As Instagram stands with 400 million monthly users, and over 40 billion photos shared. As much fun as Instagram is for sharing photos, you can also drive traffic with Instagram. 

Here are 15 reasons why we think Instagram rocks our world...

Videos on Instagram

When video was first launched on Instagram, we thought 'oh, that'll be annoying', but it's not, it's brilliant.

It’s All About Photos

Why write a long-winded post when you can post a picture? Rather than respond to the question “what are you doing?”, why not post a picture of exactly what you’re doing? Isn’t that so much easier and more informative? Pictures convey so much more to the audience. They convey emotions, ideas, sentiments, thoughts, and reality. These are things that you lose through text. Photos bring your audience into your world so intimately that they actually start to believe they are a part of it.You can also think about photos purely from an interaction standpoint. Think about your Facebook feed. Which posts do you tend to stop and look at more closely? Those with text or those with photos? I know I am all about the photos. Most of the time, I skim text but I stop and look at photos. So if your entire feed is photos, you are capitalizing on this phenomenon of photo domination.

Instagram for Business

Instagram is a critically important social network. The photo-sharing app is not only important for retailers, restaurants, or travel companies; as one of the most effective brand-building tools available today, Instagram is increasingly important for every kind of business. Use Instagram to establish your brand or as if grow. Start off by doing some research. Use Instagram yourself, before you use it for your brand.

Breaking News

Whether it's Kim Kardashian breaking the internet with her derriere or cute celebrity baby announcements, Instagram is THE place to find new exciting news. Remember when Taylor confirmed her relationship with Calvin? Yep - on Instagram.

Show Your Personality

People love to connect with people. Photos are such a great way to portray who you are as a person, or who the people are behind your brand. Spontaneous photos of your employees or personal photos or your life are a strong way to connect with your audience. Is your brand young and funky? Or is it more refined and sophisticated? Either way, your photos can portray this personality quicker and more effectively than any text post ever could.

It’s  Marketer Friendly

I don’t think the heads behind Instagram planned to make their services and features cater towards marketers. But they did. It’s almost the opposite of Facebook when you think about how easy it is to get in front of your audience. First of all, there’s no Edgerank. Yes, you actually see every photo of every person you follow (assuming you scroll down far enough or check often enough). So, as a brand, there is no need to worry about which posts will get the most views. They all show up 100% in your audience’s feeds.The launch of the new video functions is also extremely marketer friendly because now, not only can you connect with photos, but you can actually talk to your audience! Or you can show actual footage of your operations. And the best part about it is that the videos play automatically in the feed! Your audience will instantly see your video. 

Market for female

Its a place widely used by females. I guess just after pinterest Instagram stand out. If you have product for female or need to influence female customers you should use instagram. this will help you grow fast.

Stalking (in a harmless way)

Whether it's a celebrity or your ex's new girlfriend, there's always someone you get a little obsessed with on Instagram. Just don't like a picture by accident when you're looking at a picture that was uploaded two years ago. Awks.

Ads Are On the Horizon

While Instagram is still free and more or less user focused, this will inevitably change in the near future. There is plenty of talk within the social media world about Instagram offering ads. I’m assuming this feature will work much like Facebook’s or Twitter’s promoted posts. Whether the post would appear at the top of the feed or within the feed I’m sure is up for discussion. But this option will be available in the future. And I can guarantee you that tons of businesses will be jumping on the Instagram bandwagon when this happens. However, if you are already active on the site and have a strong community of followers, you won’t need to worry about the ads nearly as much. You’ll already have the market share of your audience’s attention.

Track Your Analytics

One of the reasons many people shy away from Instagram for business is that they feel they can’t track their activity. While there is no feature within Instagram to do this, there is a site that will do it for you. I am seriously in love with this site and the information it provides. Do a search for Statigram and you’ll find the site that does everything for you! I’m not going to go into much detail here as I will have a future post breaking down the features of this site. But trust me, if you use Instagram for business, bookmark this site to track your data.

