Tag: Digital Marketing Company

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Branding Services

7 Things every graphic designer wishes they knew when they were starting out

professional graphic designers

The human brain is hardwired for visual content. We can process visual data 60000 times faster than text or audio. From shapes, colours, lines, to textures every element leaves an impact. Visual storytellers or simply put graphic designers play a very important role in a brand’s journey, making a splash (pun intended, sure sure) with their creativity and art.

We asked the creative minds at one of the best digital marketing companies in Ahmedabad, about the 10 things they wish they knew when they started their journey as professional graphic designers in Ahmedabad.

Master the “tools”

When it comes to designing, it’s not just about thinking creatively. It is very important to have in-depth knowledge about the software and tools required to edit, design and create.

Budding designers can learn the ropes of designing from Adobe’s design tutorials, and online courses on SkillShare polish their skills on tools of the trade like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.

Sketching skills come in handy

A graphic designer needs to think creatively, and nothing stimulates creative thinking like sketching does. Even the National Center of Biotechnology Information agrees. Sketching brings forth clarity to ideas and thoughts.

These rough drawings allow the designers to play around with their ideas, usage of elements, the flow of colours and placement of content. These sketches also aid in showcase an idea to the clients for approval before digital designing begins. This way it can help save time.

ALWAYS have a backup

One of the most important things to be mindful of as a designer and content creator. While this point may be a subject of many jokes, it is painful when you’re not able to retrieve something beautiful, created with much passion and hard work, just because you forgot to take a backup of the file.

Always keep a copy of your work, downloaded fonts, elements, and other content on a hard drive or any form of detachable digital storage device. Even storing it on cloud is a great option and increases accessibility, but also brings along with it the risk of lack of data privacy.

Creative block is a thing!

There will be days when you wake up and just can’t find the same mojo and inspiration with which you create designs every day. It is completely OKAY to feel this way, and it is called a creative block.

Getting out of this phase may look difficult, but it’s not the end of the road. Go back to your previous work, look at what you have created and to reignite that lost spark.

Sometimes, even looking at the work of other fellow designers, can inspire you to break the block.

Build a portfolio

As a digital marketing company in Ahmedabad, we always ask for a portfolio of work from candidates who wish to work with us.

Every designer must have a well-presented and updated portfolio consisting of their best works, adding any testimonials they’ve received from their clients. A portfolio is a sneak peek into a designer’s brain and an overview of his/her design style and language. A beautiful and thought-out portfolio makes you stand out and increases your chance of getting the job or project.

Be open to criticism

You cannot make everyone happy. No matter how much thought, hard work and creativity you’ve poured into a project, there will be naysayers.

But not all feedback is negative. In Fact we believe that all feedback has at least 1% truth in it. Some of this can be constructive and help you grow as a designer. Instead of blanket rejecting all feedback, accept, listen, and take in the bits that can help you improve. It also helps one show their intent to grow, ego-lessnes regarding their own work and a willingness to try new things in their profession.

Always seek an advance while freelancing

Graphic designing is one of the many jobs which has the benefit of working from home. But with remote jobs, there comes along with it challenges of not being paid in full for the job done.

Clients may offer you tasks, assignments or even seek samples of your work before green lighting the project.

But it is important to be assertive and inform the other party about your terms and conditions. One of which should be to get paid at least 50% of the total project cost in advance. Genuine clients who appreciate your work will agree, and it ensures both the parties fulfil their part of the contract, now that a monetary transaction has taken place.

ALWAYS Stay curious!

Never shy away from asking questions, trying to find new things, and learning new skills. Because curiosity may have killed the cat but it definitely helped the designer become better one day.

Before working on the design, the designer should always go back to the client to clarify any doubts he/she has in their mind. It’s true sometimes it feels like only a NASA scientist can decipher what the client wants, but asking as many questions will always help.

BONUS TIP : Don’t be afraid to push yourself outside of your comfort zone! Keep learning!

If you are a budding graphic designer who’s looking to work on some elevated ideas with a bunch of cool folks and cooler clients, drop us your work portfolio and CV at hr.florafountain@gmail.com. And if you’re among the ones looking for such creative minds and professional graphic designers in Ahmedabad to work for your brand, drop us a hola on hello@flora.ffteam.in.

