Author: James Tsirikos

This article aims to identify, explore, and recommend a number of various approaches and methods that have yielded successful Instagram engagement for company’s operating within the discount sportswear industry. The various factors aim to provide an insight into what has worked best so far for various sportswear companies at attracting and appealing to their target market, and how these in-turn generate further post engagement.

Entertaining and Engaging Content:

Although seemingly an obvious suggestion, this is ultimately what will truly set you apart from your competitors, so it’s essential to get this right. What is your campaign offering to truly engage your market?

Are you running a competition to actively involve consumers? Are you publishing Content that your followers will find relevant and entertaining? Can you hold a special event and broadcast this live on Instagram?

These various factors are credited highly by digital marketing sources, and when utilised by sportswear company’s in the past, they appear to have yielded consistent levels of effective engagement. These approaches truly allow the company to stand out and create a memorable experience for the viewer. The below examples successfully achieved high levels of engagement and stand out effectively within the respective companies Instagram pages:

These various examples are encouraging customers to join online competitive leagues, participate in promotional competitions, as well as engage with an entertaining video involving staff members.

Successful levels of engagement have been achieved on these posts, providing a unique and original approach to sportswear marketing. Other examples from companies demonstrate how they may become over-focussed on product promotion, which results in a bland and un-engaging appearance:

The style and aesthetic offered from these pages is generally less engaging and satisfying to browse through, viewers may feel overwhelmed by the focus on product promotions which is also likely to discourage them to stay on the page for as long.

Offering a greater variety of engaging content is therefore an effective method to create a more attractive and appealing page appearance, in turn resulting in lengthier engagement times for visitors.

Brand Promotion / Endorsement:

Partnering with target influencers is a highly influential technique and provides a potential platform for the business to reach a whole new consumer base (Lyfe, 2017). Within the sportswear industry, this can be achieved by creating special events and campaigns with teams that the company supplies to.

This approach has appeared successful for companies in the past, with each campaign achieving significant engagement:

The above examples demonstrate the effective use of promotion and product endorsement, offering a practical display of how partnership companies can be used as an effective method of additional advertising. Each of these types of posts received a high level of engagement in relation to how many follows the account had, indicating that followers are appealed to this style of promotion.

Creating an Appealing Aesthetic Across the Platform:

Aesthetic and appearance of the profile also appears to be a significant factor within the discount sportswear industry. It is of great importance to ensure the blog has an interesting and fresh appearance, to persuade the visitor to engage further with the content. The below examples demonstrate pages who have achieved this successfully:

In comparison, we can see how this appeals and engages with us when compared to a company who has orientated the page solely around current offers and discounts:

It is an essential approach to ensure that the themes, content, and quality of the pictures posted are appealing on a consistent basis, otherwise it is highly likely that followers will quickly lose interest in the page (Fallah, 2018).

References:

Digital Marketing Institute. (2017). How Influencer Marketing Can Pump Up Your Content Strategy. [online] Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/2017-10-10-how-influencer-marketing-can-pump-up-your-content-strategy [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018].

Fallah, R. (2018). How to Optimise Your Instagram Strategy. [online] Digital Doughtnut. Available at: https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2018/january/how-to-optimize-your-instagram-strategy [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018].

Lyfe. (2017). Digital Marketing Blog: 13 Instagram Marketing Tips That Get Real-World Results. [online] Available at: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/instagram-marketing-tips/ [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018].

Within the proposal for the chosen company, it was identified that further engagement could potentially be achieved across the Facebook platform, as levels of likes / shares were consistently lower in comparison to the other social media outlets. A particular topic of focus was organic reach and the associated implications attributed to its gradual decline across Facebook in recent years. This article will therefore focus on the various aspects of organic reach in the context of modern Facebook marketing.

What is organic reach?

Organic reach is essentially how many followers have viewed content within a certain period of time on their newsfeeds through natural methods, not including adverts and other paid promotional methods (Fuss, 2017).

What is the future prospect of organic reach?

Levels of organic reach for content brands publish over Facebook has gradually decreased over recent years, as numerous algorithm updates have reduced the likelihood of posts appearing naturally on follower’s feeds, leaving posts which have already accumulated successful levels of likes / shares to take dominance. Paid advertising approaches therefore appear to be the more effective method (Manson, 2014).

The importance of posting engaging content is now more critical than ever, as it is unrealistic for brands to rely purely on paid advertisements and should seek to use organic posts to their full potential. This should therefore encourage brands to be more selective about what they post, adopting a quality over quantity approach. Remaining routed in audience preferences and interests remains a crucial process, as well as identifying optimal post times to encourage organic engagement (Manson, 2014).

Organic reach is generally perceived to be declining in significance, and Facebook is actually estimated to become primarily a host for purely paid advertising approaches in the years to come.

The benefits of achieving organic reach:

Suggestions to improve the companies organic reach via the Facebook were suggested, these are the positive implications that are generally associated when achieved correctly:

Creates instantaneous word of mouth – Posts that are successfully viewed and engaged with organically subsequently create a chain reaction of other responses from followers (Kyberd, 2017). Posts that are engaged with at this initial organic stage will then naturally appear within the news feeds of followers, as Facebooks current algorithm selects post to appear that have successfully accumulated high levels of engagement (Bernazzani, 2017).

