Our newest member of the team is me! Chloé Grayling. Having lived in the North of England and London for 8 years combined, I have finally realised that home is where the heart is and am now happily back living in Okehampton, Devon. I have a background in Fashion PR, Footwear Marketing, and even Decking and Cladding, but my true love has always been writing about and exploring the Southwest of England. 

Here are 10 facts about me to help you get to know me a little better…

What’s your name and role?

Chloé Grayling, Digital Marketer

When did you join the MiHi Team?

I joined the MiHi Team in October 2023 making me one of the the new kids on the block.

What’s your favourite viral video?

It’s got to be the Zoom “Lawyer-with-a-cat-face-filter” saga! Working from home I spend a lot of my time on Zoom calls, and this just had me howling with laughter. The fact that the other (very serious) members of the meeting kept straight faces throughout gets me every time. 

Touchwood this will never happen to me – but I can’t promise my dog Winnie won’t make a background appearance every once in a while!

“I’m here live, but I’m just not a cat!”

Who’s your number one influencer?

I’m quite into my health and fitness and during lockdown when gyms were closed, @courtneydblack was my saviour. She had me jump squatting across my living room and I’ve never looked back!

What is your office essential?

COFFEE and a fresh bunch of flowers every week.

Where was your best holiday experience?

It has to be snorkelling in Sharm-El-Sheikh in Egypt on my 30^th birthday – it’s honestly like a whole new world under the sea! (cue the Disney karaoke!)        

Top tip for starting out on social media?

Don’t take planning, algorithms or statistics too seriously – whilst it’s important to have a tone of voice to suit the brand you’re working with, it’s also great to let your personality shine through and think about what you would want to see as a consumer.

What would your Mastermind category be?

Poochons (it’s a dog breed, Bichon Frisé x Poodle)

How many followers do you have on your most popular social media account?

Embarrassingly, my dog has more followers than I do at 1,265 – @winnie.thepoochon – she is a model though…

Recommend a great place to eat/drink in the Southwest.

I love a good country walk with my dog Winnie (did I mention her yet?) followed by a Sunday Roast in a cosy pub on a weekend. My all-time favourite place has to be The Three Crowns in Chagford  Their Yorkshire puddings are as big as your head!

if you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Meet the MiHi Digital Team… Chloé Grayling appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Threads amassed 5 million users within its first 4 hours of launch. The app went live at 7pm EDT in the US and midnight in the UK. However, regulatory concerns mean it is not available in the EU at this time.

What actually is Threads?

Threads is a free text-based conversation app made by the brains behind Instagram and Facebook.

Meta describes Threads as: “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things – or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.”

In other words, it’s a place to talk about the things you love with other people. How original.

How does it work?

After downloading Threads myself and taking it for a spin, I can confirm that it’s reassuringly simple to use. It features one main news feed and the classic like, share and comment functions we’re all familiar with. Meta aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here. The app looks very clean, minimalistic and unsurprisingly, exactly like Twitter. You can publish text posts, reshare (the same as a retweet on Twitter) and quote share (like quote tweeting). You can also create a series of text posts, much like Twitter threads, which does beg the question: what will threads be called on Threads? Threads squared? A spool? Yarn? Who knows…

Despite Threads being text-centric, this isn’t to say you can’t post images and videos here too – in fact, you can post videos up to 5 minutes long. However, much like Twitter, the main focus of the app is to connect with others through snappy, insightful conversation. Having said that, Thread’s character limit for text posts is 500, which is nearly double Twitter’s.

The interesting thing about Threads is that it’s directly linked to your Instagram account. In order to set up a profile on Threads, you have to log in using your existing Instagram username. So, in a way, Threads is quite literally an extension of your Instagram presence.

This could be relevant to brands if, for example, you wanted to post visually striking content across the image-orientated Instagram, and then use Threads for starting conversations with your customers, gaining feedback and engaging further within your niche.

