We gone on all the time about using #hashtags on every Instagram post. There isn't a lot of point in posting if you don't put hashtags on.

What happens when people use a hashtag in the wrong way in order to get their posts seen in an inappropriate way?

Instagram bans the hashtag. It open doesn't actually disappear but the recent posts vanish.

If you try to use a banned hashtag, often Instagram will stop the text on your post from showing. 

If that happens, remove some of the hashtags and post again. Keep removing them until it works.

Desk?!

The list is huge so here are some banned hashtags that you might be surprised to see:

• alone
  
• boho
• brain
• costumes
• elevator
• hardworkpaysoff
• happythanksgiving
• humpday
• iphonegraphy

• kansas
• killingit

• newyearsday

• pushups
• saltwater
• skype
• snap
• snapchat
• snowstorm
• sopretty
• stranger
• streetphoto
• thought
• valentinesday
• workflow

Have you found any more funny or odd banned hashtags? Let us know!

1. Your logo!
You would be surprised how many businesses forget that the blog needs the same brand as the business to work as a form of brand awareness building. A logo is great for awareness of your brand and your first key element needed. It gives your blog site a face to your readers, something that they can remember it by.

Your logo is a subtle and very effective way of making your readers remember what your blog is all about and in turn, remember what your business is all about and what its products and/or services offered are.

2. Clear navigation bar
The navigation bar should be easily accessed, straightforward and simple. Your readers are after the content of your blog. They do not want to have to deal with too much design. Much like your content, your navigation bar should also be user-friendly.
 
3. Social sharing buttons within blog posts
You can increase your chances of going viral by making your content easily shareable on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram buttons can be easily setup on your website to be accessed on all of your webpages.

4. Proper typography
 Your font style, colour and size can affect how well a reader perceives your blog posts. True, it is the content that matters but they need to read it to find that out! If the font isn’t very easy on the eyes, you will lose the readers before the end of the post. Never use font less than 12px!
 
5. Responsive design (mobile-friendly layout)
 If you really care about your visitors and how they view your blog, make it easier for them to navigate your site in any screen sizes especially for mobile users. In 2018, the present is mobile.
 
6. Related posts, most popular posts and latest posts. 
These three things assist in keeping your blog site as organised as possible as it can help readers get to know what’s the latest, what’s trending and other posts related to what they are reading, further increasing traffic and subtly giving readers more reasons to stay.
 
7. Breadcrumb trail
 If possible, add breadcrumbs to your blog site. It makes navigation so much easier and helps readers understand where what topics they are reading belong to.
 
8. Tags or categories
What makes tags so important is that they not only keep your blog site organised but also allow search engines to know what ‘topics’ are covered by each post, acting like keywords. They are crucial.

9. Comment box.
We can’t be clearer on this point – use every single opportunity to encourage interaction between the business and your readers. Use a ‘call-to-action’ – a line or two telling or asking your readers to do something – on every post, at least once. Once you have a large enough reader base, they will discuss the content of each post on the content box and may even provide additional insight that you can use later on.
 
10. About page & contact info 
These are simple pages that are quite self-explanatory and they are necessary because they complete the overall professional look that you will want your blog site to have if you want to attract readers and increase overall traffic.
 
11. Service/product pages and payment options
Blogs are made for a reason and it’s not just to give valuable content. It is your way of advertising to your readers as well. Make sure that you capitalise on your reader base and further increase traffic by including a services or product page in your blog site. If possible, include payment options as well to make everything easier for your consumers.

12. Blog sign-up form (and/or newsletter sign-up form)
Email marketing is extremely powerful so allow your readers to receive your blog posts and/or newsletters by email. Used in this way, the content builds brand awareness, consumer trust and loyalty. Make use of it.
 
13. Google analytics 
Google analytics are great as it gives you concrete numbers that will show you what is wrong with your blog, what is missing, how you can improve it. Look at each blog post over a period of time and learn from the results – promote those posts that do well and edit/rewrite those that don’t.
 
14. SEO tools
SEO plays a very important role in driving traffic and putting your site on the map. Use tools to come up with proper keyword placement, frequency, etc. so that you drive traffic to your blog site and get your site ranked higher and higher in search engines.
 
This checklist hopefully will help you see if you have all the essential elements on your site. Once set up, most of these things need very little attention. You can focus on keeping the quality of your content high so readers keep coming back.

Need a little help with your blogging? Get structure, support and a great big boost to get your blogging bringing in business in our six-week coaching programme. Click here to check out the next available online programme:

This is an unusual time. The coronavirus has changed our personal lives, our work lives and the lives of almost everyone, around the world. March and April 2020 will be remembered for the next hundred years, if not longer.

Businesses are in shock. While some are obviously suffering, others are near collapse under the weight of a huge upturn in sales.

What is your situation? Have you got a handle on where you are now and where the business will be in 3 and 6 months.

If you are still working and have money coming in now, should your strategy be to look ahead three/six/twelve months and work out what you need to do now to make sure you have work and money coming in then?

If you are in one of the industries that are thriving right now (or perhaps better put as getting lots of sales right now), is it inventory you need to focus on and for marketing, what do you need to think about to make sure you keep getting sales longer term?

If your sales have dried up or you hadn't had time to build them up before the world locked down, do you need to focus your efforts on protecting the brand awareness you had and building it up so potential customers know that you exist?

