Instagram Marketing Gains Powerful Advertising Platform

Everyone’s watching Instagram.

From Instagram marketing buffs to naysayers, the digital community has been closely following the photo and video sharing site’s success in the past few months, commenting on its recent rapid growth as well as the announcement that the platform had surpassed Twitter with 300 million monthly users. With a simple interface and entirely visual style, Instagram continues to gain a foothold in the social media market, rolling out new features with surprising frequency to keep the competition on its toes.

Amid a series of changes to improve user experience, Instagram has quietly rolled out its new advertising API, giving social media marketers the opportunity to promote their brands and content on the platform in new ways. While the service has launched with comparatively fewer built-in tools than Facebook’s suite, Instagram’s service is already being supported by a number of popular CRM software, including Salesforce.

Between the company’s continually growing popularity and constantly updating functionality, it’s time marketers start considering a place for Instagram marketing in their strategies—but what exactly does this entail?

What Integration Can Do for You

New promotion platforms—particularly for social media—often come as a bittersweet opportunity for marketers. Along with the allure of new channels, audience, and growth, comes the reality of new testing, new demands for content, and community management. For small brands, this can pile up to an insurmountable strain on budget and manpower, while for larger companies there’s always the risk that a slight oversight might result in public embarrassment that can harm your brand.

However, these considerations can be greatly mitigated with Instagram’s CRM integrations. By bringing your Instagram campaigns immediately into comparison with your other efforts, testing and management can be streamlined, allowing marketers to more simply apply principles from their other efforts to their new Instagram marketing campaigns.

The most popular software currently supported is Salesforce, boasting a range of analytics tools and management options. Considering Salesforce integrates with many other marketing services, it will offer marketers the widest range of comparisons for testing and learning.

Along with Salesforce, marketers that use Brand Networks, SocialCode, Nanigans, Unified, Kenshoo, and Ampush will also be able to incorporate their CRM or automation with Instagram. Integration can help reduce micromanagement while also providing quick insights into both successful and problematic content.

For those who haven’t jumped on automation yet, choosing the software that is best for you may not necessarily be a question of popularity, but rather a question of specialization—different types of automation can take over different elements of community management based on your needs, allowing one or two marketers to operate as if they had the skills of a full team. If you’re already working with software that Instagram doesn’t yet support, consider reaching out to either Instagram or the software’s developer—you may be closer to integration than you think!

Instagram is continuing to grow and adapt at a rapid rate. While it may never unseat Facebook, it has already made a strong bid for second place in social media relevance. If the platform previously felt inaccessible to your brand, their new advertising API might be the perfect mix of power and functionality to make the platform viable for your company.

Having trouble generating the right content for your audience? Check out Skyword’s free eBook, 6 Critical Challenges That Sabotage Quality Digital Content Production.

Instagram Marketing Gains Powerful Advertising Platform

Instagram Marketing Gains Powerful Advertising Platform

Everyone’s watching Instagram.

From Instagram marketing buffs to naysayers, the digital community has been closely following the photo and video sharing site’s success in the past few months, commenting on its recent rapid growth as well as the announcement that the platform had surpassed Twitter with 300 million monthly users. With a simple interface and entirely visual style, Instagram continues to gain a foothold in the social media market, rolling out new features with surprising frequency to keep the competition on its toes.

Amid a series of changes to improve user experience, Instagram has quietly rolled out its new advertising API, giving social media marketers the opportunity to promote their brands and content on the platform in new ways. While the service has launched with comparatively fewer built-in tools than Facebook’s suite, Instagram’s service is already being supported by a number of popular CRM software, including Salesforce.

Between the company’s continually growing popularity and constantly updating functionality, it’s time marketers start considering a place for Instagram marketing in their strategies—but what exactly does this entail?

