Instagram is quickly gaining on social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest in terms of marketing influence. Now that it has been acquired by Facebook, chances are that its user base and its influence will only grow.

Learning how to use Instagram to market your business can help you to leverage this influential tool to help your business grow and to drive sales. Here are a few tips for how you can use Instagram to market your business:

Share Beautiful Photos

The best way to get noticed on Instagram is to share truly exceptional photos. This is the same principal for sharing content on your blog or any other social media: You must share something special in order to get your readers, fans, or followers to take notice and to feel compelled to engage with you on these channels. Set yourself apart and attract more fans by sharing beautiful photos on your Instagram feed.

Tell a Story

Don’t just share beautiful photos of your products or of your services in action; tell a story about your brand. Show photos of your products being used by your target audience and illustrating how they are making life better. Share photos that showcase how life will be for customers who use your services.

Telling a story is a more engaging way to connect with customers than trying to simply sell the product.

Encourage User Images

Engage your followers more by encouraging them to share beautiful photos of their own that sell your brand. Not only will you get more great pictures to attract new followers, but you’ll also make your customers a part of telling your story, building stronger connections with them and promoting brand loyalty.

Hold Contests

Contests are a great way to attract more Instagram followers and to encourage more engagement with your brand. You can hold a photo contest and give away a prize for the best or most creative photo of your brand. Or you can simply hold a drawing for a random follower, encouraging more people to follow you on the site and learn more about your brand.

Contests help you build buzz for your company, your products and

services, and Instagram offers unique opportunities for contests.

Use Keywords

The principles behind SEO work across online networks. Make sure you use your keywords to help you attract more followers in your niche. Use them in descriptions of your photos, your alt text, and your hashtags. Users in your niche can then find you when they are searching for those or related keywords. The more you use your keywords, the more likely you will be to connect with these potential customers.

Instagram presents a lot of potential for businesses looking to market their brand. The site is growing and gaining influence every day, and businesses can start using it now to connect with customers and build long-term relationships that drive sales.

How are you using Instagram to promote your business? Share your tips for success in the comments!

Know the Guest Author:

Sarah Clare is a writer and oversees the site projectmanagementsoftware.com, where she has recently been researching project tracking software. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking and scrapbooking.

For today’s marketers and entrepreneurs, social media is an important tool in getting the word out about their products and services. But as the old saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words — especially with the rise to near-ubiquity of Instagram, and the dominance of photo based content on networks such as Facebook and Pinterest. These shifts are forcing brands large and small to adjust their content strategy to make sure they continue to tell their story in a way that is visible to their audience while being engaging and on-message.

Building a brand with the use of photo apps offers affordability, immediacy and countless creative options to get your brand out there. With these apps, brands have the ability to share quality photos and visual content without the continuous need for Photoshop.

Brands have also found photos as a great way to get their community involved in their online presence by crowdsourcing photos from their community members and sharing from their own accounts.

With all the features, filters and effects that Photo Apps offer, the creative possibilities for building your brand through images are seemingly endless. To get started, here are five photo apps and their features that you can use to further engage with your community and create a quality social presence.

Instagram

The photo app that started it all, Instagram is the most popular of all the other photo apps out there and sets the standard for them as well. Instagram is still being figured out by brands, but has served as a great way for media outlets and brands to showcase their products, as well as get their community involved in their mobile presence. Visit Instagram here

Lightt

A new, unique take on taking photos, Lightt features the use of highlights: single 10-second grabs of pictures. Each highlight captures the motion of the moment, and when like together, a string of highlights reads like visual memories. It will be interesting to see how Lightt succeeds in the mobile market, but certainly seems worth checking out to create dynamic and creative content. Visit Lightt.

Mobli

While Instagram has quickly become THE storyteller for individuals, Mobli has created a product that could be the storyteller of choice for communities. With dedicated “channels” for events, locations, causes, etc. brands can get their communities involved by creating a channel that features the view points and images from all of their members under one roof. Visit Mobli..

