5 Entrepreneurs Who Built Their Brands with Content Marketing

There have been significant changes in how we connect with customers within the past couple of years.

Go back a few decades and the most effective way to reach your audience was print, TV, and radio – the big three traditional marketing channels. All a brand needed to stand out back then was a massive budget, which only the larger incumbent businesses had at the time.

Today, the lead-generating power of those traditional channels is rapidly diminishing. The most cost-effective channel that offers great returns is now online content marketing.

The popularity of content marketing shows no sign of slowing down because of the sheer volume of leads this channel generates while minimizing costs. In fact, it costs up to 40% less than paid marketing and produces 3x as many leads. And unlike paid marketing channels (social, search, banners), where the ads disappear when the budget runs out, content stays online until you pull it down.

That means the return continues to grow indefinitely.

There's no shortage of major brands who are just killing it with content marketing, ranging from comprehensive written content (like Shopify's blog or HubSpot's massive marketing resource library) to emotionally impactful videos (like the Olympics promotions from Under Armour and P&G).

Content marketing isn't exclusive to major brands, either. More than 85% of B2B marketers employ content marketing as part of their strategies, and 76% of marketers plan to produce more content over the next year.

Startup founders and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking note of this low-cost, high-return method for growing their brands and executing successful launches. In this article, I'll cover five entrepreneurs who managed to build their empires primarily with content marketing.

1. Peep Laja

Peep is the founder of ConversionXL, a blog that focuses on conversion optimization and is largely considered to be one of the best resources in its market. He also recently launched the ConversionXL Institute to offer training and informational resources for those who don't have the budget or the traffic needed for traditional optimization testing.

Peep launched his blog in 2011 and had some early success with posts that went viral, including the first month when 50,000 visits rolled in. The months that followed were fairly consistent, which is a spectacular feat for a new blog.

By the end of the first year, Peep was starting to reach the 100k visitors per month mark.

Although there were already thousands of marketing blogs crowding the online space, Peep knew he could stand out if he specialized. By analyzing data and researching other blogs, he found a gap that wasn't yet fully addressed with quality content. Specifically, he created a formula to produce evidence-based, data-driven marketing advice centered around conversion optimization.

He also optimized his posts for traffic based on the types of content that racked up the most shares:

• Long posts between 1,800 and 3,000 words


• Posts with highly relevant images


• Evidence-heavy content in which every claim was backed up with data – either with examples or links to credible research

The surges of traffic came from smart promotion and distribution. At the time, there were fewer social channels available than we have today, so Peep had a consistent list he followed to promote content:

• Direct contact with companies mentioned in the content, which resulted in those companies also sharing the content on social media


• Simplified, concise emails and tweets promoting the post


• The use of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to share content


• Content submissions to Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Hacker News


• Promoting content with the help of influencers (like Tim Ferriss)


• Writing guest posts for other sites to generate referral traffic

A key part of Peep's success was not focusing on quantity of content. In his first year, he averaged just one post every five days. That figure later dwindled to two posts per month.

While the frequency was lower, the quality was nothing short of epic. It's that super high-value content that helped him climb to over 100,000 visitors per month from both onsite and offsite content marketing – and zero paid content promotion during that time.

2. Neil Patel

Neil Patel has become a master at building an audience through a wide variety of content marketing that is primarily focused on delivering high value. Over the years, Neil has launched four multi-million dollar businesses, including Quick Sprout, Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics.

Not only does Neil regularly produce content for each of those channels, but he also consistently posts on NeilPatel.com.

Each of those websites could be made into a case study that highlights the power of online content marketing and the traffic it can generate.

Above, I mentioned how Peep focuses on producing the best quality content. The downside to that approach is that it limits his ability to produce volume. In Neil's case, he wanted to produce volume without a loss in quality, so he did what any smart marketer would do…

He outsourced.

Rather than limiting himself to only what he could produce, Neil outsourced content production for KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg. By hiring multiple freelance writers that could produce quality content, Neil was able to amplify the return of content marketing.