Another interesting thing: at the tap of a button, you can connect with all your Instagram followers on Threads. There’s no need to manually find and follow all your friends. This means most people won’t be starting from scratch on the platform and, if you’re a business, you can easily connect with any of your existing, loyal followers from Instagram.

Should Twitter be worried?

Twitter currently has around 400 million active users, whereas Instagram has an eyewatering 2.35 billion. Granted, not all of these users are going to transfer over to Threads. But there’s a lot of potential here, nonetheless.

While lots of marketers have been hyping up the release of Threads, we don’t truly know if it’s going to be a success or a flop. Not yet. With apps like Clubhouse riding fast then dying hard within just a couple of years, versus TikTok giving Google a run for their money, there is a lot of potential for Threads to take the social media world by storm. But equally, it could quickly run out of steam. It’s a waiting game for now, and that makes it hard to know whether it’s worth investing into this app, or if it’s going to be a waste of your time and energy.

However, one thing that will work in Thread’s favour is the growing number of people dumping Twitter because, to be blunt, they’re fed up of Elon Musk. From bringing back controversial banned accounts, to laying off masses of Twitter staff members, to recently limiting the number of posts accounts can read in a day, Elon has made some drastic changes to Twitter since taking over the platform last year. It’s been a bumpy ride and, in all honesty, he’s rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.

As more and more accounts are leaving Twitter, presumably, these people will be looking for somewhere more refreshing to hang out. Could Threads become their new haven? It makes sense, but we will have to wait and see…

There has also been recent talk about the relentlessness of social media – the never-ending doom-scrolling that platforms like Twitter and TikTok encourage. With this in mind, I thought it was a nice touch that Threads has a ‘take a break’ function, which will remind you to leave the app after 10, 20 or 30 minutes.

Additionally, Threads has the option to completely hide any replies on your posts. This function isn’t available on Twitter and has been praised by many marketers, journalists and entrepreneurs already. For example, marketing tycoon Steven Bartlett described this as “the most overlooked feature in [Thread’s] pursuit of creating healthy / friendly conversation” and explained that “if someone abuses, scams or trolls in your replies, you can remove it from view completely”.

Should my business be using Threads?

This is a tough question. Why? Because it all comes down to context.

If Twitter is already a significant part of your business’s social media strategy, and you’re making great progress there, you could assume that you’ll do pretty well on Threads too. Particularly if you’re seeing a lot of your followers leaving Twitter amid the Elon Musk fiasco, Threads could be a great opportunity for you to connect with them elsewhere.

However, it can be dangerous to assume that something that works well on Twitter will work well on Threads too because, currently speaking, we don’t know what kind of culture is going to develop on this new platform. You could end up catering to a whole different crowd.

Equally, if you have a substantial following on Instagram, many of these users will transfer over to Threads and you could continue to craft a relationship with them here. However, you need to bear in mind that your strategy on Instagram, where reels and images take front seat, will look very different to your strategy on Threads. You can’t simply copy and paste your content from one platform to the other – and frankly, that would be pointless to do anyway.

But possibly, threads could offer a place for you to nurture relationships and focus more on gaining feedback from customers. For example, if you run a hotel, you could ask your followers ‘what are the key qualities you look for when choosing somewhere to stay?’ or ‘we’re revamping our website – does anyone have any requests?’ or ‘what are your favourite family days out in the area?’ But this is only really worth doing if you have enough followers on Threads to conduct a decent-sized survey.

The truth is, if you’re already performing well on a social media platform, you might be better focussing on that rather than trying to branch out to Threads. This is especially relevant if you’re already overworked, burnt out, and trying to balance multiple tasks as a business owner.

But on the other hand, if you have room to experiment, why not give it a go? It might be all for nothing if Threads crashes and burns within 6 months. Or, it might be the best social media decision you ever make. Where are your bets lying?

But be warned: once you’ve made a Threads account you can’t delete it without also deleting your Instagram. So, if you give Threads a go and then decide to back out of the platform, you can deactivate your account but please don’t delete it! This would wipe all of your following across Instagram too – and building that back up would be a monumental task.