Inexpensive method of advertising – Organic posts provide the company with an inexpensive channel to advertise within, a much more affordable alternative to paid Facebook advertising (Patel, 2017). Although paid advertising is renowned for being effective on Facebook, maintaining consistent levels of organic reach is likely to keep pay per click costs relatively low, preventing over-reliance on their outcome.

Effective method to test posts – Companies can opt to post content and test how it is received organically, before testing if it is worthwhile to invest in the advert and re-publish it to achieve further paid reach (Hubacher, 2016). As Facebook’s advertising fees are gradually increasing, this initial organic testing may potentially save the company money, as the decision to invest further in the advert can be determined by how its received by the audience first time around.

Negative associations of Facebook organic reach:

It has become increasingly difficult to achieve – Research into the current and future effectiveness of organic reach revealed that there has been a clear decline in engagements since early 2017, primarily due to the most recent algorithm update (Hutchinson, 2017). An estimated 20% decrease in engagements has been identified across the platform; meaning posting at optimal times, ensuring quality content, and gaining promotion from collaborators is now more crucial than ever.

Difficult to measure its exact effectiveness – Facebook actually only measures ‘reach’ as the amount of times a specific post has fallen into the news feed of followers, and doesn’t represent page views or website conversions (TSM, 2015). Therefore, although organic reach is important to achieve, it does not provide as much of an in-depth insight into its effectiveness in the same way paid adverts can be tracked and measured.

Does content marketing offer a solution?

Although the current information surrounding organic reach suggests it’s becoming relatively obsolete, separate research has indicated that Facebook is still an effective free marketing tool, and successful marketing can still be achieved if the company recognises and fully understands their market and consumer behaviour effectively (Palma, 2016).

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action (Pulizzi, 2016). This marketing tactic has now been deemed as essential in ensuring that companies are posting content which is relevant and appealing to its target audience, promoting a message which defines what the company is about, as well as finding what the customer is interested in, this is labelled as the content ‘sweet spot’ (Pulizzi, 2016).

By creating and rolling out content marketing orientated strategies, companies can look to further engage their audience and generate campaigns that will genuinely intrigue and capture their attention, subsequently heightening their likelihood of appearing on the news feeds of their audience. So ultimately in the battle to win the attention of the consumers.. content is key!

Bibliography

Bernazzani, S. (2017). The Decline of Organic Facebook Reach & How to Outsmart the Algorithm. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-declining-organic-reach

Fuss, S. (2017). Facebook Post Reach Explained. [online] Quintly.com. Available at: https://www.quintly.com/blog/2017/04/facebook-post-reach-explained

Hubacher, J. (2016). Why Organic Reach is Still Important – Carusele. [online] Carusele. Available at: https://carusele.com/organic-reach-still-important/

Hutchinson, A. (2017). New Study Finds Facebook Page Engagement Has Declined 20% in 2017. [online] Social Media Today. Available at: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/new-study-finds-facebook-page-reach-has-declined-20-2017

Kyberd, R. (2017). How To Boost Your Engagement And Organic Reach On Facebook. [online] Optimise and Grow Online Business. Available at: https://optimiseandgrow.online/boost-your-engagement-and-organic-reach/

Manson, M. (2014). Social Ogilvy. [online] Techenet.com. Available at: http://www.techenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Facebook-Zero-a-Social@Ogilvy-White-Paper.pdf

Patel, N. (2017). 20 Secrets That’ll Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach. [online] Neil Patel. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/13-secrets-thatll-boost-your-facebook-organic-reach/#whatisorganicreach

Palma, A. (2016). Effectiveness of Facebook as a free marketing tool. University of Mindanao International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, [online] 1(2). Available at: http://umindanao.edu.ph/journal/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Effectiveness-of-Facebook-as-a-free-marketing-tool-2.pdf

PULIZZI, J. (2016). Finding Your Sweet Spot – An Extreme Content Focus [Exercise]. [online] Content Marketing Institute. Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/03/extreme-content-focus/ [Accessed 22 Feb. 2018].

PULIZZI, J. (2016). What is Content Marketing?. [online] Content Marketing Institute. Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/ [Accessed 22 Feb. 2018].

Tactical Social Media. (2015). Why Organic Facebook Reach Doesn’t Matter. [online] Available at: http://tacticalsocialmedia.org/why-organic-facebook-reach-doesnt-matter/

As we know, Instagram is an immensely popular social media platform, currently boasting around 800 million worldwide users (Statista, 2017).

The platform is also considered as a valuable social media marketing tool, mainly attributed to it’s visually appealing nature combined with a high number of daily visitors (Statista, 2017). Instagram influencer marketing is predicted to be worth $2 billion dollars by 2019 (Mediakix, 2017).

