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Instagram announced a new test that would begin hiding public like counts on all posts. It begins in Canada and extends to Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand.
Then an announcement from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri says that the US will be the next country to join the list.

But why is Instagram hiding like? And what will this new update mean for brands and influencers?
According to Adam Mosseri, the decision to remove public like counts is part of a greater effort to lower the Instagram pressure and make it a healthier, safer platform.
In a perfect way, it will encourage users to focus more on the actual shared content not how many likes it receives. And without the fear of dropping in terms of likes, users will feel more comfortable expressing themselves through content creation.

But what will the timeline look like?

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While like counts will no longer be public, this doesn’t mean that they’re disappearing completely. Users will be able to view how many likes their photos have received, but their followers won’t be able to see the total number.
Rather, the post will show that it was liked by “@mary george and thousands of others.”
The public will also see the list of users who have liked the post, but they would have to count them manually to know the final amount.

What about Brands and Influencers?

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Likes have long been a measure of success on Instagram and removing them will certainly change the entire influencer game.

According to Digital Marketing, this move is actually a huge cash grab for Instagram. So, by taking away like counts, Instagram is basically taking away power from influencers hands and forcing brands to pay for ads.

Without public like counts, influencers will have to ask for more engagement from their followers through Instagram stories.
This will encourage people to leave comments, participate in polls, share their posts with friends, and more.

How will this change affect Businesses social media strategies?
For influencers, companies will have to be more creative in analyzing data, which will help them determine what content is actually working.

According Social Media Directors:

⦁ This is a huge positive step for the industry, as too many brands prefer likes over creating meaningful content. Now, without the pressure of this “shallow metrical,” businesses will have more freedom to develop real relationships with their followers. Double tapping a photo is easy, but responding to polls, commenting on posts, and other forms of engagement explain your audience’s willingness to connect with your brand and that loyalty and enthusiasm is worth more than a thousand likes.

⦁ This change isn’t without complexities. The real question is how will it impact the commercial relationship between brand and influencer or celebrity ambassador, which has to date largely relied on public likes to infer popularity and favourability.

⦁ The net result will be positive as it will force more attention on what has been a grey area of media for too long, and perhaps most importantly, let’s not ignore the significant human benefits that should emanate from this change. Multiple research reports and studies have suggested a correlation between likes, or the lack of
them, and mental health issues of day to day users of social. This change isn’t the answer to those issues, but it’s a significant step in the right direction.

⦁ Good influencer marketers will still have access to those metrics even if they’re hidden. We’ll still be able to know an influencer’s engagement rates before committing to working with them, and we’ll still be able to fully report on performance metrics. Overall, it’s going to become really clear which agencies have the tech, strategy, and expertise to succeed despite this change.

⦁ Influencers welcome this change for the most part too. By conducting a survey, more than 300 international influencers when these tests first started rolling out worldwide. This survey found that the majority of those surveyed, 62 percent, wanted their likes to remain hidden. More than 51 percent didn’t see a change in the number of likes they received even when they were hidden. And in sentiment analysis, more than two times the positive comments over negative ones.

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While Instagram may seem alarming, there’s no reason to be worried. In fact, this change comes as a welcome chance for many brands to pinpoint the effectiveness of their campaigns and foster a committed, loyal audience. With carefully crafted content and a team of social media experts to support you, you’ll still be able to experience success on Instagram.

To know more about what’s happening with social media platforms, leave us your email

Throughout history and before the arrival of the inbound methodology, marketing and advertising were almost completely outbound. According to Peter F. Drucker, the patriarch of modern business and marketing, inbound marketing took root as far back as the mid-1850s when Cyrus Hall McCormick, who invented the mechanical harvester, used market research to develop inbound methods for generating consumer interest in what was then a radical evolution in farming.

By the 1950s and ’60s, market research took hold, which allowed marketers to collect information on their customers’ interests and habits. Not only did this information let marketers create more pointed campaigns and better understand their consumers’ buying journeys, but it also made consumers feel more involved in the sales process.

The result of these advances was a quick rise in interruptive outbound marketing in the form of billboards, door-to-door sales, TV and radio commercials, print ads, and maybe that was the most horrific medium of all.

By the 1970s, Drucker’s fundamentals on marketing were growing in popularity. Drucker believed that customer orientation and market segmentation were at the core of a powerful marketing strategy. He knew that the point of marketing was to “know and understand the customer so well that the product and service fits him and sells itself.” Furthermore, Drucker believed that, with the right method of marketing, all a business needs to do is make a product or service available so that “logistics rather than salesmanship” are what seals the deal.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

• Peter Drucker

So, what is exactly the inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is about carrying solutions and opportunities that have an affirmative impact on people and on your business.
hmm, how do you do that?
There are so many definitions, but the best one was from HubSpot they defines inbound marketing as:
“Sharing is caring and inbound is about creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more.”