If you use social media to create a lot of paid ads, Threads probably won’t be much use to you. Not for now, anyway. According to The Guardian, “Meta will not be accepting ads on Threads for this year at least.”

Final thoughts

All in all, this is an exciting time and the Mihi team will certainly be keeping a close eye on this new app. Happy threading (or not)!

Need some help growing your business via social media? Or need a hand identifying which social platforms will work best for you? Get in touch with us today.

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post What we know about Threads, Meta’s new rival to Twitter appeared first on MiHiDigital.

But if that isn’t enough, here are a few more reasons why you should be taking full advantage of social media for small businesses…

·      It gives you the potential to reach and attract new customers.

·      You get to know your customers.

·      You get a better understanding of your competitors.

·      You will build your brands awareness.

·      You can connect with your customers and build trustworthy relationships.

That being said, it’s a huge task if you’re not that way inclined, so we’ve pulled together a few top tips to get you started:

Top tip number one: Plan ahead!

We often hear that business owners and employees just don’t have time to be posting on social media every day, which let’s face it is completely understandable. Or they say it’s easier to spend a little bit of time every day, making something up on the spot and posting for the sake of posting. But trust us when we say that’s not doing you or your business any favours, and often ends up being more time-consuming and stressful in the long run.

Having a calendar gives you the time to find out what your customers really want from your social media, and what’s valuable to them. Just test out some different messaging in your calendar, this is called A/B testing and shows what messages work best with your particular audience, find what works and build from that! 

So, avoid the last-minute scrambling and plan ahead with a social media calendar. We’ve written a whole blog about why and how to start your own social media calendar here – Top Tips for Creating Your Social Media Calendar

Top tip number two: Schedule your posts!

Now that you’ve got your plans in your calendar, get ahead of the game and get scheduling. Not only does this free up your time by scheduling a block of social media content all at once but it also means that you can focus on the other important tasks in your week, without having to worry about what picture to post later.

There are lots of free and paid scheduling tools online to help you, including our personal favourite, the Mata Planner for Instagram and Facebook. Most of these tools make your life easier and show you when to post when your followers are online too! But if you use a tool without this feature, it’s always a good start to aim for 7pm in the evening when everyone has settled down into their socials, or 7am in the morning when people are having a morning scroll. But remember to keep an eye out when planning ahead, things change quickly in the world of business and you need to make sure your content is still relevant.

Top tip number three: Keep track of what’s working!

There’s only one way to tell if you’re getting results and that’s by checking your analytics. Even for small businesses, knowing what works and what doesn’t will be super valuable for when you’re working on your next set of content.

All social media will show some form of analytics, so take the time to understand it and try to replicate the content they’re loving! – repurpose it for other platforms e.g.

Top tip number four: Pay attention to trends!

Trends are trends for reason, so give the people what they want and get involved with a few if they are appropriate for your brand.

Although be wary, don’t just jump on every bandwagon you see on Tik Tok, if you’re a serious health brand your customers probably won’t want to see you risking damage doing the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, for example.

Top tip number five: Be social!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, social media is meant to be social! So, once you’re done planning your content, make sure you’re spending time replying to comments as timely as possible, reacting, commenting, and sharing other relevant posts. Take half an hour out of your day every day and you’ll see the extra engagement for your accounts too, it’s a great way to get to know your customers, plus you can have a quick nosey at your competitors to see what they’re up to – Win, win!

And one last extra tip! Be consistent! The more you drop in and out, the fewer people will see your posts, so take the time to get ahead with your scheduling and watch your reach boom! 

If you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow on social media, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post 5 Tips to Successfully Use Social Media for Small Businesses appeared first on MiHiDigital.

If you’re creating content sporadically, not only is this taking your time, but you’re probably seeing a few more typos than you’d like and maybe even a change in tone across your platforms which ultimately isn’t the best look for your business. So, planning ahead and creating a social media calendar would be a much better use of your time as well as giving you the opportunity to proof your posts before those blasted keyboard warriors pick up on every typo or inaccuracy in the book.

What the heck is a social media calendar?

