The Facebook acquired photo-sharing site, Instagram, which launched in October 2010 allows users to take and upload photos to apply filters to a 4:3 ratio image and share their smartphone photography with the world through other social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

As of January 2013 Instagram has 100 million registered users and 90 million monthly active users; to say the very least, its popularity has been rapid. This not only had to do with Facebook purchasing the app based service in early 2012 but with its expansions beyond Apple products onto Android phones and the web.

Though there are now more ways and access to Instagram, many users are still having trouble gaining the exposure they want for their photos and uploading many, although will help with gaining followers, will not necessarily bring you the tapped hearted likes you hope for, so what should an instagrammer like you do? Add hashtags.

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is not new to the web although it’s most definitely more well-known now than when it was originally used in IRC networks (Internet Relay Chat) to label a group or topics. It is known as one of the very first forms of interactive chat messaging which has been a leader to other forms of chat such as MSN Messenger, AOL chat, Yahoo chat and more recently Skype and Facebook chat. The hash symbol became an inspiration to the micro-blogging site, Twitter, which catapulted the hash symbol (#) into what we now know today as a hashtag.

The hashtag is using the # (hash symbol) prior to a string of words or a word which will then become an active link for users to find in search or to follow. Other sites have used the hashtag, such as Google Plus and of course Instagram.

This Brings Us to Why It Is So Important That Instagram Users Use Hashtags

In order for their photos to be seen and liked by other like-minded people through search is by using the same keywords that you inputted as a hashtag.  If you have ever uploaded or taken a photo and added it to Instagram without hashtags you may or may not receive any likes for your photo. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great shot nor does it mean you should stop using the site since not receiving likes can most certainly be discouraging. Instead add hashtags to your comment section that are relevant words to your photo and sit back and watch as you receive more likes.

Whether you have a strong following or not will not always yield the likes that your photo deserves but as you add hastags that help bring the story of the image to life, your image will be seen by more people and therefore will aid in people double tapping their screens from across the globe.

Which Hashatags Should I Use on Instagram?

The best hashtags are followed by words that best describe your photo. Here is an example of an image of my dog Caeden

Once I added his photo to TheErinRyan on Instagram, I received 3 likes, but he is so cute right? LOL… by adding the hashtags #caeden #dogstagram #dogs #dogsofinstagram #petsofinstagram #pets #petsagram #eavig #ilovemydog #bordercollie #instadog #instacute #instahub #instagramers #instagood #igers #instagramhub #instagrampics #instaaddict

Suddenly my 3 likes instantly changed to 12 likes, and then to 16 likes…you catch my drift.

It wasn’t whether the image of my dog Caeden was cute or if I took a great photo, it was due to the hashtags which allowed people to find the image when searching for any of the words within the hashtags. The more hashtags, the more likes you are going to receive.

We all would love to be popular on every site we take part in, but only a few will get the tons of likes just from being who they are or from their photo-taking abilities. For the rest of us, we can be our own superstars on Instagram with a little help from our friend the Hashtag.

Top-hashtags is a great site to find the most popular hashtags on Instagram.

[hashtag image via brandwatch]

There’s one thing that permeates throughout the car industry (and most industries in general) in regards to Facebook that needs to change. We look at our dealership Facebook pages and judge much of our success based upon how we’re doing there. Normally, we check the results and monitor the pages from a desktop. This is strange since most of us who use Facebook do so primarily on mobile devices.

Why hasn’t the mobile trend of Facebook translated properly into marketing?

We see promoted posts, organic posts, and ads hitting our stream all the time and it seems that the majority of them are geared towards a desktop experience. This is a huge mistake. Facebook has been heading towards being a mobile company long before Mark Zuckerberg made his declaration late last year, “Today there is a no argument – Facebook is a mobile company.”

With that in mind, how can car dealers take advantage of the mobile aspects of Facebook and fit that into their marketing and advertising strategy?

