Lessons

Lesson Info

Analyzing Your Efforts

so we haven't talked much about this yet. And for some people, statistics really matter. And they really in data, really batters. Ah, lot of people asked me if I analyse everything I do. And for me, the return of investment is always within my community. I do know what my stats look like, but it doesn't drive the decisions I make in how I post and engage on Instagram. Um, you know, I check my data. Probably. You know, I'll go in and check it maybe once or twice, three times a week to look and see, like who's following How many people started following me or unfollowed me? What filters I'm using that really help with the engagement. But it's not changing the way I'm doing anything I'm doing based on that data. But for those of you that need that, especially at the beginning, when you want to know what time of data post or what filters to use, there's ways that you can do that, and so you need to just know you know what's gonna be meaningful to you. It's kind of like the weight loss anal...

ogy. It's not about the amount of pounds that you lose, but it's about the way it makes you feel. And so it's again. This is very personal. That's what you need to do for your business. For me, it's absolutely hands down. The comments, the engagement, the community and how it grows daily for me is, is how I analyze my success. But there are tools for you so that you can go and look at them if you need to. For your business. A lot of my you know, one of the things that I do is I drive traffic over to YouTube, as I mentioned earlier. And for me, some of the success from Instagram is just getting more subscribers on YouTube and seeing that the numbers there go up and for you, it might be trying to get more fans on your Facebook page or more followers over on Twitter. Everyone has different parts of their business that they're trying to grow and different communities that they're trying to grow, and obviously it's gonna be different for each person's business. So I'd like to ask you all here, sitting in front of me, which you know which goals that you might have for your business to analyze them and to look at how you know if it's not just a instagram. If it's another platform that you really want to look at to assess data from Instagram I am for for me and for our business of helping jewelry designers, it's really the engagement that we're gonna, um I'm really honing in on that now. I mean, because that's how we're gonna find out what we can also provide Going forward, you know what the needs are out there and what they're looking for. So I'm excited about communicating even more with with our community. And I'm sure since you've been here, your engagement has gone up tremendously, right? It has. And you have some to say Yes, Um, so for me on the adventure travel gal and I'm looking to drive traffic to my blawg in particular so that I can be important in the travel community and really hit that niche because they don't think that adventure is a sort of blown out of the water and social media as other categories of travel are. So I just I think that people need more adventure in their lives and they need a resource to find that. So, um, I think driving track about traffic back and forth from social media to my blawg is sort of, you know, is the key is kind of making those two things mash in a proper way. That works. Good point about you. You want some real quick. As for me, I I would like to look at my client's data as we do campaigns and different promotions for them and contest to see how their engagement goes up. That's a great point. Yes, so, you know, success. Um, an engagement it likes don't necessarily mean sales on instagram. So a lot of people, just all over how many likes they got on a post. I much prefer to get a comment than a like, but the truth is, when you do get likes, you do get more eyeballs on your post, and people can. People that are following you can see in their feed. Who else is getting those likes from when they go into following and the news? You can check to see who you're following and who their starting toe, like so you can use some of some of the people that you respect and admire, you might say. Well, since Sue likes this, that in that person and I respect Sue, I might go in and start following the same and the way that you see that is by the likes that people are giving. Um, so some people really think that likes are key, and they absolutely add to the eyeballs and the growth of your account. But it's really, in my opinion, the engagements that that really help grow your account. And whenever you get a like you know, you get a double tap toe like I'm trying to convince you all that to not focus on just the likes but to focus on the convict. Come on the engagement. So if someone double taps and prove that they were, you know, really shows that they're compelled with, they're attracted to what you're showing and sharing, but doesn't necessarily mean that they're one of those authentic super fans that really are there, other than just looking at the content that you're showing. So I always say the people that are engaging are the people to really focus on and engage back to, and that's really how you can work it grow in your community, and here's you know it's again back to content that you're showing and comments that you're seeing. So one of the things