Drive Traffic to Your Site

A photo posted by Fahim Ahsan (@fahimssky) on Feb 25, 2016 at 9:41am PST

Yes, believe it or not, you can actually drive traffic to your site from Instagram. It may not be as easy as Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn or Google+, or even Facebook for that matter, but it can be done. The advantage those other sites have is that you can post links to your site right in your comments. On Instagram, you can post a link to your site in the comments but it doesn’t post as a hyperlink. Unfortunately, this does make it more difficult – and I hope Instagram changes this in the future.However, you can post your website link in your bio. I recommend you choose this link carefully since it’s the only one you can advertise. Choose the page you most commonly want to direct people to. Then, what I recommend is advertising in your post comments that people visit your website (for more information, to view a blog post, to see more photos, to learn more about a product, etc.) and let them know that the link to your site is in your bio. It is an extra step they have to take, but it works. I know because I have seen results of driving traffic to my blog from Instagram.

It’s For All Types of Businesses

Many people often assume that photos work best for product based businesses. But this isn’t necessarily true. Even if your business is B2B, there are still plenty of opportunities to share photos. And your photos don’t just have to be about “work”. Include photos of your team working, photos of travel destinations when meeting with clients, photos of your office, photos of projects you’re working on, photos of the flowers outside your office. The options really are limitless on Instagram. Have fun with it and make your photos a reflection of that!

Work at Instagram

Instagram Inspire Creativity. Really inspire creativity around the world by helping over 400 million people capture and share beautiful photos and videos. you can Join with them officially for your career. If you are interested to do jobs on Instagram please head over to this link.

It’s Just Plain Fun!

So, even if none of the above reasons were enough to justify joining Instagram, I would recommend it just because it’s fun. It’s honestly one of most fun sites I use. It’s not necessarily the most educational (I turn to Google+, Twitter, or LinkedIn for great content), but sometimes you just want to have fun on social media. For me, this is that site. 

If you love Photography then this is the social media you must have. You can't compare this site with no any other social media, just because it has some exclusive features.

Small startup investing most dollars in digital marketing tools and strategies is the epitome of how vital it is to spread this digital panorama further to ultimately compete with top business insiders in present time. The new businesses can only gain recognition if they turn up successfully to user's laptop screens and smartphones.


Honestly, e-commerce has made marketing a lot more fun for business groups, sales and marketing teams at various organizations. What can be more amazing than knowing who is interested in your business and who visited your website how many times and stayed for how long? The statistics are crystal clear, which let marketers proceed in the right direction and invest in result-oriented resources and services, generating better ROI.

However, this digital business has led to rigorous action among all kinds of and categories of enterprises. Everyone is adopting the latest tools released in the market and investing immeasurably in upgrading their skills and strategies. Then how do you stand out from the rest?

This is the biggest question we need to speculate, research and find at least one such natural approach that can be implemented quickly. In this article, we have tried compiling some innovative tactics, digital marketers can use to shift from their cliché traditions and change the rules of digital marketing. It's time to commence Digital Marketing Training, including SEO to Social Media to Content Marketing.

Promote your business through Podcasts

If you are not listening to podcasts, do not undervalue them as the data reveals that around 46 Million of Americans listens to Podcasts every month, as stated by Edison. The average user listens to six podcasts per week. You can initiate your podcast series on the most in-demand and best-in-class products and services you offer, brainstorming with some relevant facts and information and defining various use cases. Release them on YouTube or any powerful TV channel to capture larger audiences and gain consumers.

Native Advertising is Difficult to Recognize

Make use of the fact that more than 50% of the audience are barely aware of native advertising. Many of you may also not be knowing what the terms means and how is it implemented. These ads look like they belong to the editorial and look and read like non-promotional content. It is even hard to recognize by ad blockers and thus, you can publicize your products without worrying about the advertisement blocking nightmare.
You could seriously pull more traffic by distributing your content through choice-based advertising on various famous blogging websites, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, mailers, Forum discussions, Quora QAs. Click through rates often see a high jump with professional native advertising.

