Getting Social With Shayna: September in Review

And just like that, another month is behind us! September brought back-to-school, the first day of fall, and some exciting social media happenings.

Welcome to the second edition of Getting Social With Shayna, a monthly recap of the social media updates and news that matters most to your business, and what to do about it.

Instagram Launches Shopping in Stories

You’re probably already are that we are HUGE fans of Instagram stories here at Citrine Marketing. This is one of the biggest areas of social media growth in 2018, and this latest launch proves that. Instagram continues to put a ton of effort and resources to growing stories—and it’s working!

If you sell products online, you should be very excited about the latest Instagram update. Mid-month, they launched the feature of shopping in stories.

Image via Instagram

If you have an existing online store (most of our clients use Shopify) and already connected to Instagram (i.e. you can tag products in your feed posts), you should now also have the ability to tag products in your stories.

So why is this so great? In short, it creates the opportunity for the buyer journey to begin on stories, which previously was only possible through swipe up. I recommend that you retailers jump on this in a big way (without getting overly salesy about it, that is!).

Instagram Co-founders Out

A big change was announced at Instagram this month—it’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger—have resigned. While this isn’t an update that any of us can do anything about, it’s one to note.

These two incredible minds built what would become to “the jewel of Facebook,” as the New York Times referred to it. Instagram is by far my favorite social media platform, so I’m admittedly bummed about this end of an era, and slightly concerned about why they left and what this means for the platform.

Given the changes, I think it will be interesting to see what changes within the next six months to a year. Maybe all good things—but we’ll just have to wait to find out!

Good Reads

Research Tells You How to Pick Better Images for Social Media
Content Marketing Institute

TL; DR

We know the value of imagery on social media—there is no disputing that. But beyond that, how exactly can you know which imagery is going to perform best? Thanks to this research, we now know!

Here are some insights to note:

• Show a body part such as a hand or ankle preferred. These partial body images performed 29% better than images with a full person and 10% better than images without a person.

• Go bright, clear, lively, and original. images heavily liked on Facebook tended to display four qualities: brightness, clarity, liveliness, and ingenuity.

• Successful Instagram posts tend to have the following properties:

  • Brighter images

  • Images with a lot of white space or background space

  • Colors toward the blue end of the spectrum

  • Single dominant color

  • Low saturation images, with relatively gray, faded, or pastel colors

  • Images with a lot of texture

4 Ways Marketers Can Get Started with A/B Testing
Wistia via The Daily Carnage

TL; DR

A/B testing (AKA split testing) is an effective way to determine which variant of a test resonates most with an audience based on a set of chosen metrics. These tests allow marketers to learn on a granular level — even the smallest change can make a huge impact on conversion rates, sign ups, or other key metrics.

Here are a few ideas for what you can test on social media:

• Posting frequency — How many times a day are you sharing posts?

• Timing of posts — What hours of the day work better for engagement?

• Media type — What type of content resonates most with your audience?

• Thumbnails — For non-autoplaying content, which thumbnail attracts more clicks?

• Post copy — Is it better to be straightforward with your copy or more descriptive?

How Instagram Rose Into a Cultural Powerhouse
New York Times

TL; DR

“For all the behaviors it inspires, the app has remained a primary way to keep in touch with friends, and maybe kill a minute or two in the line at the grocery store. It even works as a dating app.” I love this tribute to Instagram and it’s place in our lives. No big takeaways other than the commentary on this culture phenomenon.