that you might dio when you see the likes and the comments, it kind of helps gauge you on what you strategically should be doing more of or less of, a zai mentioned earlier. I know that I was posting to frequently when I first started so, so eager. I was getting a lot of likes. I was getting engagement, and I thought The more I do that, the more activity I will get. But that's not true. That's not what happened. You know, people don't want to see their newsfeed be in clogged up with the same content constantly. So again, I prefer to post either once a day, and I know what the prime time of day for me is, or in the morning or in in the evening. Eight in the morning has been a really good time for me and seven at night. I find that people are going to instagram to just chill and relax its you know, the mentality of people that you knit in crow, Shea and Craft You know, this is just a creative outlet where your feeling like you're flipping through a magazine and getting a lot of visual stimulation. So the place that I go to get my stats and my data is called Icona Square and it used to be called static Graham. They recently changed their name. So when you goto iconic square dot com and it is free, you could search. And you Concertante, Um, look at all of your staff and we mentioned earlier I think I forget who said it in the live audience that you actually took a screenshot of your top five followers. It was Eugen and you shared that is content over on Instagram. There are a lot of different visuals right there. An icon, a square that allows you to do that. Some of the data that is worthy of looking at is who has started to follow you And who has unfollowed you and I. We talked about this earlier, but I want to say it again. If someone has unfollowed you and it really upsets you and you're like, I can't believe them followed me, I wonder why. And you really want them to start following you again. The way to do that is to go into their account, show some love like some post. But more importantly, engage. And you might even say to them I was really sorry to see leave. Oh, you might even send a d m a private message and find out why they left and and maybe learned from that. Or maybe they just weren't your ideal follower, and that's OK, but if you feel like they were, there's a strategy that you can go back in and strategically try to pull them back to you. And I definitely recommend doing that through damming. Now that you all know how to use the D. M. I also like that you can see which filters that you use generate the most engagement. And it's really interesting to see that, um, I, you know, there's 20 different filters I'm not aligned with one in particular. It all depends on how I could make my post look better, but I think a lot of the photographers out there and people that really need to have a certain look and feel consistently or using the same filter. And then again, I mentioned what time of day to post. So it actually shows you an icon, a square. What time of day is the best time to pose now, if you're new to Instagram, I don't recommend going into Icona Square and looking at all the data and making changes. I suggest after two or three months going in there and looking and then assessing what's working and what you're doing, that's really getting you the kind of followers that you wanna have. And so it's just great because it's free. So it's a great place to check in. And as I mentioned, I do check in. But I am not at this stage. I'm not analyzing them to the point where it's changing my mind. Aceto What my posting strategy is, I know from just the engagement in the comments what my community wants to say. So how many people here in the audience are using Iconic Square and even the worldwide audience? I'd like to hear if they are. Can you share some ways that you're looking at that data, if you are or what you like about it originally went in there to peek and see about the unfollowed, follow thing. Um, but yeah, I realized it's not something to get hung up on, but it is interesting. And, you know, perhaps you can see a trend. Um, you know, did you get a whole bunch of on follows at once or that sort of thing? So it was interesting to look at that. I did. Look at the top, Engage Er's and I gave a shadow. And that was something that I actually learned in one of your webinars. No, Um, that's I didn't figure that out of my own. So I did do that, and that was pretty cool. And then, yeah, I was interested about you know, which posts were doing while getting more attention. And it was surprising that you could look at the filters. I thought I was like, super detailed. So there's really a lot of top line statistics, and there's even some some real detailed stuff in there. So it was was quite, um it was quite interesting, was really helpful. Oh, great. Yeah, I just wanted to add that what I thought was really valuable was knowing when to post and what I'm posting. So there's this really cool thing. Where has the big gray square. And I'm like, OK, that's what I'm posting cause I mean, I don't know. I post whenever I feel like posting. And so it told me, like, for me, I focused, like to four and seven for whatever reason, Those are my big posting time does your time. Yeah, And as time goes on, it changes depending on how many more how much more engagement I'm getting. But it's definitely a valuable thing to look