His efforts eventually grew traffic for both sites to more than 100,000 visitors and he never wrote a single post. As of 2015, the sites were seeing more than 700,000 monthly visitors.

Today, Neil continues to blog on his own, as well as with the help of freelance writers that produce daily content. That content is then posted across several company blogs and guest sites like Inc., Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, Forbes, Search Engine Journal, and more.

3. Dan Norris

If you haven't read “Content Machine” by Dan Norris, I highly recommend it. In that book, Dan talks about the content marketing techniques he used to launch a successful business. Dan is the founder of WPCurve, a site that connects site owners to WordPress developers for access to unlimited small development jobs and fixes.

Most impressively, Dan was able to grow his business from nothing to more than $1 million AUD in just two years, and he only spent about $180 on advertising during that time. He relied almost entirely on content marketing, producing a wealth of high-value content for his target audience and ultimately bringing them together on his platform.

4. Emily Weiss

In 2010, Emily Weiss launched the beauty blog, Into the Gloss. The quality of the content she shared contributed to a rapid rise in traffic as it gained momentum and became a source of revenue generation for Emily. At that point, she shifted gears into an entrepreneur mindset. She took the team she had developed with Into the Gloss and went from content to commerce.

Emily described the content she created as the heart and soul of her brand. She often shared content beyond the blog via Instagram, and her fans later helped design the line of products she launched in 2014.

Her content marketing generated tremendous feedback, and her product line Glossier was specifically based on that feedback from her audience. For Emily, content marketing wasn't just a one-way channel for generating traffic to her site. It was a medium through which she could engage her fans and create something they really wanted.

She even took clever approaches to her content: for a solid month, Glossier never branded their Instagram and instead teased out photos before finally revealing the company launch. Her approach to content marketing grew their following to more than 15,000 on Instagram alone and helped solidify her line of cosmetics.

Today, Emily continues to rely on the blog audience, as well as their social channels to drive engagement and solicit feedback for new products to ensure that customers always get what they want.

Her achievement is proof that a highly engaged audience can drive significant success in ecommerce, even from a blog.

5. Joy Cho

In 2005, Joy Cho launched a blog to narrate her journey as a graphic designer in a new city after moving to New York. While she had no specific strategy for the content, she shared the things that she enjoyed. As the blog gained traffic, she began receiving lead requests from prospective clients.

As the stream of clients grew, Joy was able to transition from a part-time freelancer to running a full-time business. In recent years, she has transformed “Oh Joy” into a media lifestyle brand that helps organizations with their own designing and content marketing, typically from a visual perspective.

Her creative use of visual content marketing has earned her a spot as one of Pinterest's top influencers with more than 13 million followers. The growth of her brand through content has also landed her some top-tier clients.

Target contracted Joy to improve their Pinterest marketing efforts, resulting in a Pinterest board that generated more than 850k followers. She has since earned a spot in TIME Magazine's top websites in their “Design 100” issue.

How much do you rely on content marketing for outreach and promotion? Share your strategies with me in the comments below:

Guest Author: Aaron Agius is an experienced search, content and social marketer. He has worked with some of the world's largest and most recognized brands, including Salesforce, Coca-Cola, Target and others, to build their online presence. See more from Aaron at Louder Online, his blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+and LinkedIn.

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7 Awesome Hacks to Promote Your Social Media Posts

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Every day, the average social media user is inundated with a ton of posts. Most of these might be from friends and people she follows; the others are from brands vying for her attention. Considering each link posted to social media enjoys a half-life of around three hours, brands must search constantly for novel ways to promote their posts to keep them relevant for longer. (highlight to tweet)

Although social media is a great platform to tell your brand story (which is the best way to market your brand, as humans love stories and can relate strongly with them), many brands have really not figured out how. Social media still is a great native distribution channel, and if we can master its complexities, we can generate more attention for our content. We want to maximize the reach of our content through more clickthroughs, likes, and shares. This will help us gain an edge over our competitors.