From Mobile to Wearables

M-commerce is already a buzzword as shopping and gaming and informative apps have reached to your mobile phones. Needless to mention, our smartphone is the most trustworthy companion to entertain us on our busy professional days and hang out with us on our lone nights. While smartphone technology is evolving at a faster pace, individuals are gravitating towards smartwatches and tech-savvy wearables. Now you can control your cell phone operations using your smartwatch and thus, marketers must not waste a minute to move their applications to people's wrists. Involve your enterprise and the sale steam more into the Internet of Things (IoT), connecting technology with sales.

Embrace Video Content

Think of our childhood days when we cherished reading and learning with colorful images and videos on the television. Words are best understood when combined with pictures, graphs and videos. Infographics, graphical reports, and content-based videos will take you ahead in the race. All these verticals link your business to digital media and give you more audiences, long-lived consumers and higher conversions. 

Integrate traditional advertising with Social Media

An established truth is- Laptop and mobiles have scaled down people's interest in Television. However, the commercials have been an intriguing means to generate awareness among large audiences and influence them so much so that they can relate it to their real life. 


Traditional advertising can be ingeniously integrated with modern social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, engaging audiences into creative advertisements of your products and services. There is a good scope to incorporate tactical social media elements like hashtags, contests, campaigns, 'vote to select a winner' and many others give you strategic and persuasive ways to increase the number of likes, comments and shares on your advertisement posts. 

I had never heard the word ‘bitcoin’ until just last month, when I read a story about a poor guy who threw out his computer hard drive that housed a virtual wallet filled with $9 million worth of bitcoin (According to Forbes). Unfortunately, the hard drive is nearly impossible to find in the landfill…quite the hard lesson to learn.

How does a computer hard drive become worth $9 million? Let’s take a look at the term bitcoin and what it means.

An Introduction to Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a new form of currency. They are digital coins which are transferred from person to person without the need of a bank or any other centralized service. You can send or receive any amount of payment from anywhere in the world with very minimal fees.

These digital coins are stored in a digital wallet where you can also track all your transactions. This wallet is also where all your transactions originate. Wallets are available as an online service or as a download program you install on your computer (I’m thinking this is the form used by the fellow who tossed his hard drive).

Getting Started

If you’d like to start collecting bitcoins, then your first step is to set up your digital wallet.
Next, you need to look for a currency exchange to purchase your bitcoin. A local currency exchange is necessary if you want to use physical currency to trade for bitcoin. An online currency exchange is an electronic form of payment.

There are a few different companies selling bitcoin so you’ll notice they are called by different names but the concept is the same. These coins are loaded to your digital wallet and ready for you to spend, regardless of the particular name or exchange you use.

Where Can You Spend Your Bitcoin?

You can use bitcoin to purchase gift cards to major retailers through Gyft.com. Gyft is an app that downloads to your smartphone and you upload all your gift cards to your phone. No more losing your plastic gift cards…it’s as simple as buying, uploading and redeeming all from your phone.

A Subway sandwich shop in Allentown, PA accepts bitcoin as payment and they have seen a wide array of travelers to their store, just for the fun of testing out the bitcoin process.

There’s also the world’s first bitcoin ATM machine at Waves Coffee House in Vancouver, British Columbia.
And WordPress.com accepts Bitcoin as payment now!
If you do some more research on accepting bitcoin as payment, this could be a very unique marketing tactic to use for your own business. 

Of course, some people fear this unregulated form of currency could be used for illegal purchases but speculators see a rise in the bitcoin value recently and have confidence that the value will continue to rise.

Top Coins and Top Currency Exchanges Today

As always, do your due diligence and research the Bitcoin trend on your own before investing any money. If you think this is something you want to try, the top coins available for purchase today are:

1. Bitcoin
2. Litecoin
3. Peercoin
4. Namecoin
5. Quarkcoin

And the top currency exchanges are:

1. Coinbase (California)
2. MtGox (Japan)
3. Cryptsy (Florida)
4. Coinsetter (NYC)

If you have any personal experience with Bitcoin, we’d love to hear about it so leave a comment and tell us your thoughts on this new currency.