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Social Media

Engage with them! How interactive content helps a brand grow online

How interactive content helps a brand grow online

Pick 6 Horror Movies and We’ll Guess Your Biggest Fear with 98% Accuracy
Heels or Flats: How do you dress to impress on date night?

We all have come across such articles on the internet. And in most cases, have clicked on the link and answered all the questions, either out of curiosity or interest in the brand. This is interactive content at play, on web and social media.

What is interactive content?

Any form of content that encourages the user or follower to not just passively consume content, but participate and interact with the brand, is called interactive content. It can include quizzes, surveys, polls, riddles and calculators added into articles, social media posts and stories.

It is an interesting and fun approach to connect and interact with the customer, pick her brain on what they think about the brand, its products and in some cases, even collect data from them for future marketing activities. And anything more than just reading text is always more engaging.

In order to provide the best social media marketing services in Ahmedabad, Flora Fountain has always believed that content must engage, educate and delight the brand’s user.

BuzzFeed – Killing it on the internet with interaction

Everyone knows BuzzFeed. While there might be different reasons why people like them, the one thing that makes them stand out in the market in terms of content, are their interactive posts, quizzes and surveys. According to BuzzFeed, 96% of users who start their sponsored quiz, complete it. That is a very high completion rate!

buzzfeed-landing-page

And the brand has been successful in generating engagement, user interaction and data collection because their content targets specific audiences, it is created to be mobile-friendly and incorporates a lot of visual elements.

It’s very simple, create content that makes storytelling a conversation, rather than one-way communication, where the consumer is only reading and gaining information but cannot interact back.

Like, this FRIENDS S1-based quiz that takes one on a nostalgic trip back to the teens. What’s fun is that they become addictive after a point.

Benefits of interactive content

Increases consumer engagement

When a brand creates any form of interactive content, it is seeking its users’ opinion about the topic. It shows that the brand truly values the consumer and they are open to accepting their users’ ideas, thoughts, and feedback.

Instagram-reel

And no, it’s not rocket science to create engaging content online. And one of the best examples of it is this great use of the Poll Stickers feature by youth fashion brand Forever21 about their footwear trends.

More attention from the audience

When a brand regularly creates interesting interactive content on their social media platforms, it creates a great recall value in the minds of its followers and users. They begin to participate in the quizzes, puzzles and polls regularly and look forward to the next such post.

One such example is of Falguni Vastrapur on Instagram. Its digital marketing company in Ahmedabad regularly creates funny, engagement inducing content on its Instagram pages.

word-puzzal

Most of the participants in their comments are their customers, who are delighted that their favourite snack brand interacts with them like their next door friendly neighbour.

More data captured for optimised lead generation and conversion rates

fusion sweets brand

Interactive content doesn’t always have to be just This or That type of polls and quizzes. They can also be a simple Ask Me Anything (AMA) or DM for Price Request types of questions too.

Ahmedabad-based fusion sweets brand Bellezoe has been known to be keeping its stories interactive in a way that it gets to capture customer data like their social media handles, and in some cases, their contact details too.

With the database of interested users on Instagram, they keep these ‘users’ or prospective customers updated about their latest products, offers and much more.

Types of interactive content

Instagram Polls & Surveys

Instagram is a goldmine of interactive content. Especially its stories, with multiple stickers which offer interactive tools for users to engage with the brand. Some of its popular stickers include the Poll, Question, Rate Me and Link Me.

Some of the top brands from around the world, like Forever 21, Ray Ethnic and local brands like Bellezoe use such stickers to engage with their followers regularly.

Quizzes & Puzzles

As mentioned earlier, BuzzFeed is the champion when it comes to Quizzes. Almost every other media company or brand all over the world uses BuzzFeed’s Quiz template or a modified version of it in their content.

LIVE Q&A sessions

Many celebrities and even brands love using the LIVE feature on Instagram and Facebook to host direct Q&A sessions with their followers in real time.

Some of our favourite LIVE interactive sessions include musician Ehsaan Qureshi’s late-night Instagram LIVEs during the pandemic-induced lockdowns where he’d invite budding artistes and singers to join him on the same screen and perform for his followers. A similar activity was done by the Instagram page Your Food Lab, where the chef would host a Cook With Me with his followers on LIVE, while answering their questions and having fun chats with them.