Here are a few tips to keep you ahead of the social media marketing curve.

1. Using Open Graph Tags on Facebook

Google uses the schema markup to understand how web content is organized-this is how it shows results. Rich snippets of recipes, ratings, and events are examples of how Google understands the schema markup of web content and displays results accordingly.

Similarly, Facebook has its own specialized tool called Open Graph Protocol, which shows content in a highly structured way. If you can master this protocol, you can increase the engagement of your Facebook posts and also enhance the way in which they are distributed.

2. Create Different Posts for Different Channels

Every social media channel has its own unique way of presenting content and, thus, has its own loyal audience who like to consume content in that fashion. Users will appreciate that you have taken the time and effort to adapt your content according to the demands of that particular platform.

On Facebook, for example, you will be better served if you post content that is informative and entertaining-something that is instantly shareable. Create attention-grabbing headlines and content that will form an emotional connection with your audience.

LinkedIn has a professional audience. Your content should be crafted so as to add value to their professional lives.

Twitter is known for its witty, trending updates. Share content that is catchy, interesting, and curiosity-inspiring.

Instagram is a visually-led platform that thrives on stunning photos. Can you create great visuals of any part of your content? If so, do it, and post it on Instagram.

3. Add Call to Action Buttons

Create posts in such a way that your CTA button is prominently displayed, enticing readers to take action. It could be as inane as “Learn More,” taking the reader to your blog post, or a more ambitious “Subscribe Now.”

Readers are more likely to click on these buttons, and their success can be tracked through UTM parameters. If you see good traffic coming through from that post, promote it more to get more traction.

4. Ask Your Sources to Share the Posts

You have likely written a great piece of content that mentions someone or quotes someone. Once you post it, send an email to the source, telling them that you have posted this content that mentions them and asking them to share it with their audience.

A simple tweet will also do.

Does the person you mentioned in your post have a substantial following? Sharing your post with their audience is a great way to promote your work.

5. Get Your People Involved

Social media isn't necessarily the sole domain and responsibility of the marketing department. Every employee is capable of contributing to your social media accounts. Employees from different departments are experts in their field and can bring a unique perspective and depth of knowledge to your social media content. It also imparts a feeling of importance and team effort when employees are allowed to share content on the company's social media accounts.

Customers will appreciate when brands post well-researched and interesting content. It can be difficult to produce quality content consistently-involving employees with different expertise will make your job much easier. Such high-quality posts are bound to get good traction and drive user engagement.

This also makes promoting new posts easier. If employees are involved in social communication, they can be encouraged to share the posts with their own personal networks. This can get your posts substantial traction.

6. Use Industry-Specific Hashtags

One of my previous posts on this blog talks about ways you can find relevant hashtags for your business. Using hashtags that are specific for your industry in your posts is a great way to promote them.

The travel, tourism, and hospitality industry, for example, uses a host of different hashtags like #travel and location-specific hashtags, like #”country” (#spain, for instance), #”city”, #”airport”, etc. There are also popular chats hosted by different people that discuss specific topics. On certain days of the week, travelers post themed content. For example, #BeachThursday attracts beach-themed pictures and videos of beaches.

It was my quest on one such Thursday afternoon that I stumbled upon Playa del Carmen. Their hashtag-perfect post was what led me to this relatively under-the-radar beach, where I had the holiday of a lifetime snorkeling with turtles and cenotes, exploring ancient Mayan ruins, and watching the Caribbean sunset.

7. Ask Questions in Your LinkedIn Post Titles

To get traction out of a LinkedIn post, convert your post title into a question. The aim is to stimulate conversation, and what better way than to ask a question and let readers share their thoughts on it.

If you keep on participating in the conversation actively, you can keep your post at the top of your feed and keep on promoting it for as long as you want. This strategy can be used on any platform, not just LinkedIn. An intelligent question is too much to resist, and more often than not, it will induce a conversation.