at. Yes, So before jumping, Holly, I want to say so what? You just explain Mona Lisa is, um it shows you the circle. So when you go into iconic square, the larger circles you see as at your posting time, other circles that where you're getting the most engagement. So it makes it really easy if you know exactly, um went to post it also for me. I was ableto no when my engagement was dropping off on instagram and when I shared it over to Facebook and he knew that there was after six hours, it was the ideal time for me to share it over to Facebook. And again, it just might be different for you. But it's It's fun to look at, and I definitely endorse looking and knowing specifically if the filters are a part of your strategy. Did you have a question? No, I didn't. I didn't have. I actually discovered Icona Square just before I took your class. And again it was one of those. Oh, that's really cool. They knew that what picture I took going time, and they posted really as visually just a cool thing to look back over time. And you can tweet your stats and post your stats to Facebook. Iconic square makes it nice toe broadcast your results. So, yes, I think everyone should check it out again. It's free, Um, and it's a tool that I have used frequently in the chat room is really loving icon of square Jonah Wilson says. I love a con, a square, and they're free. Instagram statistic photos. I love sharing those with my followers, and Nadine says that iconic square helps to see what tags are working for you and the time that you get engagement. Yeah, those hashtags you can see which tags are working. Great. Okay, well, my next guest, My last and final. Of course. Handsome guy because everyone that's coming up in being part of a way. We have the ladies in the audience and we have the guys coming up on stage. This is my friend Peck, who I met at Social Media Marketing World hashtag social marking world holding my instigate a lifeline. And it was the place to be to take photos. And interestingly enough, Peck and I had not met before. He saw me like going crazy with the hashtag signs and photos. He was over there looking like, you know, Instagram, Who are you? And we met. I introduced myself to him. We sat down, we figured out how we could collaborate together, which has been awesome. And Peck is the owner of Spectacular, which you all can go to on your devices if you want to look at Peck Tacular. And I'm just so excited that he lives in San Francisco and was able to be here with us today to be a part of the show and share with us what spectacular is all about and how you can use it for your small business to help you with Instagram. So welcome pack. Thanks so much. How are you Yeah. You good to be here? Yes. So I think we great for everyone to hear what what spectacular is and why Instagram and how how Instagram plays a big role in your company and what you're doing. Sure, sure. So Spectacular is a web based instagram viewer. It's spectacular dot co. I don't own the dot com and it's basically a way to view your instagram on the web. The genesis of this was we created, you know, I was a heavy instagram user. Personally, I think I'm almost 2000 photos on instagram pic on instagram and I was always on the computer, and it is, But it was also always on Instagram and was using up my phone battery, and that wasn't cool, but like there was no way at this was it was created two years ago, and there was no way at the time to kind of really view it nicely on the web. So it was something that we built ourselves to solve our own need. I'm gonna let you take it away with your presentation. Awesome. What you doing already? Um OK, so a za background. So I have ah interactive agency in Silicon Valley. We do. We design APS and websites for clients. So we have lots of Silicon Valley start ups and enterprises that use our work. And then we also make our own products and pick tacular being one of them. So two years ago, we created this product. It was named Time magazine Top 50 Websites of 2013. That was pretty cool. And with that, I like to, uh, kind of give you a brief look of instagram. Let's spectacular. So you go to pick tacular dot co today you can pretty much see So we're on. We're really on here. Feed? Yeah. So it's basically it's based. The press described it as you know, Pinterest plus meets Ah Instagram. And as you can see, basically we took kind of like the famous interest layout of kind of endless photos and kind of matched it up and display your instagram photos. And this is a great way to kind of manage really used dual everything that you need to do on instagram short of posting photos. Ah, we've pretty much kind of very seamlessly recreated the instagram experience. You can like photos. Um, you can write comments right here. Uh, just like you would on instagram on your phone. If you're familiar with Pinterest, you can use this and it will feel very familiar. Um, you can see the popular photos. Kind of like the explore mode. You can go there. He could go access from the top or the left. You can look at your own photos. This is our kind of the our company's account in a showcasing some of our work here. Some of our team members, um I think you can show photos your light and the other cool thing is, we've can a curated a bunch of instagram accounts. So if you're if you like brands and kind of get it if you wanted to get an idea what big brands