According to the scoop shared with MMW, the “shopping on Instagram” feature that allows businesses to tag products in Instagram posts is now enabled for merchants in eight additional markets: UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Brazil.

“This strategic expansion unlocks potential for Shopify’s merchants to sell to Instagram users all over the world,” the official word reads.

Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices, is a great venue for Shopify’s hundreds of thousands of merchants in categories such as fashion, jewelry, beauty, furniture and home decor to grow their customer base in a meaningful way. Riding on the successes from the earlier rollout for Shopify’s U.S. merchants, the expanded integration will allow shoppers all over the world to experience this unique commerce feature on Instagram.

With the objective of helping its merchants reach more shoppers around the world, Shopify continues to invest in social commerce so brands and small businesses can sell to shoppers wherever they are. With its 500 million daily active users, Shopify says that Instagram is a natural integration alongside Shopify’s other sales channels like Facebook, BuzzFeed, Pinterest and eBay, and will help brands leverage mobile to reach consumers around the world.

“Shoppers around the world increasingly demand unique experiences that shorten the path to purchase, and the future of commerce will need to meet and exceed these evolving demands. We continue to partner and experiment with leading social platforms to support our merchants in reaching their customers wherever they are,” said Satish Kanwar, Vice President, Product, Shopify. “The expanded collaboration with Instagram is indicative of our commitment to support our merchants in growing their business and reaching more customers globally.”

The post First Look: Shopping on Instagram Goes Global with Shopify appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Kamiu Lee, VP of Strategy & Business Development at

Since Instagram debuted their new polls feature in October, there’s been quite a positive reaction from brands, influencers and regular users alike. Not only are people using polls more than some of Instagram’s other new features, but they also boast a remarkable engagement rate as opposed to typical content posts. In fact, we have found that anywhere from 10-17 percent of users will respond to Instagram polls that they come across in an Instagram Story, compared to the average five percent who engage with regular static posts on the platform.

Brands and marketers would be wise to leverage influencers to use polls given the positive reception of this feature. In fact, we recently polled our 87K+ follower base of influencers and found that 66% of influencers had already tried IG polls. And out of those who hadn’t, a whopping 87% intended to do so in the future—this means that influencers, oftentimes at the forefront of testing content and platform features, are on board and their audiences are on board as well.

Let’s review some of the reasons why brand and influencers should be incorporating polls into their upcoming partnerships:

Increasing Audience Engagement

Since there is a clear call-to-action, Instagram users are more likely to engage with Instagram polls than regular posts, making polling is a great way for brands to really get their audience involved. In sponsoring an influencer’s poll, brands have the ability to also engage a different and highly engaged audience.

In tandem with the benefits of authentic engagement and valuable consumer feedback, sponsored polls provide a different value from standard “likes” and “comments.” Brands are constantly seeking different ways to track engagement with influencer posts, and polls offer a totally transparent way to do so.

Apparel brands, for example, could promote a new clothing line by working with influencers to create different “ways to wear,” and poll followers about which looks were their favorite. Not only does this approach provide vital exposure for the brand’s products, but offers a reason for audiences to engage and gather inspiration. A travel brand – whether an airline, hotel chain, cruise line or metasearch company – could leverage influencers to source most-desired travel destinations or open dialogue around ‘must-have’ amenities when traveling. 

Gathering Consumer Feedback in a New Way

Influencers call upon their followers all the time for their opinion, asking them for feedback around what they enjoyed about a post or what kind of products or services they prefer. In talking with dozens of influencers in our network, we uncovered that most influencers are currently using polls as a content planning tool. Sam Ushiro of Aww Sam, for example, uses polls to vet potential posts by asking followers what types of content they’d like to see more of.

In the same vein, brands have always proactively searched for conversations around their products or services across social media to get a sense of consumer sentiment. Instagram polls offer brands a specific platform to obtain this kind of valuable customer feedback, allowing them to ask specific questions that may open the door to positive, consumer-driven product enhancements or creation.

Brands can work with influencers to help gauge this consumer interest via polls – especially around new product launches or iterations of existing products. For example, beauty brands could engage influencers to gather feedback around a product like an eyeshadow palette, to uncover target audience preferences around details like colors or finishes. Taking it one step further, when brands incorporate this feedback loop into their product design process, it can help boost brand loyalty amongst influencers and consumers alike.

