As many of you already know, the Instagram Photo Sharing app has taken the world by storm over the past two years. Boasting 30+ million users even without an Android app (which was now just recently released), Instagram has been getting everyone’s attention.  This includes Facebook, who just purchased the company for right around $1 Billion.

With Instagram having been named Apple’s App of the year for 2011, then acquired by Facebook (there may be some big integration plans in the future), and the new addition of the Android app that is continuing to massively boost their user base, it’s important to understand how to utilize the app in intelligent and creative ways to help boost your brand’s relationship with its consumers.  Take a look at these 4 tips that can help get your brand on the way to building a strong Instagram community!

1.  Post engaging content & know your audience

Instagram revolves around one main concept, and one thing that makes it such a huge success: the pictures! People love looking at different photos, and it requires minimal effort to analyze an image (as opposed to reading a body of text).  With over 250 million photos posted a day, it’s important that when posting images to Instagram you are selecting ones that are visually stunning, original, and most importantly ones that your consumer base can relate to in some shape or form. When using Instagram you want your users to react to your image (whether they like or comment on your image) to help spread your photo and build your Instagram network. Red Bull does a great job of posting relevant and engaging content on their feed frequently.
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If you follow our Facebook page, you may have noticed that early last week, we quietly marked the 10-year anniversary of envisionit media, inc. We’ll be celebrating properly as the year goes on (so be sure to keep up with us here and on Facebook and Twitter for updates). Meanwhile, I thought I’d take a look back at a few notable differences between the digital marketing landscape a decade ago and today.

It wouldn’t be a very quick read if I included every single difference, so these are just my faves. Enjoy the walk down memory lane and provide your own memories in the comments!

OMG, what did we do without Facebook?
That’s right…10 years ago, Facebook didn’t. even. exist. Gasp! Social media was barely even a phrase. Yes, the idea of social media has been alive for some time—think instant messenger and message boards. But the marketing world’s favorite buzzword of the last few years didn’t quite yet have today’s popularity and meaning back in 2002.

And how quickly the space has grown! In 2002, Friendster was introduced. Myspace followed in 2003. Flickr and Digg hit in 2004, and that same year the college scene was introduced to The Facebook. Twitter was born in 2006. StumbleUpon, FourSquare, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest…all these social networks later, and companies now commonly have dedicated social media marketing roles and entire departments.

Phone is ringin’…
I happened to graduate from college in December 2001 (which is why I know to follow up this section’s subtitle with “…oh my god.” Name the reference in the comments if you know it!) and got my first cell phone a few months later in 2002. It was the standard Nokia phone that everyone else had. It made calls, it received calls, that was about it. Some fancy people had PDAs at the time, but it would be a few years before Blackberrys found popularity and exactly 5 years until the first iPhone was introduced. And now? There’s an app for that! And QR codes, geo-fencing, mobile-friendly websites, mobile SEO…and the word on the street for a few years now has been that the future is mobile marketing.
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Pinterest is the fastest ever growing social media website. It was the fastest site ever to surpass the 10 million user mark. Of those users, 80% are women and 55% of those women are aged 25-44. Pinterest users are spending on average 14+ minutes a day and 98 minutes a month on the site, which is only lower than Facebook and Tumblr (ComScore). These are the numbers.

Does your brand’s target audience fit into the above mentioned demographic? If it does, you should definitely consider opening a Pinterest account. Women are flocking to Pinterest and using it to create recipe books, inspiration boards, plan trips, search for clothes, plan their weddings, and find and share fitness tips.

Getting Your Brand On Pinterest
When setting up your brand on Pinterest, you will want to make it personalized. Create your own inspirational pin boards that don’t include your products, but can go along with your theme.  Show the consumers that you’re more than just a brand and that you get inspiration from elsewhere.  Pinterest is not about self promotion, it is about sharing what you love or are interested in.

Now, you’re a business, so its important to present your products on Pinterest in a light that users will repin. Use creative photos of your products, recipes, documents, etc. Don’t just use stock images that are boring, Pinterest is meant to help in the creative process so Be Creative! You will want to consistently be posting (we recommend 50% brand, 50% community outreach). Don’t just post once a week, post every day. “Like” other people’s pins; it’s a community, so be active. The more you post quality items on Pinterest, the more likely your items will be repinned.
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Every organization wants to achieve success in digital marketing. There is nothing better than reporting a 300% increase in conversion. In order to get there, you need to take the necessary steps. It starts with an approach towards web analytics that is designed for success.

Let me first define web analytics: it’s the collaboration between analysts, web developers and management on the collection of web data for the purpose of analysis and optimization.

Having experience in implementing some of the best web analytics platforms such as Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends and Coremetrics, I know that no out-of-box solution fits your exact business model. All web analytics platforms will start collecting data when implemented, but that data isn’t necessarily reflective of your company’s business goals or online KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This is why web analytics is a collaboration between multiple teams, to measure the KPIs that matter to your business. It is valuable to have a consulting partner who is able to suggest the best way to obtain the KPIs that matter to your company’s bottom line.

