Click through the categories below to read posts about specific topics, or scroll down to read posts in chronological order.
In the ever-evolving landscape of social media, influencers and content creators often find themselves facing unexpected challenges. Recently, our team at Simply Social Media has encountered a recurring issue with Meta, Instagram's parent company, removing sponsored content published by the influencers we work with without clear explanations. After numerous frustrating experiences and extensive research, we've identified a common thread – alcohol.
Influencer marketing goes beyond follower counts and photography skills. Authenticity, storytelling, and meaningful engagement with the audience are the hallmarks of a good influencer. Authentic followers who genuinely engage with content matter more than sheer numbers. A good influencer excels at storytelling, sharing personal experiences to create emotional connections. Meaningful engagement, such as thoughtful comments and discussions, is a sign of a successful influencer. To succeed in influencer marketing, prioritize these qualities over superficial metrics and focus on authentically connecting with the right audience.
As a professional influencer marketing agency, we are well aware of the dangers of buying Instagram followers. Sure, it may seem like a great idea at the time - you get an instant boost of followers, and you can use those numbers to show your influence. However, this practice can be extremely harmful to your account in the long run.
When you buy Instagram followers, you are not only paying for fake accounts, but you are also inviting a whole host of problems. Not only do these followers not interact with your posts, but they can also make it difficult for your actual, legitimate followers to engage with your content. Additionally, if the followers you have purchased are bots, they can be flagged by Instagram, resulting in a decrease in your overall reach and engagement.
At our agency, we prefer to work with influencers who have a minimum of 80% authentic followers. This means that their followers are real people who actively engage with their content and add value to their brand. If you have purchased followers in the past, or if you have a lower follower quality due to bots or people who stopped using their accounts, we recommend removing those followers to improve your overall follower quality. If you are going to go this route, be sure to do so slowly as this could flag your account to Instagram as well. (More on this here.)
At the end of the day, buying followers can be a fast and easy way to get a quick boost in followers. However, it’s important to remember that this could have detrimental effects on your account in the long term. Investing your time in building a real community and gaining quality followers is the best way to ensure that your influencer marketing campaigns are successful.
Removing inactive, fake or bot Instagram followers is an important task to maintain the health of your account and ensure that your audience consists of real, organic followers. It can be tempting to want to quickly remove all fake followers at once, but this can actually cause more harm than good. Instagram has algorithms to detect sudden, drastic changes in the number of followers, which can result in your account being flagged.
Imagine a future where Instagram releases features that actually help your posts get seen. A future where instead of battling the algorithm, you can increase engagement and audience reach with minimal effort. Hold on tight friends, this isn’t sci-fi, this is actually happening! It’s all possible with Instagram Collabs!
The new Instagram Collab feature allows you to co-create a piece of content with another account. That means that both accounts are listed as publishers of the post, and the post shows up on both account feeds. Just like that, you get twice the audience!
You can use the Collab feature on images and Reels so you aren’t limited in the type of content you create. You can keep doing your thing, but now you get to rock it with friends! We have a handy video on our Instagram page that shows you how to do it, but essentially all you have to do is toggle to the “Tag People” section and invite a collaborator when creating the post. That person accepts the invitation, and then it is published on their feed as well. Easy!
Currently, you can only “Collab” with one other account but we hope they expand this soon. If you’re someone who partners with brands or businesses, this is going to be an incredible feature for you! Giveaways, for instance, just got exponentially easier—no more tallying entries from multiple posts, now it’s all in one place. Creator, business, and personal accounts can all access this feature, so it’s accessible to everyone on Instagram.
In the spirit of collaboration, we took a much-needed break from our laptops to get outside and get creative. After using Lightroom for editing our photos and Google Keep for drafting up our caption ideas, we created a post on Instagram. For this experiment, Caitlin was the originator of the post, meaning she started the post then invited Amy to Collab. All she had to do was tag Amy in the post, and then the option to invite her to collaborate popped up. Exceptional ease of use!
We learned a few important lessons when it comes to using Instagram Collabs. Here’s what we found:
It does matter who originates the post. Only the originator can edit the post after it has been published, and the collaborator will not be automatically notified of any changes.
In addition, whoever starts the post will be the first name in the byline, regardless of where you’re viewing the post. In the area by the caption, only their name will appear.
Yep, still talking about the originator: while both accounts can see the specific post insights, only the OG gets “credit” for it in the overall Insights.
While the reach, impressions, and engagement are calculated from both accounts, “profile insights” are limited to what happens on the OG’s profile. These include new followers, email button taps, and profile visits.