Calculators

Feed in the data and get to see the results. One of the best and professional ways to interact with consumers and users is to provide them with an easy to use calculator to find out answers to their questions themselves.

It not only improves their engagement with the brand, but increases the chances of them taking the conversation forward and getting converted into a potential sale/business. One of our favourite calculators is the one below, from Ahmedabad-based Investment Advisory firm White Ocean.

sip-dashboard

How to plan your interactive content?

It’s not rocket science. Simply follow this checklist below, created by digital marketers of Flora Fountain, one of the best social media marketing services in Ahmedabad, follow.

    • Outline your objectives clearly
    • Use the language your audience interacts in
    • Keep it simple as you can
    • Keep it mobile friendly
    • Collect & store customer data for future

Easy-peasy? No? Worry not. We’re here for you! Drop us an ‘Allo on hello@florafountain.in and we’ll help you create such amazing, interactive content for your brands too!

Categories
SEO

On and Off: Your brand’s guide to creating an SEO strategy

off-page SEO and on-page SEO

93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine like Google.

75% of users never go past the first page of search results.

Knowing such facts is one thing, but internalising them and then acting on them is what helps a brand really shine online.

SEO or search engine optimisation empowers brands to do that. The process of optimising a website to improve its visibility and rank in search engine results is known as SEO. It is a detailed plan which on execution helps a website improve its search engine ranking in order to capture more organic traffic. This plan is built on two different foundational pillars like on-page and off-page SEO. In order to fully optimise a brand’s SEO strategy, a thorough understanding of these two pillars become extremely important.

The difference between on-page and off-page is quite simple. On-page as the name suggests are all the activities done ‘on the pages of your website’. Whereas off-page means all the activities done ‘beyond the pages of your website.’ Of course it’s more than just these two lines.

Read on as Flora Fountain, a top SEO company in Ahmedabad, India, is here to help you get a better understanding of all that SEO jazz.

Let’s jump in!

On-page SEO

The process of optimising individual web pages in order to rank higher and garner more relevant organic traffic in search engines such as Google and Yahoo is known as On-page SEO. It entails optimising both the content and HTML source code of a page. From creating content with keywords, optimising title tags, meta tags, and internally linking relevant pages as per the URL structure, everything that takes place on the website falls under on-page SEO.

Content and keywords

You might already know all about content and keywords, but a refresher never hurts!

Content is indeed the king QUEEN! Most brands, despite knowing this, fail to optimise content. SEO includes looking for the keywords that your audience is using to search for information on the internet, and then creating, optimising, and regularly publishing website content around these keywords. Content also includes the kind of images you put out on your website. So you need to optimise them as well. Make sure that they are not larger than they need to be and are in the right format (JPG and PNG).

The experienced SEO team at Flora Fountain, the best digital marketing company in Ahmedabad, India, also understands how to optimise existing content, in order for a brand to increase its organic traffic.

title and meta description

Title Tag and Meta description

The main heading or the title of the web page is a title tag. And the short description that appears under it is a meta description. Title tag comes up on the search engine results page (SERP) and is a very important factor for the success of on-page SEO. And because Google search engine usually picks up only about 65 letters or characters from the title tag, a brand needs to choose every word, even letter, very wisely! Meta tags on the other hand describe the content on that page but, more importantly, it’s written to help your web page stand out in the list of SERP results. Keep the meta description under 155 characters to ensure your entire description is shown in search results.

Internal Linking

Connecting any link from one page on the website to another page on the same website is known as internal linking. Linking to various relevant pages on the website makes it easier for search engines like Google to understand the relationship between pages on the site and to crawl everything. Internal linking also provides a more immersive user experience that can keep the visitors engaged for a longer time. Though, unlike backlinks, internal links don’t boost the website’s domain authority. But, they funnel existing domain authority built using backlinks and spread it across the website.

Mobile friendly website

A website designed to show the most optimised view as per a device’s screen size, ranging from smartphones to tablets, is known as a responsive website. The overwhelming majority of website users browse on their phones, and yet 44% brands still do not have mobile-friendly websites. Google too favours mobile-friendly websites, pushing up the ranking of the website if it is mobile-friendly. These are all the considerations that go into website development when you hire a top SEO company like Flora Fountain to work on your website re-design from day 1. Just like this Ahmedabad-based school did!