air doing on Instagram? We've curated brands on here as we call him channels, and you can kind of go and look at that. You're into food photography. He like me. I always go peruse here and get really hungry. Um, yep. On and, uh, you know, just just a few popular channels. Hashtag search also works so you can type in a hashtag here. We also have people search so basically whatever you can do on Instagram short of posting an actual photo which, uh, no app outside of Instagram can Dio you kind of recreated it. If you want to learn more about a person, you can kind of click here and it opens a neat little profile and you can follow that person right there then and there and kind of go back to kind of your mean, mean main task. If you want, you can jump to their full profile page and kind of go there. Um, let's go back. That's that's pretty much a spectacular. So let's just jump back to the rest of the talk and who will come back to here to kinda I would love for you to share with them how you can pin right spectacular, because I about Pinterest and I know a lot of artists and crafters love Pinterest And what I love so much about your platform is you can literally pin from spectacular without going into Pinterest. You can pin your instagram photos right? So best huge value. It is huge. So one of the things that s so you know at the time I really like both Pinterest and Instagram. And if you try it on your phone now, there is really no easy way to pinch a photo from Instagram to Pinterest. I challenge you to try it. It's It's not its, you know, because you can share it straight to Facebook. Twitter flicker all that stuff, but not to Pinterest. And with this, there's actually a very easy way. Just click on the share button and you click on pin and then we'll have to log in. I didn't log into this machine, but basically now you can quickly, easily. And in this piece of content to Pinterest from your logged in interest account and the value there is, you know, for people who are very active on on Instagram. But not so much on Pinterest. You already curating and creating content on instagram. Why not just take all that content you already created and curated and move it over to Pinterest so that driving traffic back to your account and you know, and possibly finding new viewers in a new audience onto the Pinterest social network? So that's a great way to do it and you can do it all. You know this is all kind of free tools. Um, that you can do on spectacular dot co. The other thing I'd like to mention for a small business which will cover what we have here. A button is the spun here shows where you can click that button or you can click the nearby here. What this does is especially this is a very pertinent to, ah, retail small business where you're at a location and you want people, um, customers from from around from around you You're very interested in photos that are happening here by because those air essentially your potential customers. So we have this feature called photos nearby, and you can kind of scroll through and these air basically photos taken. This was less than a minute go around here. Um, yeah, kind. All businesses, people, anything kind of in your vicinity. So these air great. If you see something really engaging, uh, and you think the person might be a good fit as a customer, you might want to like and engage with, um and thus, you know, make them aware your services or your instagram account and bringing him onto the fold. And this is this too is not something that's quite readily available on Instagram the phone. So this is 10 a. Another value from online. Molly J. Says score this alone for me Makes it worth the last three days of my life on, uh, bar BBC says this is great. We can do all this stuff from our desktop now too, and manage clients. So there's a lot of people that also three we're offering and, you know, whatever kind of ideas they have to can extend the product we happy to hear. Um, so you have Teoh have to sign up in order for your your in order for it to be seen on here. So you have to have an INSTAGRAM account. Yes, you have to have an INSTAGRAM account. Do you need Teoh? Then sign up and have a spectacular account to No, no, There's really no concept of a pick tacular account, you know, like some sites just like some sites where you log in with your facebook account. This is exactly you log in with your instagram account and you see instagram photos. When people say ho, can you delete my spectacular account? There's really no deleting. You have to delete your INSTAGRAM account for the photos. You know, if they don't want their photos here, we're just taking their instagram photos and all your activity there. We're not. We're not storing it. We're not doing anything with it. It's all pulled straight from Instagram. So So basically, you do have to have an INSTAGRAM account. And the nice thing is, you just signed on with your instagram account. Great. Hi. I was just wondering if there's a way to see who's commented and who's liked our stuff. But I know that it's low. Yes, yes, that that does get lost. So let me go here and show example. There's four likes here. I'm just gonna click on the like button here, and we see here the four likes and I can just close that he goes away. Um, and as far as I don't see any too many comments, but basically you can with any photo you can drill down, and