What Integration Can Do for You

New promotion platforms—particularly for social media—often come as a bittersweet opportunity for marketers. Along with the allure of new channels, audience, and growth, comes the reality of new testing, new demands for content, and community management. For small brands, this can pile up to an insurmountable strain on budget and manpower, while for larger companies there’s always the risk that a slight oversight might result in public embarrassment that can harm your brand.

However, these considerations can be greatly mitigated with Instagram’s CRM integrations. By bringing your Instagram campaigns immediately into comparison with your other efforts, testing and management can be streamlined, allowing marketers to more simply apply principles from their other efforts to their new Instagram marketing campaigns.

The most popular software currently supported is Salesforce, boasting a range of analytics tools and management options. Considering Salesforce integrates with many other marketing services, it will offer marketers the widest range of comparisons for testing and learning.

Along with Salesforce, marketers that use Brand Networks, SocialCode, Nanigans, Unified, Kenshoo, and Ampush will also be able to incorporate their CRM or automation with Instagram. Integration can help reduce micromanagement while also providing quick insights into both successful and problematic content.

For those who haven’t jumped on automation yet, choosing the software that is best for you may not necessarily be a question of popularity, but rather a question of specialization—different types of automation can take over different elements of community management based on your needs, allowing one or two marketers to operate as if they had the skills of a full team. If you’re already working with software that Instagram doesn’t yet support, consider reaching out to either Instagram or the software’s developer—you may be closer to integration than you think!

Instagram is continuing to grow and adapt at a rapid rate. While it may never unseat Facebook, it has already made a strong bid for second place in social media relevance. If the platform previously felt inaccessible to your brand, their new advertising API might be the perfect mix of power and functionality to make the platform viable for your company.

Having trouble generating the right content for your audience? Check out Skyword’s free eBook, 6 Critical Challenges That Sabotage Quality Digital Content Production.

Instagram Marketing Gains Powerful Advertising Platform

Now With 2 Million Advertisers, Facebook Gains a Foothold With Small Businesses

Facebook now has 2 million advertisers, a milestone CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today in a video post on the social network. Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg thanked small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs for jumping on board with the platform, helping it attract 500,000 new advertisers in the last year.

“Millions of businesses like yours are using Facebook to connect with their customers and reach the world,” Sandberg remarked in the clip.

Just a few years ago, Facebook was an unknown quantity when it came to local advertising for SMBs—the platform was perceived to be more for direct e-commerce players and big brands. That small-business challenge appears to have been met.

“What does stand out here is that Facebook is making it easier to advertise, particularly for small- and medium-sized businesses,” said Rebecca Lieb, a Facebook analyst. “Much like search engines developed tools 10 years ago to serve targeted ads, Facebook is doing the same and removing a lot of friction for these businesses.”

Reaching 2 million advertisers is yet another indication of Facebook’s growing dominance in digital, getting more businesses to market to its 1.4 billion users. The social network is changing the face of digital advertising much the way search redefined the marketplace more than 10 years ago, according to Lieb and other industry watchers.

Today, Facebook also launched a mobile app to help businesses manage marketing campaigns. And it’s these types of “turn-key” products for small businesses, which are often less socially savvy, that are making it possible to advertise on Facebook, Lieb said.

“Targeting, segmenting, day-parting—this is not their core competency,” she said, referring to the thousands of small businesses that have to learn a whole new marketing language for the social network. “Facebook has to go into local markets and show them this is how you as local advertisers leverage the platform.”

The fact is that to reach fans on Facebook, big brands and small businesses have to pay for promoted posts. There is no such thing as free reach, according to Jordan Kretchmer, CEO of social marketing software firm Livefyre.

“Facebook has become one of the best paid media channels out there,” Kretchmer said. The social network is developing the ads, the networks, the tools and data collection capabilities that hold promise for marketers to reach consumers in the most targeted way possible, online and via mobile devices.

However, its total control also creates the risk that businesses will become overly reliant on Facebook to reach audiences.