Another thing to keep in mind is that SEO results are different when it comes to mobile pages. A website does not automatically inherit the main site’s SEO ranking on mobile. The search results on mobile are calculated based on the site’s mobile page speed.

URL structure and SSL HTTPS

URL structure is a very crucial part of any website. URLs with relevant keywords allow search engines to crawl from page to page on a website very smoothly. This also makes navigation more efficient for visitors. While creating a URL, a brand should always use the primary keyword for the page and avoid repetitive words to keep it short.

Similarly, an SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, certificate is also very important as it improves the website’s page security and visibility. With the help of SSL, the likelihood of interference of a third party in between a website’s server and a visitor’s server, decreases, guaranteeing that the content on the website is safe. Moreover, because of this search engines give ranking preference to sites that are SSL enabled.

Website Speed optimization

1,2,3,4,5! If your site takes this much time to load its content completely, chances are that 90% of users will abandon your site before the website loads. This metric is tracked as the bounce rate. And the more time your website takes to load, the higher the bounce rate. While crawling, Google correlates a high bounce rate with lower user engagement which affects your ranking as well. In fact, as per Google guidelines for developers, the site speed does impact search rankings.

So while most website design agencies might not give enough importance to this, from an SEO and user experience perspective, your website must load in under three seconds, so that with the help of SEO services and other on-page and off-page optimization, your website can come up ranking high in Google.

Breadcrumb navigation and Alt Text

Some other important parts of on-page optimisation include adding breadcrumb navigation and alt text. Breadcrumbs inform the website visitors to navigate through the site. It shows them where they are on the website. Moreover, it enables Google to understand the structure of the site. While alt text is a word or phrase that can be attributed to a picture file to help ensure it gets indexed and makes the website more accessible for reading software. Both these factors make a website with alt text for its images rank highly.

As you might have guessed, On-page SEO optimisation is something you have complete control over through your website’s code and content, however that’s not always the case for off-page SEO. So what exactly is off-page SEO optimisation?

Off-page SEO

As mentioned before, this refers to all the strategies and activities planned and executed, outside of your website, to bring traffic to it. It is tremendously valuable because it tells search engines that the website is important to others on the web. Every link that a site receives acts as an endorsement from another source. It shows the quality of the website. This is usually done through backlinks.

Backlinks

Also-known-as inbound links or incoming links, Backlinks are links that are created when one website links to another. They help a website gain more traffic and it also serves as one of Google’s top three ranking factors.

Imagine, a company with a brand new website. And no one links to it and it doesn’t submit the website Google. It can’t be found because search engines will take forever to find it, if at all. But if multiple other websites, especially those with a high ranking or domain authority, link to it, search engines can crawl through that link and index the pages. If this sounds awfully a lot like a popularity contest straight out of high school, that’s because it kind of is. Being linked to by the “popular kids” or high-trafficked websites, usually ranks your website high in search engine’s crawling eyes, and eventually bodes well for your website traffic.

Backlinks

Create. Earn. Build.

These are the three ways to get backlinks.

Creating means when someone manually adds links to their site from other sites. This can be done by regularly leaving blog comments or replying on forums. Earned backlinks or organic backlinks occur when people discover a site’s content after googling it or through social media and choose to link it in their site. This usually happens when the content on your website is rich with information or entertainment, or another quality that the reader highly values. Last but not the least, building backlinks means when a website owner contacts other website owners or editors and requests them to link to their website. This usually works as a barter between websites.

Local SEO

According to studies, more than 50% of ‘near me’ searches result in a store visit and 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information. So your brand needs to show up when someone searches for the service you provide in your area. That means you need to show up in your local google searches. But how does one go about it? With ‘Local SEO’, which helps brands to be more visible in local research on search engines like Google.

As part of local SEO, a citation is an online mention of your business on another’s website, that links not only the name but also the address and phone number of your business. It consists of your business’s name, address, and phone number or NAP. You can submit these citations to the listing sites or can hire an agency to do it for you. These citations work as proof for Google’s algorithm to find out that your brand is a local business.