By creating a social media calendar, you’ll be able to plan your posts, manage whole campaigns and give yourself some sort of structure for creating content that week, or that month if you’re feeling brave! It’s also a good place to find any gaps in your media library that might need filling.

Depending on what floats your boat you could be setting up your calendar in a spreadsheet or in Google Calendar or some sort of over-expensive social media management tool. But our favourite is the Meta Planner because it gets the job done and even better, it’s free!

So, where to start when creating your social media calendar?

A good place is to take a proper look through your current social media profiles. See what kind of content worked before (and what didn’t) then have a good nosey at some of your competitors to see what they’re up to because odds are, you can use their ideas for some inspiration.

Next, you need to think about what social media platforms you want to focus on, do you have a photogenic, hands-on business that would work perfectly on Instagram and Facebook? Or are you more of a B2B organisation that would have value in Twitter and LinkedIn? Remember, you can start small and build up to more as you learn more about your audience and customers.

What should you be including in your calendar?

Well, this totally depends on what your business needs for example a small business might need a few details and a picture whereas a big organisation may need full tracking links budgets and management approval. but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s likely that you’ll just need the basics like:

·      The platform you’re posting to

·      The date and time you’re posting

·      Your caption

·      Any media – images or videos (or a link to where they’re stored)

·      Or just a link to an already published post or webpage.

If you wanted to go into more detail, you could label what your posts are, remembering the social media rule of thirds:

·      1/3 of your content should be relevant news and tips that are beneficial for your followers.

·      1/3 of your content should be promoting your product or service.

·      1/3 of your content should be interacting with others and be personal.

Now fill that calendar with some crackin’ ideas!

Start with noting your ideas for each day and build those into captions, then plan how you’re going to create the media for your posts.

Take note, it’s always a good idea to proof your calendar with another member of your team too, just remember to schedule your posts in when they’re ready!

And that’s it, we make it sound so simple right? As with everything social media, the more you do, the more you learn about your audience and the easier it will be to get that spot-on content in your calendar!

If you want to know more about how MiHi Digital can help your business grow on social media, then get in touch with the team!

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post Top Tips for Creating Your Social Media Calendar appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Instagram and YouTube have a more varied audience
For most businesses, Instagram and YouTube provide a better target market. TikTok has been dominated by Gen Z since its launch and that is showing no signs of changing. This is great news if your business is targeted at Gen Z but bad news if it isn’t. The limited audience range makes it difficult to promote your business, whilst in comparison, Instagram and YouTube have a varied user base so no matter how niche your business is, you’ll be able to find an audience for what you offer.

Instagram and YouTube are more business friendly
TikTok is widely known for its informal and light hearted content with trends and dances becoming particularly popular. This means there is less scope for selling products and services effectively, particularly when you compare it to Instagram and YouTube which actively make it easier to sell your products/services through features like clickable links. Whilst you can of course use trending audios and take part in challenges, the chances are that very few of these are going to be suitable for your business.

Instagram offers more format options
Chances are when it comes to your products or services, you need to get a certain amount of information across. This is where Instagram and YouTube can reign supreme over TikTok. Both these platforms allow you to post longer format videos, letting you get all the information across whereas TikTok is more geared to short, snappy content. Instagram also gives you more options on how you’d like to present your content, including images, stories, longer captions, reels and videos. This makes it easier to create varied content that will appeal to a wider audience, as some people will prefer image content over video.

Instagram and YouTube deliver better results
Whilst it can be tempting to focus all your energy on TikTok videos because of its popularity, the goal of any business’s social media is to increase brand awareness and revenue. For most businesses, lead generation on TikTok is going to be significantly smaller because the target market is not going to be as wide as Instagram or YouTube. That’s why we recommend focusing social media marketing efforts on Instagram or YouTube, ahead of TikTok.

Whilst there are pros to using TikTok and it does have a large user base, the core issue with it is that for most businesses, their target audience is not going to be on it. You may get video views but if they’re not engaging with your business, endless views aren’t going to help you.