The key is understanding that there are three goals which can be achieved through a single action. Kill three birds with one stone. Many in the industry are trying to bolster their SoLoMo presence; social, local, and mobile are unifying in scope and should be unified in strategy as well. Facebook is one of the keys to success.

Over the next two and a half months (and for the last several) we will be diving more deeply into enhancing the strategies that car dealers can use to accomplish the trifecta of SoLoMo goals that must be attained in 2013 to hit the highest level of success. In the meantime, here are some things to remember when working with your own strategies:

• Check how every post appears on mobile devices. It’s always a good idea to make sure that everything looks right on your websites regardless of device or operating system. The same holds true for Facebook. An image that looks great on a 17-inch monitor might be too small to be appealing on a 7-inch handheld. Make sure that your posts, images in particular, play well with the small screen.
• Target your advertising around a mobile experience. It’s easier to understand ads meant for mobile when viewing them on desktops than viewing ads meant for desktops when viewing them on mobile. For example, you may be running a campaign for an oil change special that goes to a landing page on your website, but if the landing page doesn’t work properly on a mobile device, most of your fans will never see it properly.
• Post from your mobile device itself. There is a separate Facebook Pages Manager app that works nicely for running your pages. This can be a lifesaver if you’re also active on a personal level on Facebook. Nobody wants to post something on their business page that was meant for their personal page. More importantly, this allows the user to start thinking in terms of real-time uploads. It’s an important frame of mind to have; your Facebook pages need as much interaction from the real world as possible. Great pictures of cars and the local area that you find on the internet are fine and work well as filler content, but the real juice can be found in pictures that you’ve taken at the dealership (and no, we’re not talking about pictures of happy customers)
• Interact with local organizations from your mobile device. There’s nothing worse than a missed opportunity. Your dealership is not just what happens on the lot itself. Chances are you’re doing something, whether it’s sponsoring a little league team or picking up Saturday lunch for the crew at the local barbeque joint. Take advantage of these opportunities to be “out and about” with your Facebook page.

In many ways, vendors (ourselves included) have done a disservice to the automotive industry by trying to fit a round peg in a square hole when it comes to Facebook. The majority of services out there are geared towards making the dealerships feel like they’re being effective on Facebook rather than actually accomplishing anything. If you’re not using mobile as the cornerstone of your through process when working with Facebook, you’re not paying attention to the primary venue through which people interact on Facebook. You can’t play the game if you’re not on the right field. Start thinking along the lines of a mobile experience and stay tuned to what we’re rolling out in the near future.

Staying relevant as a business in the highly competitive marketing world is not simple to do. Being creative and keeping up with the trends while trying to find newer ways to reach your audience can sometimes leave a business stuck in not really knowing which social tools will provide the best results.

The first steps business marketer’s must take in producing a successful marketing campaign, is by locating where their audience spends majority of their time online and to discover what type of content customers are attracted to the most, which at this point in time are photographs.

The amount of users on the photo-sharing social application, Instagram, is steadily increasing and is a perfect example of how companies can reach their audience, stay relevant, and trendy. Since Instagram reached 80 million users in August 2012, it goes to show that it is a place where the customers are; now the businesses need to make sure they are there too.

This infographic, “The Business Marketer’s Guide to Instagram,” created by Column Five and shared by Marketo, provides an even closer look as to why business marketer’s should include Instagram in their marketing campaigns. Click to enlarge.

Your online reputation should matter to you, whether you are online for business or for pleasure, if you have a presence online then you have a reputation you need to be managing. A simple way to manage your online reputation can be done using Google alerts which you can set up easily through your Gmail account. Be sure to setup your name and business name in quotation marks so when you receive emails they will be relevant to your request (the quotations are your best secret weapon as they will include alerts actually relevant to your search, without them you will be inundated with emails including the same words).

Google Alerts is one easy and free way to keep on top of your online reputation but no matter the tool you use to monitor, you may need to include variations of your business or personal name. Currently, 61% of businesses are ensuring that their reputation is being tracked and identifying what you need and want to manage when it comes to your online reputation needs to be acknowledged.