Social media

Over 93% of regular internet users log into social media. So as a brand make sure to create social media accounts for your business on the platforms where you know your target group is active.

And though it is true that the likes and comments on social media don’t directly impact the website rank, it still enables you to promote your site to 93% of users who are either new or existing customers of your brand. When they see your brand on social media, they get an opening to contact you, and you get to answer them regularly.

Another thing that you can do is join hands with the right influencers and seek collaborations to promote your product or service. When influencers successfully create a buzz for your product, Google takes note of this online chatter and if there are enough shares, they’ll start to prioritise your content over others. Similarly, blog posts are a great way to put out new keywords with more recency, as blogs get indexed by search engines. In such cases, it makes sense to go with a top digital agency, with social media services, content-writing services and SEO services in-house so all the functions can work together without friction.

Reviews

It should come as no surprise that people do a fair share of research on the product they are about to purchase. And 88% of customers trust reviews posted by others online. So the more the reviews, the more your brand establishes itself as a trustworthy online brand among your existing and potential clients.

And according to Google’s local quality guidelines, responding to such reviews can improve your business visibility.

Still on the fence about SEO? Let the SEO experts, at one of the best digital marketing companies and SEO companies in Ahmedabad, India help you get a better understanding, and craft a smart and persistent SEO strategy for you. Give us a call now to inquire about our SEO services.

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Digital Marketing Agency

Social Listening: Why You Must Know What Customers Are Saying Online

Social Listening

3.6 billion in 2020 to 4.55 billion people in 2021!

No, that’s not the increase in population but the increase recorded in social media users.

4.55 billion people, or about 57.6% of the global population, today use social media.

users to pay more attention

This ginormous population is constantly interacting online, collectively creating (and bringing down) trends, fashion, memes and also brands! Whether they are B2B, B2C, B2B2C, every brand today needs to know what people are talking about them and their competitors online. They also need to know where to find the users who are talking about them, and which users to pay more attention to.

How? Through social listening.

Let one of the best digital marketing companies in India, Flora Fountain help you hit a gold mine for customer service and product development through social listening.

Social Listening

Social Listening is a strategy used by brands to monitor and track all the public conversations taking place on any social media platforms related to their brand or product. These conversations or mentions are analyzed for insights to evaluate customers’ feedback.

In simpler words, it helps a brand understand why, where, and how online conversations are happening, and what people think of the brand.

Why do brands need it?

Social listening can help brands understand and thrive in a dynamic industry that morphs faster than a Power Ranger.

A. Brands can learn about their audience & create better content

If a brand actively practices social listening, it can learn a lot about what its customers desire. The strategy helps the brand discover where their audience is most active and which social networks they predominantly use. Also, brands can understand what their audience wants, where their interests lie, and questions they have, based on certain topics and keywords. Knowing where your company falls behind and knowing where you exceed customer expectations will allow you to perfect the areas you’re already succeeding in and build a plan around the areas that are in need of improvement.

B. Brands can build better social media marketing campaigns

Once brands learn the various important aspects about their audiences, this information can help build a better digital marketing campaign. Because the best digital marketing companies will always make campaigns focusing on topics that are relevant to the target audience, so they sit up and pay attention.

Social listening helps a brand uncover such relevant topics by analysing all the social conversations based upon such keywords.

C. Brands can get a better understanding of their competition

Social listening also enables a brand to get a better understanding of how audiences feel about their competitors and the industry in general. This data gives an insight into where the brand fits in the market. It might also reveal competition, direct or indirect, that the brand didn’t even know existed.

D. Brands can find relevant social influencers

Finding the right influencer for a brand is not a piece of cake. But social listening helps brand identify people with a strong following on social media and other online platforms, that match their target audience. Because when the right people talk about the brand to the right audience, chances of higher sales and customer retention increases.

But how does one practice “Social Listening”?

Users are unafraid of sharing their opinions online. So, in order to keep up with them, a brand must listen to them. This can be done by either hiring a team or a social media agency to keep a tab on trends, or by using specialized software or online platforms that offer social listening tools, that give businesses access to more detailed forms of information.