Social media has overwhelmed the very fabric of our daily existence. With the average lifespan of social media posts decreasing by the day, it is imperative for brands to find novel ways to get attention for their posts. What works for one brand might not work for the other, and it is only through strategic trial and error that you find how to promote your social media posts better.

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Are You Monitoring Social Mentions? Here's How They Can Influence Your Marketing Strategy – Brittany Berger [SSM015]

In a world where customer service is becoming the new marketing – understanding how to find, monitor and respond to social mentions is a great skill for marketers to develop.

It can help to shape your marketing strategy, too!

Knowing where to listen for important conversations online will allow you to react in real-time to trends in your industry and deliver the content or answer that your audience is looking for.

We had the privilege of speaking with Mention's Head of Content and PR Brittany Berger about the specific ways brands and businesses can leverage monitoring to track social mentions and to shape their marketing strategy moving forward.

A huge thank you to Brittany for packing this episode with great insights and actionable takeaways for social media managers and marketers looking for ways to take their social media monitoring skills to the next level.

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

• iTunes


• Google Play


• Stitcher


• Sound Cloud

In this episode, here's what you'll learn:

Brittany Berger shares her insights and expertise into how marketers and businesses can use social media monitoring to deliver real-time, marketing results to your audience and potential customers. You'll also learn other great things about social mentions like:

• The basics of social media monitoring and how to do them right


• What tools are best for monitoring social media conversations


• Why listening to peers and competitors is a great way to improve your strategy


• What platforms are best for monitoring conversations and how it works


• How social media strategy and social monitoring go hand-in-hand

3 Takeaways for Marketers Looking to Use Social Mentions to Influencer Their Marketing Strategy

In Brittany's Words…

1. Always listen to your audience first

Always listen to your audience first – no one knows them better than themselves. Even though we all like to think that we know them very well. Which I'm sure we all do!

2. Never discount doing the same thing as your competitors

Never discount doing the same things as your competitors, you can still do them differently and get great ideas from them. We've even worked with some people who might be considered a competitor after findings stuff that they've done and realizing the collaboration potential there.

3. Think of your marketing and social media processes as a whole

Always think of your marketing and social media processes as a whole. I like to make sure everything fits together well and that anything we set up as a team with mention or with monitoring in general makes sense with the other processes we have such as publishing.

Mentionable Quotes and Shareable Snippets

In Brittany's Words…

“Monitoring your own brand, monitoring your competitors, and monitoring your industry are the three basics of social mentions that you can use to stay general and learn so much with such a simple effort.”

Show Notes and Other Memorable Moments

Thanks a million for checking out this episode! Below are the websites and other tidbits that were mentioned in today's podcast about personal branding on social media. If you have any questions for us, feel free to drop us a line in the comments and we'll respond right away!

Tools Mentioned by Brittany

• Mention – Monitor your brand anywhere online


• Respond by Buffer – Social customer service software for support teams


• TweetDeck – Your personal browser for staying in touch with what's happening now


• Zapier – Better together


• Slack – Be less busy

Other Great Quotes from the Show

• “When I'm writing content I always try to think of how that will tie into the end result (on social media) because it's not really something that you can just start thinking about once it's already live.”


• “There's a lot of hidden use-cases for tracking social media mentions online. For example, sales and support people or product development can monitor for insights into their audience or about their product.”


• “If you're not listening to your audience then you don't know what they really want. And so then how can you give them that?  You can take a good guess, and I know a lot of us do customer interviews and buyer personas, but that doesn't mean you don't actually have to pay attention to them.”


• “Anything about your own brand should definitely take priority (when it comes to the frequency of monitoring your brand). And it also depends on your goals and what you're using it for. If Influencer Marketing is one of your goals it's important to be on top of the things that you check first.”

How to Say Hello to Brittany (and us)

Brittany Berger is super active on Twitter and would love to say “hello” at thatbberg and you can read more about Brittany and her work at brittanyberger.com.

