with clients to discuss 2020 digital goals, and I kept getting asked the same two questions in different ways. Since you might have versions of the same issues, let’s discuss them now. 

“Without the likes, how will I know how my competition is doing?”

This is a loaded question because the likes on a social media post are not a direct correlation to how your competition is performing financially. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it, popular does not always pay the bills. I have known businesses whose accounts do not have the coveted 10k + following and are killing it in their bank accounts. And I also know businesses accounts with thousands of followers who are struggling to make ends meet. Tracking how your competition is doing based on the follower counts or likes on their social posts is irrelevant. You can never honestly know how your competition is doing or if they are financially your competition without seeing their profit and loss statements. From a marketing standpoint, stick to analyzing how your content is doing. Track your analytics and mindfully share more of the content your audience is telling you that they want from you. Your only actual competition should be striving to be better financially than where your business was last year at this time. 

“Without the likes, how will I know how my post is performing?”

The public might not be able to see your like count, but as the account owner, you still can while likes are one of the last things that should concern your marketing efforts I completely understand why they are essential to you. It feels good to know that people took the time to double tap on your post; however, to track if your marketing efforts are truly effective, you need to focus on conversion. The important statistics to you should be the conversions from social media to your website, sharing your post on their feed, or the conversion of someone reading and commenting or sending you either an email or direct message. Consider this, when you are out networking or selling your product in person, you are primarily marketing yourself. At these events, you can hand out all the business cards that you own, but the only way to be sure that someone ever really “sees” or “hears” you is if they convert that information and reach out to you on the contact information on your business card. 

Fighting an algorithm day in and day out is frustrating and exhausting. I completely understand that, however, the removal of post likes is not the end of the world. Likes have never paid your bills. Sure, clients/customers have liked your posts, but what made them a client/customer was clicking on your website to purchase a product or sending you a message to book your services. Look back at which post-converted them to click and be in direct contact with you, and keep doing more of that.  

Continue putting your best stuff out there, and remember that these are FREE platforms to use. We could all still be in a time where to be known or seen we would have to pay for an advertisement in a magazine. However, that’s a topic for another time.  

Why Keeping Your Social Media And Digital Marketing Up To Date Is Important For Your Business Health

One of the accounts I work with is a user-generated content account where I repost content from paying community members, as an additional way to market for them. Right now, these accounts are smack dab in the middle of their busy season. They aren’t keeping their channels updated because they are so busy running their business. Not updating is entirely understandable. You, as a business owner can not wear all the hats, run the business, write content, and post the content all while taking care of themselves, their families, and their other personal commitments. Something has to give, and most of the time, I have noticed that it’s their digital marketing that gets put on the backburner.

While this is an understandable situation, I am here to advise against this happening too often to you. There are inexpensive and even free resources to keep your accounts up to date; it just needs some planning in advance and setting aside a few hours during the week to update the scheduling applications.

In this day in age, we all as customers have become accustomed to interacting and engaging with a brand on we feel like we know them in real-life level. We think of brands as a part of us and the smaller ones we might even feel a personal connection with the owner.

The flip side to this is that it could be attracting other new people to your feeds via locations, hashtags, and search terms. If these new people visit your feed, see that you have not posted in months or longer, they may scroll right past you and choose to do business with someone who is keeping their feeds up to date and current.

Both of these situations are not ideal for your business because, in a world where our attention span is about three seconds, a society we are continually fed content from every direction existing and customers could forget that you even exist if you are not staying at their top of mind.

A few suggestions to avoid this situation from continuing to happen to you, invest in either a free or a paid social media scheduling platform, schedule time on your calendar to write and schedule your posts. Or hire out the workload to a social media manager.

Every single business has a busy season. The trick to keeping existing customers as well as enticing new customers to conduct business with you is to maintain your social media presence.

Five Ways To Successfully Instagram Story For Your Business

During one of my latest speed marketing sessions, we were chatting about Instagram Story Highlights and how some stuff is better left off of them. If you’ve met with me or heard me talk you already know that your Instagram Highlight buttons should be where you put work that you would want on a portfolio or that you want to live permanently in your feed.  

You’ve also heard me say that your Instagram Stories should also showcase a more personal version of your business, highlighting the person and people involved in doing the business. The stories should give a behind the scenes of the person that is engaged in the business for 24 hours.  

Stories could include slides of your dog, cat, kiddos, camping trip, etc. However, these slides should not necessarily make a permanent home on your highlight reel if they do not have anything to do with what your actual business is. The more candid stories that relate to your business should live in your highlight reel if you love them and fit into the themes of one of your bubbles.

