Igniting Business Blog

Recently, Instagram released its shopping feature to a general audience, including users in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Spain, and more. The feature gives approved businesses the ability to tag products in a post. Users can then view product details and make purchases through Shopping on Instagram without ever leaving the mobile app.

LinkedIn has existed on the periphery of what most users consider social media for years, but they're making a more and more concerted effort to gain legitimacy in that stage. While it's not as all-encompassing or as interactive as Twitter or Facebook, this platform is especially popular if you’re selling or marketing business to business (B2B). You can incorporate LinkedIn marketing into your small business campaigns with an increasing degree of success using LinkedIn’s resourceful toolset. You’ll find to continue increasing engagement, LinkedIn has further developed its range of features, with one of their newest being Smart Replies.

If your small business is on social media, you're likely there to grow your customer base, audience, and following. Unfortunately, we can make very basic mistakes that will get fewer people to follow us, and may even drive away some users who had already chosen to follow you. Avoid these three practices on your social media platforms.

YouTube's global reach is far and wide, with users spending a billion hours consuming video content. Average people can gain celebrity fame and there are videos suited for everyone's needs, so this platform will surely continue growth throughout the year. Video marketing has become popular among businesses, with companies publishing on average 18 videos a month and even more video content and media reserved in their library. Now that videos are a marketing staple, like other social platforms, your small business can grow its audience by capitalizing on trends. Keep an eye on and adopt these in the rest of 2018 and onward:

Your logo is arguably the most recognizable part of your business. People know who Pepsi and McDonalds are due to their iconic logos and their tie to their brand and products. But that doesn't mean you're limited to your original logo design. Logos, just like websites, have trends that can change year-to-year. If you're feeling it's time to give your logo a facelift, here are some design trends surfacing in 2018.

Social media continues to play a major role in the way we conduct our personal and business lives. Your peers and favorite organizations use social media to promote ideas and share with the global community. Additionally, successful brands use social media to shape their business's growth and connect with their customers. Your small business should follow suit to reach users and achieve results with your social media pages.

Almost everyone has a preferred method of learning new information, even if they don't completely realize nor understand their own effective learning style. Some people are visual learners and create connections with photos, videos, and media. Others need to read and follow written text in anecdotal or guided steps to gather information. If your small business wants to reach a wider audience, then it will need to deliver valuable content in a variety of formats. Delivering content in all the ways your users prefer to learn, ultimately, means you will capture a larger audience.

When it comes to the business world, having a strong business card is the key to starting new relationships. From networking with possible clients, connecting with business professionals in your industry, contacting leads, recruiting new hires, using the right business card puts you and your business at an advantage. A specially designed business card can help promote your business uniquely, and set you apart from competitors. Here are some key reasons why having a distinguished business card is the right decision for everyone.

Getting customers is hard, but keeping customers can be harder. Sometimes all it takes is a single bad experience, an off-day with customer service, or just a product defect to make a customer take his or her business elsewhere. For small businesses who want to keep customers coming back time and time again, it's important to consider best practices to keep your customers coming back.

Facebook is changing their metrics to count viewable-only impressions of posts and ads instead of basing their impression count on when a post or ad is served. They announced the change back in 2016, but the updates to their metrics tools took longer to complete than initially estimated. Facebook should be rolling out the change over the next several months.