Today’s Lessons & Action Steps

• ALWAYS do thorough research before investing any of your hard earned money. This avenue is new and just because it’s popular today doesn’t mean that trend will continue.
• Consider accepting bitcoin as payments and add that fact to your marketing materials. You most likely will have to educate your market about it but that paints you as the expert in your field and builds your credibility and expertise.
• Start small. There’s nothing saying you have to jump in and spend thousands of dollars on bitcoin all at once. Give it a try (after doing your research) and judge for yourself if it’s worth it.
• Research how to avoid being in a situation like the guy who lost his $9 million! What happens to your bitcoin if your hard drive crashes or you forget it’s on your hard drive and throw it out? Is there a way to backup your digital wallet or to access it from another computer?

Personal Bitcoin Story

In December 2013 Don Campbell shared his bitcoin experience with our Expert Members group. He purchased .1 bitcoin (notice that’s a decimal point…at the time of this happens, whole bitcoins sell in the $600 range). Don’s initial investment was $87. However, it took a week for the transaction to clear, at which point the .1 bitcoin was worth $67, or 23% LESS than his initial investment.

Of course, as with any type of financial investment, there’s always the potential for the value of the bitcoin to rise again but do be careful before investing.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the targeted, measurable, and interactive marketing of products or services using digital technologies to reach and convert leads into customers and retain them.The key objective is to promote brands, build preference and increase sales through various digital marketing techniques. It is embodied by an extensive selection of service, product and brand marketing tactics, which mainly use the Internet as a core promotional medium, in addition to mobile and traditional TV and radio.

 A Must Read: 18 Top Tips For Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing activities are search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, and e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, optical disks and games, and any other form of digital media. It also extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback and on-hold mobile ring tones^. The fundamental concept in digital marketing is based on the inbound marketing approach or generally it's called customer centric approach.

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, Digital Marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers and businesses.

In simplistic terms, digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. Digital marketing differs from traditional marketing in that it involves the use of channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time.

A Must Read: How to Plan Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketers monitor things like what is being viewed, how often and for how long, sales conversions, what content works and doesn’t work, etc. While the Internet is, perhaps, the channel most closely associated with digital marketing, others include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.

Why Digital Marketing Is Important

Digital media is so pervasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it. Gone are the days when the messages people got about your products or services came from you and consisted of only what you wanted them to know. Digital media is an ever-growing source of entertainment, news, shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now exposed not just to what your company says about your brand, but what the media, friends, relatives, peers, etc., are saying as well. And they are more likely to believe them than you. People want brands they can trust, companies that know them, communications that are personalized and relevant, and offers tailored to their needs and preferences.

Challenges Facing Digital Marketers

• Proliferation of digital channels. Consumers use multiple digital channels and a variety of devices that use different protocols, specifications and interfaces – and they interact with those devices in different ways and for different purposes.
• Intensifying competition. Digital channels are relatively cheap, compared with traditional media, making them within reach of practically every business of every size. As a result, it’s becoming a lot harder to capture consumers’ attention.
• Exploding data volumes. Consumers leave behind a huge trail of data in digital channels. It’s extremely difficult to get a handle on all that data, as well as find the right data within exploding data volumes that can help you make the right decisions.

7 Secrets to Engaging With Your Online Customers

Three Keys to Digital Marketing Success

So, what does it take to do digital marketing right? Here are three keys to digital marketing success:

1. Manage complex customer relationships across a variety of channels – both digital and traditional.
2. Respond to and initiate dynamic customer interactions.
3. Extract value from big data to make better decisions faster.

Content Marketing & Social Media remain the king and queen of digital marketing strategy. It should come as no surprise that start-ups should focus their resources on developing custom and relevant content if they want to succeed online. However if Content is king, then Social Media is definitely queen. In fact, Social is one of the most cost effective ways start-ups can build their brands voice and start engaging with their target audience. So it's a great place to start. But a few tips for newbies to remember For their Digital Marketing Strategy:

The 3 main questions consumers ask when looking at a website

content marketing is a part of Digital Marketing Strategy

When a consumer first appears on your website, whether they know it or not, they will ask themselves three questions:
Where am I?
What should I do?
How should I do it?
If the website fails to answer these 3 questions then the user is more likely to bounce from the site. Google’s new algorithm will view this as proof of a site’s unsuitability and drop it down the Google rankings.

