• What to post instead of your regularly scheduled content to be interactive, memorable, and relevant.
• What to focus on internally as a business while store traffic may be down.
• How to be a part of your community and make a difference that will last far beyond the coronavirus.

A Reply to Later’s Top 7 Instagram Marketing Trends for 2020 

by Evelyn Stetzer

Happy New Year from your friends at TSG! One of our favorite platforms that we use daily to schedule content, Later, posted their projections for 2020 trends. Here are some answers to questions you might be asking about your social profiles and how to maximize on these trends:

What do hidden likes mean for how I produce content?

This article is spot on when it says Instagram’s update can encourage both “saving your best content for in-feed” and people posting more, less filtered content, since the vanity metric of likes are soon to be gone. These are the two natural side effects when a limitation like a number grading your posts is removed: you feel less pressure to post or you become shyer to post if there’s isn’t a visible affirmation that your post is good in the eyes of others. Hence why we call this a vanity metric: “likes” were never...

Animated Instagram Stories

by Rachel Howard

If your business is not using animated Instagram Stories you could be missing out on a huge opportunity! 

Instagram Stories are creative, fun, and engaging and provide a way to connect with your audience in an authentic way. But how do you stand out on Stories now that everyone is using them? Is there a way to cut through the noise?

We have the answer - animation! 

Animated Instagram Stories are trendy and create a way for you to make captivating content for your audience that will stop them in their tracks. Just a little bit of movement can go a long way. 

With so many creative apps and platforms on the market, it isn’t hard to create dazzling Story slides. We’re sharing with you our top 7 platforms to make animated Instagram Story content super easy for your business. 

Why You Should Make Animated Instagram Stories Part of your Strategy

Instagram is all about engagement with your...

Strategic Marketing in Today’s Digital Landscape

by Elise Poeana

We all know that marketing is crucial to the success of your business - large or small - but how do you execute in a way that makes sense for your brand, community, and customers? 

It isn’t enough to just spend a bunch of money on today’s top digital media platforms. Messaging, voice, and content have to match your brand ethos while tying back to your business goals to successfully drive new business forward while keeping you top of mind for existing customers. Even more important than how much you spend is how and where you spend your marketing dollars. 

Here at TSG, we work with clients across industries to connect their products and services with customers authentically and cost-effectively. To truly be a competitor in today’s digital landscape, all content needs to look, sound, and feel like you. Beyond wanting to sell to your customer, you need to truly want...

How to think like an Ad Strategist

by Cody Giles

In college, I took a speech class. Every week, we would learn about the different aspects of a really successful speech. Though we covered structure, subject, delivery, and even personal aesthetics, our professors stressed one of the most important components - Know. Your. Audience. Just like my speech class, the success of a digital advertising campaign often hinges on the ability to not only identify your audience(s), but also the strategic use of messaging and imagery to speak directly to them.

Imagine being a seventeen-year-old receiving ads for a high-end jewelry designer - are you going to click on that ad? Not likely. You may even roll your eyes and say “who thought that I would be interested in this?” - this exactly the kind of response that you want to try to avoid. As you’re building a strategy for a campaign, the very first thing you need to do is ask yourself a number of questions.

The very...

Client Success Stories

by Andy Kalan

I remember the thrill of excitement. Each morning when I walked into the office, I would call out to one of our ad strategists, “What is tally today?” And each day, like the building swell of Holiday spirit toward the eve of Christmas, it grew—insurmountably. Our team was doing the impossible. In the frantic lead up to the year’s biggest shopping extravaganza, we put together the first of what has been many successful multi-faceted holiday campaigns.  

It all started with a pre-Black Friday blitz to all of their subscribers, sounding the alarm on what was going to be the sale of the season—fashionable jewelry from one of the industry’s most in vogue new faces. As an email went out along with the launch of our ads, we saw immediate results. One purchase, two, three…the revenue climbing as followers of the brand jumped on the opportunity to seize the sale. The creative was masterful,...

Tips for Writing Good Hashtags

by Erin Lashley

The key to writing good hashtags is planning ahead to curate a library of hashtags that you can pull from when scheduling out your content. This will allow you to have a better workflow and be more efficient with your time as a content creator. The more work you can do upfront, the more you can create quantitative, quality content.

The best way to find good hashtags is to use the search feature in the Instagram App and search “Tags” for keywords users would use to find your content. You’ll notice each hashtag has a set number of posts associated with it. The key here is to collect a list of hashtags that have a variety of posts associated with it.

For example, look for hashtags that have between 10,000 - 50,000 posts, 50,000 - 200,000 posts, 200,000 - 500,000 posts, etc. Having hashtags that reside in larger pools may get your content seen by more people but some hashtags are so oversaturated that your content may not...