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In a scientific Definition: Inbound Marketing is the process of attracting prospects, via content creation, before they are even ready to buy.
It’s one of the best and most cost-effective ways to convert strangers into loyal customers.

The moment people arrive at your website, your sales team can engage with them using email and chat, Planting value as they learn about your brand.
Then, the customer service team role comes, they can help them long after they’ve become customers by acting as an advisor and expert on your product.

As we said before, Inbound is a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to plant a business that provides value and builds unbreakable trust.

As technology evolves, Inbound guides an approach for doing business in the most helpful way. Inbound is a better way to market, a better way to sell, and a better way to serve and help your customers. Because when “good for the customer” means “good for the business”, your company will grow better, stronger over the long term.

By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your business.

Inbound Marketing Methodology

These three methodology will help you effectively market to your target audience the inbound way. So there are specific strategies for each inbound method of attracting, engaging, and delighting consumers to help your business grow better.

Attracting Strategies

We want to attract the right strangers in other words “Your target persona” to your website and to your brand with quality, compelling content that answers the questions they have. We’ll use blogging, social media, content offers, keyword and SEO strategy, and even outbound advertising to reach them. Also provided values and guidance for your products. Give them solutions for their challenges. And don’t forget about customer testimonials, and details about promotions or discounts.

To attract your audience members on a deeper standard through inbound marketing, optimize all of this content with an SEO strategy. An SEO strategy will require you to target specific keywords and phrases related to your products or services.
This will allow your content and information to organically appear on the search engine results page for the people who are searching for this information.

Engaging Strategies

When you use inbound strategies to engage your audience, be sure that you’re communicating and dealing with leads customers in a way that makes them want to build a long term relationship with you.
When using these engagement strategies, Blast information about the value your business will provide them with.

Specific engagement strategies may include how you handle and manage your inbound sales.
Focus on how customer service representatives can handle interested people and prospects. Additionally, be sure you’re always selling solutions rather than selling products. This will ensure you that all deals end in mutually beneficial for customers and your business.
That means, you provide value for your right fit customers.
Delighting Strategies

Delighting inbound strategies guarantee customers are happy, satisfied, and supportive long after they make a purchase. These strategies involve your team members becoming experts and mentors who assist customers at any point in time.
Incorporating thoughtful, well-timed assistance, support, and request feedback from customers is a great way to delight these people. Bots and surveys should be shared at specific points in time throughout the customer’s journey to ensure they make sense and are valuable.

The mark of an inbound strategy focused on delighting customers is one that assists and supports customers in any situation, whether or not your business gets any value out of it.
Remember: a delighted customer becomes a brand advocate and promoter, so handle all interactions, both big and small, with care.

If so, what is Outbound Marketing?

Simply, outbound marketing on the other hand starts with some basic knowledge of your target audience and builds programs to teach those very specific potential about your products and services in a meaningful way.
Outbound marketing typically is accomplished using the more traditional ways such as direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing and events.

But what’s the difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

The difference between inbound and outbound marketing is tender and often the lines between the two are blurred.
For example, an inbound marketing program can be used as the first step in a long-term marketing campaign to capture lead data,
whereas a related outbound portion would be used to nurture and educate those prospects to the point where they are ready to make a buying decision.
Together they create a sustainable, long-term program that can produce a continuous stream of sales opportunities.
Vital to the success of your business-to-business lead generation is the ability to leverage both inbound and outbound marketing mechanisms. Inbound marketing is necessary to complete your sales pipeline with new leads, while outbound marketing helps you track and drive your existing prospects through the buying cycle. Only through the combination of both practices can you build an effective lead generation engine capable of filling your sales pipeline.

Modernity of Inbound today and beyond

Today, inbound marketing is focusing on using relevant content that is catered for consumers throughout each stage of the buying.
This ensures not only that leads are moving through the funnel to become customers, but also that consumers are receiving the most personalized, meaningful experience.
Also, with inbound marketing, consumers find brands through search engines, social media, and blog articles.

The possibilities with inbound marketing are endless, especially with the rise of analytics and artificial intelligence, which allow companies to learn more, faster, and to deliver an even better, more personalized experience.

According to inbound marketing methodology, this very personalized strategy is what will make the sales process perfect and deliver on Drucker’s point, that by knowing and understanding a customer well enough, The product or service can simply sell itself.

Will you invest in inbound Marketing to improve your business?

