As with so many other online ventures, though, there’s a right way  — and a wrong way — to promote your business on Instagram. If you violate unwritten rules concerning Instagram etiquette, you could do more harm than good. Here’s how you can ensure that every post is perfect:

Start With a Goal and Personas

A solid Instagram campaign begins like many other aspects of business: with a goal. Why are you on Instagram? What do you hope to accomplish by promoting your business on an app that’s popular with millennials?

Be sure to get specific on your goals as well: For example, don’t just say that you want more clicks on your website as a result of Instagram marketing. Instead, quantify that goal with a percentage increase in clicks you’d like to see.

Once you’ve established your goal, make sure to take the time to create personas (models of your potential customers) to experiment with targeting the right audience. For example, when working with one of our larger clients, we created three ideal personas of people who might be interested in its products. That really helped when we dove into creative.

Make Sure Your Photos Look 100 Percent Professional

If you want to present a positive image of your brand online, you’re probably going to have to fork over some cash for professional photography. Yes, it’s an expense, but keep in mind that you’re displaying yourself prominently on a network that reaches hundreds of millions of users. If you present a good image to even a fraction of that many people, that’s going to be great news for your reputation. On the other hand, if your photo looks unprofessional, people will immediately get the impression that your business isn’t to be taken seriously.

This advice is especially valuable if you’re in the fashion industry (also fitness, beauty products, etc.), which is well-suited for Instagram marketing. Hire a professional photographer to capture images of your clothing and accessories in a way that will appeal to people in your target market.

If you don’t have the money for professional photos, check out Canva. It’s an inexpensive option that works well. With our smaller budget clients, we have seen success using this platform. However, you need to make sure you also have great captions that speak to volumes about your products to your audience.

Make Sure to Show Your Human Side

Let others know that there are actual people behind your brand with candid, humorous, and maybe even quirky posts of you and your employees from time to time. Avoid using Instagram solely as a space to promote products, however. You’ll come across as a salesperson instead of someone who’s contributing value to the community.

Based on our research, we have seen that many consumers appreciate Instagram because it allows them to see the personal side of figureheads and brands. Make sure you appeal to this.

Use Hashtags 

When it comes to social media marketing, hashtags can be some of your best friends.

That’s why you should post your photos and videos with hashtags. It’s often the case that you’ll pick up a few extra followers from people who were just browsing through posts tagged with a hashtag that you added — and those people can turn into lifelong loyal customers.

There are a couple of rules to keep in mind about hashtags, though: For starters, only use hashtags relevant to your niche and your post. Otherwise, your content could be considered “spammy” and will not be hitting your demographic. Finally, use the most popular hashtags relevant to your brand. You might have to do some digging to find the tags that are used most frequently, but it’s worth the effort.

For example, on my Instagram, I use the following hashtags: #business, #news, #entrepreneur, #marketing, #socialmedia, #data #tech and #technology. This results in my posts getting hundreds of likes. If I don’t use these hashtags, the likes diminish substantially. If you’re unclear about how to find the hottest tags, use the help of an app like Tags For Likes, or visit Tagboard.

Don’t Burn Out Your Followers

Here’s the scenario: You have 32 new items to add to your product line, and your photographer takes fabulous, high-quality photos of each of them. Now it’s time to post all of those photos to Instagram, right? Wrong. If you post 32 photos at once, you’re basically encouraging loyal fans to unfollow you.

Instead, space the timing of posting your photos out so your followers aren’t swamped with multiple sales pitches at once. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you automate the publishing process: Take a look at HootSuite and Buffer as a starting point.

In one case, we tried increasing a client’s posts from one per day, to five times daily. The result? We saw an increase in unfollows of 29 percent. The lesson here is not to overshare.

Keep Your Caption Short

When you post on Instagram, you’ll almost always need some sort of caption.

But you’ll want to keep your captions short. Remember, people are busy. So as a best practice, write two or fewer sentences as a caption, and fewer than 15 words in the post itself.

Start Posting Now

The perfect Instagram campaign requires a series of flawless Instagram posts. Fortunately, with the right know-how and a little bit of experience, you can be well on your way to capturing more leads by unlocking the power of Instagram marketing.

One of the things I frequently tell clients is that they don’t have to think of SMS as a replacement for their other marketing activities. In fact, some of the best results I’ve seen are from businesses that incorporate SMS into their overall marketing strategy. Text marketing can complement other strategies such as SEO, social media and email marketing.

How to Integrate SMS Into Your Marketing Campaigns

Nowadays, smartphones and mobile devices have become an increasingly popular way to access the internet. People use them not only for phone calls, but also to access social media sites, check email and, of course, to send and receive text messages.

