How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business, with Josh Thompson and Candice Georgiadis
Video — Advertising on Instagram with video assets has been the most cost-effective content for us compared to images. We’ve found videos allow you to connect emotionally with people to tell a much better story.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Josh Thompson. Josh is Senior Social Media Strategist at Portent — a Clearlink Digital Agency. Josh is Facebook Blueprint Certified and has worked in social media advertising for seven years; he’s worked with clients of all sizes — including notable brands such as Pepsi, Patagonia, Amazon, Mountain Dew, and Boost Mobile.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My path into advertising and marketing was a complete accident. I played professional golf for about 4.5 years around the United States, but my playing days were cut short due to injuries. After hanging up the golf clubs, I joined a friend at an agency in New York, and the rest is history. I’ve always been a curious person, wanting to learn as much as possible and continue to find new ways to improve. I think that’s one of the main reasons I’ve enjoyed digital advertising. We’re able to push a campaign live, track the results, and improve in such a short amount of time. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. I’m glad I found the career as its been very fulfilling and enjoyable helping other companies.
Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing in the big picture hasn’t been around that long. Facebook was founded 14 years ago, and advertisers have only been able to run ads on the platform for the last ten years. In that short time, I’ve been able to positively help a lot of companies, both small and Fortune 500 companies. While helping clients, I’ve seen a lot of different scenarios and solved a lot of problems while managing millions of dollars of ad spend. The combination of experience and always wanting to learn to stay ahead of trends have helped me out tremendously in social media marketing.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
One of the most interesting stories is probably the first office I worked at in New York City. There was a large production company that let us work out of an empty room in their office. The room was very small and tight at times with four employees, but it was a lot of fun. We made a rule after the first week that you couldn’t eat lunch in the office. The office only had one tiny window for air circulation, and that window faced a dark alley, which didn’t help much with circulating air at lunch.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
At one of my first jobs, we would often bring physical presentations for quarterly or yearly in-person client meetings. We’d use a local printer in the area to help with printing and binding the presentation to ensure everything was high quality. One of the times, we sent our files to the local printer the day before the meeting and towards the end of the day they informed us their printers broke and will not be repaired for 24 hours. We were able to find another printing company in the area, but there was a lot of unnecessary scrambling as a result. I learned quickly to control what you can and give yourself enough time to solve the uncontrollable.
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
The best social media platform depends on the goal of the business or campaign. Then you work backward to determine the best strategy and ultimately the best social media platform(s). As of right now, the most effective social media platform for us has been Facebook and Instagram. The platform still depends on the goal and where their audience is spending most of their time, but Facebook and Instagram ad technology is well ahead of other platforms. We can now reach and acquire new customers at a much lower cost, often 3–4x lower than other social media platforms.
Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share 6 ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
● Video — Advertising on Instagram with video assets has been the most cost-effective content for us compared to images. We’ve found videos allow you to connect emotionally with people to tell a much better story.
● Native Assets — Catching user’s attention is critical for success on Instagram. Maximizing the placement (Newsfeed or Story) with the appropriately sized asset will improve performance.
● Stories — More Instagram users are consuming content through the Story placement. Ensuring the Story placement is enabled with your campaign will lead to most cost-efficient results.
● One Call to Action — People are busier than ever, and it’s becoming more challenging to have them complete multiple actions. Keep it simple and have one clear call to action to increase the likelihood of them to finish.
● Targeted Content — Creating content that speaks directly to your target audience versus the masses will improve overall performance and help avoid being lost in the newsfeed.
● Think Mobile — People are viewing content on the mobile device and not the desktop. The Instagram content needs to be mobile friendly as a result. That means tighter shots, easier to read and video transcriptions.
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could inspire anyone, I’d encourage people to always be kind to others and do the right thing no matter the situation. Doing the right thing is always the right thing.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Having lunch with Tiger Woods would be great. I still enjoy playing golf and following the golf tournaments. He’s one of the best golfers of all time and has gone through a lot in his career. He made a lot of significant adjustments to his golf game to improve even when he was the best in the world. That approach to consistently want to improve while being the best is fascinating in a good way to me.
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business, with Josh Thompson and Candice… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.