Read More: Tips For Writing Social Media Captions

1) Start with a ‘Goal’ & know whom to listen to

What is it that the brand wants to achieve with promotional activities on social media? Higher sales? Explore new audiences? Improve customer retention or form a new channel of sales/revenue? Once this is clear, it becomes the GOAL of the brand.

Next, the brand must figure out where should they put its ear on. In simpler terms, a brand should know which platforms they need to pay attention to. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google searches, LinkedIn, etc.

Thirdly, how to identify these conversations. Through direct mentions of the brand, social media handles, and/or product names, hashtags, campaign names and relevant keywords, names of important people in the company, and topics related to the brand. And all these points to study the competitors as well.

Starbucks

A great example of it is the following post, where Starbucks was not tagged with its official twitter handle, yet the brand was able to identify it online thanks social listening and respond to it, thus improving their customer engagement.

2) Empathize with the audience & respond fast

The audience needs to feel that they are being heard.

And in order to do that, the brand needs to engage a little more with its audience. Be it negative or positive, the brand needs to empathize with the audience.

brand gets positive feedback

If a brand gets positive feedback, then it needs to figure out what the audience loved about it and build marketing campaigns on that basis. And if the brand gets negative feedback, it needs to know the pain point of the audience in order to solve it.

3) Choose the right listening tools!

As kids, everyone is taught how active listening is important, but when it comes to brands, they haven’t always had the right tools to do so at a large scale. But now, there are many that can help brands in collecting and analyzing data in an easier way. Here are some that work across major social media networks:

Sprout Social Report

Sprout Social:

This tool provides brands with in-depth analytics and insights for organized social listening. One of its features shows the hashtags and topics that are trending across the mentions of the brand and replies on behalf of the connected brand. The name of the people and brands that most frequently talk about and get mentioned with a particular brand surface on the tool.

Hootsuite:

Brands can use this tool to monitor conversations, keywords, and mentions, along with hashtags, and respond to them. The tool helps a brand to analyze many real-time conversations taking place on digital platforms.

Hootsuite

HubSpot:

hubspot report

Brands can monitor social interactions and connect with the right people. It allows a brand to link data from social media with contacts in their database in order to create custom keyword monitoring, email alerts, mention notifications, etc.

Other than these, there are tools like Lately, Brand24, Brandwatch, Buffer, TweetDeck, Mention, which come with comprehensive features to help brands collect brand mentions across major social media networks.

As one of the top full-service digital agencies, Flora Fountain provides digital marketing services in Ahmedabad, India, and across the world. Drop us a message to plan some insightful social listening strategies for your brand.

Categories
Branding Services

Brand Voice: The WHAT, WHY & HOW it matters

Branding Company

Imagine entering a family event and meeting your reticent uncle who doesn’t talk much until you ask or tell him something. But then you meet his enthusiastic world-traveller son, and you both just can’t stop talking and exchanging notes on shared interests established during the conversation! Now think about it, do you give the same attention to both of them? Are you equally engaged talking to both of them? The answer, of course, is no. Just like your uncle and cousin have different personalities and voices, on which your level of engagement with them differs, just like that, brands too can have different voices based on their personalities.

But the million-dollar question, does your brand need a voice? And is it ready to have one? But what even is a brand voice?

Read on to find out answers to these and many more questions from the best known branding and digital marketing company in Ahmedabad.

What is a brand voice?

Every brand has a defining persona that leaves a lasting impression on the audience it interacts with and the customers it serves. This happens through the various ways it communicates with them, through advertisements, social media posts, branding activities, promotions, etc. The language it uses, their flow of words, the personality it imbibes on, is what comes together to form a brand voice that makes people remember the brand and talk about it to others, hence ‘spreading the word’ about it.

How it matters…

A brand’s distinctive voice makes it consistent, memorable and recognisable. A brand increases the awareness of its product, services, ideology, mission and vision through its voice. With the digital landscape now massively crowded, it seems like a competition of who is the loudest. But when a brand maintains its consistency in voice through its words, graphics, pictures, it stands out amidst the din and people are able to identify it out of the crowd.

Defining a brand’s voice…

Don’t know what your brand should sound like? Worry not… everyone starts somewhere, even Coca Cola did. The branding and content marketing teams from one of the best branding companies in Ahmedabad has these five tips for you to figure it out and get started.

