Social Media Agencies – Flora Fountain

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Remember the last time you scrolled through your Instagram feed and thought “Hey, how did they know I was looking for this sneaker/hoodie/blender/fill in the blanks?” More and more people are discovering new products and services online through social media, over traditional methods of discovery like TV ads, newspaper ads, hoardings and billboards. And this is even more true after the pandemic, with an increasing population comfortable spending time and money online.

So it is imperative, when a brand has a new product ready for launch, to create a big buzz online. Brands have to get people curious about the product and the idea behind it. However, with over 3.6 billion people active on various social media platforms, spending an average of 2.5 hours every day scrolling and messaging, there are chances of a brand’s messaging getting lost in the din and noise made by almost everybody online.

So here’s the ultimate cheat sheet (or guide, if you will) created by India’s top social media marketing agency, Flora Fountain, to make some noise, stand out and attract the right eyeballs for a new product or brand launch online.

1. First thing first, Identify the audience

The first thing a brand must do before planning a new product or starting any form of marketing activity for its launch, is to understand “WHAT DOES THE MARKET WANT?” and “WHERE DO WE FIND THIS AUDIENCE”

It starts with market research, where the ideal customer is identified based on various demographic points like age, gender, interests, income, region, etc. It can start from something as simple as a Google search of a product similar to the one about to be launched by the brand. Simply going through the kind of people that the competition brands are addressing through their content, images, and the reviews on their shopping platforms can give a rough idea about the ideal customer.

If the product is targeted towards young people in their 20s who love following trends, then Instagram is the place to find them (well, isn’t everyone on Instagram now!). If the product is more service-based, priced higher and is targeted at a somewhat older audience, Facebook can be the place to target such an audience. If the target is business communities, or art lovers, or musicians, there is a platform for these too. But it all starts with knowing who the product, service, brand or idea is meant for: the OG TG.

2. Plan out the online content calendar

Having a launch timeline is very important for the brand to chart out every move, every post on the various digital platforms it is active on. While it may sound like a task as easy as taking a picture and posting it on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest with a caption stating check out our newly launched collection, it is way more than that…

Think about it, the product pictures needs to be clicked, they have to be named (if not done), banners and creatives for website pages and posts are to be made, captions as per the platform (hashtag heavy for Instagram, long yet linked for Facebook and short and sweet for Pinterest)

are to be written, promotional email drafts have to be created, SEO work is to be done, special social media promotional content for boosts are to be made… Phew!

Yeah, that’s right… All that, apart from the regular, in-store or outdoor marketing campaigns. Here’s a look at how Ray Ethnic, an Ahmedabad-based ethnic fashion brand recently planned their product launch. Simple, minimalistic & to the point.

Plan out every piece of content that will go online, from the teaser to the launch to the product showcase. Yes, it takes time, but then actual work becomes a piece of cake.

3. Start creating a buzz

Social media is such a powerful tool, it is scalable, cost effective, provides great creative freedom to experiment, and the best part: The people are there, online!

And one of the best ways to get started with the promotions is by generating curiosity among the people online, on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even LinkedIn (if the brand has an audience there).

Start with Coming Soon posts like these:

Give the viewers a sneak peek on how the product is going to look like, what it is for, why it is unique, etc. This is kind of teasing the customer, by showing parts or some element of the product as a preview and why they should look forward to it.

Next, you can create countdown posts that usually say, ‘2 Days to Go’, ‘1 Day to Go’, etc. These kinds of promotional content create a sense of anticipation among the followers and the customers and they stay tuned with the brand page on social media.

And finally, post the launch, a giveaway or a contest can be run through specially created posts to boost up the engagement on the page. Wondering why? Because when the page gets maximum engagement, the posts are visible on the Explore and Suggestion sections of non-following people online who may have similar tastes in the product.

4. Get creative with hashtags

Another great way to make waves around the social media about an impending launch is by creating a unique hashtag which gives a hint of the product and the brand, while leaving the users and followers guessing on what it could be.

While creating a launch hashtag, these three points should be kept in mind:

It should be precise
Don’t combine more than 3-4 words together
Try to write it in Title case, to make it easy to understand

By creating a hashtag, they instantly highlight the content that’s related to the launch and reinforces the brand identity. Further, it helps followers to tag, share and participate in the launch activities and post pictures of their own which are connected with the brand.

5. Make the splash: The launch

The launch has to be timed in such a manner that the product/s must get revealed on all social media platforms at the same time. This is where the advance content planning as mentioned in the first point, comes of great help.

Since Instagram and Facebook both fall under the same entity, it is easier to plan and schedule posts around a specific time, using custom content, hashtags, CTAs, etc. While Facebook has its own Creator Studio platform to manage Instagram and Facebook pages, there are other third party platforms like Later and Hootsuite for LinkedIn, Google Business and Tweetdeck for Twitter.

Flora Fountain, one of the best social media agencies in Ahmedabad suggests that brands should ideally boost these launch posts for maximum visibility and opportunity to showcase their products to newer audiences. While it is simple to create an Ad Account using Facebook Business or AdSense for Google platforms, it is advised to get the top digital marketing agency on board to share the burden of tracking, analysing and strategising these paid promotions online.

Plan a staggered launch
Unlike the one time big splash launch, a staggered launch is done by revealing the products one after the other or as batches, in stages. The rollout of the products can go on for weeks together instead of putting everything out for sale on the launch day.

Remember how smartphone giant Apple launched the iPhone 12 in two stages? While the original reason behind this exercise was the supply chain disruption due to the global smart-chip shortage, the marketing teams of the brand decided to launch the smaller versions of phone in the first stage, and the bigger and pricier versions along with its upgraded version of accessories just in time for pre-christmas sales.

This way, brands can not only keep the conversation going, but also tap into multiple points of high sales, like the festival and holiday seasons.

6. Have your analytics in place

The true success of a launch or really any digital activity lies in the data. A brand should have the tools to identify the right metrics, evaluate the various milestones during the launch at regular intervals and then do a comparative study with its goals.

Before the launch, set up a cross-channel social media analytics dashboard using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot or Sprout Social and connect the various platforms where the launch will take place,

i.e. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Of course, each tool also has the inbuilt insights or metrics for views, clicks, conversions for brands to identify which piece of content and strategy and worked and what didn’t.

It allows tracking of various metrics like hashtag performance, region-wise visitor activity, post reach and engagement, etc. This way, brands can make informed decisions in terms of allocating budgets to campaigns, tweaking the target audience to ensure a successful launch.

7. Keep the conversation going

Post launch, the brand must keep the momentum going through various forms of audience engagement. Because all that buzz generated post the legwork done to get the product launched, must not fizzle out in a week’s time.

Continue publishing content related to the product, the salient features about it, it’s availability online or offline, and how the response is (only if it is positive). Encourage followers and customers to tag the brand with their product and reshare them on the pages, giving the users some free publicity too.

Something again Ray Ethnic hits the nail right on the head with its popular post launch campaign #RayOnYou. Thanks to some smartly planned celebrity endorsement, now even regular customers post regularly with outfits purchased from Ray.

Always keep a close eye on your mentions and customer questions on the comments, respond to them within 24 hours, negative or positive. This will not only give the brand image a boost, but organically push the posts on the explore feeds of social media timelines too.

Now that you have the ultimate guide to the perfect social media launch, get started right away. Or, how about you let the experts do the job for you. Drop us a line on hello@flora.ffteam.in or click here.