Cultivating a Conversation via Influencers

Because the best influencers strive to create a more personal relationship with their following, an influencer’s opinion – and decision to work with a brand – holds much more weight than a brand pushing the message across their own channels. The first-person perspective – and approval – provided by influencers can be invaluable.

When there is a strong natural affinity between the brand and influencer, we find that the influencers’ following  will be more inclined to engage, act and provide honest feedback through a third party they trust.

Despite polls still being a relatively new feature, given the strong uptake by influencers and users alike, brands and marketers should certainly consider incorporating it into their influencer and social media strategy. Brands can lean on the influencer themselves for authentic ideation of content, and whether to incorporate features like polls as they know their audiences best.

The post Why Brands Should Leverage Sponsored Instagram Polls appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Just how much does it cost to advertise on Instagram today?

Well, uncover your eyes and take a look. It’s not so bad after all.

Thanks to the new visual from AdEspresso, it’s time to learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know and more about Instagram ads.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: How Much Do Instagram Ads Really Cost? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

We’re told that customers will gain a deeper understanding of clicks, reach, engagement, Story consumption, and more with the ability to create customized reports as well as plan and moderate activities under one platform.

As a result, brand marketers can further strategize on which campaigns are most effective, and will also know which steps to take when they aren’t seeing the best outcomes. This functionality is built in close collaboration with Instagram through exclusive early access to the new Measurement API’s, which Instagram publicly announced earlier this week.

Instagram has over 700 million users and its Stories feature alone is used daily by over 250 million users, which is more than the total number of daily active users on Snapchat’s entire platform, the announcement touts.

“Falcon.io’s Instagram Measurement will be generally available to all customers on July 31,” reads a statement emailed to MMW. “To learn more about Instagram marketing, download our free handbook, How to Create a Social Content Strategy.”

The post Falcon.io Says New Instagram Measurement Offering Can Enhance Content Strategy appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark

Instagram is a popular and highly engaging social media platform. In just seven years, Instagram has significantly increased its user base in almost all demographic groups, and now helps users share roughly 80 million new photos every day. According to Forrester Research, there is a 4.21% per follower engagement rate for every Instagram post. This is 120 times higher than Twitter and 58 times higher than Facebook. For marketers, Instagram is a vital resource, and learning how to use it effectively is crucial. Here is a few hacks to get you going:

Connect to Facebook

Since Facebook owns Instagram, it is easy to connect your profiles on these platforms. By doing so, your posts on one platform will automatically be posted to the other platform as well. If there is not considerable overlap among your followers on each platform, this is a great way to maximize the outreach of your posts. Even if there is a lot of overlap, you will be able to reach all of your followers equally, regardless of which platform each frequents most.

Use Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are key to discovery on Instagram – how else do people discover your content in the barrage of 80 million images uploaded every day? With hashtags, you can define your content and make it stand out as relevant for particular audiences. There is no limit to the number of hashtags you can use, so don’t shy away from this feature.

That said, you don’t want to overdo it. Adding too many hashtags can come across as desperate and obscures your content. The point of a hashtag is to quickly and clearly tell users what your content is about before they click on it. Therefore, you only want to use hashtags that are specific and succinctly describe your post. By doing this, you can easily feature on the Discovery / Search dashboard and gain more views. Do some research on trending hashtags in your niche to get started.

Once your account has a large enough following, you can utilize Hashtag Contests to increase engagement with your account. Here’s how it works: First, choose a hashtag thats is relevant to your niche. Next, encourage your followers to upload photos and videos that fit the hashtag. Finally, create a gallery of these posts and upload it to Facebook, Instagram, and your website where people can vote for winners. By doing so, you’ll increase engagement with your chosen hashtag and drive a lot of traffic to your Instagram account. If your following is large enough, you could even create your own hashtags that are specific to your brand.

Shout Out to Followers

It is important to give as you receive. One reason why Starbucks is among the top five brands on Instagram is that they routinely give shout outs to their follower’s accounts. By linking to follower’s accounts and even setting follower’s images as their account photo, they maintain their followers and also attract new ones. Just make sure to seek permission from the original poster if you’re going to do this.

There are other ways to shout out to followers. One way is by embedding user submissions on your website. If your site has a lot of traffic, it will provide great exposure for the user. You can also draw attention to your followers by liking and commenting on their photos, responding to their comments on your posts and using @mention while interacting with them.

These gestures show you really care about your followers and that you’re not some cold and inactive account that only wants followers but gives nothing in return. This can only make more people want to follow you.