Identify the brand’s audience

Every brand must ask this question to themselves first, “Who are we serving?” This question unravels many aspects of the ideal customer a brand wants. It further brings out more questions like, what is their age, what language do they speak, where do they live, how much do they earn and spend, who do they hang out with, do they travel and where, etc…

When a brand starts to find answers to all these questions, they come up with the persona of their ideal customer, and that helps them target and speak to the right audience in the language that resonates with them. For instance, a Taj hotel will speak impeccable English in their posts, but a local café like Eleven11 in Ahmedabad would prefer using slang, puns and jokes in their communication. You get the drift…

Be consistent, and document EVERYTHING about it

The success of a well-defined brand voice lies in the consistency of its application. And to maintain this brand voice, it is important to document every important feature and aspect that defined it in the first place.

This brand voice document must mention the company and brand’s mission, vision, the personality traits of its ideal customer, their vocabulary, the brand tagline & the story behind it, some examples of the correct usage of brand language, and mistakes to avoid.

This practice will be helpful for multiple departments, from the strategist racking his brains over the next promotional campaign idea, to the rookie writer who will be writing for the brand’s social media and marketing copies, to not got astray.

Audit & Edit

Don’t know where to start yet? Simple, look at the last 6 months of promotional activity, communication, advertising and all that marketing jazz done by the brand. Study the language and the tone used in all these posts and advertisements. Identify the points where the brand received a positive response from the target audience and the ones where it didn’t create much of a flutter.

A good brand manager will notice the inconsistencies and start editing out and implementing the ideal brand voice elements from the document as mentioned above. Wondering why this happens? Different writers have different styles of writing, and when there is no structure or plan to follow, these inconsistencies in the brand language and voice start to creep in and stick out. So, always audit and edit every time you feel like the brand is losing touch with its audience.

Maintain brand tone of voice

This again brings us back to the second point, where we spoke out of consistency. And to simply put it, brand voice is WHAT a brand wants to say it, and the tone is HOW the brand says it.

It varies between audiences, and the brand voice document again comes in handy here. Since it contains a response and tone for every situation, from a glowing review to a scathing rebuke online.

It also underlines how a brand makes its announcements, from new launches, price-drops, celebrity endorsements, media features and much more. For instance, a brand like Souled Store were “excited” much to announce its tie up with YouTuber Ashish Chanchlani, while Sabyasachi’s tie up with actress Shobita Dhulipala was subdued, but both brands hit the target.

Some great examples of brands perfecting their communication voice

Coca Cola

coca cola

Down-to-earth, friendly and very positive. Ever since we all were kids, we’ve seen Coca Cola as a brand that unites, a brand that brings people together, adds life to the party and solves even the biggest crisis when two people share a Coke. It’s captivating red colours, the pristine white waves flowing through it while forming the brand name in cursive lettering has gone on to become a great symbol of friendship.

Uber

Bold yet considerate, simple and consistent. Uber’s brand voice is in true sense, a no-nonsense voice. Its communication is to the point, and audience-first. The brand knows that the people using it will be mostly young professionals wanting to reach work on time and hence can’t really wait to read a witty copy. Even the colour schemes are bold black, simple grey and clean white.

Uber

Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson

Strong, masculine and confident. Harley-Davidson has always hit the mark when it comes to promoting their bikes. The beauty of their brand voice is that

a.) It addresses its existing audience in their vocabulary, which is rugged and maybe a bit rough on the edges.

b.) It challenges the new viewers to try and be like them and show if they can handle their strong motorcycles.

It resonates very well with the tribe that believes in being rebellious and fiercely independent and believes in freedom and loyalty.

We hope this guide helps you define a distinctive voice for your brands and stand out in the crowd. Or, let the experts at Flora Fountain pick it up for you and hit it out of the park. Drop us a line on hello@flora.ffteam.in

Categories
Social Media

5 Lesser Known Features Of Instagram to Make Any Business Stand Out

Features Of Instagram

Everybody is on Instagram! With 1.386 billion people actively using the platform every day, it is the 4th most used social media platform in the world. According to us at Flora Fountain, one of India’s top digital marketing companies, Instagram is no longer just a social media platform to post pictures and videos, but an ever evolving people’s platform where people can connect, interact, stream and even shop.