Understanding that your reputation needs managing is the first step, then concluding as to why it is important and how and who it effects is the second step to be perceptive as to why managing your online reputation should be a priority.

The “who” that has stake in your positive or negative online sentiment is larger than your own, it includes investors, employees to your competitors (since they can gain on your negative reviews). Your acceptance that consumers are not only looking to reach out through the use of social media for customer service or are using it as a place to vent their frustration, either way, your quick response and solution will help save you from the ripple effect of negativity that can happen.

The ripple effect is nothing new, it has always happened offline or on various review sites, whereas social networks provide an easier and more efficient platform to not only fix issues between your business and its consumers but to help aid you by remaining in control of your reputation and keep your relationship with online users and potential clients positive.

Figuring what needs to be monitored, how it will be monitored to who will monitor your personal or business’s online reputation is by setting in motion a strategic plan to prepare for moments when you discover negative sentiments which will help you respond intelligently with a plan in action to assist you through the emotion that can often lead to a worsened problem if failed to prepare for them.

You can see the following 7 steps to understanding how to monitor your online reputation in the following infographic.

Those in social media marketing as a profession realize that there are certain unknowns when it comes to the new web. We know that people are on social media. We know that they don’t want direct marketing. We also know they’d rather get direct marketing than pay for the services, so there’s at least a little room for something.

The question is, “what is that something?”

Whether from B2C or B2B, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn give marketers the ability to try to reach the target audience and generate leads. The vast majority are trying. Most are failing, or at least not meeting their expectations if they’re not failing altogether.

This infographic breaks down how 2012 compared to 2011 from a lead-generation perspective.

Click to enlarge.

Too often, dealers and other businesses are given intangible ideas that they’re supposed to use to try to master Facebook. They’re told to “be engaging” or “be a part of the community” on Facebook, but what does any of that really mean?

From both an esoteric as well as a straightforward perspective, the idea of making your posts “resonate” may sound like another one of those intangible concepts that don’t really say much, but once you understand the way that EdgeRank and Facebook advertising work, you’ll see that getting true interaction and spreading the brand on Facebook is actually a very concrete and sustainable strategy. It’s all about understanding why certain messages work and others do not.

To truly resonate, a dealer must “touch” the audience in some way with every post. As we’ve discovered through research and testing, a wasted post can do more harm than not posting at all on Facebook. You have to bring value to the table because Facebook has been taking spam protection and news feed quality very seriously since October of last year. It doesn’t take many spam reports or post ignores to tank your EdgeRank and make your posts invisible for all intents and purposes.

Why Happy Customer Pictures Are Bad

There are many dealers that are making one huge mistake with their Facebook page. They’re posting images of happy customers who just bought a car. There are definitely ways to make this work and any general rule will have exceptions, but the vast majority of those posting these images are doing more harm than good with them.

Boring pictures do damage to your EdgeRank. It’s that simple. If you’re posting a lot of images of smiling customers who just bought a new Ford Focus, there’s a pretty good chance that anyone who sees the image is going to pass it up in their news feed. What many dealers (and even vendors) do not realize is that every time someone is presented with a post on Facebook and they pass it up, the chances of them seeing the next post are reduced. The chance of other people seeing your posts are reduced.

Your posts should not be the type that people can simply pass up. If they don’t know the people standing in front of the car, there is very little chance that they’re going to engage with the post in any way. By posting these, you’re basically saying, “any of our fans who know these people, this post is for you and everyone else can ignore it.”

If they ignore your post, you hurt your chances of future posts being seen in the news feed. This cannot be stressed enough. You cannot waste posts. If you want to post pictures of happy customers, you have to get more creative. It’s hard because you’ll have to get your customers and your sales team to do things that are likely outside of their comfort zone.

