Category: Social Media

Instagram Captions for Ecommerce: Why Visuals Are Only Half the Picture

With Instagram’s growing user base, high engagement rate and increased Average Order Value (compared to Facebook), you already know that being present on Instagram is non-negotiable.

You post high quality product images, tag your products for maximum shoppability, post daily stories, have all the right hashtags, dabble in influencer marketing and endlessly fuss over your feed’s aesthetic….

Only then you’re left shaking your fists at the sky and cursing the dreaded algorithm because your post didn’t get much traction. 

But when it comes to your Instagram captions, you slap together two

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How to Engage Instagram Followers with Copy So They Love Your Brand and Buy Your Products

I remember when Instagram was yay high. When we were just kids posting filtered photos of street graffiti.

That all changed when I signed on as YOGABODY’S in-house copywriter.

The company’s Facebook game was on point, but we wanted to give it a bigger go at selling our products on Instagram, too.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean to say I can’t just use pictures of fit yoga women and the quote “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best” and call it a day? 

Not

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Stop All Social Media Activity (Organic) | Solve For A Profitable Reality

Life is short.
It is time to point out an ugly truth, and to be the brave person that you are, the intelligent rational assessor of reality that you are, and kill all the organic social media activity by your company.
All of it.
Seems radical, but let’s take it one step at a time.
To give you a sense of the depth and breadth of ideas I’ll cover today, here are the sections in this post:

+ The Promise of Marketing Utopia.
+ The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia, Implications.
+ The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia: Examples.
+ Win Big: Stop Posting Content for Organic Reach On Social Channels.
+ Is the Huge Audience on Social Media Platforms Completely Useless?
+ Is the Idea of Marketing Utopia Permanently Dead?
+ Bottom-line.

I urge you to have an open mind. My plan is to challenge your critical thinking skills, and share lessons that will apply broadly across the professional effort you put day in and day out. Most of all, I’m excited to frame an important problem, and present solutions that will transform an important part of your marketing strategy.
Let’s go!
The Promise of Marketing Utopia. 
I hate pimping (what marketing has come to be). I adore building meaningful relationships – the kind of long-term connections where a brand truly gives a f about their customers, and gives something of value in exchange for their attention. I LOVE brands that can pull this off, and support them with my un-asked-for evangelism and precious $$$s.
Hence, you can imagine how gosh darn excited I was at the advent of Facebook and Twitter (first real social networks). There were a billion people

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How To Suck At Social Media: An Indispensable Guide For Businesses

Facebook, at last count, has 1.5 billion monthly active users. YouTube has 1.2 billion users (watching 6 billion hours of videos!). Instagram has an estimated 400 million users.
Those are some big gigantic numbers!
I believe that every human with time to spare, and a connection to the web, should be on social media. The benefits are numerous. Facebook allows you to stay close to people you choose to. YouTube has democratized entertainment and education. Instagram allows you to express your creativity, and soak up expressions from others. Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, others have a role to play as well.
Humans, check.
But, what about businesses? Companies small and big? In India or Japan or the United States?
It comes down to two important questions: 1. Do the big gigantic numbers imply that your business should use these social media channels? 2. If yes, should your participation be the same as regular humans?
I believe that we have never answered the first question. Businesses were told: “The numbers are HUGE!” The second question was never answered either, but because all businesses know is how to pimp that became their default strategy.
The assumption is: Big Social Audiences + Big Pimping = Big Social Profits.
Big mistake.
You know that of course because for your business, after five solid years of investment, this has not proven to be true. Even the people who powered your investment in Social Media, the Gurus, have, reluctantly, accepted this reality.
I believe that it was erroneous not to answer the two questions above, it was erroneous to be tempted by the Big Numbers and not understand how Social Media channels actually worked (streams, home pages, personalization, rankings and more).
So, let’s fix that error.
In

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