By Ashley Cassidy Seale, Founder and Creative Director, Ruby Social Co.

Instagram continues to dominate the social media scene by evolving its offering to remain the most relevant social network today. One of its fastest growing offerings is Instagram Stories (to give you an idea, 200 million people use the feature daily, which is 50 million more than Snapchat), allowing users to record short video clips that appear above the photo feed. While these videos used to disappear within 24 hours (a la Snapchat), users now have the option to save these videos and add them to their profile “Highlights.”

In an age of curated perfection and perhaps overly glossy content, it’s easy to understand why the on-the-fly nature of Stories has become so popular. The trend will continue to explode into this year; here are five reasons you should place a greater emphasis on Stories in 2018:

1. Stories offer more chances to be discovered by new followers

Many brands and individuals alike have noted that is increasingly difficult to grow their presence on Instagram. Due to the ongoing algorithm changes by Facebook as they continue to move towards the pay-to-play model, many users have experienced a considerable drop in the level of engagement with their content. This has been felt across the board and can be very discouraging; however, there are ways to improve the situation. While there is not an exact science of how to best improve the odds of your content being seen, regularly using Stories has been noted to help. In addition to being seen by your existing followers, Stories are also discoverable, which means that by including a hashtag and location you can be found on the Explore page by new followers.

2. Easily drive traffic to your website

If you have more than 10,000 followers and are using Instagram for Business, the company has included a helpful feature which allows you to link to outside content right within Stories. This is incredibly powerful for eliminating the barriers of traffic conversion as it allows a seamless transition from the Instagram app to your own website.

3. Provide a behind-the-scenes look and grant special access to events

Get creative with the type of content you post on Stories, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Stories allows you to provide a behind-the-scenes look at a story or bring the follower along with you to special events by reporting live from a location. While there are great ways to stylize your Stories to reflect your brand, the idea of this feature is to be a bit more authentic and less polished (believe it or not). Enhance your video by adding colours, stickers, filters and text.

4. Put a face to your team members

First and foremost, social media should be social. Stories is a great place to give your editorial staff members a (literal) voice. Pull back the curtain and consider scheduling regular “takeovers” with your various team members and have them expand on their content by adding their perspective. This can be a great strategy for humanizing your publication or adding a face to a byline, so to speak.

5. Stay top of mind

The more frequently you post on Stories, the more users engage with your videos, the further up in their feed you’ll move up. Using Stories is a great way to stay top of mind with your audience as it’s more real time than the traditional photo feed. Use the poll function and encourage your community to engage via DM (ensure your community manager is on top of this) to create a greater feeling of connection and trust. Experiment with different posting times outside of traditional business hours (i.e., evenings and weekends) to acknowledge your communities in different time zones than your own.

Ashley Cassidy Seale is a communications professional with more than a decade of public relations and marketing experience. Between her time in the agency world, helming teams and leading award-winning, national campaigns for lifestyle, fashion and beauty brands to working in-house for design houses and luxury retail, Ashley has fine-tuned a truly holistic expertise. An early adopter of social media, she harnessed her digital know-how to build an online presence under the moniker Quaintrelle, which has since evolved from a lifestyle blog to a bona fide, internationally recognized brand with workshops and events. An influencer in her own right, she launched Ruby Social Co.—a communications and content studio for clever brands—to bring this unique perspective to thoughtfully navigate her clients into the spotlight.

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By Ashley Cassidy Seale, Founder and Creative Director, Ruby Social Co.

While it may seem like Instagram is getting all of the attention these days, Twitter is still a very important place to be in today’s political and economic climateーespecially for publishers. Although the platform is struggling to innovate, it remains not only a powerful traffic driver but also a popular place for breaking news.

Here are 3 tips to improve your Twitter game in 2018:

1. Tweet for Twitter’s sake

It can feel like a waste to not be constantly directing your community to the long-form content on your site, but constantly sharing links is the Twitter equivalent to a brand selling to followers at every turn. The most important thing to recognize (and remind ourselves of) is that social media is meant to be social.