I’ve flipped my way of storying and started thinking of Instagram stories as “trailers” to grab the attention of the viewers to click your name and check out your entire feed. Since I started experimenting with this method on my feed, and a few clients, feed their stories, views, and profile visits have skyrocketed. It’s insane, stories that used to get 20 pictures or so have quadrupled! I’ve been testing this on my feed for 30 days, and while my likes and engagement are down, my website, clicks have quadrupled as well.  

A few simple ways to create a “trailer” for your feed:

1. Make use of the quiz, survey, and question stickers.

• Erase the “Ask Me A Question” statement on the question sticker and ask your audience a question you want their answer to. 

• The survey sticker is a great way to do a market research of your target. A few times, I did a survey asking if people would prefer speed marketing during happy hour and the response was overwhelming that they did. Therefore, I’m going to try a few sessions during the happy hour. 

• The quiz sticker is a cool interactive sticker to see who in your audience is paying attention to what you are putting out there and an excellent way for your audience to get to know you better and for you to be more personable. 

2. Don’t always be trying to sell and talk about your business. Show what your life looks like, messy desk, no makeup and all. You also want to show who people are going to get in real life when they sign up to meet with you.

3. Make sure that your highlight bubbles are categorized including services that you offer, reviews, and any other page that is also on your website. 

4. If you are selling products and have them in your feed, shoot those posts also to your stories. 

5. Try to keep up to 4- 6 slides on your story in a 24-hour time frame. Any more than that and people are going to swipe away from your account. This is extremely important if you are doing a video story. Please be conscious that you are saying everything you want and getting to the point in ONE story slide. If your video goes for multiple slides, you’re going to get swept next. Longer video can most definitely live on your IGTV channel. 

The story neighborhood seems to be the hip place to hang out these days. If you are not storying, consider giving it a try, and if you need help with ideas sign up for one of the Speed Marketing Sessions. 

The Digital Marketing Manufactured Look Is Moving Out

Q. Should your brand's social media feeds only be styled professional photos? Is it ok if your brand's social feeds are just phone photos, or is it ok if your feeds are a mix of both?

A. The best device to take content photos with is the device that you already have with you.

I am a firm believer that putting any kind of content out there is better than not putting any kind of content out there.  If the only equipment that you have to take a photo is your phone then that is the equipment that you must use. A good photo doesn’t necessarily come from a big fancy DSLR camera, it does help however but what makes a photo great is the skill set of taking a great photo.

A comment was left on my Instagram post when I posted about this subject and I feel that it sums everything up perfectly, “If you can’t shoot compelling content with a phone, you can’t do it with a DSLR.  Invest in learning skills, not gear.” Citizen Nomads

There are beautiful feeds out there that I know personally are only shooting their social posts with a phone camera. Then there are feeds that I know they are hiring out their content shoots to professional prop stylists and photographers.  All of which is great but the question then becomes are you doing this just to fit the “Instagram Aesthetic”?

The Instagram Aesthetic is something that has been created by influencers, the beautifully styled flat lays with the warm filter, the perfect pose in front of the perfect piece of street art taken by their Instagram partner.  You all know what I’m talking about, the perception that everything is perfect because their photo is perfect. This is boring, generic and the chances of you getting scrolled over are pretty great. Because that perfectly styled photo of yours looks manufactured and just like everyone else in your industry.  

The Atlantic released an article stating that the “Instagram Aesthetic Is Over” and I seriously couldn’t be more excited that things are shifting.  The article goes on to talk about how Gen Z influencers are now reaching for their phones camera instead of hauling a DSLR with them to restaurants and spending hours getting that perfect shot masked with the perfect curated “Instagram Aesthetic” filter they have created. Gen Z wants to shift things back to real-time and consistently showing up as your authentic self, not your social media alter ego.

I’m not here to pish posh on a beautiful photo, quite the opposite, in fact, I’m here to say that it should stop taking up so much of your brain space and time to get that Instagram aesthetic approved photo. Mavens feed has been and will continue to be a mix between phone, stock, personal DSLR and professional photos, why because I want to be part of the change in the way people look at marketing and branding. As a business, your business should be a reflection of and authentic as you.  I should meet you for coffee, or walk into your store and feel the same feelings that I feel when I look at your feed or see your ads. I shouldn’t be seeing an alter ego of you on social media and meeting the authentic you in person. The translation of your in-person experience with a brand and a digital experience with a brand should be very similar if not exactly the same.

