Longer Instagram Videos

......for those of you who needed that extra 45 seconds

Instagram has now increased it's 15 second video time limit to a whole minute! That's four times more video content that can now be shared in one video post! This is big news for users who were frustrated that marketers got to post longer videos than the rest of Instagram users who weren't paying big bucks to promote their videos. Two month's, and several backlashes later the company has now made this feature available for all of it's users. 

One of the driving forces towards the move to a longer time limit on instagram videos is due to increased amount of of videos posted to the social media platform. Video consumption on the photo-sharing social media platform rose 40% in the last six months, according to the company. Instagram has played a huge part in the surge of videos to it's platform by adding public video view counts. This has in turn spured publishers and advertisers to make more videos. 

This new feature allows social users and advertisers to get really creative with their material. It allows them an ample amount of time to tell their stories and gives them an opportunity to connect with their audience more than ever before. A very affective tool for companies than primarily advertise on Facebook. As well as companies that didn't see a great value in the photosharing aspect might give Instagram advertising another look with the new video features in mind

Instagram Video Views

Following in the lines of Facebook and Snapchat, Instagram is the latest social media platform to start showing users the number of views that their videos are getting and from who. 

For socially driven Instagram users, this feature is a nice add on but really makes no difference to their utilization of the app. For the business driven Instagram users this feature is very important for them to see how their content is performing within the app. This sort of data allows them to monitor which videos were more effective for their audience and which videos did not have as many views. They can use this information as a reference point to help structure their future content based on views data available to them. This allows users to make their business Instagram account more affective than ever before. 

Instagram has seen a surge of business pages start to utilize it's platform. While the majority of companies stick to strategically taken professional photos of their products or services in order to blend in with the rest of the content on the social media platform. Other's have seen great success with professionally edited video content on their pages that intrigues their followers and has them asking for more. Along with having companies have their own Instagram business page, Instagram users with a huge follower base are beginning to utilize their platform and turn it into a business, making themselves the brand. Influence is what users are charging companies for. They charge a company per post to promote their brand or product. 

The companies that pay users can now measure how affective the user's post about that particular product was with their followers. Can now make smarter decisions in regards towhee they choose to promote their brand and if what their paying them is worth their return on investment. With this new feature, I believe we'll start to see more and more companies posting videos on Instagram than ever before. This is because video offers them something that pictures do not. There is  currently no way for companies to measure how many people saw their picture post on Instagram, they haven't reached face book's level of post data yet. Though, there is now a way for them to see how many people say their video, and who exactly those people are. Therefore they will go with the choice that gives them the most data to generate the most accurate content. 

Have you met Facebook's New Emoji's?

Facebook has finally given it’s users what they’ve asked for (sort of). Users have long seeked for an alternative way to share their reactions to Facebook posts other than just the “like” button. The most popular suggestion from users was the “dislike” button. This was due to the lack of ability to express accurate feelings towards something you see on Facebook without having to leave a comment. The like button was a great tool for the majority of situations but the one size fits all format towards the content on Facebook wasn't something that users were too fond of. It also wasn't very effective to measure feed back because it wasn't an accurate measure of user's thoughts and feelings. 

On February 24th users got just that. Facebook didn't necessarily give them what they asked for with the “dislike” button but it did give them a series of emoji's that users can use to describe their feelings towards a photo, status update, or post. By giving users a greater range of ways to react to their friends’ updates, Facebook is converting its less-engaged users into more active ones. And the more things people click while using Facebook, the more accurate the data will be about how people emotionally respond to content.

Users can access these new emoji's by hovering over the “like” button in a desktop browser or holding down the “like” button on Facebook's mobile version and five animated emojis pop up. With a click of a button, you can choose from new emotions when commenting on a status update. You can tap on either the like, love, haha, wow, sad, or angry emoji's to express your reaction. With the release of these emoji's, Facebook has also updated posts in News Feed so that they will now show a tally of the reactions a post gets from each different emoji.

Do you like Facebook’s new Emoji’s?

Comment or tweet me you thoughts

Social Consumers

The internet has opened the doors to a global market. Social Media had created a platform for consumers to have a voice and influence that they never had before. 

Before I buy a product online or even in stores I check reviews. These reviews help be decided whether or not I am making a good choice by buying these particular products. I look for positive and negative feedback and weigh the two against each other to make my final decision. This process is one that millions of consumers partake in on a daily basis. The Social Consumer is one consumer phenomena that is continuing to grow and grabbing the attention of major companies.