Thanks for listening! We'd love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It'd mean the world to us if you'd be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

-

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you'll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

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Are You Monitoring Social Mentions? Here's How They Can Influence Your Marketing Strategy – Brittany Berger [SSM015]

Why Data Journalism Is the Secret to Engagement

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Data is everywhere, and nowadays, it is readily available and easily accessible for marketers to utilize in their content strategy. While many refer to a data-driven content strategy when looking at ways to better understand their audience and leverage influencers, a data-driven approach can also mean creating content based in data journalism.

As the efficacy of outbound marketing and traditional advertising continue to decline (even as their costs remain high), brands are turning to inbound tactics like content marketing as they evolve from advertisers to branded publishers. Data journalism is one of the newer trends among content marketers, which utilizes data analysis to extract compelling stories, often through easy-to-digest visuals like infographics and videos.

Since ideation can be one of the most challenging and intimidating aspects of content marketing, a data-driven, journalistic approach offers a fresh source of inspiration. Helping to satiate the internet's nearly insatiable curiosity, this research-based approach in content creation establishes authority through thought leadership for brands. (highlight to tweet)

Data journalism can fit into any content strategy in any vertical. My team at Fractl utilizes this data-driven approach in nearly every client content marketing campaign we produce. In order to avoid comparing apples to oranges when it came to campaign performance metrics across different industries, we set out to delineate vertical benchmarks by sifting through nearly 350 of our own client campaigns across various industries in a recent study. Besides finding the average media placement and social share count rate for each vertical, we also were able to further pinpoint which verticals saw the most success with various data sources and strategies.

Two Approaches for Content Engagement Across 15 Verticals

Establishing your brand as an industry leader through authoritative content is becoming increasingly important as brands make that switch from advertisers to publishers. Generating high levels of engagement and a loyal following is important regardless of your vertical, but we found two approaches to vertical content strategy exist, depending on campaign goals.

Tangential Strategy and Traditional Virality

Tangential relevance to your brand (but still specific relevance to the brand's vertical) helps with content creation in terms of diversity and frequency. For this approach, consider the details defining the brand and its target audience, then brainstorm topics and ideas that broadly or horizontally relate back to the brand's vertical. When searching for the mass appeal that generates a lot of engagement from general audiences, this tangential approach in content strategy is a great option to consider-especially when working with a vertical that doesn't typically see viral-level engagement.

Ideally, creating broadly relevant content that appeals to a socially-engaged audience's motivations for sharing will help generate those social shares and media mentions. Take, for example, a UK brand in the online pharmacy and healthcare market. With the goal of creating a viral hit, our creative team thought of a highly relatable, highly emotional topic that tied back to the services offered by the brand: body image and eating disorders. By illustrating the “ideal” women in 18 countries around the world, unique visuals grabbed the attention of a broad audience, generating 3.5 million views from a single media placement-plus 900,000 social shares from over 600 other media stories.

Niche Strategy and Perceived Virality

As more and more content floods the internet, it becomes more challenging to get noticed in a sea of mediocrity. Your brand is forced to compete with not only direct competitors but quite literally everyone. A more targeted approach through a niche content strategy allows even the smallest brands to earn exposure through perceived virality, leading to stronger word-of-mouth marketing, growing brand awareness, less competition, and most importantly, more qualified leads.

Creating and promoting content that connects with a specific, niche audience within your brand's vertical involves researching audience personas, including where they seek out information, what publishers they read, and what motivates them to engage with content. Our B2B client Alexa's campaign performance is a prime example of how creating niche content fellow marketers found valuable led to engagement far above the Business & Finance vertical benchmark. While their content calendar wouldn't appeal to someone outside of the industry, it helps brands and marketers take their PR outreach to the next level-and earned Alexa over 150 media mentions in authoritative industry publications.

Insights on Data Sources for Different Verticals

Data journalism is the core of each campaign we analyzed, all utilizing various research methods and sources to help create content geared towards the brand's specific vertical and target audience. Sourcing the data can be broken down into two methods: data curation and original research. But what method is best for your vertical? Here are some insights we've learned along the way.