Struggling with social media and need help with your digital marketing strategy? Give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post TikTok for businesses: Are Instagram and YouTube still relevant? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

What is the Instagram Explore Page?

Before you can get your content on the Instagram Explore page, it is important to understand exactly what it is. If you’re already familiar with the Explore page, you can skip this bit and head straight to the how to get your content on the Explore page section below!

The explore page brings together content that Instagram feels a user will be interested in based on their activity. For example, if a user likes a picture of a cat, the algorithm will take note of this and show a user more cat related content. As it is so individual, no two Explore pages are alike, meaning you’ll largely be competing within your own industry for a target audience that is likely to already be interested in seeing content like yours. The explore page includes photos, videos, reels and even stories. More than 200 million accounts visit the Instagram Explore page daily, that is 50% of the platform user base! This is a huge audience to tap into and a great place to generate more leads.

How to get your content on the Instagram Explore page

Understand Your Audience
Understanding what your audience is interested in is the key to generating content that delivers results. As your audience informs so much of what you do, it’s best to make sure you’re clear on who is following you and what they like first. If you’re not entirely sure who your audience is, take some time to analyse your current followers. Go to Instagram Insights and take note of information like age, gender and location. This will help you to craft the most appealing content for your audience. You can also look at which of your current posts are the most popular and create content that is similar in style.

Post at the best time
For the algorithm, what time the content is posted is vital. Recent posts that are getting immediate engagement are more likely to appear on the Explore page as Instagram will perceive them as high value content that others will also enjoy. To establish the best time to post, again look at your Instagram Insights and see when your current audience is the most active. You can also Google the most popular days/times to post in your location and base your posting times on that.

Encourage engagement
Whilst you’re hopefully posting interesting content your users want to engage with anyway, you can use a call to action (CTA) in your caption to help encourage this. For example, ask your users to leave a comment, visit your website or watch your story. There are also story options like polls and questions where you can encourage your audience to interact with your content. This can also be a great way to gauge what content your audience wants to see more of! Don’t forget to engage back with your audience by liking and responding to comments.

Stay on topic
It can be tempting to jump on every social media trend that is gaining traction, but the reality is that not every single one of these trends is going to suit your specific business. To generate engagement and build an audience that you want to convert to customers, consistency is essential. This also relates to the algorithm, for example, if you post about fitness one day, travelling the next and dogs the day after, Instagram won’t know what your account is about and therefore won’t recommend it to an audience. Keep your message consistent and only use trending audios, challenges, etc, that work for your business.

Use all the content formats
We all process information differently and prefer different formats, so it’s important to take advantage of Instagram’s different post formats and post stories, reels and pictures, as well as create opportunities for interaction, for example, story polls. More recently, Instagram has revealed that video content, such as reels or IGTV is highly favoured and is more frequently shown than pictures. With this in mind, it is important to create reel and video content for your brand. If you don’t yet have video content for your brand, you can be sneaky and use still photos in reels instead.

Use tags
Hashtags, geotags and account tags give you the opportunity to expand your posts reach as the Explore page allows users to search for hashtag, location and topic. By adding relevant tags, you can help your audience find you. Statistics show that accounts that use tags receive more engagement on their posts than accounts that don’t. Make sure that you’re only using relevant hashtags. It can be tempting to jump on hashtags that are trending or popular, however, this can have the opposite effect of your post receiving less exposure and engagement as it appears spammy or is showing up in searches where it’s not relevant.

By using a combination of the above, you will be well on your way to featuring on the Instagram Explore page, expanding your audience and bringing in new leads for your business.

Struggling with social media and need help with your digital marketing strategy? Give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Explore the Instagram Explore Page appeared first on MiHiDigital.

All these factors impact when they are online and when you should therefore be posting.

We spend more time outside during the summer

It’s light outside, hopefully warm (it was very warm this summer) and it’s not raining (again we did have a drought this time around!). So ask yourself, when are your followers most likely to be online? The answer is, of course, later in the evening than they would be during the winter. 