Be Creative with Brand Promotions

Ultimately, every brand wants to use Instagram to promote their products and services. But when you do, its important to stay classy, cool, and creative. Pilot Pen USA, for example, uploads pictures of beautiful notes written with their pens.

But you don’t need to stick to just product demos. Other great tactics include uploading videos of the brand’s core members discussing company culture, or cool photos of company events, networking clips, parties and other fun activities. The idea is to get the audience to relate to the brand, rather than just providing a product demo. Videos are particularly effective here, which is why it’s now one of the most widely used features for marketers.

Get People Talking

There are various ways to get followers talking about your brand. By asking for product feedback, suggestions, and real-time images of followers using your products, opening a Q&A networking session, or doing anything else that makes followers feel they are part of an inclusive circle, you’ll create a community around your account.

Bottom Line

There tons of Instagram hacks out there that will help your marketing campaign. Take note of what successful brands are doing on their account and see how you can incorporate their strategies in your own. Be creative and stay committed to it as Instagram marketing is an ongoing and dynamic process.

The post OPINION: LaunchSpark Founder Sparks New Ideas for Instagram Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The new feature, according to the report in question, “allows online retailers to easily connect with more potential customers on mobile, showing them the right products at the right time.”

Nosto’s Instagram feature launch comes after the company announced its official Facebook Marketing Partnership in April 2017.

Nosto automates product advertising by showing people ads featuring items they’ve expressed interest in, increasing the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) significantly. Nosto’s Dynamic Instagram Ads work in the same way as its Dynamic Facebook Ads, providing automated ongoing management of product feeds, Facebook Pixel events, and APIs – all with just a few clicks. This greatly reduces the amount of resources traditionally required to set up and manage powerful advertising on these publisher platforms.

“In an increasingly mobile driven industry, being able to advertise on Instagram is rapidly a becoming a ‘must-have’ for e-commerce professionals. We’re proud to offer innovative tools to empower the success of our customers, and adding Instagram to our feature palette allows retailers to do just that.” says Matti Rönkkö, CEO of Nosto. “Since offering the possibility for Dynamic Instagram Advertising to a select group of customers last year, we’ve already seen clients boosting their sales and ROAS on the published platform, powered by Nosto’s smart algorithms.”

The post Personalized Advertising Comes to Instagram with Nosto appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company, we’re told, now allows customers to plan, execute and optimize their Instagram marketing strategy from a single platform with a new publishing flow.

What’s included in the latest update?

With this update, Falcon.io becomes “the only platform of its kind that enables customers to create and schedule Instagram Stories and carousel posts of up to 10 images or videos, in addition to single image or video posts.”

Falcon.io’s newly redesigned Hub mobile app also enables customers to get a full overview of all scheduled and published Instagram content, receive push notifications for posts ready for publication, and collaborate with their team on content.

“The ability to create and schedule Instagram content directly through the Falcon.io platform has made it even more of a versatile tool in our social media strategy,” said Brandon Edler, content manager and creative strategist at The Finish Line. “Enabling the marketing team to collaborate and approve posts within the new publishing flow ensures that everything we post to Instagram has an end to end audit trail that ensures our team stays on brand and delivers value.”

The post Falcon.io Rolls Out Instagram Publishing Flow for Stories and Carousel appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is an exclusive guest contributed post to MMW from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark

Instagram is a popular and highly engaging social media platform. In just seven years, Instagram has significantly increased its user base in almost all demographic groups, and now helps users share roughly 80 million new photos every day. According to Forrester Research, there is a 4.21% per follower engagement rate for every Instagram post. This is 120 times higher than Twitter and 58 times higher than Facebook. For marketers, Instagram is a vital resource, and learning how to use it effectively is crucial. Here is a few hacks to get you going:

Connect to Facebook

Since Facebook owns Instagram, it is easy to connect your profiles on these platforms. By doing so, your posts on one platform will automatically be posted to the other platform as well. If there is not considerable overlap among your followers on each platform, this is a great way to maximize the outreach of your posts. Even if there is a lot of overlap, you will be able to reach all of your followers equally, regardless of which platform each frequents most.

Use Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are key to discovery on Instagram – how else do people discover your content in the barrage of 80 million images uploaded every day? With hashtags, you can define your content and make it stand out as relevant for particular audiences. There is no limit to the number of hashtags you can use, so don’t shy away from this feature.