And for a business to make the most out of it, here are 5 interesting but lesser known features that Instagram’s product team came up with in 2020-2021.

The Audio search tab

Everyone is reeling aka scrolling through reels. It’s true! Close to 100 million daily active users in India consume content on reels every day. It has also brought back into limelight many musical classics and become a deciding factor in new songs trending.

But the challenge was that people couldn’t recall the actual names of the songs. Now with a new search feature called Audio in the search tabs of the Explore section, anyone can simply type in either the lyrics of the song or the name of the artist and find the audio clip and its many variants on Instagram.

Instagram Audio Search Tab Reels Feat

Further, users can also see the many reels made using this specific audio clip and even use them for their own content. How does this help businesses and professional pages? The social media experts at Flora Fountain, the best digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad, say that by using popular or viral song clips on the reels, the chances of the reel ranking higher on the explore pages of people consuming similar content increases, and it becomes easily discoverable to more people on the platform.

Text translation in stories

As per Statista figures from October 2021, India has 201.1 million active users on Instagram. Instagram supports 9 Indian languages on the app for posts, stories, etc.

Now, to ensure all its viewers get to explore, see and understand what people around the world are talking about on the platform, no matter which language they use, Instagram had launched Text Translation on Stories in July 2021.

Text-Translation-on-Storie

How does this work? Every time someone sees a story with an overlayed text in a language that is different from the one set in their app, Instagram will show a “See translation” notification on the top left corner. Once users tap on the option, they will be presented with a translated panel. This feature currently supports 90 languages.

This update can be useful for brands operating in global markets. Instagram users all around the globe can now translate and understand the written text in the Instagram stories of their favorite brands. It already had this feature for its post captions, profile bios and even comments, but not many might have noticed or talked about it.

Words to Text Subtitle Sticker

Okay, now this one feature has us very excited! The words to text feature sticker on Instagram stories changes the way stories and reels are viewed. Known as caption stickers, this feature turns verbal speech into text and displays it on the screen as the video and audio plays along.

Think about it. People who can watch reels in public! Just by turning off the sound! And still not miss much of the action. Of course it is also super helpful for people who have hearing disabilities, who can also enjoy reels without any audio cues.

IG-Stories-Captions

Businesses and professional pages can reach out and engage with more people through this feature, and make their content more interesting. While this feature is officially available in all English-speaking countries, it is still being beta-tested in India and other big, non-English speaking markets.

Instagram Keyword Search

One of the subtlest, low-key yet important features to have launched on Instagram is the Keyword Search.

Now this feature is going to revolutionise the way people look for and consume content on Instagram. Earlier, if someone wanted to look for content on bridal jewellery, they’d have to search for content with hashtags such as #bridaljewellery. Due to this, a lot of interesting content that may not have used the right hashtag stood the chance of missing out.

Instagram-keyword-Search

But with Keyword Search (yes yes, very much like Google Search), people can simply search for the content they wish to see using the key words or phrases and the results show everything from posts, reels, videos, even if they don’t have the specific search phrase as a hashtag in their caption.

Instagram Guides

What are Guides? Exactly… This feature didn’t create much of a flutter, despite having a huge potential in changing and improving the engagement game on the platform.

Guides are article-like posts, which include various Instagram posts or captions, products or photos, and videos. It’s a creative functionality for accounts and creators wanting to recommend a food, products, services, tips etc. to their followers.

Instagram-Guides

Businesses can curate a complete range of their products and promote it in the form of recommendations. Brands can promote their services or products by smartly embedding them with well written descriptions and titles.

Now, these guides do not have any new piece of content, but are just existing posts curated into a structure.

Further, when an account posts a guide, it doesn’t get featured on the timeline of its followers like Reels or IGTV used to do. Instead, these guides needed to be promoted via stories and DMs for people to click on it and open.

But with our experience as one of the best social media agencies in Ahmedabad, we say WHAT’S THE LOSS IN DOING IT anyway?

Now that you have ‘DISCOVERED’ these interesting features of Instagram, which could help your business grow online, get started now! Or, you can get the experts at Flora Fountain to do the job efficiently and effectively. Drop us a hello on hello@flora.ffteam.in today to know how.