The 5 Best Instagram Posts From Brands This Week

Instagram has become a hugely important social platform for brands who want to connect with new and existing customers. With over 300 million monthly Worldwide users, more and more brands are looking at Instagram as being an important component in their social media strategy.

In need of a little Instagram inspo for your brand? Here's a list of the best Instagram posts from brands that have been killing the Instagram game this week:


1. Expedia

"Grand Canyon National Park, breathtaking in all its grander and an iconic reflection of American topography. So much history hidden within these trails, valleys, and plateaus. It's incredible to think that sometime hundreds of years ago someone sat right where I did last week on my birthday." - @iamarmory Share your photos of the U.S. National Parks with #ExpediaLovesParks and #PPNationalParks. We're regramming 100 of our favorites in honor of the 100th bday of the @nationalparkservice. Also check out the #NationalParksAdventure film by @macfreefilms now playing in IMAX® and giant screen theaters. Click the link in our bio to watch the trailer. [26/100]

A photo posted by Expedia (@expedia) on Apr 3, 2016 at 10:42am PDT

What makes you want to book a trip and start exploring more than pictures like this? Online travel company Expedia has been using Instagram in their social media strategy for a while. Expedia's Instagram account will give you some serious wanderlust, getting their followers excited about travel and, hopefully, wanting to use their services!



2. Sweaty Betty

Step out for Spring in this seasons must have prints and colours #SweatyBetty #SweatYourStyle

A photo posted by Sweaty Betty (@sweatybetty) on Apr 5, 2016 at 4:52am PDT

Sports clothing company Sweaty Betty has an Insta feed that is so aesthetically pleasing, that it's almost enough to make us want to exercise voluntarily. Almost. Their pictures are flooded with "#goals" and *heart eyes emoji* comments from adoring brand loyal Instagram users, and, with over 80k followers Sweaty Betty boast a great example of how Instagram can work for brands if done correctly.


3. Kettle Brand Chips

It's the perfect Saturday for a picnic, and the perfect picnic snacks are our Avocado Oil Hawaiian Barbeque Chips, a baguette with jam and Brie, and fresh fruit! #yum #weekend #picnic

A photo posted by Kettle Brand (@kettlebrand) on Apr 2, 2016 at 4:46pm PDT

Not only have Kettle Brand mastered the art of producing ridiculously good tasting crisps, they've also got a pretty cool Instagram feed too. It's full of posts like this one which tastefully (pun intended?) show off their snacks through charming pictures rather than "in your face" hard advertising.


4. Toms

"You can't put a price on new experiences, meeting new people, foreign places and cultures and gaining a worldlier perspective." — @johnphilp3 #travelingTOMS See more photos and read about where John's #TOMS are taking him on the blog. Link in profile.

A photo posted by @toms on Apr 2, 2016 at 4:54pm PDT

With a huge following of over 700k on Instagram, shoe manufacturers and overall do-gooders Toms are a great brand for marketers to look at if you're in need of some Instagram inspiration. Their latest campaign "#TravellingTOMS" encourages followers to post pictures of their Toms shoes in various locations around the world. It's a great way to increase brand awareness and engage audience at the same time!

5. Ben and Jerry's

The right kind of sundae. Photo by @eatmenyc

A photo posted by Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) on Apr 3, 2016 at 9:27am PDT

As if we needed another reason to want to go out and buy Ben and Jerry's ice cream, their Instagram pictures are enough to make you salivate all over your phone screen. Their account is dedicated to making the stomachs of their 620k+ following grumble for ice cream with mouthwatering pictures like this one. They also use their Instagram to launch new flavours and post pictures of brand loyal followers eating their ice cream to increase engagement!

Hopefully this post has inspired you to start snapping pictures for your brand's Instagram account! Lets start a conversation over on twitter - tweet us @inbounderly to tell us whether YOU see Instagram as being an important tool in your social media strategy?

Share this post with your friends!

Tweet

10 Free Tools Every Digital Marketer Should Use

Our jobs as digital marketers are busy and massively varied - one minute we're creating content and the next you're staring at thousands of numbers trying to find trends. Using tools to help us with these day to day tasks not only makes certain aspects of our job easier, but can also make us more productive and offer insight into how we're doing.

Because we like to help fellow digital marketers out, here's 10 free tools every digital marketer should use! Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @inbounderly.

Social Media 

1. Buffer

Probably the most useful social media tool you'll find available for free, Buffer lets you schedule
social media posts across multiple social channels, and offers analytics so you can see which posts performed better. This tool is ideal for managing your social media presence and ensuring you post consistent messages across platforms.

2. Canva

This tool is an absolute dream. It allows you to easily create images to a professional standard without the need for being a designer. Perfect for social media, it provides templates that are made to work seamlessly with the social media platform of your choice.  

3. Social Mention

Social Mention is a tool which offers real time search of social media channels and blogs. It's a really useful tool for seeing what other blogs are blogging about and what the internet is talking about.

4. IFTTT

"If This Then That" is the perfect automation tool to make your social media platforms work together. IFTTT lets you create 'recipes' which trigger an action between two apps, for example, "If I post an Instagram, then post that picture to my Twitter." For more inspiration, click here to read 100 IFTTT recipes.