Given this info, it is super important who you decide to collaborate with! Do think carefully about who you partner with as you don’t want to lose control of your aesthetic and voice.
If you are using this feature for a brand partnership, you must still use the branded content partner tools and FTC language to disclose the relationship.
How will YOU be using the new Collab feature? We’re excited by the endless possibilities and the opportunity to have some creative fun that also boosts engagement and reach!
Do you know the history of the Zia symbol? Our state's flag features a sacred symbol created by the Zia Pueblo, but its presence on the flag is thanks to an act of appropriation in 1925. When the Daughters of the Revolution held a design contest to choose a symbol, a local physician, Harry Mera, submitted the Zia, something he had seen while studying and admiring Native American arts. As an article in New Mexico Magazine states, Mera did not seek permission, and the pueblo was left without any power to counter the appropriation—at the time, the people of the pueblo weren't considered citizens and weren’t allowed to vote.
The history of the flag is well worth learning about and reckoning with when using the Zia symbol. For those who want to use the symbol, you can ask for and pay for use through the Zia Pueblo (as you might have noticed, our @SimplySantaFeNM account logo uses the Zia, and we obtained permission before using it). The article mentioned above provides a solid overview of the history, and for those seeking to learn more, you can tune into a filmed lecture from the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center that was hosted in tandem with a 2018 exhibition focused on the Zia symbol, its history, and its complications.
Local jewelry maker Leah Harrison of Yote Jewelry also has a fantastic blog post on the subject. As she writes, "So many aspects of Indigenous culture are in our day to day, yet also overlooked. How can something that defines us as a community have such little recognition by those who live by it? The Zia Symbol is a beautiful, exclusive, and powerful symbol. It holds a special place to us as a State and as a people, but it also has very specific origins. It has been on loan for a very long time now and deserves recognition. It is sacred and should be treated as such."
We've linked the video, article, and blog post below as well as a link to the official Pueblo of Zia website. If you have educational resources to share, we'd love to hear about them!
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=10155288578081755&ref=watch_permalink
https://www.newmexico.org/nmmagazine/articles/post/favorite-sun/
From your favorite chef’s preferred skillet to your fitness guru’s latest workout gear, there’s a good chance you’ve been on the receiving side of influencer marketing and the power of a recommendation. Yelp and Google reviews are great, but how much more likely are you to trust a review by hamburgersrock395 than a review by someone whose taste you already admire and respect? Herein lies one of the top reasons why influencer marketing really works—an influencer’s opinion has an established platform, and their audience is ready and willing to take note.
The enormity of the internet is both its gift and its curse—especially when trying to find a modicum of reliability. People are overwhelmed and looking for a direction that resonates with them—depending on what they tend to like, and what/who they aspire to be. When a website geared towards audiophiles recommends a pair of headphones based on a hyper-technical description, the person that appeals to might not be the same as the person looking for a cute pair for an upcoming trip. Instead, they might look to see what their favorite entrepreneur who constantly travels recommends.
That’s why influencer recommendations are a powerful tool for getting the word out about your business or product. Certain influencers have a direct line to the audience you’re looking to target. An influencer builds a following based off of their personality, their interests, how they engage, and how trustworthy their suggestions are. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes a lot of work—another reason why this method of marketing is so valuable. The respect you gain from an audience might require years to develop, but an influencer has already developed that audience.
Once an influencer posts about your business or product, the value doesn’t end there. The savvy brand will reuse the User Generated Content that is created by the influencer. These people are creators—photographers, trendsetters, videographers, speakers, writers, and thought leaders, and more likely than not, their content is going to be highly engaging. So from re-posting their content on social media to including it in a testimonial page on a website or newsletter, it’s vital to not miss an opportunity to promote their content. According to one stat, “55% of consumers trust user-generated content over any other form of marketing, making it a surefire way to boost your sales and improve brand loyalty.”
A quick aside—reposting someone’s content is only valuable if you know how to adhere to etiquette, such as posting with correct attribution. Lucky for you we’ve already done the homework for you! Check out our blog about how to use UGC here.
The super savvy brand takes it a step further and takes advantage of the opportunity to get in front of a new audience by engaging directly with comments made on the influencers posts. Direct engagement with their followers on their posts will be far more successful than engaging without such a nice introduction. It’s like connecting with someone during a dinner party versus a cold call via email. It’s a real missed opportunity to leave that on the table!
In a recent campaign with local Santa Fe restaurant Paper Dosa, there were tons of comments about how much people love the restaurant and what it means to them. Without missing a beat, the team at Paper Dosa engaged with all of the comments, showing their gratitude and paving the way for more followers and ultimately customers!