Big brands have already reacted to Facebook’s dominance by investing in their own data and audiences, like Taco Bell building an app last year to own access to its user base, Kretchmer said. “If Facebook changes something tomorrow, these brands can jump away from it and not miss a beat,” he said. “Small businesses are at a disadvantage. They are beholden to pay Facebook to drive traffic.”

Last quarter, Facebook ad revenue was $3.6 billion, an increase of almost 60 percent year over year. It is the No. 2 digital ad business, still far behind Google, but comfortably ahead of companies like Twitter and Yahoo.

Of course, it also has rivals like Snapchat, coming up today much like Facebook was 10 years ago. That’s why Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp, which have more than a billion users combined.

“Marketers flock to media that collects the most users, that’s just how it is,” said Nate Elliott, a Forrester researcher. So Facebook’s size is drawing the biggest brands, which are having the most success at the moment marketing there, he said.

The large companies have the advantage because they have their own data, and Facebook can be stingy when it comes to sharing its data.

“It’s perverse. Facebook knows more about customers than anyone ever, yet marketers are forced to bring their own data to the party,” Elliott said.

Marketing experts said the data question is the next one Facebook has to address with small businesses. Kretchmer said companies like his Livefyre are developing ad-targeting and data tools that have only been accessible to large brands so far.

“Getting to relevancy is more difficult for smaller businesses than larger ones,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer’s principal analyst. “For one thing, they don’t tend to come into Facebook with their own large data sets, as do many of the larger companies that advertise on Facebook. This presents an opportunity for Facebook to educate small businesses about the best way to create and target ads to achieve relevancy.”

Now With 2 Million Advertisers, Facebook Gains a Foothold With Small Businesses

ChinaNet Online Holdings (CNET) Stock Gains Today on New Partnership

By Shawn Ingram

| 12/22/14 – 11:15 AM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Shares of ChinaNet Online Holdings (CNET) were gaining 48.6% to $1.56 Monday after the Chinese advertising agency announced a new partnership with cloud print services company MediaFun Creative.

Under the new agreement, ChinaNet will use its experience with small and medium-sized businesses to help MediaFun expand its sales marketing to new cities through mobile and the Internet. The Taiwan-based MediaFun will share its print services in China under the agreement.

The two companies said they plan to share in profits and commissions under a joint venture agreement.

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“This cooperative agreement continues our ongoing efforts to expand our marketing and related value-added services for our clients,” ChinaNet COO George Chu said in a statement. “We in turn look forward to utilizing our deep experience in franchising and the China market to help MediaFun expand its business opportunities.”

TheStreet Ratings team rates CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS as a Sell with a ratings score of D+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

“We rate CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS (CNET) a SELL. This is driven by multiple weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover. The company’s weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its feeble growth in its earnings per share, deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins and weak operating cash flow.”

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

• CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS has experienced a steep decline in earnings per share in the most recent quarter in comparison to its performance from the same quarter a year ago. The company has reported a trend of declining earnings per share over the past two years. During the past fiscal year, CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS swung to a loss, reporting -$0.01 versus $0.13 in the prior year.


• The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed when compared to that of the S&P 500 and the Media industry. The net income has significantly decreased by 178.3% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, falling from $1.16 million to -$0.91 million.


• Return on equity has greatly decreased when compared to its ROE from the same quarter one year prior. This is a signal of major weakness within the corporation. Compared to other companies in the Media industry and the overall market, CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS’s return on equity significantly trails that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.


• The gross profit margin for CHINANET ONLINE HOLDINGS is rather low; currently it is at 17.16%. It has decreased significantly from the same period last year. Along with this, the net profit margin of -7.51% is significantly below that of the industry average.


• Net operating cash flow has significantly decreased to -$0.01 million or 100.49% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, when comparing to the industry average, the firm’s growth rate is much lower.


• You can view the full analysis from the report here: CNET Ratings Report

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ChinaNet Online Holdings (CNET) Stock Gains Today on New Partnership