This is the goal of Maven and Muse produced content. Your business is as authentic as you are and this should translate into your digital marketing. By creating authentic to you content you are getting people to stop their scroll and take notice. This will build engagement, which leads to trust which leads to booking or purchasing from you.

The manufactured look of Instagram does work, it’s proven day in and day out. Perhaps in your homework assignment, you will notice that the manufactured look is what your target likes and expects from you. I’m not here to disrupt what is already working for you,  I am here to challenge you to look at the analytics of your feed and see what posts have performed the best. Are they stock, DSLR or phone captured content? Were your words heartfelt or salesy? Dissect the top three best performing posts and mimic more of that in the weeks to come.  The numbers don’t lie my friends, they are communicating to you what is working for you, what is setting you apart and not making you manufactured.

How To Make Your Instagram Accessible For Visually Impaired Community

You’re posting on Instagram all of the time as part of your business marketing plan and I know that you have seen the “ALT  text” when you are loading a photo. You’ve probably blown right past it when you are posting because why would you even bother, as far as you know Instagram does not offer SEO so what’s the point?

Instagram introduced the ability to add ALT text to photos in an effort to make the platform more accessible. Users can add their own custom ALT text that can be read by screen readers to assist those with visual impairments.

Right now, you’re thinking, “This is awesome, how do we use this feature professionally and assist those with visual impairments? “

The ALT text is NOT meant to be a  “copy and paste” of your Instagram caption. Instead, the ALT text should be used to describe exactly what is in your photo.

Think about it, Instagram is a VISUAL platform, and we certainly are not describing the photo in our caption. We are instead,  writing our marketing copy, sharing a quote or a story. The caption is the part screen readers are able to assist the users with, however, the user is missing out on the visual that accompanies it if you are not writing your own  ALT text.

Instagram wants everyone in the community to be able to interact with each other, including those with visual impairments. Keep this in mind, if you are not adding your own ALT text, know that Instagram will automatically generate  ALT text to your photo using their own technology. Their image recognition technology will scan your photo and write an ALT text for you. I encourage you to begin getting in the habit of writing your own ALT text before you post because the Instagram generated text is pretty generic.

The ALT text is your way of giving the user a full Instagram experience by understanding the complete context of both the photo and the caption. As a business owner,  you are now making your content, your product and yourself accessible to more people in the community. How awesome is that?!

An item to note: It is strongly recommended that ALT text be 125 characters or less to ensure compatibility for popular screen readers. The character limit for the ALT text on Instagram is 100 characters.

While researching and at the time of this publishing I did not find any solid evidence one way or the other that by also using the ALT text could mean that there is some sort of SEO associated with it on Instagram just yet. However, I have to believe that this is in the works if it does not already exist on at least a BETA level.  ALT text on images when using it on your website we know helps your SEO ranking on Google, which has me thinking that perhaps something like this is coming or again already exists to some level on Instagram.

How To Add ALT Text To A New Post:

1. Upload your image as usual.

2. On the Instagram caption page, press “Advanced settings”:

3. Click “Write ALT text”: On Instagram you can write a maximum of 100 characters to describe what is in your photo.

4. Write your ALT text and press “Done”

How To Add ALT Text To Your Old Photos:

You are able to and I encourage you to take the time to do so.

1. Select the photo you want to add ALT text to:

2. Click on the 3 dots “…” in the upper right-hand corner:

3. Choose “Edit”:

4. Press “Add ALT text”:

5. Write your ALT text:

6. Click “DONE”

Tips on how to write ALT text from Perkins School for the Blind:

1. Describe the image as specifically as you can.

2. “Imagine someone is sitting next to you as you scroll through Instagram and they point at a photo and ask what it is. Chances are, you’ll give them a one or two sentence description that is perfect for writing as alt text” ( Perkins School for the Blind).

3. Is there an important text on your photo (like signage or quote)? Write out the text.

4. Keep your ALT text (relatively) short, 100 character limit on Instagram and 125 character limit on popular screen readers.

5. Write who is on the picture (especially if you have a personal account). For example: “Jade sitting on her computer with a latte next to her.”

6. Colors: “Don’t be afraid to share what colors are in a photo, if the color is important. A photo can be described as being in black-and-white, having warm or cool colors, or being tinted a certain color. Someone wearing clothes that are the main focus of the photo can write that they are wearing “dark denim Levi’s with a white t-shirt, Adidas sneakers with green earrings.”

