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It’s National Puzzle Day, Reader... 📣 Shout out to our Director of Strategy who loves a good 🧩 jigsaw puzzle!

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for LinkedIn

• ➕ More leads and sales from Instagram

• Instagram 👁️‍🗨️ read receipts

• 🔐 IP and brand protection from Meta

• 📣 Additional industry news from Apple, Instagram, YouTube, and more

Struggling to keep your LinkedIn company page followers engaged? Research shows company pages need a mix of text, images, video, and live streaming to do well with the algorithm.

Apply the 3:2:1 Content Strategy

You want to post at least 6 times over 2 weeks:

Publish three "Good to Know" posts that share industry info and thought leadership. These build your credibility.

Publish two "Good to Feel" posts that show off your brand personality or values.

Now that you've earned the right to sell, publish one "Good to Buy" post that clearly explains how your product or service solves something for your target customer.

Today's tip is inspired by Michelle J. Raymond, a featured speaker at Social Media Marketing World.

Have You Met Paul? 

In 2019 Paul Roetzer was featured on our Social Media Marketing Podcast to discuss what AI would mean for marketers. A year later, he taught a workshop on AI at Social Media Marketing World. A few hundred people attended his session.  

Fast forward to 2023 and Paul packed a large room at the conference because everyone was looking to him for AI insights. In three weeks, he is taking the main stage to keynote Social Media Marketing World. Will you be there to hear what he has to say?

I don't want to miss Paul's groundbreaking AI insights.

Instagram DM Automation Strategy for More Leads and Sales

Want more qualified prospects and customers from Instagram? Have you considered a strategy that leverages permission marketing via Instagram direct message (DM) automation?

In the 1990s, Seth Godin pioneered the simple concept of permission marketing. The idea is that people respond better to marketing that’s “anticipated, personal, and relevant.” That means they’ve opted into receiving messages that are meaningful to them. 

Set Up Your Lead Sources on Instagram and Facebook

Pretty much any interaction on Instagram can trigger an automated DM conversation. The key word there is conversation. Remember, you’re not just sending a canned response to customer inquiries. The tech is smart enough to start real, meaningful chats that nurture leads and drive action.

Organic Lead Sources

• Comments on Live videos, Reels, and feed posts: In your videos and posts, tell viewers to comment with a specific keyword or key phrase that triggers your DM bot. 

• Feed post comments: Set up a series of automatic replies for feed post comments and randomize delivery. This creates more activity on the post and instantly rewards users for their interaction.

• Direct messages: Set up automatic message templates that trigger when someone DMs you spontaneously. For example, you could pre-draft messages to display FAQs or popular offers. The user just has to tap to the option that interests them.

• Story mentions: You can set up DM automation so that whenever someone tags you in a story, they get a personal DM from you. This is a powerful way to turn user engagement and user-generated content into touchpoints on the path to a conversion.

• Story replies: If you have comments switched on for your stories, you can send an automated DM every time someone comments on your latest video.

• Keyword or phrase in bio: While you can’t trigger chats directly from your bio, you can leave a call to action for people to message you with a specific word or phrase to get a conversation started.

Paid Lead Sources

• Feed, Stories, and Reel ads: Instead of linking your ad to a landing page, link it to a DM flow that begins with a pre-filled conversation so leads just tap the ad to start chatting with you.

• Comments on ads: You can send automated comment responses and DMs whenever someone comments on your ad. This is especially useful when users comment on ads with questions about product details.

Nurture Your Leads

However you start the conversation, you’ll need a plan for the next step: nurturing those leads toward a conversion. For example, you could take an email marketing sequence that has a high success rate and convert the email content into a series of automated DMs.

Think about what you want to get from the conversation. Most of the time, your goal will be to collect email addresses or phone numbers so you can eventually reach customers outside the platform. 

Whatever you hope to get from your leads, always remember the golden rule: don’t demand too much without offering value in return. The more data you ask for, the more valuable your lead magnet should be.

Here are some suggestions for lead magnets: a free webinar, download, challenge, newsletter, or discount code that will tempt people into taking your offerings.

Pro Tip: Send all of these magnets via DM. Why? Your lead started the conversation via DMs and they want to stay on that communication channel.

Convert Your Leads Into Sales

This is where personalization becomes really important. You can stand out by scripting your DM conversations to ask users relevant questions and then use that information to send genuinely personalized product recommendations and targeted offers.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Natasha Willis.

Where Will You Be in a Few Weeks? 

If you want to take your marketing to the next level consider joining thousands of marketers in beautiful San Diego—February 18th to the 20th—at the 11th annual Social Media Marketing World. 

"I came to San Diego hoping to learn valuable strategies and best practices for creating success on social media and left with knowledge I didn't even know I was looking for that will completely transform the way I approach social media strategy, " said Elena Griffo.

I’m ready to attend and see what I've been missing.

🗞 Emojis From Apple: New emojis rolling out with iOS 17.4 beta include a phoenix, a lime, smileys shaking their heads, and a series of updated people emojis. Source: Emojipedia

🗞 Instagram DM Read Receipts: The ability to turn off read receipts for Instagram DMs is rolling out to users. Source: Instagram via Threads

🗞 Instagram Flipside: After running some experiments over the past few months, Instagram has launched its new "Flipside" alternative profile feature for a small group of users. Flipside provides users with a separate profile space that is only accessible to people they choose. Once a Flipside is created, users can set their posts to only be viewable in their Flipside, allowing them to share content with a smaller, selected audience. Source: Social Media Today

🗞 New Brand & IP Protections From Meta: The new and improved tools include an updated Brand Rights Protection tool with new features, like saved searches and cross-platform searching, to make it easier for brands to monitor for infringement. There is also a new Intellectual Property Reporting Center that allows for logged-in reporting and tracking of reports. For copyright holders, Rights Manager now has additional capabilities like automatic blocking of infringing images, image attribution to provide ownership information, and bulk actions to manage reference files more efficiently. Finally, Meta launched a Protecting Businesses section of its website that serves as a guide for brands on developing protection strategies, covering how Meta enables protection, monitoring, and resolution of issues. Source: Meta

🗞 X/Twitter Video Tab: The platform's mobile app will soon feature a dedicated Video tab. Source: XNewsDaily via X/Twitter

🗞 YouTube Superchat Likes: YouTube is currently testing a new feature that allows a small group of users to "like" Super Chat messages during a live stream or Premiere video. In this experiment, select users will be able to like Super Chats to show appreciation or agreement. If a Super Chat receives likes, that engagement will be visible to the streamer and audience in real time. However, "like" data will not be saved after the live stream ends or in the archived video. Source: YouTube

Did You Know?

Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes invented bubble wrap while they were attempting to create three-dimensional plastic wallpaper.