Instagram is a powerful networking and advertising medium for home-based business ventures. Since it was acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has grown from 30 million users to a staggering figure of over 300 million users! It allows photos to be captured, cropped, filtered, tinted, and otherwise altered, then posted publicly. In addition, videos no longer than 15 seconds can be posted, providing a snapshot of someone’s day, what they are doing, or (as is very common) what they are eating. These photo or video posts are then disseminated across a series of social networking platforms. Instagram is like the base of a tree whose branches include Facebook, Flikr, Tumbler, Twitter, and WhatsApp. If the Instagram user has accounts with any of these other services, sharing a photo or video across platforms is instantaneous. For online business people, it is a vital, diverse, far-reaching advertising tool. Below is a brief guide that shows how business owners can be Generating Leads from Instagram, thereby increasing traffic for home-based business. With the speed and convenience inherent to social networking, these steps require a small investment of time, but high returns.   Business Basics: Leads and Conversions The first step in marketing and advertising is to generate a lead. A lead is defined as any potential customer, someone who expresses interest in a product or service. For businesses with an online presence, one of the newest yet proven methods of advertising is generating leads from social media. Anyone who clicks on a link related to the business, fills our a form, puts himself on an email list, signs up for a newsletter, or in any way provides contact information is considered a lead. The more leads a business has, the better, but this is only the first step. To make money, leads must be converted. Advertising gets leads. Further advertising of individual products and services, matching them to the individual customer’s needs, and convincing the customer to make a purchase, this is conversion. The primary difference between lead generation and conversion is the higher level of personal communication. This is wear an individual’s selling chops come into play. Making the lead feel his or her needs are important, and that the product can accommodate those needs, increases the likelihood of conversion. In an internet that now hosts over 1 billion websites, this “personal touch” is the essential tool that can make online advertising successful. Instagram and the Personal Touch This “personal touch” tells potential customers many things about the product and the business that created it. It shows the business cares about the customer and wants to satisfy a need. It shows the business is constantly focused on improvement by being in touch with the latest advancements, strategies, and technologies. It also shows the business owner is human; he will make mistakes, but he will also work to make them right. The question is, how does one show the personal, relatable side of a business with still photos and 15-second videos? Below are […]

Many online marketers are turning their attention to the mobile market. For them, social media is old news. They will continue to sustain the status quo. But, they are losing sight of some incredible innovations that are happening at the turn of 2016. The Benefits of Facebook Advertising are obvious, but they are also evolving fast. Leads can be generated immediately by developing an incredibly dense and powerful social campaign. How is social media evolving? What are three of the biggest social media marketing tips that can be implemented right now that will generate many leads online? Marketers are looking into changes within the audience insights, and how the quantity of their advertisements makes all the difference. 1. The Relevance of “Audience Insights” Facebook has an incredibly versatile platform for bridging the gap between what a company expects its target market likes and what the target market actually likes. All companies are making a guess on what their target market actually wants. They assume that if their target market enjoys country music, they will also enjoy buying cheap banjo strings. It is not a huge logical leap, but sometimes a company misses the mark. Audience Insights is an intuitive system for Facebook marketers. A lot can be written about the feature, but at its heart rests an incredibly generous tool to discover what a target market truly enjoys. A company selects a certain market within the page. For example, they can choose a target market of “people who like private school education in Chicago.” They can then receive demographic information based on this niche. They can potentially discover that 85% of the market is female, 17% is under 30, and 20% do not actually live in Chicago. That information is telling. It may also provide deep knowledge about a market that may have just been assumed before. The Audience Insight feature is still being discovered and explored, and it has only been released out of beta for a few months by the end of 2015. But, the Audience Insight angle of Facebook will become an ever greater tool for Facebook marketers in 2015. 2. A Network of Connected Advertisements Out of all the Facebook Advertising Tips, this one may be the most important moving forward. A handful of advertisements really will not do it in 2016. Marketers will need to have 50 or more different advertisements running at any one time. They need to draw paid traffic from various resources. They also need to find out what works- and what does not- on an unrivaled and astonishingly fast scale. The rate of effectiveness is not high enough when a marketer is sticking o three or five advertisements at any given time. A typical corporate record label may sign 100 bands a year. They do not expect to make money on 95 of them. If Rogue Wave, Dredg, and The Great Mountain Fighters failed to make a profit, Adele and Coldplay will account for any losses from the remaining 95 leads. […]

When a business uses social media to advertise, they have several methods at their disposal to reach out to prospective clients. Generating leads via a Facebook site is not that difficult when the proper steps are utilized to get the ball rolling. Here are some Facebook advertising tips that can be used to grab the attention of prospective clients, possibly boosting sales as a result. Benefits of Facebook advertising Advertising on Facebook will draw in potential customers from around the globe rather than ones only located in the immediate area. Word of mouth travels fast via social media, making it the best way to get a business seen and known by all sorts of demographics. Generating Facebook Leads Facebook leads can be categorized as direct or indirect leads. A direct lead is the placement of a link on the social medial page which forwards the person to the business website. The customer will click on this link if they feel they would like further information about the company. A indirect lead is the sharing of a blog post, picture, or status with a link included. The customer may click on this link out of curiosity, sending them to the business website to browse. They were not originally interested in this particular website, but clicked on it because the information it claimed to share seemed intriguing. Creating A Website When someone needs home business leads, social media is one of the best ways to gather potential customers without paying large prices for advertising. The information is all available via the Facebook site, making it a snap for business owners to get the ball rolling in gathering leads as soon as they decide to open their business to the public. Having a business website can be a great help in gaining customers as it will work in conjunction with the social media site. A website will house all the information about the product or service they are offering. It will include details about the benefits in buying from this company, as well as the personal information needed to get a hold of them. The colors and fonts should be pleasing so potential customers spend more than a few seconds browsing the information. A high “bounce rate” results when a prospect comes your website, and doesn’t stay there more than a few seconds. Pictures should be included as well as frequently asked questions and answers. Starting The Lead Process When creating a business social media page, the cover photo is what will grab attention of anyone browsing the platform. Use wording in this cover photo, adding a call-to-action so people who spot the business page will see what it is about before they browse the details. This should include an eye-catching phrase, great looking font, and company name so people will see this information at the moment they see the page pop up as something they may be interested in. Make sure to place an appropriate photo behind the text. A photo in […]