Companies know the power that social consumer have on their market and they are very reactive and interactive through their social media outlets, especially twitter. Many consumers who tweet their comments or concerns to companies usually get a very timely response from the company. This helps companies stay on top of their market perception and allows them to manage their reputation on social media outlets as they are able to somewhat control the dialog that is on social media about the company. It helps them address and contain any backlash that may come their way.







Like the bigger companies, many businesses today need to take notice of and hone in on the power of the social consumer. They need to be very reactive to their consumer's on all Social Media platforms. This means that their questions need to be answered on a timely basis, problems need to be addressed accordingly. If businesses chose to ignore their social consumers and not actively engage in their commentary, they will loose control of their reputation on social media platforms. The dialog about their company will be solely dictated by their social consumers wether it is accurate information or not.

See The Power of Social Consumerism in an infografic Here

How often do you read reviews before you buy something? Do you yourself write reviews about a product or service online?

Facebook's Boost Button

For businesses that would like to grow their presence on Facebook, the “Boost Post” feature can be your best friend in making that happen. 

The Boost feature is only available to Facebook business pages. It allows business pages to appear higher up on their audience’s news feed for a fee. The fee is completely up to the business. It’s based on how long the business wants to run the boost and the number of impressions the business would like to get from it’s audience. It’s a beginning stage that helps familiarize businesses with how they can utilize Facebook’s advertising tools to help grow their business because they run the relatively more expensive and distinctively targeted sponsored posts. 

One of the main reasons why businesses choose to use this feature is due to the unpredictability of the reach that organic posts have on a business’ Facebook audience. Therefore, they don’t want all the time and effort dedicated to their business’ Facebook posts go unnoticed. Boosting a post solves this by guaranteeing a degree of visibility from their audience because they have a high chance of being seen by people who have liked their business page. If those people happen to like or comment on the boosted post, it might appear on their friend’s New Feeds. These friends might be people who were never previously aware of your business page, that are now exposed to it. This gives the business page greater exposure to a new audience. 

So, how can a business utilize this tool to help them gain that same sort of exposure? The most important thing to do is choosing a post that will attract you’re audience’s attention. It would be ineffective to boost a post that will gain exposure but not great feedback. You want your audience to interact with the post when they see it. Once you have chosen a post, you click on the “Boost Post” button on the bottom right corner of the post. Then, choose the audience you want to reach with the boosted post. You can select to boost the post to the News Feeds of people who like your Page, as well as their friends, or choose a specific audience through targeting. If you would like a more specific demographic than that, you can also target groups by interests, location, ages and gender. After you’ve selected your audience, you need to manage the budget dedicated to boosting this post. The budget is determined by the amount of time you want the post to remain boosted, which, in turn, determines an estimated audience to which the boosted post will be visible.

Have you ever used the “Boost Post” feature? If so, how has it impacted your business?

                           Comment or Tweet me your thoughts at Twitter.com/GinaLuari

Social Media Marketing and the Presidential campaign

It's no secret that with every Presidential race social media plays a much greater role.

In the 2008 Presidential Campaign President Obama used pop culture to launch and promote his HOPE campaign through many different influential figures in the entertainment industry. He was able to use their platforms and fan base to spread his message and reach voters that he would have never impact through his own personal platform. This ability to reach a wider audience other than those watching CNN was ultimately one of the major reasons that won him the election. 

In the 2016 Presidential race candidates have been more active on social media than ever before. One of the most active and reactive candidates is the outspoken Donald Trump. Trump has many different social media accounts but it seems that his favorite social media platform is Twitter. Trump regularly express his point of views on the social media sight by tweeting his thoughts to his followers as well as the public figures that he might be directing them towards. This has helped Trump stay relevant amongst voters as well as the media. 

Candidates no longer launch commercial marketing campaigns they launch social media marketing campaigns. Through these campaigns they are able to not only spread their message but also engage with voters and see which social campaigns they are responding to as well as their thoughts about those issues. They then are able to focus their campaigns on the issues that voters are most concerned about. The most socially engaged the candidate is the more relevant they become to younger voters and that alone could win them the election. Though, not all social campaigns are affective for candidates. In order for them to have the most impact they need to first build the platform on their social outlets by gaining as many followers as possible in order for people to be receptive to their message. 

Above are the Presidential candidates with the most followers. Are you following any of these candidates? If not, do you follow any other Presidential candidates? If so, which ones and what made you follow them on their social media platforms?

Comment or Tweet me your thoughts at Twitter.com/GinaLuari