5. Nuzzel

Nuzzel still remains relatively unknown, but we're not sure why. Nuzzel is a really clever tool which connects to your Twitter account to show you what stories and posts your followers are sharing most.

Content Creation

6. Hubspot Blog Title Generator

The name is pretty self explanatory here. This tool from inbound marketing gurus Hubspot will generate your next blog title if you're stuck for ideas!

7.  Portent's Content Creation Tool

Portent's content creation tool is very similar to the above tool from Hubspot, however perhaps offers more personality in its suggestions. As it is a random generator, some titles will come out not making much sense, but if you're looking for a way to add something fun to your content, using this tool will help!

8. Buzzsumo

What content do people care about? Enter a topic and Buzzsumo will tell you. It'll also tell you who the key influencers are around that topic. This is the best tool around for finding out what content works in your industry.

Other

9. SEOsitecheckup

Their slogan is "search engine optimisation made easy" and that really sums this tool up! Enter a URL and this will tell you where you're going wrong and what you're doing well in terms of SEO. Its handy scoring out of 100 system is great for tracking SEO improvement.

10. Pexels

An example of the quality of photos on Pexels!

When we're creating content, writing web pages and posting on social media, we need to use images. Images are massively important in all of these areas, with Twitter claiming that posts with photos receive around 313% more engagement. What Pexels offer is a searchable archive of stock photos that aren't awful! This collection of gorgeous photography can be used without attribution, even for commercial use. In fact, all the photos used in this post are from Pexels.



If you found this article useful please share using the buttons below, or let us know @inbounderly if we missed any great tools from this list!


Tweet

Instagram Announces New Algorithmic Timeline

With over 400 million active users monthly and 3.5 billion likes a day, Instagram is one of the biggest photo sharing platforms in the world. These impressive stats clearly show that Instagram have done something right – having started just 4 years ago Instagram has propelled itself to the top as one of the most popular apps in the World. And they’ve just announced a huge change of their platform.

Announcing the shake up in a blog post published earlier this week, Instagram have decided to introduce an algorithmic timeline. Coming just a few weeks after Twitter implemented the exact same thing, an algorithmic timeline will display posts that the logged in user is likely to care about first, rather than showing the latest post first.  

With Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr having all introduced very similar updates in the recent months, it seems that all social platforms are moving away from the traditional way of displaying a timeline chronologically. But why are so many platforms doing this? Well, Instagram claimed this is because “most users miss on average 70% of their timeline” and that introducing the algorithm will ensure every user is only seeing the content they really care about.

Being able to view only the content you care about seems like a good idea, but aren’t we already achieving that by following only the accounts we want to rather than every account on the platform?! It seems concern over this algorithmic update is shared by many across the globe:

No no noooo #ripinstagram I HATE algorithms that show me 'what I want'. I follow people to see ALL their content!! https://t.co/nRJ9LbqYCN

— S Parker (@SParky_1989) March 17, 2016

Why do all social networks assume that we want to have our feeds "optimised"? Just show me things in the order posted 😣😣 #RIPInstagram

— Kate Livingston (@K8Livingston) March 16, 2016

What you guys thinking about the proposed Instagram algorithm feed changes? One of the reasons I don't use Facebook anymore 😟 #RIPInstagram

— Stylonylon (@juliarebaudo) March 16, 2016

Why does every social media platform suddenly want to destroy itself?

Bye bye, #RIPInstagram https://t.co/Fl38LP3mWz

— .avi ren (@avi_ren) March 16, 2016

I follow people because I want their updates, in chronological order. I don't want you to choose who I see first, @instagram. #RIPInstagram

— Sarah Dolislager (@sarahdolislager) March 16, 2016

It is actually quite hard to find much support for the update online, with the hashtag #RIPInstagram currently growing in momentum on Twitter. What do you think about Instagram's announcement? Let us know on Twitter @inbounderly.

Share this post with your friends to let them know what's coming!


Tweet

What Is Inbound Marketing?

As the effectiveness of traditional and intrusive marketing techniques continues to dwindle, inbound marketing is on the rise. It's a huge buzzword in the marketing industry right now and - while buzzwords are often thrown around for a while before fading into nothing - inbound is definitely here to stay. Here at inbounderly, we love inbound. And we're on a mission to make the rest of the world love it just like we do.

What is inbound?

Put simply, inbound marketing is the process of attracting potential customers IN to your business through targeted content.

By creating content that your ideal customers actually want to see, you are drawing your customers in and guiding them through their buyer's journey. This is becoming increasingly more effective than traditional marketing techniques such as cold calls and advertising, which can be intrusive and turn your potential customers away.

What is the buyer's journey?

The buyer's journey is the journey a potential customer goes through leading up to a sale. The journey is made of the awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage.

How do I do inbound?

There are a number of different ways you can do inbound, including blog posts, social media, case studies, ebooks and videos. Through using these techniques, your ideal customers will find you. That's much better than you targeting people who don't want to hear from you, right?

What are your opinions on inbound? Do you think it's the way forward? Tweet us @inbounderly!

Please share this post and leave a comment below with your favourite inbound marketing method!


Tweet