While you want to hit your KPIs and convert traffic to your hero content, you will quickly lose the attention of your community if you fail to balance this with added value, conversation and a more human element. Get involved in the conversation as an outlet, rather than not responding to the reactions of your readers. Try using the poll tool to expand the views expressed in your content or gauge the reaction of your community.

2. Use unique visuals to attract more attention to your content

While Twitter is not an inherently visual platform, that’s the perfect reason to incorporate more images and video into your strategy. Spark curiosity, build excitement, or illustrate a narrative to increase your chances of having your content clicked on, engaged with and, better yetーshared.

You may dismiss GIFs and feel they are limited to juvenile memes shared with friends; however, they can be created in an elevated way that reflects your brand as a publisher. Using GIFs provides the opportunity to allow your followers to engage with your content and expand beyond the character limit.

Twitter is investing in video for 2018, so this should be part of your strategy as you move into the year. Posting accompanying short clips will help attract attention in your feed and will encourage more retweets.

3. Leverage the voice of your staff writers

When you look at many top media outlets on Twitter, the majority of them are focusing their strategy on driving traffic to their website. Rather than simply looking at your Twitter feed as a sort of RSS feed, look at what makes your publication unique.

A surefire way to differentiate from this tiresome model is to showcase the diversity of your assets—the talent and perspective of your staff writers. It’s likely, as we continue to move within a global news cycle, your competitors are covering similar stories.

As the concept of a Twitter chat has mostly come and gone, the idea of discussion between an account and its community has fallen to the wayside. Bring back this thinking by using your feed as a forum again. By scheduling takeovers or Twitter chats with your writers and reporters, you can build on and borrow the equity of their individual accounts and link it back to your publication’s main account.

Ashley Cassidy Seale is a communications professional with more than a decade of public relations and marketing experience. Between her time in the agency world, helming teams and leading award-winning, national campaigns for lifestyle, fashion and beauty brands to working in-house for design houses and luxury retail, Ashley has fine-tuned a truly holistic expertise. An early adopter of social media, she harnessed her digital know-how to build an online presence under the moniker Quaintrelle, which has since evolved from a lifestyle blog to a bona fide, internationally recognized brand with workshops and events. An influencer in her own right, she launched Ruby Social Co.—a communications and content studio for clever brands—to bring this unique perspective to thoughtfully navigate her clients into the spotlight.

Magazines Canada Hotsheets deliver current information on a single topic, each written by an expert in the field. Return to Magazines Canada Hotsheets.

By Ashley Cassidy Seale, Founder and Creative Director, Ruby Social Co.

Counting more than 500 million active users, Instagram remains the fastest growing social media platform today. With over 40 billion photos posted to date and an average of 95 million photos and videos being shared per day, the conversation has quickly moved from “should we be on Instagram?” to “how can we maximize our presence?”

Many companies tend to think of their Instagram page as a place to editorialize and humanize their brand, so as a publisher you naturally have a leg up on the fine art of storytelling. As Instagram is a visual platform first, it’s important to draw people in with both beautiful and engaging content. Balancing quality content with a well-thought-out strategic plan is the way to see growth and success. Here are five tips to help you and your team maximize your efforts:

1. Get to know your audience

Of course, what works will differ vastly from publisher to publisher so it’s important to first consider your audience. This is a word that you should never forget when you talk about your social media marketing strategy—community. In fact, it would be helpful eliminate the word “followers” or “following” entirely from your vocabulary. Sound harsh? With far too many individuals and brands being too focused on growing their following rather than building a community, users are becoming increasingly savvy and skeptical of “hidden agendas” or the feeling of being sold to.

The best place to start is to take some time to look at who is following you already. This is a very simple and often overlooked practice, but there is much insight to be gained. Take note of the following (either through stats or through actually combing through your feed): where does my community live, how old are they, what type of content do they post, how often, who are they following, what type of posts do they engage with? People share much of their lives on social media now, so we have even more information to analyze to better understand them and anticipate what will best resonate.