this will show you all the comments. If there were a lot of comments here, um, let's take, for example, maybe a popular photo. We're gonna go to the Popular Channel and say, Well, that's That's a lot of comments, you know? Oh, no comments. Well, a lot. Yeah. So you can just kind of scroll through that 29 comments. Yep, I see. Help. Does that answer your question. Right. Okay. Um, yeah, with that, we can. I think there's more stuff in here, and then we're gonna go through it and ah, but, you know, it's kind of like to make sure I cover all the topics. All right, that's a brief tour. So is with social media. You know, Hashtags are a big thing we've taken on, whether it's vine instagram, even Facebook has implemented hashtags eso just the definition hashtags A word or phrase preceded by hash or pound sign and used to identify messages and the very topical base. So typically, you know, as an example of my own stuff whenever I post something, you know, a typically post one of three things. It's either my dog are It's, like food pics or, you know, sports fitness stuff. And then I'll kind of hash tag it accordingly so that people can find it. Um, I can kind of drill. You know, I can kind of have the shared experience when I take when I post something I'll. But you know, I post a picture of my dog, which is a Japanese all clicking on the harmonies hashtag and then kind of like all the other having to use dogs so that they can come and like my have unease dog. But it's just a definitely a way for other people to kind of be aware of you and people will be able to find find your content. But, um, you know, being a small business, I think focusing on Hashtags alone is kind of very narrow because there's a few problems with Hashtags and will kind of get into why Hashtags is only, like, maybe half a picture. Maybe not even just half. Maybe a lot less. Um, And with that, for example, Phil's coffee, Um, there a client of ours. So we have kind of enterprise and Brian Tools on top of the free products. So we have the spectacular Dot CO, which is free today for everyone. But we also have, like, another paid tools which I won't get into so much. But anyways, um, with with Hashtags alone, when here we have an example of a photo of feels coffee, which is Ah, really delicious coffee brand. I'm a fan of the mid mojito myself. You can see the photo here that the user did not post any comment. Borden hashtag Phil's coffee. So what happens here is using regular hashtag search tools. This photo would not have been found. And for a local hot coffee shop, you know, they're not like a bigger brand where there's tons of content. Any missed opportunity fills this pretty decent. You know, they have, like 13 14 locations. But if you're a mom and pop local store, um, and you're only getting five photos a day, maybe or five photos a week. Any miss opportunity is huge, so you definitely won't don't want to miss any opportunities. And you consumers, you can't always rely on your consumers to hash tag your coffee store. But sometimes they geo tag it, and this is an example here where they didn't write any comments. But they either auto Geo tagged their photo because Instagram has kind of been set up that way, or they purposely tagged him at Phil's coffee. And our tools help do that. So one of our products is really focused and there many products, stunned. Come out of the woodwork where you can You can see where the more photos at that location we Even with Instagram, when you tag a photo, a geo tagged a photo, you can click on that location and then you can see more photos at that location. So it really encourage you to use that tool, especially if you have, Ah, a small business with a retail location. Whenever you post a photo at your own store, you should Geo tagged that location and every once in a while you check, you know, tap on that location and see what other photos air popping up, you know, and basically, these air, all your consumer generated photos and what we're seeing from from our data because we also have analytics is we're seeing anywhere from, you know, we're picking up photos either twice as many or sometimes 10 times as many photos that are being geo tagged but not hash tag or commented at all. So you know, a brand a small brand could see, you know, if they're used to just doing cash tag searches, they may be seeing only like five photos a week they could go up to 10 photos a week or upto 10 x 10 x that once you start looking at the geo tag data as well, um, so the other thing, too, is with Hashtags. The downside of this is, um, we people. It's not very location specific. People can just start putting hashtags willy nilly. Whether pertinent or not, I encourage you to just search, for example, like the Nike hashtag and you could see, like all the photos that are not relevant to Nike it all There's just a lot of spam and a lot of noise. Um, and that's because with Hashtags, I could be anywhere and just hash tag anything with geo tags. Uh, you know, the way they've kind of set it up is you kind of least have to be in the vicinity. You can't just say, Hey, I'm geo tagging Egypt or New York, or you kind of have to at least be around there. So So with geo tax, it's a more more specific. Be certain that at least they're kind of in the general area. There. Potential customers, maybe, if they're not already customers in your retail store