This blog post aims to break down and analyse the implications of Instagram marketing, therefore focussing specifically on the management of social media presence from Chaffey’s sixth digital marketing channel (Chaffey, 2012):

Engagement Levels: 

Instagram is renowned as one of the most engaging social media platforms available. A study conducted on the 25 most successfully engaging global brands revealed that the average Instagram post gained an engagement rate of 3.31%, this is a significant figure considering tweets from the same company averaged a rate of 0.07% (Peterson, 2017).

Potential of Instagram advertising:

• 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business account, and at least 30% of users have purchased a product they discovered via an advert on their feed.
• Instagram stories receive 250 million daily visitors.
• 1 in 5 minutes that people spend on a mobile device is either on Facebook or Instagram.
• 65% of top performing Instagram posts feature products.
• Effective hash-tagging system – posts with hashtags receive around 12.6% more engagement.

A risk to consider however…

Due to the platforms overwhelming popularity however, Instagram suffers from content saturation, as a result approximately 70% of Instagram posts don’t get seen unless they have received a substantial level of engagement. So pushing for additional likes and hash-tagging is now more significant, as well as adding a location, and even posting at the right time of day is an effective method in order to avoid this issue.

A more comprehensive list of stats can be accessed below:

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/

This following section will be covering the sophisticated new approaches Instagram offers, in order to truly utilise the app effectively and maximise engagement levels…

Instagram Business Tools: 

This recent innovation from the company is an effective tool to allow marketers to tailor their profiles into a business orientated page, as well as incorporate analytics to effectively analyse how engaging their posts are:

• The company’s email and phone contact information can be incorporated through the profile. Directions to the store can also be added:

• Analytics can be used to highlight the most successful posts the company has uploaded in recent weeks. Specific countries, ages and gender of followers which engaged with posts can also be identified by the tool, allowing the company to tweak their output to increase engagement levels:

• Posts can be converted into adverts in a few easy steps – the company can simply choose a post, and run it as an advert for as long as desired. Here we can see how a page has taken a relatively old post and converted it into an advert to appear on more feeds, offering a click through link for customers to directly access the companies site.

Creating Effective and Engaging Advertisements

So now we have established Instagram is a highly engaging platform, an effective tool to advertise, and also allows businesses to monitor and analyse the success of their campaigns, this section looks to identify what techniques companies should adopt to create truly engaging and effective advertisements:

• Keep adverts simple: promoting a single product and providing a direct URL link to the company website – the below examples are of companies that have successfully achieved this:

All of these posts have been highly successful campaigns at promoting engagement from their target audience. The adverts all have a simple and effective message, with attractive and eye catching imagery which is more likely to attract the attention of the viewer, as apposed to a cluttered and overwhelming advertisement.

• Identify and target the correct audience: Instagram uses Facebook’s advanced built-in targeting system, allowing you to tweak and fine tune adverts to specifically appeal to a target market. Further information for how to successfully use this can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/494140404019543

These factors combined with the analytical tools mentioned earlier provide a suitable starting point to create attractive and effective adverts, allowing a business to engage further with it’s target audience and measure the campaigns success over time.

Bibliography

Chaffey, D. (2012). Digital marketing: strategy, implementation and practice. 5th ed. London: Pearson Education Limited.

Osman, M. (2017). 18 Instagram Stats Every Marketer Should Know for 2017. [online] Sprout Social. Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/

Read, A. (2016). Where Social Media Is Headed in 2017: The Biggest Trends to Watch For – The Buffer Blog. [online] Buffer Social. Available at: https://blog.bufferapp.com/state-of-social-media#instagram

Statista. (2017). Instagram: active users 2017 | Statista. [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users/

The aim

Game of Thrones is one of the most popular and talked about TV series’ in the world. In New Zealand, SKY holds the exclusive rights to broadcast the program accross the country.

With season 4 of GOT on the horizon, SKY saw this as a prime opportunity to drum up further hype surrounding the series, with the aim to gain more users signed up to their globally popular SKY TV service, as well as their new Zealand counterpart SOHO. Employing the aid of worldwide digital marketing giant DDB, they set about creating a campain to interest and excite current and new watchers of the series. This post aims to create a brief analysis on the campaign’s effectiveness.

The idea

With the primary aim to create a further hype and get people’s attention towards the series, DDB employed the use of shock tactics to create a worldwide buzz. Placing a 7 metre statue of the notorious and globally hated charecter from the series King Joffrey in Aotea square, with a winch and rope wrapped around his neck; the winch was then powered via the use of Twitter….

Every time a tweet was posted with the hashtag including #bringdowntheking, the winch was slightly turned and Joffrey was gradually pulled closeer towards his inpending doom.

The result:

Passers by soon caught onto the significance of the statue, and  began to tweet and post photos at a rapid rate, spreading the campaign like wildfire.

The campaign took the world by storm, reaching an estimated 43 million people across 168 countries.

DDB’s Brandwatch Analytics recorded that almost 875,000 responses were gathered from the campaign,and in no time the king was pulled down with ease.

Overall this initiative was a smash success, and is a key example of how a well executed digital marketing plan can affect on a global scale.

Other reports:

http://creativity-online.com/work/sky-tv-game-of-thrones-bringdowntheking/34644

http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/ddb-new-zealand-to-bring-down-king-joffrey-for-sky-tv/64476