Next, audit your own existing content. Using Instagram for Business’ stats tool it’s easy to analyze which posts are performing well, which are creating conversation, and which are falling flat. Don’t be afraid to be critical of past content in order to improve moving forward.

2. Have a purpose

While we can all agree it’s crucial to have a presence on Instagram, it’s paramount to understand and be diligent about your “why.” Competition is healthy for business but falling into a comparison trap with your fellow publishers can be paralyzing at times. It may be tempting to feel the need to keep up with the Joneses, but you know your audience best.

The best place to start is to outline your goals. While the most obvious thing may be to grow the number of followers you have (and growth should always be part of the mix), you’ll likely want to set your sights on other metrics including: driving traffic to your hero platform, increasing engagement and driving conversation about your content, testing new content, etc. Consult with your team to establish clear benchmarks and multiple checkpoints throughout the year (quarterly is a good rule of thumb); however, it’s important to remember that Instagram is also an excellent brand-building tool and that sometimes this kind of growth is less tangible.

What content pillars does your publication focus on? Consider these and then think about which would work best on Instagram. It’s recommended that you choose three to five pillars and stick to them to as to not be too generalized.

Consider your value propositionーwhat are you offering? As with your regular content, there should always be a takeaway for the reader. Think of your content as less of a teaser to your website and more of a sidebar. What can you offer on your Instagram feed that users can’t find anywhere else? The more value you deliver, the more engaged and trusting your community will become.

3. Create a cohesive aesthetic

Unlike Twitter or Facebook, Instagram relies heavily on visuals. While storytelling is important (we’ll address this in the next step), the thing that will get you noticed faster than anything is beautiful imagery.

The best profiles on Instagram have a signature look and feel. Think about your brand positioning and what this looks like on other platforms and how this can translate to Instagram.

Consider colour palette, brand aesthetic and audience. Do this by focusing on your top nine photos at any given time, so as to not appear overtly formulaic. Explore options with colour tone (warm or cool), white space, props and backdrops, and commit to a look.

4. Leverage the caption

A good photo is great, but the magic happens when that million dollar shot is paired with a thoughtful story or insight. See the caption as an opportunity to tell a story and inspire conversation. Embrace the micro-blogging format (who says you have to stop at 140 characters? Not Instagram), but balance this by knowing when to keep it short and sweet.

Keep storytelling at the core. Do this by mixing it up: share a story, evoke emotion, aim to inspire, shed some light and lend your expertise. Of course, all content should reflect editorial values, maintain integrity and stay true to the voice of your publication.

5. Embrace the content calendar

Create a content calendar for Instagram by leveraging the editorial calendar for your hero content. Think about ways to expand on this content and add a new twist for Instagram. Planning ahead at least two to three weeks is ideal; however, leave room to be nimble and flexible to respond or address world events, pop culture stories and viral trends that fit within the context of your brand.

Stick to a posting schedule. Consistency is key with the new algorithm, so posting at a similar time at least four to five times per week will help ensure your content is being seen. Don’t be afraid to experiment with posting times to see what captures the attention of your audience best.

Ashley Cassidy Seale is a communications professional with more than a decade of public relations and marketing experience. Between her time in the agency world, helming teams and leading award-winning, national campaigns for lifestyle, fashion and beauty brands to working in-house for design houses and luxury retail, Ashley has fine-tuned a truly holistic expertise. An early adopter of social media, she harnessed her digital know-how to build an online presence under the moniker Quaintrelle, which has since evolved from a lifestyle blog to a bona fide, internationally recognized brand with workshops and events. An influencer in her own right, she launched Ruby Social Co.—a communications and content studio for clever brands—to bring this unique perspective to thoughtfully navigate her clients into the spotlight.

Magazines Canada Hotsheets deliver current information on a single topic, each written by an expert in the field. Return to Magazines Canada Hotsheets.