In October we posted a story about customer photo types that aren’t totally boring. It was a good list, but the changes that were happening at Facebook at the time have made even these pictures too boring. They’re better, but probably not good enough for today’s EdgeRank. Here’s an example.

Better. Not good enough. You cannot risk people passing up too many of your posts if they simply don’t resonate. I said that it cannot be stressed enough so I’m going to say it again: when people pass up your posts without engaging in some way, Facebook registers this and it hurts your chances of appearing down the line in their feed.

If you absolutely have to post happy customer pictures, make them extremely creative. Make them of general interest. Before posting, ask yourself if you would like the image if you saw it on your news feed. In general, these types of posts should be avoided.

There's something special about the annual National Automobile Dealers Association convention that cannot be matched by other events throughout the year. There is certainly value in the education at events like Digital Dealer, Driving Sales Executive Summit, and AutoCon, but they are missing one major component that you can only get at NADA.

Bulk.

It's not just the bulk of dealers that attend. It's not simply the bulk of vendors or industry speakers. It's the bulk of needs fulfilled. Dealers have needs. OEMs have needs. Vendors have needs. Everyone has the ability to get their "fix" at NADA regardless of whether a dealer attends or not.

Here's how:

If You Attend...

One key to success if time permits is to go in with a plan. You know what your dealership needs. You will most likely discover new needs, learn of new products and services, hear new strategies, etc., but you should know going in what the real challenges at your dealership are. Go in with a plan to solve those challenges because there is no other venue that will have a wider range of solutions available.

• Don't be shy. Take pitches. Brochures and swag are nice but they don't translate into much at all. That's not the vendor side of me speaking when I recommend taking pitches. It's the reality. If you don't take the opportunity to stand or sit face-to-face with someone, to ask them pointed questions, and to get the information that you need, you won't get the most out of NADA. Some dealers prefer to go "wide" and get a taste of everything, then make their decisions about follow up when they get home. Anyone who has tried this strategy is probably aware that most of the things they thought they would remember ended up not getting the appropriate attention. These are big decisions. NADA is a big opportunity. Take advantage of it.
• Take notes, or even better, shoot video. You have a smartphone. Use it. If something is extremely interesting, ask the presenter to stop and repeat it. Nothing can remind you about why you liked a particular product or service better than reliving the experience when you get back to the dealership. Show your managers. Get their input.
• Skip the gimmicks. I've always been amazed at how people will waste time standing in line to get their picture taken with Dan Marino. Sure, he was a great quarterback and you might be a big fan. The problem is that the time spent collecting a souvenir could be spent improving your dealership. Go with a mission. If everything's perfect at the dealership, there's nothing wrong with having your caricature drawn. If your dealership can accept improvements, use your time wisely.
• Enjoy yourself but learn more after hours. Nothing brings out the truth serum as much as the networking events and cocktail parties. Talk to other dealers. Talk to vendors. Get the real skinny.

If You Don't Attend...

Here's a little secret. Every vendor spends more money than they get back in return from the event itself. Sure, the extended value is strong for vendors who do it right and the business they can gain over the months following the event are worth it. However, the opportunity to get extra deals during or immediately after the event are hard for vendors to miss.

• Contact vendors immediately after the event. Tell them that you didn't attend NADA this year but that you're interested in taking advantage of the deals that were available for attendees. No vendor will turn you away. In fact, they'll be excited to get some side-NADA-action going.
• Call your friends at the event and ask them to get you some videos. We all have friends or 20-group members who are attending. Tell them that you are considering some SEO solutions and ask them if they can record a mini-pitch for you while they're attending.
• Check out these networks - ADM, DrivingSales, DealerElite, DealerRefresh, etc. Once the event is over, the automotive social networks and blogs will have wrap-up posts. Take advantage of them.

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Whether you attend NADA or not, it's the right time to hop in and learn what you can do to improve your dealership's performance for 2013 and beyond. Participate while you're here or participate from afar. Either way, you'll win.