Data Curation

To avoid bias and establish authority, curating hard data from reputable sources (i.e., open source government databases) or scraping social media networks for specific information allows content marketers to utilize existing data but add value by simplifying the information and pulling key findings. Similar to curation for content like blog or social posts, it's crucial that campaign data curation includes creating new content. Otherwise, it just becomes noise.

With higher-than-average media mentions and social shares, Drugs & Alcohol; Politics, Crime, & Safety; Automotive; and Education verticals successfully utilized data curation more than the other eleven verticals. Here are a couple of our creative team's go-to sources paired with examples of client campaigns demonstrating each source's potential for success.

• Government Data: One vertical that utilizes official government data sources well is Drugs & Alcohol, as it improves the promotional viability of the campaign. Specifically, publishers covering these topics need authoritative and verifiable sources to protect their own credibility. For example, a campaign examining the drug use in America versus Europe gathered data from several reputable international government sources including SAMHSA and EMCDDA. The authoritative “.gov” data sources mixed with the international scope of this campaign led to a huge amount of national and international press coverage-over 550 media mentions, to be exact.


• Social Media: On the other end of the spectrum, scraping social media networks for data is another source geared towards entertainment. It's worth noting that campaigns for 10 out of 14 verticals specifically using curated social media data saw higher-than-vertical-average media placements. Most notably, more than half of the top performing campaigns falling under the Automotive vertical curated data from the social networks. A scrape of four years worth of Instagram posts with hashtags of various car brands revealed the most-selfied cars on the internet. By appealing to a very broad audience and curating data from a widely used platform, this campaign earned over 150 media mentions plus nearly 9,000 social shares.

Original Data

A second method requires additional resources by creating content based on original data, usually taken from proprietary brand internal data or from primary research. The latter allows for a lot of creativity; research methods range from surveys to surface swabs, leading to a plethora of new data for a campaign.

Business & Finance; Fashion; Home & Garden; Travel; and Technology verticals saw success with original data more than the other verticals with higher-than-average levels of engagement. Here are two examples of our creative team's favorites research methods for acquiring this original data:

• Field Research: Some of the best data requires a field trip to find it. Going out into the field to collect data ranging from video footage to bacteria swabs offers a proprietary edge, especially when it comes to media promotions. For example, to demonstrate the severity of distracted drivers on one of the country's busiest highways, 20 minutes of original footage was broken down into stills to pinpoint the number of distracted drivers. This time-consuming analysis paid off by earning nearly 200 media mentions. In another example, collecting and comparing surface swabs of bacteria in different hotel classes to reveal the truth about hotel hygiene led to some interesting discoveries that made headlines across the internet with close to 700 media mentions.


• Surveys and interviews offer insights not only for brands looking to better understand their consumers, but also for curious internet browsers. Nowadays, running a massive survey with participants fitting specific requirements (demographic, geographic, etc.) has never been easier with tools like SurveyMonkey and MTurk. For example, by surveying smartphone users performing a list of specific commands, then ranking the three most popular smartphone assistants on accuracy and satisfaction, Comparing Cortana earned over 340 media mentions thanks to the tech pride and brand loyalty of smartphone users.

A data-driven, research-based approach requires content strategists to do their due diligence to correctly source and analyze the data. Presenting key findings from huge data sets must be done without an agenda to avoid bias. Transparency in the methodology while scrutinizing fact-checking are crucial aspects of ethical journalism.

Whether it's through a tangential or niche vertical strategy, content should ultimately provide value to an audience through education or entertainment to break through the noise. Data journalism is quickly gaining popularity, becoming an invaluable resource to content marketers in every vertical, thanks in part to its ability to educate and entertain.

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Shopping on Instagram: Get the Complete Details and What it Means for Businesses Like Yours

This year alone, Instagram has released business profiles and features like Stories and Zoom. Lucky for us, Instagram has something new to share again:

Shopping is coming to Instagram!