Photo Mage

This is a simple photo editing app. Choose a photo, apply one of 15 filters, add a label using five built-in fonts and save it to your camera roll, even if you don’t have a network connection. This is a great way for brands to add context to some of their photos and further tell their story despite a picture already being worth a thousand words. Visit Photo Mage here

Cinemagram

Using a similar interface to Instagram, with profiles, popular pages, filter effects, etc. Cines or cinemagraphs are animated GIFs created by recording a two to three-second video that loops a small section within the shot, saving the rest as a still image. With the rising popularity of gifs on platforms such as Tumblr and Facebook, Cinemegram gives brands an easy way to capitalize on this trend and create content their community will enjoy. Check out Cinemagram here

Know your Guest Author:

Harrison Kratz.is the Community Manager at MBA@UNC, a new initiative which allows students to receive their MBA online from the University of North Carolina from anywhere around the world. He also sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, Tweet Drive. When he’s not working, Harrison switches his focus to great food, watching any sport that’s on TV, all things Disney, and traveling. You can find Harrison on Twitter @KratzPR.

This is a guest post by Steven on tips for your blog to market new product. You can read the guidelines for guest posting at our guest posting guidelines page.

If you have a blog, it can be a great place to market products and services – whether they are your own or you’re praising the work of someone else. However, there are good ways and bad ways to engage in blog marketing. Dos and don’ts, if you will.

Do stick to your niche

A blog, by its very nature, is meant to “narrowcast.” You are speaking to a very specific audience when you tell poor twenty-something’s how to cook, or offer advice on writing for television. Knowing this, why would you ever think it a good idea to start pushing the maid service you just opened or posting ads about discounts on baby products? If you are going to market something, make sure that it is something your audience is likely to have an interest in.

Do continue your regular posting schedule

Unless, that is, your regular posting schedule is infrequent and haphazard. Basically, you want to be posting valuable content several times a week – content that makes your readers stick (and click) around, and that helps you to climb the search engine charts. If you suddenly increase or decrease your number of posts, you’re going to confuse your regular audience.

Don’t go ad crazy

Once you learn that you can feasibly earn money by advertising products on your blog, the temptation might be to include ads everywhere. Why not put up an ad when people click between pages? Or rollover ads? Or pop-ups? Or – You get the idea. A good rule of thumb is not to put up any ads that would annoy you if you were trying to enjoy another site. If it’s intrusive to you, chances are your visitors will feel the same.

Do make yourself an expert

If you are going to attempt to convince people that a product or service is good and they should pay money for it, they need to see you as a reliable source. The only way for you to convince them of this is to be a reliable source over time. Write well. Pick topics that your audience will find interesting. Give them information and opinions they can’t find anywhere else. Your goal may be to sell a product or service, but before you can do that, you need to be able to sell yourself.

Do offer discounts and giveaways

Want to show people that they can trust you and get them excited? Put up coupons and have giveaways for products and services. People are far more willing to try something new if they can get it for less – especially if you can let them try it for free. You may feel like you can’t afford to do this, but a happy customer espousing the virtues of a product or service is far more valuable than you trying to sell people on something. Who would you be more likely to believe – a person essentially advertising something, or your buddy who’s telling you how amazing his new whatever is?

Don’t start to sound like an advertisement

Whatever you do, be careful that you don’t cross the line into making your blog an advertisement for what you want your readers to buy. The point of a blog is to inform and entertain – not to sell. Rather than writing a post about why De-balder Hair Grow is super awesome, try one on the history of hair growing products, or on different methods that people use to prevent baldness and regrow hair, highlighting the virtues of Grow in one of your bullet points.

Just remember that everything that even seems like a potential advertisement needs to be balanced out with engaging, conversational content that has no ulterior motive.

About the Author:

Steven Payne, when not writing about Insight Promotions, LLC and their best in class on-pack promotion services, is covering all things related to marketing promotions to keep his readers informed!

This is a guest post by Charlotte on organizing your inbox. You can read the guidelines for guest posting at our guest posting guidelines page.

If you regularly use one email account and you get a large influx of emails every day, keeping your inbox neat and tidy could be a job in itself. Setting up automatic filters that send your emails to certain folders can help you to keep on top of everything, and it will also ensure you always know where your important emails are kept.

A lot of people assume you need to be a computer whiz to set these filters up, but it can actually only take a couple of minutes and it can be done on all of the major email providers. So, if you’re struggling to sort your emails, follow these simple tips for setting up filters in Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook.

Gmail

Gmail’s filter system can automatically delete, archive, star or forward your emails and you can set it to work on all messages being sent to you.