Because phones are now such a ubiquitous part of modern culture, they can be integrated with your other marketing efforts. SMS marketing offers many apps and services that make it easy to connect text marketing with other platforms, such as:

• Capture emails: You can use an app that lets you capture email addresses via text. This gives you another way to build your email list and power your email marketing campaigns.
• Social media: You can use SMS to get more social media followers by running contests and sweepstakes that are promoted by both social media and SMS. For example, people can enter text-to-win contests by texting a short code. Place the short code on your Facebook or Twitter, making it easy for your followers to enter the contest. You can also do it the other way around — send your SMS contacts texts about a contest you’re running on your Facebook page.
• App downloads and website traffic: Use text marketing to direct people to download your app or visit your website. By delivering a direct link to download on the App Store, people can immediately download it instead of having to search for it.
• Live events and offline marketing: SMS is also a powerful way to boost the effectiveness of your offline marketing campaigns, such as sales and special events held at a retail store. The traditional practices of putting up billboards or hanging up flyers can be enhanced and modernized by using SMS or QR codes that let people enter your contest or join your list instantly.

Enter the New Wave of SMS Marketing

As I mentioned, SMS marketing has changed quite a bit in recent years. When I first entered the field, SMS was a new concept and involved lots of experimentation. Early text marketing suffered some of the same flaws as early email marketing, such as sending messages without permission, or creating lists that were not well targeted.

We are now entering what I see as the second wave of SMS marketing. Here are some of the characteristics of this new and more powerful wave.

• Building targeted and segmented lists: The key to successful SMS marketing, which holds true for all types of marketing, is to send messages to the right audience.
• Developing good timing: You want to send messages consistently, but not so frequently that it becomes annoying. You also want to identify the best times of day and days of the week to send messages. This is another area where testing and analytics helps you become more effective.
• Integrating SMS with your other marketing efforts: As discussed, you should look for ways to make text messaging fit in seamlessly with your overall marketing strategy.
• Creating compelling offers: One of the benefits of SMS marketing is that there are many ways to provide value with your messages. Contests, promo codes and giveaways encourage people to respond to your texts and check out your offers.

While SMS marketing is no longer new, you still have plenty of time to benefit from this industry’s new wave. There are now more ways than ever to make text marketing a powerful component of your marketing mix.

What’s the best way to use the Instagram Story tool for your brand? The most important thing is to just dive in and give it a try. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? It disappears in 24 hours, right?

Here are a few pointers to get you started. Always remember that every brand and account is different. Analyze your own data (views and clicks) to see what content resonates with your audience the most, and adjust your digital strategy accordingly.

1. Make it consecutive and consistent. They’re called stories for a reason. When you’re thinking about what content you want to post on your Story, don’t think about it as a bunch of random separate posts. Think about what message you want to convey your audience. It’s like a television series: Each “episode” needs to stand on its own, but there should be an underlying theme across each piece of content. Whenever my company is on site with one of our clients at a concert, we try to do everything we can to capture the entire essence of the event. We start with the content of the artist and fans getting pumped up before the artist hits the stage. We make sure we get the opening and closing songs (plus some good stuff in between), and then maybe post a video and video from the after party. It really captures the essence of the whole day, rather than just a few random posts from the concert.
2. Think about your first impression. When it comes to Instagram Stories, the post you upload to kick off your Story matters a lot. If your first post doesn’t catch somebody’s eye, they’re not going to watch the rest of your Story. I highly recommend adding a video as the piece of content in your Story, as this is often the best way to grab somebody’s attention. When analyzing data, we’ve found that more people go on to watch your second post within a Story when the first thing they see is a video.
3. Switch it up. When you’re putting together a Story, a good way to keep it interesting is to alternate between using different types of media. Keeping your Story all pictures or all videos can make it a little monotonous. Kick it off with a video, but then add some still photos, Boomerangs, and maybe throw in a slow motion shot to keep it interesting.
4. Find the sweet spot. How many pieces of content should you put in your Story? This is a question I get a lot, and I always recommend 8-12 pieces of content per day/Story. This can vary slightly depending on what you’re programming, but it’s important to always remember quality over quantity. Don’t ever post a piece of content just because you’re trying to reach a certain number of posts.
5. Use links sparingly. A lot of people don’t realize this, but if you have a verified account, you can actually link out to an external website from your Stories. You don’t want to use the link tool in every single post, but this is a great way to drive people to watch a full video, read a full article, or purchase a product in your store. Make sure to make it clear to your users that they need to “swipe up” — or they won’t know there’s a link integrated into the post. This link tool is magical though. I’ve seen it bump a single up on the iTunes charts several times even within the last 30 days. It’s been great for boosting sales in our client’s online stores as well.

Instagram Stories have already proven to be such an incredible tool for our clients, and this is only the beginning. Imagine where it will be in the next few months! I’m highly anticipating what tools are going to be released next, as each one will inspire us all with an endless list of new ideas on how to better connect with and monetize a digital audience.