As we have talked about in a previous article, we have several marketing strategies so how to know which one exactly has worked?

Strategy is one of those terms that everyone seems to be throwing around these days. As for digital strategy?
And the thing about digital marketing strategies is that every company has one, even if you’re not the one actively controlling it. Even if you’ve never spent a minute on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any other Web property, customer opinion is forming about your brand, based on mentions of your company’s name by individual users or by your obvious lack of participation.
Because your actual presence on different digital marketing properties matters more than ever, it’s a good idea to take time out of your schedule to regularly evaluate how well your strategy is performing.

And whether you’ve got one in place, or you’re just starting to map one out, it’s crucial that you have a measurement framework in place so you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Because if it’s not working, it’s crucial to identify why and pivot. And if it is working? You need to identify why?

So how do you evaluate a digital marketing strategy in only 5 simple steps?
Great let’s see:

1- It all starts with goals

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A good digital marketing strategy will always be heavily influenced by business goals which are almost always financial (or ladder up to financial growth).
By the first step in any good digital marketing strategy evaluation is a thorough examination of the specific goals you’ve set for yourself in the past. (Obviously, if you haven’t yet created any goals, this is the first issue you’ll want to tackle!)

Digital marketing goals include items such as:
⦁ The number of social shares for your blog posts
⦁ The size of your fan base on social networking websites
⦁ Mentions of your brand name on social media websites
⦁ The number of positive reviews left about your company on sites as Google Reviews and Yelp
⦁ Website visitors from social networks
⦁ Total number of conversions resulting from social traffic

If you’ve previously set up goals, take the time to determine whether or not you’re hitting your target projections. Also, look to see if the goals you set in the past still make sense for your company based on its current performance. If necessary, revise your goals to accommodate new objectives or to account for changes in product/service offerings.

2- Taking a look at your digital presence

As you examine the types of customers you target again, you’ll also want to periodically assess whether or not you’re actively participating on the right digital properties.
For example, suppose you’re in an industry that targets young women, ages 18-26. If you launched your digital marketing campaign before the advent of the social networking sweetheart, Pinterest, you could be missing out on a potentially tremendous source of traffic if you never took the time to determine whether or not you’re active on the right sites!

3- Messaging strategies measurement

So, if you’re going to evaluate the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy, you’re going to need to look at numbers.
Truth time? Numbers are just part of being in business.
And look, there is so much data in there, it can be hard to know where to start. So let’s take you through where to look and what metrics matter the ones that relate to your goals and objectives.

So, what are the key things to measure? Basically, your business goals and the marketing objectives that lead to achieving them… which are likely:

⦁ Which types of messages (i.e. text-based status updates, blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.) are performing best with your audience?
⦁ Do the words you’ve chosen for various messaging pieces seem to clang with your audience?
⦁ How frequently are your marketing materials being shared virally amongst users?
⦁ Number of traffic that completed specific actions
⦁ Sales revenue
⦁ Profit margin
⦁ Sales volume
⦁ Number of traffic that transacted
⦁ Number of Users

The trick is, If your digital marketing message is in line with your customer’s expectations, you’ll see high levels of engagement with your branded materials, as well as a high number of social shares as people pass your content on to others. If you aren’t yet seeing these results, this could indicate a mismatch between your company’s messaging and your customers’ interests.

4- Digital Marketing ROI

But, What’s the ROI: Simple it’s the measure of the profit or loss that you generate on your digital marketing campaigns, based on the amount of money you have invested. In conclusion, this measurement tells you whether you’re getting your money’s worth from your marketing campaigns.

Calculating your exact returns can be difficult, but you’ll ultimately find that the data you’re able to produce are well worth your efforts.

To measure ROI, you’ll need to track two variables:
⦁ The amount you’ve invested into your digital marketing campaigns for both financial investments and time expenditures

⦁ The financial benefit of any conversions you’re tracking.

5- Examining your target customer profiles again

Remember, any good digital marketing plan is founded on a series of well-constructed customer profiles that outline the specific types of people you’d like to reach through your campaigns.
So, shouldn’t launch a new marketing campaign until you have full knowledge of your target customer’s demographics, interests and Web activities, and you have to continually develop this profile based on your newest data.
As an example, if you target young men on Facebook but find that Facebook Insights reports the majority of your “Likes” come from middle-aged women, you may need to change all elements of your marketing campaigns to account for this new customer data.

• Note: if you don’t have a digital marketing strategy yet read our blog on how to create a digital marketing strategy. (Link to our blog)in the end.

Tell us how often do you evaluate your company’s digital marketing strategy? If you have any tips on assessing your current campaign performance, share them with us!