To apply a filter you just need to click on the ‘settings’ button in Gmail and then on ‘filter’. You’ll then be shown a criteria box, which allows you to specify what you want Gmail to look out for when searching your emails. You can choose between ‘from’, ‘to’, ‘subject’, ‘doesn’t have’, ‘has the words’ and ‘has attachment’. So, for example, if you wanted all your Facebook emails to go into one folder, you would simply need to set the filter to look for messages being sent from an email address with Facebook mentioned in it.

You can select from a number of actions when applying your filter, including ‘archive’, ‘mark as read’, ‘star it’, ‘apply the label’, ‘forward to’, ‘delete’ and ‘never send it to Spam’. You simply need to select the action you would like and click ‘create filter’.

Hotmail

To set a filter system up in Hotmail, click on the ‘options’ button, select your Hotmail account type (Windows Live or Hotmail), go to ‘mail’ and then select ‘Rules for sorting new messages’ under the ‘Customising Hotmail’ heading. Click on the ‘new’ button on the next screen and you can then start setting up your filters.

You can set your filters to look for any part of the email, such as the subject, the sender’s address or the content. There are various actions you can choose, including ‘move to inbox’,  ‘move to a new folder’, ‘delete’, ‘add category’, ‘remove category’, ‘mobile alert’, ‘flag’ and ‘forward to’. Just choose your action, set your filter and hit save.

Outlook

Microsoft calls its filter system ‘rules’ and you can set it up based on messages currently in your inbox or for a completely new email address you’re using on Outlook. Assuming you’ve already got some emails though, to set up rules for an existing email address you can right click a message and go to the ‘rules’ option. You can either hit the ‘create rule’ button, or you can select one of the following options – ‘always send messages to’ and ‘always send messages from’. This just means that it’ll always send messages sent to or from a certain person to another folder once the rule’s been set up.

If you want to create a rule with different parameters, choose the ‘create a rule’ option. You can select the following specifications: ‘from’, ‘subject contains’, ‘sent to’, and the actions available include ‘display in the new item alert window’, ‘play sound’ or ‘move to folder’. You can then do this for all of your emails to set up multiple folders.

Tell us how do you organize your inbox by commenting below.

About the Author:

Post contributed by Charlotte Watson for EKM Response. Charlotte is a regular contributor to numerous affiliate marketing and SEO communities. Charlotte is an expert in email marketing and email marketing solutions for those involved in internet entrepreneurship.

Created by: MBAOnline.com

This is a guest post by Sachin. You can read the guidelines to guest posting at our write for us page.

It is important for a business that relies on its computers to have proper IT support. You may have a large enough company to have your own internal technical support team. If this is the case then any problems you may have and maintenance of your computer network will be handled by your team. If you cannot afford to employ specific IT support staff, or you just prefer not to have an IT department, then you can look to outsourcing the care of your computer systems to IT Services Melbourne.

Saves you time and money

Having your IT support handled by an external service can save you both time and money. Instead of having your own technical support team you can use an outside IT service. This can save you a lot of money as you don’t have to advertise for IT staff, which can be costly. Your savings continue in that you don’t need to pay an IT team wages, superannuation, sick leave, holiday pay or any other benefits.

You can also concentrate on areas that are the main focus of your business, rather than worry about updating your network, running anti-virus software and backing up data. In the long run not having this added worry will help improve your businesses efficiency and increase your profits. It will also simplify your business systems if you don’t need to worry about the maintenance of this technology, and it will also save you a lot of time, and time is money.

Twenty four hour support

Nearly all businesses rely on computers and larger companies depend on a whole computer network. An IT support service can offer you twenty four hour support for your computer network and internet connection. Having a support service means you can keep your system up to date constantly. A support service will also offer you other services, like keeping your data backed up, handling your virus protection and network security and look after your software licensing.

Why your business needs IT support service

By using an IT support service you can be sure that are getting experienced and fully qualified technicians helping your business. IT support services can send people out to your office to help you with your computer network, they can offer you telephone support or even help you via remote access.

If you have a small business having IT support can be hugely beneficial as you may not have the funds or the space within your office to have staff hired specifically for this task. Many small business owners find themselves diverting time away from running their business properly as they have to handle all aspects of it, from planning and implementing the marketing strategies, looking after the financial side of things and just running the day to day aspects of the business.