Starting this week, Instagram is testing a new way for users to learn more about products they discover in the app and to purchase those products if they wish to. The entire e-commerce flow from discovery to purchase is contained within Instagram, which may potentially help solve one of the biggest Instagram questions (and social media questions) for businesses everywhere: How can I get ROI and sales from what I share?

Fresh on the heels of the announcement, I'd love to share more details on what Instagram shopping might look like and what it means for you and your business. It'd be great to have your thoughts in the comments, too!

Why is Instagram building a shopping experience in the app?

The potential opportunity for businesses on Instagram is huge. According to Instagram's announcement:

More than 84% of smartphone users in the U.S. browse, research, or compare products via a web browser or mobile app.

That is in line with the behavior Instagram users exhibit in the app. While speaking to James Quarles, Instagram's VP of monetization, TechCrunch found that:

According to a study run by Instagram, 60% of Instagrammers say they learn about products and services on the app, while 75% say they take actions like visiting sites, searching, or telling a friend after being influenced by a post on Instagram.

While Instagram is a great platform for discovering new products, it can be a little challenging at the moment to find out more information or to find and purchase those products online, particularly with the limited use of links within updates and on profile pages. With the Instagram shopping announcement, it feels like Instagram is looking to make the experience much smoother.

With that, let's take a look at this upcoming feature!

Overview: How Instagram is building shopping into the app

As shopping is introduced into the app, the primary feed experience won't change at all. Shopping will simply be an added function to individual updates.

Instagrammed photos that include products or e-commerce experiences will have a tiny “Tap to view products” label at the bottom left corner of the photo. It's possible that Instagram might simplify this into a symbol once users are used to this interface, just like they did for photos tagged with users.

Once the “Tap to view products” label is tapped, it brings up a tag for each product that has been tagged in the photo, showcasing up to five tags and the respective prices. It appears the tags for the products are initially hidden to not clutter up the photo, maintaining the clean and beautiful user experience.

When a tag is selected, more information about the product will be shown within the Instagram app itself so that users do not have to leave the app. From the video demo, it seems that users will also be able to scroll between the tagged products by swiping left and right.

   

 

If the user wishes to purchase the product, tapping the “Shop Now” link brings up the product on the business's website. From there, the user will be able to place an order for the product.

This will also be within the Instagram app itself. A key advantage I see is a much faster shopping experience. Having all these steps happen within the app itself would likely make the experience much faster than the traditional approach of switching to a browser and letting the page load (and switching back to Instagram to continue browsing).

Here's a short video of how this feature looks like:

What will it cost businesses? Incredibly, nothing

According to TechCrunch's report, Instagram isn't taking a cut from the transactions:

Instagram won't take a cut of purchases, and instead plans to monetize the product by later allowing brands to pay to show their shoppable photos to people who don't follow them, says Instagram's VP of monetization James Quarles.

Instagram has teamed up with 20 U.S.-based retail brands including Kate Spade, JackThreads, and Warby Parker for this test feature. For its initial testing phase, Instagram will be rolling this out to only a group of iOS users in the U.S.

Future plans for shopping on Instagram

While it looks really impressive already, Instagram has more ambitious plans for this feature:

As we roll out further, we'll explore product recommendations, ways products are showcased to shoppers, global expansion and the ability to save content so Instagrammers can take an action later. We want to understand how to deliver the most seamless shopping experience for consumers and businesses on Instagram, and ultimately mobile.

Instagram's VP of monetization, James Quarles, also shared with TechCrunch how they are looking to expand on the shoppable tags:

Quarles tells me shoppable tags will eventually expand to video posts, photo carousels, and other countries.

How exciting!

Shopping on Instagram: What Opportunities Are There for Businesses?