Spring Cleaning Your Content: When To Recycle Vs. When To Create

The spring equinox has happened which means that it’s time for all of the spring cleaning to happen. Spring cleaning your house, your car and even your social media feed. Today we’ll talk about reducing your time spent creating new content by reusing and recycling what you already have working for you.

The old Earth Day saying goes “Reduce Reuse Recycle” and spring is the perfect time to put this plan into motion for the content on your social media feeds so you can enjoy the incredible weather that I know you’re itching to get out from behind your computer to go and enjoy.

REDUCE the time that you spend creating content, meaning glance back through your feed to see what posts performed well and REUSE them. Decide what people liked, the message or the photo and reuse that. People are afraid to reuse content which I don’t completely understand, especially if that content is at least 100 days old. I’ll be the first one to tell you that most of your ideal clients are not going to remember if they saw that same photo on your feed previously.

If the post has a message that you want to bring back to your target copy and paste the caption and add a different photo. Remember that the marketing buzz is people need to hear or read something SEVEN different times before they will act on it.

When you are RECYCLING content just be conscious of changing up something about it up. I’m sure that you have learned or experienced something in the time since it originally posted to update the caption and always update the hashtags. No need to have the exact same photo attached to the exact same hashtags.

There is an excellent app that I use to “regram” because I am all about reducing time. What I enjoy about this app is you don’t get that icky looking transparent gray box with the original posters screen name on it. However, with that being said if you are EVER reposting someone else's content make sure to credit the original poster in the caption with “Regram: @Insert_User_Name”.

Spring is also an excellent time to create new content. The spring light is way better than that harsh winter light and I don’t know about you but my creativity feels more inspired with the sunshine. It’s probably all of the vitamin D. Block off time to style and create new product photos, or grab a coffee, get outside and walk around a different neighborhood with your phone or camera and take photos of things that are relevant to your brand that you can use later on in your marketing efforts down the road.

To wrap, reduce your valuable time by reusing and recycling previous well-performing content especially the messages that you want to stick in your ideal client/customers brain. They need to hear/read these messages seven times before they will act.

The Social Media Apocalypse What's Your Digital Marketing Back Up Plan

The social media apocalypse of Facebook and Instagram being down is happening. It’s March 13, 2019, Mercury in retrograde and we’ve been experiencing the biggest meltdown in social media history.

Since 8am PST people around the globe have been unable to get into both Facebook and Instagram. At the coffee shop today the world seemed a bit quieter, people are having these things called conversations with each other instead of being preoccupied with snapping a quick picture of their latte to put on their Instagram story. (Ahem I am guilty of this as well, sometimes.) I don’t know if this is because we are all secretly freaking out just a little bit.

I will say that I have enjoyed the silence of only having to focus on other digital marketing platforms for my clients that do not include a member of the “Facebook Family” for one day.

The real question we should be asking is, “ Will Facebook and Instagram be back tomorrow?” Honestly, that could happen. We could wake up tomorrow with the same messages on our pages, or they could be erased forever. As of this posting Facebook, reps are saying, “Facebook is down for required maintenance. We will be back soon.” Historically when huge expansive platforms such as Facebook and Youtube have done an update it’s only been 1-3 hours, as of this writing we are going into hour number 12.

If this outage has taught us anything it should be to not put all of your eggs in one basket. I’ve been saying it in talks and to clients since the first Zuckerberg Senate hearings, start thinking about your digital marketing backup plan.

If these platforms do not exist tomorrow, do you have access to your customers? Do you know your customer's email addresses and how to get in touch with them? The only real channels that are guaranteed for you to directly communicate with your customers or clients are your blogs and your email campaigns. I know these are such a pain in the ass to do. These digital marketing campaigns actually take a bit of time, I get that. You can’t post a pretty picture and write an emotionally touching caption to get your message out there. But you should start considering a plan B.

There are other great platforms to build a presence on as well Youtube and Pinterest are two that if you are not already tinkering around on you should at least begin investigating.

Lately, I’ve been pushing current clients toward my Pinterest management package because it is a powerful search engine that as of right now I don’t see going anywhere but up. The power of brand awareness that Pinterest offers is incredible if you know how to use it. Start here, you already have amazing photo content of your products which is half the battle, because you have been posting those awesome images to Instagram. Just start posting them with a good description to Pinterest as well.

Consider blogging as well, if you are a service based business or a product based business you have things to say, things that your target market IS searching for.

I am really thinking positive that the “Facebook Family” figures it out and that we are back in action soon but then again if they don’t we’ll figure it out. We are in this together.