Facebook advertising has come a long way since its inception. There are so many different ways to get in front of your ideal clientele. You can target audiences based on a variety of categories, including:

• Location
• Demographics
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Financial resources
• Industry or occupation
• Homeownership status
• Education and academic degree
• Ethnicity
• Generation (i.e. baby boomers or millennials)
• Political beliefs
• Milestones (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, moving)
• Relationship status

As a result of Facebook partnering with data companies, advertisers are now able to display products or services on consumers’ newsfeeds that they might be interested in. In addition to marketing based on the categories aforementioned, as a business owner, you can utilize the following methods:

Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences are a way to reach new people based on current or existing markets. You can create an audience that mirrors the same demographics, interests and behaviors of people who currently “like” your Facebook business page, or you can create a lookalike audience to mirror those who have visited your website, or even purchased your products/services.

You can set up your lookalike audience in Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor. Under Ad Manager, click Audiences > Create Audience > Lookalike Audience.

Next, choose the source: This could be people who visited your website, “liked” your business page or even downloaded your app. Then, choose a country where you would like to find a similar set of people. Once that’s set, decide how big you want your audience to be. The smaller the audience, the more similar they are to your existing ones. Keep in mind, however, that it can take up to 24 hours for Facebook to develop an audience. Once it’s formed, you can use this audience as another means of acquiring new business.

Custom Audiences

Custom audiences allow you to upload a document of emails or phones numbers into Facebook. Facebook then links that information to actual Facebook accounts. Now, you’re able to show up in your audience’s news feeds. One way you can use this to your advantage is to upload your prospects’ email addresses into Facebook. Then, generate helpful and educational industry-related content that you can place right in front of your prospects. It’s a subliminal, easy way to stay in front of potential business.

To set up a custom audience, you need to be on Facebook Ads Manager. Go to Audiences once again. Click Create Audience > Custom Audience > Customer File.

From here, you can upload based on two options: Your first option is choosing a .CSV or TXT file that contains up to 14 identifiers. This can be an email address, phone number, first and last name, zip code and more. The more identifiers you have on your .CSV or TXT file, the more likely Facebook can find that particular consumer. Simply click “next” and follow the simple steps to upload the document.

It may take up to 30 minutes for your custom audience to upload to Facebook. You will be notified as soon as the upload is complete.

As you create these new lookalike and custom audiences, you may have noticed a myriad of other ways to develop new audiences. My biggest advice? Take baby steps. Learn how to optimize your current lists, and continue to add as you move forward.

In a word: everything. Professional social media management is a serious game for both agencies and clients, and clients should beware of the pitfalls that come with poor choices. We’ve seen countless examples of prospects who come to us too late — when what they really need is crisis management, not social media management. Almost always, if the client or its agency had prepared for situations that arise when you open your brand up to public conversation on social networks, the issue could have been prevented. With that in mind, here are four crucial ways to secure your social media marketing and defend against both cyber security and brand integrity dangers:

1. Ask about the agency’s security measures. How does the team choose passwords for your accounts? How do they limit access to those passwords among the team? On what devices will your social media accounts be open? When you hand over the keys to your social media accounts, you’ll want to make sure that precautions are being taken to protect against hackers or even unforeseen data breaches that can occur at the agency. We educated one of our client’s teams on how and when to get involved with their own account. Ask for training sessions and/or a written handbook so you’re on the same page about whether accounts can be accessed on-site, off-site, via mobile apps, via personal accounts, etc.
2. Ask about the agency’s social media protocols. A professional marketing or advertising agency should have a written procedure for dealing with disgruntled employees, unhappy customers, foul language and other inappropriate content. At a minimum, the procedure should outline how quickly posts are removed, and/or how to report situations to you or your team for an executive decision. Not only should you be comfortable with their procedures, but you should also be comfortable with your responsibility to get back to your external social media team in a timely manner. Your online reputation depends on it!
3. Ask for details. Don’t just stop at the salesperson or principals of the agency you hire. Instead, ask to meet the key member(s) of the social media team who are responsible for executing the work. In the conversation, ask the team to describe problems that have occurred in the past with other clients, and have the team describe how they were resolved. Remember that social media is an extraordinarily fast advertising medium: We once had a restaurant client whose happy hour post ended up on the Facebook page of a higher education client. Luckily, we spotted the post within minutes of it going live and were able to rectify it. Now, we have a “write-edit-proof-post-check” procedure that allows for catching those sorts of errors before they even happen. Those are the honest stories you’ll want to hear in your sit-down with the team.
4. Monitor progress internally. You or someone on your team should be monitoring your social media platforms at least weekly. It will only take a few minutes to scroll through the posts and assess their response rates. We once had a client start a war about parking with their next-door neighbor, which the client played out on his own Facebook page (against our strong advisement to keep it private). Don’t meddle with the team you hired to manage your social media, but do check in at regular intervals.

One unfortunate phrase we hear from prospects is, “We don’t want to be on social media because people can say negative things about us for everyone to see.” The truth is, people are going to say negative things about you and your brand, anyway: You may as well be there to guide the conversation with a competent and effective social media marketing team. Ultimately, social media marketing and native advertising are vital parts of any comprehensive marketing strategy today, and there are still opportunities to be a first-mover in many industries. Plan carefully, and be sure to participate in the conversation.