While many brands are using Instagram every day, not all of them are using it as effectively as the following brands are. By using their ideas as an example for your own Instagram campaign, your business could become more successful at reaching and engaging with your customers.

1. Lowes

Lowes doesn’t just sell home improvement supplies, it shows its customers how to use their products and gives them some real world applications for them via Instagram.

2. Starbucks

Starbucks uses Instagram to not only promote their brand, but to connect with their customers. They do this by using followers’ images as part of their promotion bringing the customer into their brand story and making them feel like more of a community.

3. Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s has always had some creative ideas when it comes to their ice cream flavors, and they let that brand personality shine on their Instagram posts.

4. Sephora

A leading cosmetic and beauty supply chain, Sephora knows how to draw in their customers’ focus on their Instagram page. By making good use of white space to emphasize color, the readers’ eyes are drawn to the products.

5. Intel

Intel is one of those companies that likes to show off their technological developments, but on their Instagram page, the employees are the stars of the show. Intel offers followers a behind the scenes look at their brand making them seem more personable and inviting.

6. Taco Bell

Taco Bell uses Instagram to release new products, showcase their menu items and engage with their followers in a fun, colorful way. Their posts are full of energy and avoid any generic marketing techniques.

7. American Express

The American Express Instagram offers inspiring images of tourists carrying their American Express cards around the world. This is a creative way to engage followers and promote the use of their cards for travel.

8. Warby Parker

Warby Parker an online only prescription eyewear company, has opted to use their own employees rather than hiring models and feature them on their Instagram site to promote their products. This gives followers a sense of realism and shows what Warby Parker’s products would look like on the average man or woman.

9. Ikea

Like Lowes, Ikea uses Instagram to show followers how to use their products and even replicates an in-store experience. This promotes their products by giving followers some home decorating tips and directs them to the must-have products to complete their look.

10. Sharpie

Sharpie, the leading manufacture of markers and writing instruments used by people all over the world, uses Instagram creatively by tying in pop culture with the use of their products. This appeals to younger generations and increases the total of new followers their Instagram page receives.

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When you use social media for building event awareness, friends sharing the event with other friends can drive incredible traffic. And when people are at the event, they share their experiences with others who had second thoughts about not going, and it continues to build awareness.

Facebook generates 4 million “likes” every minute and Twitter boasts around 500 million tweets every single day. These recent statistics alone show just how powerful these platforms are on a daily basis, and it also creates the chance to create meaningful social relationships with other event professionals, organisers, speakers and potential attendees. No event professional should ignore these platforms, as the power they hold is priceless for creating and marketing successful events.

Promoting Events on Facebook – To promote your event effectively on Facebook, create an event page, utilize Facebook Ads to target interested regional attendees, run a competition, follow-up personally and involve your network. It is also important to share the event and reshare your attendees’ updates during the event.

Promoting Events on Twitter – Promoting an event on Twitter is different and more time consuming. When promoting an event on Twitter, first create a unique, simple event hashtag and communicate it through all your collateral, ask speakers to co-host Twitter Chats, discover and retweet active conversations during the event, create Twitter lists of sponsors, speakers and attendees and build relationships throughout.

Promoting Events on LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a very effective platform for promoting your event. First, publish a content post about the event, then provide regular updates leading up to the event. Use Direct Messaging to promote the event to your network and create a showcase page. Finally, create an Event Group for ongoing networking and conversation.

Promoting Events on Pinterest – Pinterest makes it easy for businesses to promote their events. Just create an event guide, promote your sponsors and add your boards to your website. Create topic and mood boards for the event and be sure to interact with your event followers throughout.

Promoting Events on Instagram – Promoting events on Instagram? Yes! Be sure to use your event hashtag on every update and share photos and videos of past events to promote the current event. You could even host a photo competition that you can integrate and share throughout your other social accounts or use Instagram to promote your sponsors and speakers.

     These are just some of the ways you could use social to promote your event and build a more effective awareness of the event, your company and your brand.

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Alternative Channels of B2B Approach

According to critics social media cannot be effective in getting business-to-business (B2B) leads compared to business events, telemarketing, and trade summits. Arguably, the content marketing for B2B is centered on the social media.

The competitive edge of social media has been based in alternative B2B channels. Sometimes, it supplements conferences or inside sales such as Google Hangout, increase client referrals such as YouTube, and connect employee with recruiter indirectly such as LinkedIn.

Successful Management of Project

Most managers of B2B have old-fashioned or outdated understanding about the importance of social media for managing projects. On the contrary, the significance of social media will promote communication, innovation, and reduce costs for project management.

The lifecycle of projects is complicated, but with early diagnosis, a considerable amount of time and money can be saved. This can be done by getting rid of the bottlenecks in client communication and inter-team communication.

In this regard, social channels will be able to share spaces such as online communities to help employees in determining the inflow and outflow of project information. By easing communication, B2B can help workers access a variety of tools.

Cost-Efficiency through Social Media

Basically, project management costs can be reduced with the implementation of social media tools. Try to imagine hiring developers to create an environment for internal project management. This can be a costly endeavour, but getting virtual workspaces instead offer lower cost to increase productivity and connect employees.

Strategic Approach Using Analytics

Project managers particularly those working in the IT domain would not risk separating social analytics and project management. If they do so, they are going to pay a huge sum of money.

Acquiring of information from data gives project management an edge. This can be done through cutting-edge tools such as analytics to provide managers with information and not data. The visualisation of data is the newest trend in analytics which in turn increases social campaign efficiency.

Additionally, according to a consulting firm based in the U.S., McKinsey & Company, social analytics tools will be able to reduce the cost of project management by about fifteen to twenty percent.

Applying Key Performance Indicators

The significance of key performance indicators (KPI) has become a huge factor in the development of project lifecycle. Through KPI, managers will be able to create benchmarks that offer updates on performance of projects. This will enable the prediction of outcomes in terms of project delivery.

Other tools are sometimes termed as web applications instead of social media. However, it does not matter as social media is considered a term that is all-encompassing. Tools with built-in KPI still offer social frameworks in which workers can interact.

Hybrid Interface through Social Media

The collaboration of project management and social media has given a new hybrid interface. This is also known as the productive social environment in which people can collaborate and communicate with each other, instead of wasting time chatting, in order to get the intended output.

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