To me, this feels like a huge leap for the Instagram experience and a very attractive proposition to businesses. Here are some opportunities I think this feature will bring to businesses:

1. Higher retail sales and tracking ability

As URLs in captions are not linked, businesses are currently resorting to using the link in their bio or platforms like Like2Buy and Have2Have.it to direct their followers to their product pages. With this feature, businesses can provide a more direct option for their followers - yay!

I believe this feature will help to boost sales for businesses - maybe more for those with physical products than those offering services or digital products. Businesses will be able to better track sales from Instagram and perhaps even track referrals as it's common for Instagram users to tag their friends in their comments to share about a product.

2. Enhanced influencer marketing

While I'm not sure if this feature will be available to non-business Instagram users, this feels like a great opportunity for influencer marketing, which is already very prevalent on Instagram. Influencers can tag the sponsored products, allowing their followers to learn more and even buy those products immediately within the Instagram app.

3. More sales through user-generated content

Another opportunity I see for this feature is through user-generated content. It is a common strategy used by businesses on Instagram nowadays. We used it to increase our Instagram following by 60% and are still using it today.

User-generated photos help to add social proof to the products and feel more authentic than photos by businesses themselves. By tagging the user-generated photos, businesses could possibly drive more sales through Instagram.

4. Additional layer of engagement

Having more options of action to take means more opportunities for engagement. I imagine a business could ask a question about the product such as “How many colors do you think this bag comes in?” As it's easier to find the answer with this feature, followers might be more inclined to search for it. This could be a way to encourage followers to click through and check out the product too.

5. More creative captions

With the additional product information page in Instagram, businesses can choose not to describe the products in the photo caption. This will allow for more creativity for the captions, without having to worry that followers might not understand what the product is about.

How will you use this feature?

I imagine many of you are as excited as I am about this potential feature. I'd love to hear from you what opportunities this might present to you and your business.

P.S. If you are thinking of diving into Instagram marketing for your business now, here's our complete guide to Instagram marketing!

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The Big Secret: All Entrepreneurs are a Little Bit Crazy

I remember the first time I found out that I wasn't the only crazy one.  I thought that other entrepreneurs had everything all together and that once I “made it”, I would also have it together and know exactly what to do next.

But I was talking to Johnny B Truant at SXSW about 7 years ago and he told me that even the successful ones were a little crazy.  And I was so relieved.

Because I didn't have to try to get rid of the crazy thoughts in order to be successful.  I didn't have to not be afraid and not doubt myself.  I just had to keep moving.

When I first started my blog over 8 years ago, I was excited and on fire and ready to take over the world.

But along the way doubt creeps in.  Comparison rears it's ugly head and you look at others and think that they are doing so much better and you don't really know what you are doing.

Everyone seems so sure and the voices in your head are saying mean things to you.

But it's freeing to find out that everyone has those thoughts (ok maybe I can't speak for every successful entrepreneur but I know for a fact that a LOT of them do – and who knows, maybe it is just me – maybe it's the voice in my head again telling me that I'm not normal and I'm going to make this the longest parenthetical out there).

Seth Godin answers the question “How do I get rid of the fear?” with this:  Alas this is the wrong question. The right question is “How do I dance with the fear?” 

Here's a picture of me speaking at the Paramount Theater in Denver in front of 500 people at the Digital Commerce Summit – dancing with my fear.

I think it's important to have a practice that grounds you, manages your mindset, and gives you an outlet for the fear.  For me, that's running or performing quite badly in triathlons and then getting back up and trying another triathlon.

This is one of my running shirts (I don't iron).

And it's also important for me to remember that I have a gift to share.  A passion for helping other entrepreneurs grow their business.  And I will make mistakes.  Things won't always go right.

But this entrepreneurial journey is a marathon, it's not a sprint.

So much of your success depends on just continuing to show up, share your gift, and get better along the way.

Give yourself permission to fail because when you are allowed to fail, you have so much room to be great.

 

Being an entrepreneur is not always easy but it's worth it.  Even when we feel a little crazy.

And yes, that picture at the top is me.  Sometimes I'm crazier than normal.

 

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