That’s precisely why Facebook will suggest you post at 7pm each day, as people are starting to come inside and move their starey gaze to their phone or tablet (yep some people do still use those for things other than placating their children from time to time).

But what about the winter?

Winter can be quite a vague term, so for the purpose of this blog post, we are referring to ‘winter’ as when the clocks go back (we do know this makes winter seem like quite a long haul but bear with us on this one!).

We’re using this definition because the moving of the clocks does have a significant impact on the overall timing of your post-publication (and if it doesn’t then it should!). That’s because people will more readily be inside from 5pm – purely because it’s dark outside (and cold, wet, windy…. You get the picture!).

So what do you need to do?

Try tweaking your social media timing by posting earlier in the evenings once Halloween is over, purely because if you don’t, your post will be closer to bedtime (we’re saying this is 10 – 11pm for most), which gives it less time to mature and reach more people during day one, which is a vital time for any social media post (engagement is almost always significantly lower the day after the day of posting).

Whilst there is no golden rule for posting as every page has a unique set of followers, it is a good bet to trial this once those clocks do go back. Match these new timings with some post momentum and you’re setting yourself up for a win! 

And remember…. Days get longer after 21^st December… and it might be warm next year too!

The post The clocks have going back – what does that mean for your social media timing? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

But what if we told you that less could actually be more? That you could reach further by posting less? Whilst that’s a slight simplification, the key word we wanted to focus on in this post is ‘momentum’. Without it your social media can struggle; with it, you will undoubtedly thrive. 

Let’s explain…..

The quality vs quantity conundrum

Social media should be about quality and not about quantity. 

Whilst you will ideally be posting on a regular basis (3 – 4 posts per week – if you have enough content – is often considered the sweet spot), you should never *ever* be posting merely for the sake of posting. 

If you’ve sat down and felt like you’re putting something out there just because it’s been a while, or you always do on a Sunday, then step away from the keyboard, plug the mouse in to charge for a moment and have a think….about ‘momentum’.

How do you get momentum?

When it comes to social media, ‘momentum’ is the stringing together of several posts that perform well. Sounds easy, right? In fact, many social accounts struggle to achieve it as they don’t actively monitor, understand, or make the most of what works well for them. 

Two factors largely dictate the performance of a post; content and timing. When the timing is right it puts your post immediately in front of your followers. It’s then down to the content; Is it interesting to them? Does it cause them to engage?

Getting the two right gives you a post that works well…. But then what happens?

Do you keep the momentum up or do you squash it?

The timing was right, the content was right…. Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got a good post and it’s got a lot of engagement. That right there immediately puts you on the front foot for your next post as people that engaged will see the next post earlier in their feeds.

Get the timing and content right again…. Your momentum continues further.

Get either of those wrong, then it squashes that momentum like a brick wall.

So what do you need to do?

Remember when we said at the start that you could post less and reach more? Here’s how you do it… 

Have a review of your previous content – perhaps your last 50 posts.

Make a list of what has worked well – both in terms of content and when it was posted.

Do the same with what didn’t.

The two will usually give you a correlation – the post content and timing that works well, and those that cause the proverbial tumbleweed to make its way silently across the screen. 

From there you’re going to post more of what has worked and less of what hasn’t. The more effective posts that you string together, the better the results you will gain.

So, there you have it – by dropping those posts that aren’t working but are taking time out of your day, you can actually build better momentum and spend less time.

That sounds pretty good to us….

If that sounds like something you need support with, give us a call on 01566 232323 or email Mark at hello@mihidigital.co.uk and we will help build and guide your business through it’s online marketing.

The post The importance of building momentum in your social media posting appeared first on MiHiDigital.

One of the most common hijack techniques is to create a fake account using your business branding and details, then going through to comment on your posts to “announce a winner” and asking for your followers’ bank details. The main issue is these people are acting as you, with your business name on their profile, it’s easy for entrants to get confused or worse still, send them their personal information and being de-frauded. Obviously, this is a horrible way for your potential new customers to interact with your brand, 

They might even try sending friend requests and messages to accounts who have entered your competition asking for the same information, pretending to be you! So it’s essential to be aware of these risks and plan how to deal with an attempted hijack. 