How long it takes to engage a website user

When a user first appears on your website it takes them all of 3.8 seconds to be engaged. If they are not satisfied by your site they will leave and search for a more interesting and valuable website. One of the key features a website has to portray is trust, if people don’t trust you they won’t use your site.

Not all Social Media Are Created Equal

Identify the social media platform most frequented by your target audience. There's no point focusing your efforts on Facebook if your target market is on Twitter. Do your research. Identify leaders, start following and engaging with them.

Post Regularly & Be Consistent

Start to post regularly. Content should be valuable and informative. Don't spam. The tone should be consistent across all social platforms. Best practice is that you shouldn't exceed the following: Facebook 5-10 posts/week | Twitter 5 tweets/day | LinkedIn 1 post/day

Tips to build a better mobile site

In 2013 eBay received over $2 billion in mobile sales alone. Well-built mobile sites are now critical for users. Top tips include;

• Design from the user’s perspective – cut the clutter, make sure the mobile site is clean and simple.
• Target the most popular user devices – you can’t have a perfect site for all mobile devices so make sure it’s optimized for the main 6 (Apple, Android etc.).
• Enhance user experience with mobile specific HTML – make sure it’s easy to use and that there’s a link to your desktop site in order to provide further information.
• Put usability first – design the perfect mobile site then look at the technological solutions to bring it to life.
• Think like a consumer – make sure you understand every piece of information about your customer, how they use your mobile site and in what context.

Fake fans

Santiago Swallow, or Kevin as he was known in the real world, set up a fake account and filled it with bogus claims about himself. This was an experiment to prove how easily you can be hoodwinked on social media.
If accounts suddenly appear overnight you should be wary, the influence measurement website Kred can identify if Twitter Profiles are legitimate. If you follow one of these fake profiles, it may lead to your details being sold on to a third party.

How to market your mobile presence to Digital Marketing Strategy

Make sure you know who your customers are inside and out, once you know this you can build a mobile site that fits their demographic perfectly. It’s important to get ahead of the game before your competitors do.

2015’s content marketing insight

Whilst 2014 was the year of personalisation, 2015 is predicted to be the year when content marketing grows up. If you can’t sum up your content within a tweet then you’re going to struggle. We don’t digest information like we used to and imagery is becoming more important to convey content. Make sure that content is viewable, shareable, actionable, memorable and mobile optimized.

Social Is NOT About You–It's About Your Customer

Don't use it for promotional purposes only. Share information that your customers will find engaging and valuable. It's about opening a dialogue with people.

Engage with Your Followers

It's a great way to interact with future (& current) customers. What are they saying? Listen first. Digital Marketing Strategy should be proper planed.

Don't Shy Away from Social Confrontations

Use it as a way to show your, hopefully excellent, customer service skills.

Don't Be Afraid to Mess Up

Your customer wants to know there's a human behind the brand. Be honest and open if you mess up. Simply consider it an opportunity to improve.

Identify what your USP is

Research and formulate one before you start embarking on content creation. Remember to avoid focusing on your features only -- you MUST SELL THE BENEFITS. This is the first mistake most start-ups make. Remember your customers want to know how your product/service will benefit them, not just a list of the feature-set!

Focus on SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should also be one of your top priorities to Digital Marketing Strategy as it's the most time consuming and can have a huge impact on the volume of organic traffic your website will receive. Make sure your website designer knows the SEO basics so there are no hurdles to the search engine crawlers accessing your content. This is critical for all new websites.

Optimize your internal Pages

content marketing

Leverage your Google Analytics data to determine the type of content your audience is most interested in, to ensure you create a more user-friendly experience. Continually add more content that's of most interest to your target market.

Share your content

Another Digital Marketing Strategy is Sharing your content to social media. Promote it on your social media profiles, email industry experts, post to LinkedIn groups and industry forums. The goal is to become a thought leader in your sector.