Influencer recommendations create the opportunity to receive powerful, trusted proclamations about your business, to directly connect with potential customers within the influencer’s community, and to utilize an influencer’s content on your own account. Working with an influencer doesn’t have to and shouldn’t end at them becoming acquainted with you and your product, it should be seen as an ongoing relationship that they will want to genuinely recommend to their own audiences.
We know how to be productive, now if someone can teach us how to keep our desks this clean that would be great!
Schedule blocking. Those apps that stop you from opening tabs. Advanced email organization. The pomodoro method (helpful yes, but also extremely fun to say). If you’re an entrepreneur who seamlessly manages to get everything done without feeling overwhelmed, distracted, or out of balance, call us and tell us everything! For the rest of us, it takes some tactics to find the best way to crush our to-do lists while maintaining healthy, happy lives. Some productivity tips have completely changed our games, so we’re excited to share those with you in hopes that they may do the same for you. But before we dive in, we’d like to point out the essential, underlying theme in all of these tips: good ol’ boundaries.
Whatever method helps you accomplish what you need to do for work, know that what you’re essentially doing is protecting your time and mental space. It took us some time, some help (shoutout to our business/life coach Justine Duran!), and some practice to implement strategies that help us be the most efficient and super boss versions of us, but we’re on a roll! Setting boundaries in your work, whether you’re an entrepreneur or working from home (or both!), is the superlative method for taking care of yourself while taking care of business, because we truly believe you can’t have the latter without the former. Alright, let’s do this!
Prep for the week. Let’s start out with Monday. Before diving into the week with your head to the ground, start off by looking at your calendar and getting an overall view of what’s ahead. Need to prep for meetings? Have any assignments due? Plan out, in whatever way works for you, when you’ll do what’s necessary to have the smoothest work week possible. This helps minimize any feelings of “when I am going to get to that!” by taking even just 15 minutes to say “I’ll do this at X time.” Easy, now you know when you’ll get it done! Our favorite part of this exercise? Planning when we’re going to do creative work, and protecting that time with all our might. Even if it doesn’t result in more answered emails (a questionable meter of accomplishment anyway, if you ask us), creative time is what makes our brains function and thrive in order to do everything else. Creative time is our fuel, so yes, it absolutely gets at least an hour today. We would totally include a photo of what our calendar looks like, but we don’t want to stress you out with how busy our lives are!
Set the stage for what people can expect. Whether it’s with colleagues or clients, it’s important to let those you work with know how often and when they can look forward to hearing from you. Do you utilize your email footer? It’s the perfect space to say how you do things, automatically, with every email. We let people know when they can expect to hear a response: we check email once in the morning, and once in the afternoon, so we’ll respond accordingly. Boom! Your clients have been communicated to, your boundaries have been maintained, and with a quick automation, you’ve set up what people can reasonably anticipate.
Easily set expectations and boundaries in your email footer.
Schedule your emails! Gone are the days of sending emails at 10 pm—it’s time to say hello to scheduled emails. We’re not suggesting you work at strange hours, but if part of your most successful schedule involves getting work done after the kids have gone to bed, or you find the calmest before sunrise - we get it! You you are working off hours, you can set your responses to a time that feels respectful, and let’s be real, makes you seem on top of your game at 8 am on a Monday!
Be your own cheerleader. Are you starting to wonder if this is a productivity tip blog or a self-care blog? To be honest, it’s both, because they go hand in hand. So in order to have the juice to get through your to-do list, pat yourself on the back. Again. And again. Working from home, being an entrepreneur, being an adult in a wild world, we don’t always get the extra push of support that we actually need. But there’s always one person around to provide it: ourselves. So don’t skimp on the self-love: you need it, we all do we. Here, we’ll start you off: none of this is easy, you rule, keep up the good work!
Skip saying sorry, start saying no. Free up your typing time by getting straight to what you need to say, and start saying what you mean. So many of us apologize for a delayed response, but a lot of the time it starts the email off on the wrong foot. Everyone takes a long time to respond sometimes, it’s just how it is! If you do want some sort of intro, “Thanks for your patience” can be a good alternative. And speaking of typing time, do you know what takes less time to say than “yes?” “No!” Once we stopped committing to things that didn’t actually jive with our work, we felt so empowered, which is such an energizing place to work from.
We’d love to hear what your productivity tips are and if any of these work for you! Remember that even if you work alone, you’re not alone in figuring out how to achieve the fabled idea of balance—we’re all in this together!