with Hashtags So you see a lot of this or it's you know, this is a restaurant and you can see the whole foods. This is definitely not whole foods, but you know, if Whole Foods were monitoring, this would show up what's going on here. And people are basically doing what what we call crash tagging. They're just like, you know, like crashing a wedding. They just crashing this very popular brand with their own content so that people can, you know, can they can be found. But it's not really relevant to the brand, and it's not really helpful. So so brands are seeing a lot of noise because anybody can, You know, If I wanted my photo to be seen, I take a picture of my dog when then I could start hash tagging at Starbucks, Nike and all this stuff just so that people search for these. I pop up, but that's not really relevant. So So Geo tags. I'll get into a little bit of detail about geo tags, so the definition is it's an electronic tag that assigns a specific location to any piece of content within social media. We're speaking specifically, we're talking about a post in the form of a photograph or video on social media. So So Yes, why? Why location and geo tagging? We kind of went into that. You can be, you know, with geo tags. You can be certain that at least there in the general vicinity, um, you know, if if not for sure. So let's let's hop back to the spectacular product. And I can I can give you a demonstration of that. I wanna geo tag a lot of my photo. Something is gonna go to my account. So if I quick on, I was just adventure beat headquarters. So if I click on this now I'm seeing and you can do this this is ah ah, free feature on Spectacular. Whenever you see a geo tag link, you can click on it and I'll take you to a page of the photos of that location. If you own a retail store, I would advise you to bookmark this this page. That way you can, you know, check on it and see if people are producing content at your retail store. Um, so this year, adventure bead, you can see Oh, some These air photos taken at this location. I'm pretty sure that all of these photos are actually adventure beat. Yep. Oh, no. But if I were to do let's see, um, if I were just to do a hash tag search, I think for a big brand, you just get Ah, big, big mess. Yeah, like that. See? No, I like you know, No, let's just go to a hotel like that's not a hotel, you know, it's it's all over people. Can Tash tag anything? So it's not really relevant, but by geo like, as you can see, um, it's pretty accurate. So that's Ah again, that's that's a free feature whenever you Which is why it's even more important to to Geo tag your your location. That way you can kind of go go to it, whether it's using this tool, my toe, somebody else's tool, or even the instagram app. Because right now on Instagram, there's really no way to go to a specific location right now. The only way to go to it is to geo tag something and then kind of go through that link. So why why do you want to do that? Why do you want toe Geo tag and hash tag. It's to get noticed by hash tagging. You can, um you know, I noticed that, for example. You know, when I do my fitness posts, um when I when I do like, certain moves aren't lifts and I hashtag those specifically, you know, I get likes and stuff from other people who kind of do the same activity on. And if you're doing stuff that, like for example, you know something noteworthy and you mentioned that in hash tag you could also uncover other people who were interested in the same thing. And that's just covering the the hashtags and especially with geo tags, um, by by being able to uncover now that now that you're monitoring geo tags, for example, now you're seeing a lot more content, you know, you're a lot more. You're not missing a lot of this content that people are producing around your area or in your store. And you could totally be missing out on an influencer who just posted a photo. But they didn't hash tag it for some reason, or they didn't comment. They just felt like, Hey, that was a moment they took it and they posted it Boom. It was gone. Only know they know about it, but it is automatically geo tag now that you can monitor it to see that kind of engage with them. That's the way to kind of make sure you don't have these missed opportunities. And also again with the geo tags by monitoring the geo tags constantly because, especially with a retail presence, you're aware of the community, local community. What's happening? You can see by looking at, for example, if I constantly look at the nearby feed, I can see kind of get a glimpse of kind of what's happening in my area. And maybe, you know, I can react to that as a business. So, um, you know, for example Oh, maybe there was. You know there was one. There was 11 episode in New York where we were for a client. They were looking at the stuff around their area and then through the geo feeds the geo tagged feeds, They noticed Oh, there was an accident there. Some people, you know, maybe I, as a business owner, can kinda go out there and help the community and then can also, you know, being pro community is helpful for your business and kind of get getting noticed. So that was one course of action that they were able to take. That you know, ness wasn't necessarily something that ah hashtag search. Just monitoring, you know, their own feed would have helped them uncover so again, geo tags.