It is tempting to retreat at the moment, especially if you are at home, rather than in the office and if you have children at home, it is especially easy to deal with today's tasks and not think ahead.

We aren't sure what 'ahead' with look like, are we?

Although nothing is certain now, nothing is ever certain. What we do know is that 'out of sight, out of mind' is fairly true now and under more normal conditions,

Do you want your potential customers to remember you when they need/want you?

Small businesses start with zero brand awareness. No-one outside your immediately family has any idea who you are or what you do. You may be at the bottom but the only way it up, right :)  What we do is start to tell our own network what we do and then spread it outwards from there.

Usually, as long as you keep up the effort, the awareness of your business - your brand - will grow.

Do this now. If you have been in business for years or just for weeks, treat your brand as an unknown fledgling and help it grow.

1. Pick a couple of tactics (not too many because you need to keep them up and use them over and over again).

2. Choose some key messages that are not irrelevant now (between five and ten work)

3. Use a couple of channels - email definitely and then perhaps one or two social media channels - and repeatedly send out your messages. Over and over again.

4. Send out the messages again. Seriously. If you haven't told people the same thing twenty times (that is each key message 20 times...) over the next 3-4 months, tell them it again until you have.

But I haven't got time for that!

Do what you can. Every little helps (to steal Tesco's motto).

But my audience will get fed up if I do that!

Only if they see it twenty times. Which they won't. If you send the exact same email out, some will get annoyed, so rewrite it.

You've seen your social media post reach rate, right? (If you don't know what we are talking about, please get in touch with us here.) If you have 200 followers, each individual post might reach 40 people. Of those 40 people, 20 scrolled past without noticing it. 20 will have noticed it but 19 will have forgotten it 5 seconds later.

Sorry to be so blunt but if you want people to get your message, you have to show it to them over and over and over again.

They aren't looking for it.

Our marketing agency, Write in Danderyd, builds and runs all sorts of marketing tactics for the smallest of businesses across the world.

Check out their latest post about ensuring your clients and potential clients don't forget you right now:

What to do for your business now

Instagram can deliver customers for small businesses. The key is to do what is effective and skip everything else. Do you know what you should be doing or do you feel like you might be wasting your time?

Do follower numbers matter? Not as much as you think.

Are you posting great content? Great! Now you've got 20% of the job done, spend the other 80% of your time actually doing what you need to do to build sales from Instagram.

Learn exactly what you should and shouldn't be doing to successfully run your own Instagram marketing in our online course.

In this online course, we'll work through techniques to find prospective clients on Instagram and turn them into leads (giving you their contact details) so you can turn them into clients.

Find out more and book here.

The session will suit you if you are:

• looking for more clients/customers for your small business
• have an existing Instagram account for your business
• know what a hashtag is, even if you aren't sure how they work

You will need:

• access to our online course system
• an Instagram account ready to use
• a goal: who you would like to attract to your business (be quite specific) and what step you'd like them to take next (e.g. give you their contact details by filling in a form OR buy X product)

You can expect:

• all the details in a step-by-step manner
• a chance to walk through through the techniques, with your goal in mind, to get you started
• actions that you can take next to get Instagram providing you with more clients/customers

Registration is usually only open for a short period so we can spend our time helping you throughout the course but right now, it is open: 8th April 2020 until 31st May 2020. We hope it helps.

Price: US$49 - 480kr - £42 - €44  Price now: US$29 - 280kr - £22 - €24 We hope this helps too.

We take payment in most currencies through Paypal. You don't need a Paypal account to pay by card.

Find out more and book here.

Did you have any problems with Facebook and Instagram yesterday?

#InstagramDown

On one of the busiest days of the year in the US, both Facebook and Instagram lost the ability to add anything new. People saw content from before the crash, messages in Messenger just sat there and Instagram feeds didn't update.

Of course there will be times when things go wrong but there is no poitn missing the irony that Instagram had to use Twitter to let people know what was happening :)

Now everything is working again but if you are running ads on either platform, go and check to see what happened yesterday. It might affect your results and stats.

If you need help with your advertising, get in touch with us.

It is so simple to set up, it only takes one step! In the Instagram app, find Settings and scroll down to Switch to business account. That's it, you've converted your account from personal to business!

Do you use Facebook ads to promote your business? If so, watch out for changes happening mid-August 2019 to the size of mobile ads - they are getting smaller in two ways:

• Only 3 lines of primary text will show on Facebook mobile News Feed. People will be prompted to click to view additional text.
• The max height for photos and videos will reduce to 4:5 on mobile News Feed. The tallest supported aspect ratio for images without links and for videos is now vertical (4:5). Media taller than 4:5 will be masked on Facebook's mobile News Feed.

What does this mean for you?

You will need to think hard about the first three lines of your text - they need to inspire people to click 'See More'. Not an easy task!

On the positive side, images that you use for Instagram will work better with this Facebook ad format.

Collect email addresses!

Contact via email is often the best, most effective way of marketing your business so hand over an ebook, free report, guide to something important – anything that your potential customers will think it is worth giving you their email address for. Then remember to email them, regularly.

Frequent, fresh content engages your potential customers, builds links that bring in more potential customers and Google loves it, so it will send you even more potential customers.

If you have advice to give, try creating an infographic using a template online or free creation service such as Canva or Venngage.

Everyone loves a good image/graph/chart!