That said, you don’t want to overdo it. Adding too many hashtags can come across as desperate and obscures your content. The point of a hashtag is to quickly and clearly tell users what your content is about before they click on it. Therefore, you only want to use hashtags that are specific and succinctly describe your post. By doing this, you can easily feature on the Discovery / Search dashboard and gain more views. Do some research on trending hashtags in your niche to get started.

Once your account has a large enough following, you can utilize Hashtag Contests to increase engagement with your account. Here’s how it works: First, choose a hashtag thats is relevant to your niche. Next, encourage your followers to upload photos and videos that fit the hashtag. Finally, create a gallery of these posts and upload it to Facebook, Instagram, and your website where people can vote for winners. By doing so, you’ll increase engagement with your chosen hashtag and drive a lot of traffic to your Instagram account. If your following is large enough, you could even create your own hashtags that are specific to your brand.

Shout Out to Followers

It is important to give as you receive. One reason why Starbucks is among the top five brands on Instagram is that they routinely give shout outs to their follower’s accounts. By linking to follower’s accounts and even setting follower’s images as their account photo, they maintain their followers and also attract new ones. Just make sure to seek permission from the original poster if you’re going to do this.

There are other ways to shout out to followers. One way is by embedding user submissions on your website. If your site has a lot of traffic, it will provide great exposure for the user. You can also draw attention to your followers by liking and commenting on their photos, responding to their comments on your posts and using @mention while interacting with them.

These gestures show you really care about your followers and that you’re not some cold and inactive account that only wants followers but gives nothing in return. This can only make more people want to follow you.

Be Creative with Brand Promotions

Ultimately, every brand wants to use Instagram to promote their products and services. But when you do, its important to stay classy, cool, and creative. Pilot Pen USA, for example, uploads pictures of beautiful notes written with their pens.

But you don’t need to stick to just product demos. Other great tactics include uploading videos of the brand’s core members discussing company culture, or cool photos of company events, networking clips, parties and other fun activities. The idea is to get the audience to relate to the brand, rather than just providing a product demo. Videos are particularly effective here, which is why it’s now one of the most widely used features for marketers.

Get People Talking

There are various ways to get followers talking about your brand. By asking for product feedback, suggestions, and real-time images of followers using your products, opening a Q&A networking session, or doing anything else that makes followers feel they are part of an inclusive circle, you’ll create a community around your account.

Bottom Line

There tons of Instagram hacks out there that will help your marketing campaign. Take note of what successful brands are doing on their account and see how you can incorporate their strategies in your own. Be creative and stay committed to it as Instagram marketing is an ongoing and dynamic process.

The post 5 Hacks for Instagram Marketing on Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Cole Vineyard, Senior Marketing Manager of Filmora and FilmoraGo.

In March, Instagram announced that it would start allowing users to post videos up to 60 seconds in length, a significant increase from the previous 15 second cap. This change has already had a huge impact on the way users, marketers and influencers interact with the app.

The increased length opens a door for content marketers to take a more serious look at using Instagram as a platform. The fifteen second limit had forced marketers to rely on outbound tactics, such as ads and endorsements, and made it difficult to provide high value content to customers.

Now there is room for true inbound content marketing through video. For brands already on Instagram that are unfamiliar with creating video content there may be a learning curve, but the payoff of tackling this new challenge could be a huge rise in consumer engagement.

Instagram says the change in video length is intended to allow users the flexibility to tell longer “more diverse” stories, and there is certainly an opportunity for more creative storytelling in a minute-long video than in a fifteen second clip. Instagram also recently updated its algorithm to favor quality content, so it is clear the app is serious about improving user experience.

However, allowing longer videos is also a matter of following trends. It has been predicted that by the year 2018 almost 80% of consumer internet traffic will be devoted to watching videos. In order to keep a larger portion of that traffic in their app, Instagram needed to enable users to consume and create more video content.

Why Limit Video Length at All?

This raises the question of why Instagram is choosing to limit video length at all. On YouTube and Facebook users can post videos that are much longer. However, there is a noticeable drop off in viewership within the first 30 seconds of many longer videos. If the video is only 60 seconds long, then viewers who might otherwise click away are more likely to watch until the end.

Viewers who finish videos are more likely to have had a positive experience with those videos and decide to watch more. This is good for Instagram because it keeps users on the site, and it is great for brands because those satisfied viewers are more likely to continue engaging with content posted by that same brand.