What can you do to stop it?

The number one rule… Stay vigilant – keep a keen eye on the comments. If you see anything you know to be a scam account, or people asking the wrong questions, just delete it. That’s the best way to stop your followers from seeing their comments, so be on it! Highlight at the outset and in other posts that you won’t ask for this type of information.

If it does happen, put a clear message out there to say that it’s not you and ask them to report the profile or page to Facebook. Reporting is the ultimate way to stop the spamming of your competition.

So, to protect your competition and its entrants, keep an eye out, be observant and ask people to report as soon as you know there is an issue.

Don’t let these risks put you off running a competition for your followers, the pros far out way the cons, so find a good prize and get it out there! Just be aware and protect your followers! 

The post Social media competitions come with a few risks, make sure you keep your followers safe!  appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Since their inception, a story step has always been limited to 15 seconds. What that has meant for video is that you’re either panicked into trying to post something meaningful that is less than 15 seconds… or you upload your video to find that it is then chopped into several 15 second segments

To make things worse, when uploading, you can often find that the last bit of your video uploads before the first bit, which can be more than a little frustrating!

However, that frustration is coming to an end! Last week a large notification started to pop up on smart phones across the land, and it said this….

That’s right! An Instagram story video can now be up to 1 minute in length! No more upload issues with the end appearing before the start! No more annoying situations when your 17 second video is chopped into one 15 second one and a paltry 2 second sequel!

But what does that mean for you and your followers?

There’re always ups and downs to big updates like this, as with anything, you just need to understand the new features and how you can make them work for your account. Overall, we think this is a pretty positive change to Instagram.

After retiring IGTV last year, 60 second stories are a welcome option for sharing longer videos for your followers. It gives you the opportunity to share more (while not having to repeatedly align and re-add your stickers and music onto every. single. clip. – anyone else triggered?) It also means that users can skip through one video with one tap. Rather than getting annoyed with 5,6 or 7 short clips to tap through a video they aren’t particularly interested in. Another small win for the change is you can save the whole story if you wanted to keep it for further content or if you just really like your work. You won’t have to download separate 15 second clips and edit them back together. 

Of course, you’re not strictly held to 60 second clips, if you wanted to do a few 20 or 30 second stories with bitesize information you still can, lots of users still prefer the quick snippets that stories provide. Just remember that lots of accounts will be taking full advantage of the longer segments, so don’t be the account with 10 bite sized stories that could be one 60 second Instagram stories. 

Stories vs Reels… 

With this new update, we see the two features slowly blending together. Reels took a bump up in length recently too, from 60 to 90 seconds. but the biggest difference between the two is the 24 hour limit on short form Stories. Meaning you can try new things, see what works and what doesn’t without it being a permanent mark on your account.

Reels are a great way to share your account to users that don’t follow you, so you’re likely to see larger reach. But your Stories keep you connected with the followers you already have. So, there’s still plenty of reasons to keep using both when building your account, experiment and learn how the new feature can help boost your following.

How long should videos be on Social Media?

This totally depends where you’re posting…

Facebook… 

15 seconds long = watch to the end.

2 – 5 minutes long = higher engagement.

Instagram…

You have the first 3 seconds to capture a user’s interest on your story or reel so make them count.

Twitter…

You should take up 44 seconds of the 140 seconds available. Just enough time to intrigue your viewer without over doing it. Think trailers for longer videos for example.

LinkedIn…

LinkedIn gives you a full 10 minutes of time, but let’s not go crazy. It’s shown that 30 seconds or under sees a 200% uplift in completion rates.

And if you were wondering what the second thing that bugs us about Instagram is…. that move a few years ago from displaying posts in a chronological feed! 

We’re here to help, if you need support with your social media make sure you get in touch! 

The post Why you no longer have to see your videos on Instagram chopped into 15 second segments… appeared first on MiHiDigital.