Tips to increase your email marketing

Many companies miss out on integrating social media and email marketing to generate new leads. After an eshot campaign make sure that you follow and tweet anyone who opened your emails, then give each of them an incentive to stay in touch with you. Connecting your eshots to Facebook also means that anyone who received it will have your advert added to their personalized ads.

Building the ultimate website

If you want to build the ultimate website you need to optimize your most used pages, so find out where visitors are landing and exiting. Create a Digital Marketing Strategy and priorities your action points, know your visitors and build a journey for them that’s easy to follow. Identify which pages are used most and build on that success. Start small, get the little things right and expand upon them when you’re ready. Finally, analyze through AB testing and compare your site with your competitors, as well as sites from different sectors.

After starting my online journey 3 years ago, if I knew then what I know now, I would probably be 10 times richer and 10 times more successful.
I’m not upset or angry though, the mistakes I’ve made have lead to me to where I am today. Running a number of successful websites, authoring eBooks and doing what I enjoy most, writing about Internet marketing.
In this article, I am going to reveal the biggest mistakes I made when starting my online journey and hopefully stop you from making the same mistakes.

1. Not willing to spend money

The biggest hindrance in the beginning was my fear of spending money.
My first lead generation campaign was to direct people to a landing page where they would opt-in to my Top 5 Foods To Gain Must Fast eBook. I was reluctant to spend any money at the time because I hadn’t made any. I wanted to invest as little as possible while making as much as possible, great plan, right?
I created the landing page myself using a basic WordPress theme and even wrote the lead magnet, all two pages of it. Someone how I managed to get quite a few opt-ins after spamming my URL on a number of forums and thought to myself:

“Wow this online marketing is really easy.”

Then I sent my first email campaign and it all went downhill. I received an extremely high amount of unsubscribes (over 70%), and in the end my Mailchimp account got banned for violating their spamming polices.
At the time I didn’t understand why, but now I realize it was because my eBook was incredibly poor value, my first email was a sales pitch which annoyed my leads and my traffic methods were of low quality.
I decided to do it all on the cheap and it backfired. If I cannot invest in myself, how can I expect others to trust and buy from me? I used to regard spending money as a cost rather than an investment back then.

2. Being scared of taking action

I truly believe the number one reason why many people fail to make money online is due to the inability to take action. We all know that person (or maybe you’re guilty of it yourself) who says they will start working on their project when they have more money, when they can find free time or next year when they finally ‘quit their job’.
There are two types of people:

1. Those that do
2. Those that say they will do

I’m not a lifestyle marketer, but I often post pictures on Facebook showing friends back home of my current lifestyle. They often private message me asking how they can do the same, but after I provide them with all the information, they make an excuse for never taking action.

I knew nothing when I started 3 years ago, I could barely write or use WordPress. Now I earn more money doing less work than in my last full-time job.
I wonder how much potential is lost every day by people reading Internet marketing content but never taking action?

3. Be around like minded people (join a mastermind group)

There’s been big increase in co-working spaces in Asia (I live in Thailand), and the idea of visiting a place to network with hippy online marketers is my idea of hell on earth. But I’m a short-sighted and miserable person who spends most of the day working in my room barely seeing daylight.
But a few months ago, I joined a Skype group with several other Internet marketers who were doing similar things as I was. If I be honest with myself, I’ve been pretty stagnant when I work alone and my motivation is close to zero.
I found that being around like minded people dramatically increased my motivation levels and work flow. Within 3 weeks of being part of that group, I launched two new websites and wrote an eBook.
If you’re someone who lacks motivation or drive, you should seriously consider joining a mastermind group, there are hundreds out there if you look for them. The money invested will almost certainly yield a positive ROI and push you in the right direction assuming you find a good group.
Summary
I’ve learned a lot of things during my journey through online marketing, things which I’ve only learned because I decided to take action. The vast majority of people are stuck in neutral and can’t seem to find the missing piece of the jigsaw to make their first $1, $100 or $1,000 online.
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned through your online journey? Leave a comment below.