Once you start obtaining data from your site, it is time to analyze and make a hypothesis. It is important to collect the most fact-based data from your web analytics platform, otherwise your analysis and hypothesis are going to fail. This is by far the most important job of the web developer and the analyst, making sure your data is accurate. No analytics platform data will match a competitor’s system, as they collect data differently. However, conversions should match 97%-99% accuracy of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system or database.
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Google has introduced Real-Time traffic data to all Google Analytics users, allowing you to view all traffic on your site as it’s happening in…real time!

Real-Time Analytics allows you to view who is entering and leaving your site, if they are a new or returning visitor, and most importantly what traffic source they are coming from.

Since Real-Time will define the source of a visitor, this is very valuable for marketers and business owners who want to know how well an ad campaign or social media post is performing. They can now gauge the immediate impact of those marketing efforts. For example, if you tweet about a new product on your site, you can immediately see how many site visitors were driven by that particular content. This will allow you to help pinpoint your  marketing strategy,  by allowing you to find what type of messages are the most effective and what time to post to drive the most traffic to your site.

Make sure you capitalize on this new feature, and use it to maximize your advertising campaigns to their full potential!

Check out some screen shots of the new Real-Time Google Analytics in action below:

Social media has become a huge part of every company’s marketing mix, whether you are a local business or a nationwide brand. It is important to have a branded Facebook page and a branded Twitter handle to communicate with your consumers directly. Many companies are utilizing Facebook to its maximum potential, but are you using Twitter to its full potential as well?

According to this article by Mashable, Twitter has over 100 million monthly active users, 50% of whom are signing in every day. That is a HUGE audience. But sometimes just pushing your Facebook posts to your Twitter account doesn’t cut it. So let me share some tips to help you maximize your success in the Twitterverse.

1. Utilize free Twitter tools

There are a lot of free tools that can help you utilize Twitter to its maximum potential. My two favorite are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. These tools not only provide easy management of multiple accounts or brands, but will also greatly help with the other tips proved below.

2. Set up relevant live searches

When using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck you have the ability to set up live streams of searches using whatever terms you desire.  As an example, lets say you are a hotel in the Chicagoland area. You can set up a search for “Chicago Hotels” in your Tweetdeck account. You will then have a live stream of all Twitter users tweeting about Chicago hotels, hotels in Chicago, etc. So if someone tweets, “What is the best hotel to stay at in Chicago?” you can quickly reach out to him or her directly with a response in a matter of seconds.
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Did you update your site to HTML5, while updating your meta data to reflect the new SEO keyword research done in AdWords, that will best help the webpages PR and PPC quality score so the keywords appear above the fold in the SERPS. Did you have trouble understanding all of those interactive marketing acronyms and terms used in the above sentence? Most people do and that is why we are here to help you have a better understanding of the world of web marketing!

Web Marketing: Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, and is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

HTML5: Hypertext Markup Language version 5 or in simpler terms, the way your website is most likely built or going to be built in the near future

Meta data: data that provides information about the other data managed within an application or environment or in simpler terms, background data on a webpage that helps the search engines figure out what your webpage is about.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing):  is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): can be referred to as organic, natural, or algorithmic rankings and it is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines or in simpler terms, the optimizing of a webpage by changing known factors that best help said web page rank higher in Google.

Keyword Research: is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.
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As we close in on a year since launching the new ROOF on theWit website, we’re happy to announce that our hard work is being recognized by some of the top industry professionals. Last week we received two awards: the Summit International Marketing Effectiveness Award and the Best Leisure Website WebAward.

The WebAward signified our ability to not only deliver a best in class website design, but a site that communicated the overall goals and objectives of the ROOF team. After the site was launched, our web marketing team took over that vision, and worked with theWit to create and implement marketing programs that drove overall awareness, traffic, and conversions to the site using various digital channels. Again, we were able to create a best in class marketing program that has sustained ROOF through the cold winter months and prepped them for the best summer yet!

Congrats to everyone at EIM that worked on ROOF this past year, and congrats to our friends at theWit, as it was a collaborative effort that allowed us to achieve these successes.

You know what they say, “All good things must come to an end…” While I’m sad to say that next week marks my last week as a web marketing intern here at EIM, I’m proud to say that I’ve truly enjoyed my time here over the past few months. To say I’ve learned a lot during my summer internship here would be more than an understatement.

Working at a small interactive agency like EIM really gave me the opportunity to gain a lot of hands-on experience. I got to work on several client tasks such as search engine optimization, pay-per click ad management, social media management, and weekly / quarterly reporting. While working closely with the web marketing team, I’ve learned all about the different aspects of search engine optimization including keyword analysis and research, meta-tag writing, content enhancement, video optimization, and link building as well as how to effectively utilize various online marketing tools and resources like social media, keyword tools, and Google Analytics. In addition to learning more about interactive marketing, my internship at EIM has also helped me develop my skills in collaboration, time management, internal communications, and problem solving.

Overall I feel like my time here at EIM has been a great success. I came into this internship as a fresh college grad with very limited knowledge and experience in interactive marketing and now after spending my summer here at EIM, I feel confident and well-prepared to take on the interactive marketing world as a full-time professional! Thank you to everyone at EIM for making my internship here a great experience…I will be sure to keep touch!

…And to close out my last blog post as an EIM intern, I’ve compiled some helpful tips for students or recent grads looking to make the most of their internship with an interactive agency:
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