If they are not experts at handling computer systems or any problems that may arise then they will waste a huge amount of their time trying to solve these issues. They are much better off making use of an IT support service.

Today I completed 500 sales for Micro Niche Finder. I thought I would write a review about the product on one of my other blogs on reviews and was preparing for it when I received a mail from one of my customers.

I was so impressed with this mail that I shed my idea of writing the review. Instead I thought I would just circulate a copy of the mail.

If anyone has a doubt about the utility of this exceptionally good niche finder software, then I am sure that this mail would clear those doubts once and for all.

Before I display that email let me also tell you about an astonishing statistics on my sales for Micro Niche Finder. Over the past few months I had sold 500 copies of Micro Niche Finder as an affiliate. I was surprised to note that in all since I started selling MNF, there were only 3 chargebacks (refunds). This shows the results that this tool has given to its users.

Micro Niche Finder has helped me excavate more than 90 niche markets and all my minisites are based on the results that MNF generated. All of these mini sites together generate a handsome income for me. It is also noteworthy here that I have not done anything on any of these minisites since months now.

If I am to pen down a few benefits of Micro Niche Finder in simple words, then it would be -

1. Extremely easy to use.
2. Get a niche in under 30 minutes of research.
3. Even an absolute tech-illiterate can also use it.
4. Easy to work interface.
5. Free lifetime upgrades.

I can keep writing and writing about the benefits and I would still have a few more to write. I am so impressed with this software. It is true that a genuine review can only happen if you have actually used it. I had bought the tool when it was only $67.00 The price of the tool is now $99.00. I would still not mind buying it even today.

Buy your copy when the price is still low or, else you might keep regretting that you didn’t.

This is a screenshot of the email that I received.

Click to enlarge

James Jones released the latest Version 5.0 of his software “Micro Niche Finder”, a few days back and since I am one of his customers since almost 2 years now, I got to download the update absolutely free of cost. I do not want to get into a straight review of Micro Niche Finder or, do an apple-to-apple comparison of it with Keyword Elite or, Market Samurai, though I have a copy of all of these tools.

I had bought Keyword Elite much before I bought Micro Niche Finder and was expecting that all its updates would be free of cost as was promised, but that was not to be. Keyword Elite 2.0 was launched as an upgrade to its previous version and came at a cost (though it was discounted for existing customers, but the fact remains that I still had to pay for it). But I did not find too much of an upgrade in the software except for a change in its interface.

Having said that I would still not want to take the credit away from KE, because it is indeed and excellent software if you have some time to spare – to learn to use it and then to use it.

This is what made me love Micro Niche Finder. It is one of the easiest tool that you could find for Keyword research and there is nothing in terms of a training or, coaching that you need to go through in order to use it. I straight away fell in love with Micro Niche Finder.

James kept his promise when he updated the software and provided all updates absolutely free. What more, he now launched Version 5.0 which is an upgrade and not an update and is still giving it out to his existing customers absolutely free. The interface for Micro Niche Finder has changed and so are many of the features. I was pretty impressed with the overall upgrades and it has cemented my belief that the future holds extremely good things in store.

Check out the difference in the interface of these versions -

Micro Niche Finder version 4.0 - Click to enlarge

Micro Niche Finder Version 5.0 - Click to enlarge

Since I have been selling Micro Niche Finder as an affiliate for quite some time, I keep getting mails from my customers. One such newly acquired prospect wrote to me asking why is it that James has increased the price of the software. In response I would like to ask a questions -

1. Isn’t a software developer justified in increasing the price of his software in case he releases an upgraded version of the software?
2. James has raised the price of the software from $97.00 to $99.99 after he launched Version 5.0. Is a $2.99 increase un-justified?

I urge all of you who yet have not bought this software to immediately go ahead and purchase this tool today itself. This is a Micro Niche Finder discount you will probably miss out very soon because I am sure that James would want to further increase the price of this tool.

You could get a further discount on Micro Niche Finder if you order from here. Get your Micro Niche Finder Discount today itself!!

What is PPC-Coach.com?

Essentially, the PPC Coach program is marketed to individuals who want to master the art of making money through PPC advertising. It is widely known in the Internet marketing community that PPC offers the most reward yet alongside this the most risk; PPC coach aims to minimize the risk you face and as a result showing you how to maximize your PPC profits.