One minute is actually an ideal length for content marketers because it is long enough to encourage interaction from consumers and short enough to limit the rate at which viewers drop off. A video that lasts 60 seconds can actually result in both more watch time and brand engagement than a video that lasts longer because it has a higher chance of being watched to completion.

The Challenges Presented by Longer Videos

Sixty seconds is long enough to tell an engaging story. It is also long enough to get boring, if you are not careful. Expectations on Instagram are high. Failure to meet the standards of Instagram users can result in a backlash. For example, Instagram used to be very selective about the ads they allowed to appear on the platform. Brands submitted ads which were reviewed by an actual human being who would judge whether the image met Instagram’s standards for quality and creativity. That is no longer the case.

Now any brand that can afford it can buy ad space on Instagram through the ad platform and not be held to the same quality standards they once would have been, at least not by the app. Users complained vehemently both to the site and to brands producing substandard content. Although they ultimately decided to live with the changes, there is still some bitterness. The resentment of subpar ads used in some outbound marketing strategies creates a huge opportunity for inbound content marketers to make their brands stand out.

While expectations for posts from unglamorous brands like Walmart are fairly low now, brands and individuals which are actually dependent on their online communities need to rise to different standards. A look at the user generated content Instagram has chosen to feature will give marketers and influencers a better idea of expectations on Instagram than browsing through some major brands’ posts.

Creating quality photographs for Instagram was already a challenge for individuals and brands alike, and the potential to create longer videos creates even more challenges. Don’t let that put you off, videos garner more engagement than photos, which means there is a chance for brands to create a feeling of community amongst their customers. The trick, for marketers, is creating the kinds of videos that will start conversations.

Rising to Quality Expectations

Marketers who are familiar with creating video content, but unfamiliar with Instagram, will face an obstacle in that Instagram only allows uploads from mobile devices. This could make it difficult to maintain the same level of quality.

Influencers, brands and Instagram users in general who are not familiar with video production and editing may find that there is a learning curve to creating longer videos that are at the same quality level as the photos and short clips they had been producing. This will result in an increased demand for simplified mobile editing apps which can make that curve less steep.

Editing is likely to be more important on Instagram than it has been on YouTube or Facebook. This is due to the length of videos still being limited – meaning there is literally no time to waste – and the higher quality expectations as noted earlier.

Instagram is attempting to meet this demand itself. In addition to increasing the length of the videos users can post, they also brought back a previously discarded feature which gives users the ability to stitch together multiple videos stored in their camera rolls.

There are also mobile editing apps, such as FilmoraGo by Wondershare, which are attempting to provide easy and feature-rich solutions for mobile videographers. FilmoraGo, in specific, offers content marketers the kinds of features that will likely be expected by audiences on Instagram, such as animated titles, royalty free music, filters and motion graphics and much more, all in an easy to use interface. It’s quickly becoming the go-to choice for Instagram video.

Another reason editing will become important is the recent algorithm update. Rather than just showing users posts in chronological order, the new Instagram algorithm is intended to favor quality content. It is hard to say how quality is measured, but it is a fair guess to say that user engagement is a factor.

Posting a large quantity of content that may have been decent, but not truly remarkable, used to work for brands because it was guaranteed to show up in the chronological feed of anybody who followed them. There is no longer any such guarantee. This has marketers in a slight panic, although it need not. So long as a brand is prepared to focus on creating high quality engaging video content it should be able to position itself well on the changing platform of Instagram.

The post Video Marketing Expert Weighs in on Instagram Video Length Extension appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

An early participant in the Instagram Partner Program, we’re told that Brand Networks tracked a variety of metrics related to spend and performance throughout the first quarter of the year and found that 58 percent of the impressions the company served on Instagram were video ads.

Advertisers are also witnessing improved performance for their ad dollars in terms of cost-per-impression, and a few select industries have proven to be the most dramatic early adopters.

“We witnessed rapid adoption of Instagram in the last half of 2015, and it’s continued to grow at lightning speed in 2016,” said Jamie Tedford, CEO and founder, Brand Networks. “As brands invest more heavily in Instagram, we’re starting to uncover valuable insights about the most strategic ways to use this platform. Among our customers, video has become the most prevalent form of advertising on Instagram, driving increased engagement and ROI for brands. We’re also noticing some interesting vertical-specific trends, as companies in industries like telecom take advantage of real-time events to augment their television advertising strategies.”

To learn more, check out the report here.

The post Video the ‘New Normal’ as Instagram Advertising Soars appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.