Igniting Business Blog

Instagram has become more than just an online platform for pretty faces, selfies, and memes. The popular image sharing social media platform now has the power to help businesses showcase their products and services to reach visually more potential customers.

Promoting your business and products on social media sites means more than posting a few blogs with links to your website—it means having a comprehensive strategy.  An effective social strategy will enable you to create a bond with prospective customers based on empathy and an understanding of the problems they face and your company's ability to solve those problems.  That strategy must encompass a wide range of content, everything from informative articles and humorous anecdotes to credible product reviews and current customer testimonials. Your efforts will work best when you think outside the box.

One way to generate more revenue in your small business is to acquire more of your best customers.  Rather than continuing broad marketing activities that are not providing quality results, analyze who your best customers and tailor your future marketing efforts accordingly. 

Online advertising is constantly transforming. It started as text-based ads with hyperlinks, then became static, clickable images. Soon it evolved to videos, recommendations from trusted content creators, and reviews. The full range of what online advertising means is growing every day, and every avenue leads to more exposure and more recognition. If you have a small business and you're wondering if the time is right to start advertising, here are three indicators you likely should invest in online advertising:

Social media sites commonly make small tweaks and adjustments to their interfaces in an attempt to find the best ways to keep users engaged and scrolling. While these changes are usually geared towards revamping the user experience, these features can also help small businesses keep their followers engaged. Here are some recent changes Facebook has made to its News Feed that small businesses can use to keep up with their audience.

Social media pages are evolving to be a continuous, scrollable presentation of content. They're designed to always offer users something new to look at, so they pull from more and more sources to fill users' homepages and timelines. While that means you have a wider audience for your content, it also means it's easier to get lost in the mix and for users to scroll past your specific post. 

You have done the research, chosen your niche and have the capital to get started. You are passionate about your work and excited to get started launching your business. For a last check, walk through these five marketing tips for small businesses to launch your business with impact to ensure that you are ready to go.

Marketing is about getting attention, but if audiences expect a banner ad or a commercial clip, they may easily ignore it if there are other things to watch. That means providing interesting content when there's little competition is a good way to advertise; an easy way to do that is with a vehicle decal.

Did you know every minute there are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube? Because of all the “clutter,” videos advertising products and services often have an uphill battle to cut through the noise.  With a few additional steps, you can match your videos to the audience you’re targeting.

Content marketing offers tremendous opportunities for getting your message in front of potential customers.  However, when done poorly or inadequately, content marketing can result in nothing more than wasted time. Here are four common mistakes that can torpedo a small business' marketing efforts.