After registering with PPC Coach, you’ll get access to some 19 custom PPC tools, 23 different methods, over 360 success stories and a plethora of videos. All the videos, tools and methods give you insight to improve your PPC skills and therefore potential to earn more on the Internet.

In the PPC Coach review that follows, I’ll briefly present what I deem to be the main attractions of the service in comparison to others.

PPC Coach Forums

What you’ll find sometimes with comprehensive programs like PPC-Coach is that not all of the learning curve can be supplemented by company representatives. This is why highly targeted forums are so valuable; these equip you to make use of the communities specialized knowledge base. It is no exaggeration to say the knowledge contained within the PPC Coach community will make you money members vary from complete newbies, to experienced PPC gurus that offer some invaluable insights.

The PPC Coach forums are amongst the largest out there as well forum is one of the largest of it’s kind. Right now as I’m writing this article, the total amount of posts has hit over 100,000. So you’re literally never a quick search away from finding the answers that could make you money The result of this is that you’re never too far from finding the right answer to your Pay Per Click difficulty.

In all my PPC Coach reviews, I feel I NEED to include information about the forums can have on your overall achievement. The forums need to be emphasized because of their importance , and if you are currently a member of other Internet forums, you’ll be able to recollect how pivotal the know-how of others has been in your present success.

Now, imagine the know-how that has bettered you from communities in the past being remarkably gainful for your entrepreneurial objectives. When you do this you’ll understand the worth of the PPC Coach community has to your online money making.

PPC-Coach.com Tools

Another must for a PPC Coach review is an overview of the tools on offer. For a start, the landing site generator epitomizes the ability of automation the PPC Coach brings to the table.

Accompanying a higher degree of PPC campaign automation, the specialized tools that come alongside PPC Coach membership allow you to extract as much profit from your Pay per click campaign as possible. Not only can you view the profit potential of keywords by using the Keyword cost analysis tool, the Keyword Generator tool has an incredible 36 billion potential keywords to research, all earmarked for their monthly search traffic.

Conclusion

What separates PPC Coach out from other programs is the quality of the forums. The amount of specialist Pay per click knowledge contained within the forum is second to none. Alongside the incredible amount of tools PPC Coach has, the service is makes PPC Coach exceedingly competitively priced at $49. a month.

Photograph courtesy Gabriella Fabbri

A new year and many new courses and tutorials.

Once again it is that time of the year when there are quite a few new year resolutions to make an independent living and set up your own internet marketing business.

Once again there will be a huge number of internet marketing newbies ready with their pockets open, who will shell out money on anything and everything so that can achieve that dream of their – to be free of the 9-5 treadmill.

But are all these courses desirable? Is it advisable to spend money on anything and everything that is sold on the internet?

Of course, not.

Selective buying and selectively choosing on feedback and brand image is what is advisable.

One such course that bundles everything into one and ensures that you do not waste your money on too many unnecessary things has just started accepting new members. But their membership is limited to only about 300 and you should show an urgency if you are really keen on making money online.

This course is called “Online Profits” and is created and run by Daniel Scocco of “Daily Blog Tips”.

The reason why I said that you will not need another course is because “Online Profits” is that extensive. It has 24 modules that covers everything from picking domain names and hosting them to blogging and affiliate marketing. A few things that are covered in their modules are as follows:

• Business Principles
• Identifying and picking domain names
• Picking a hosting plan and setting up a website
• Researching niches
• Details about web designing
• Setting up and maintaining wordpress
• Blogging as a business
• Keyword research
• Online Forums
• SEO, link building and traffic generation
• Social Media, Affiliate marketing and Email marketing

That is just a jist of the modules. If you get into the details of the modules you will realize that it covers almost everything that you can think off when you think of “Internet Marketing”.

The best part about this course is the faculty that is involved. Take a look at it.

That faculty covers the who’s who of internet marketing. You can make out from it as to what kind of coverage the course has.

Daniel is offering a free report for his online profits subscribers. You do not need to join the course in order to get this report. It is absolutely free.

Get your free report on the 10 Deadly Business Mistakes You Should Avoid.

By reading this report you will get to evaluate the quality of information that Daniel shares and should be able to make a decision on joining the course.

Just ensure that you do it fast because I hear that as I complete this post, there are only about 150 spots remaining in his course.

Join the course today at online profits.