By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

By Mitch Carson

Pinterest is a social media network with a focus on users posting photos or videos (called ‘pinning’ on the service) to their own or others ‘pinterest boards’, which are a collection of usually similarly themed ‘pins’.

While it is not as large as some other social media services, with just over 150 million active users, it has a specific and fairly unique advantage in terms of usefulness for business purposes. That advantage is the focus itself, because a majority of Pinterest users are browsing with the intent of purchasing, which can make it fairly essential for marketing purposes.

And while predominantly a female-based user base, Pinterest recently made efforts to increase their draw with potential male users, raising their overall male user base to about 40 percent of the total, meaning any business can find a use for marketing through Pinterest, regardless of target demographic.

With the advent of various social media platforms, it’s no longer just celebrities who can influence trends in fashion, beauty, and other areas. More and more, ‘regular’ people are becoming minor celebrities simply by talking about their interests, on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. They write blogs and make videos about applying makeup, or hairstyles and colors, or any of a million other things that can be shared online. They can have hundreds of thousands of followers who eagerly await the next blog, photoset, or video. This makes some of these digital celebrities quite influential when talking about or creating trends.

One way in which this can be and has been useful for marketing purposes can be seen in the case of Becca Cosmetics, which has partnered with several different internet personalities to create guest boards attached to their overall profile which are completely curated by those personalities, which increases traffic. Another advantage to this type of scenario is that contracting with influencers to promote their guest boards on their other social media platforms will increase traffic from their specific fan base to those guest boards and, through that, to your company profile. In addition, searches for those influential pinners will bring up your brand, placing your products in front of potential buyers.

It is vital, of course, to choose people who actually are and will continue to be influential in your field in order for this tactic to work. There are many ways to artificially inflate the number of followers a particular person has, so a better way to find the right people for this would be to ask them about their engagement rate. The right people for the job will know this number, and you will want those with the highest engagement rates.

A similar tactic for marketing through Pinterest is by allowing the users to help generate content for your company profile. The most successful brands currently on Pinterest are posting new pins an average of at least five times a day and in many cases quite a lot more. The advantage of creating user generated content boards is that you will in effect be getting free content from the people following you brand, freeing you to pursue other facets of your business.

Jewelry company Mejuri utilizes this ability with their board ‘Styled By You’, which is filled with content sent in by their customers. This gives Mejuri a great deal of high-quality content, and it also allows potential customers to see their products being worn by other customers instead of models.

The most effective way to curate a board for user generated content is to create a private board accessible only by you and your marketing team, and then repin the best content to a public user generated content board. This allows the company total control over the quality of pins.

Another method for using Pinterest in your marketing is the soft sell approach on Pinterest boards by way of demonstrations. The hair care brand OUIA, for example, has a beach wave board full of different ways to create the beach wave hair style. This soft sell approach can be effective because even though OUIA isn’t directly marketing, they make a point of mentioning the use of their products in creating these styles.

Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Saturday at a “Patriots Day” rally in Berkeley, the third time the groups engaged in violent confrontations on city streets in recent months.

Fistfights broke out near Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where Trump supporters had scheduled a rally. Fireworks and smoke bombs were thrown into the crowd, and a few demonstrators were doused with pepper spray.

Both groups threw rocks and sticks at each other and used a large trash bin as a battering ram as the crowd moved around the perimeter of the park. One bank boarded up its ATM machines before the rally as a precaution.

About 250 police officers were deployed to the scene by mid-afternoon after officials sought assistance from the neighboring Oakland Police Department.

Caption Disabled parking fraud undercover operation

(Video by Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

(Video by Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Caption Do you have what it takes to be a Laker Girl?

Every year, the Laker Girls hold open auditions for a spot on their team. So our Curiosity Correspondent, Benjamin Crutcher, decided he wanted to find out if he had what it takes to be a member of the famous dance squad.

Every year, the Laker Girls hold open auditions for a spot on their team. So our Curiosity Correspondent, Benjamin Crutcher, decided he wanted to find out if he had what it takes to be a member of the famous dance squad.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

ALSO

‘Outrageously reckless:’ Woman gets prison in road-rage killing of Navy officer on freeway

‘He’s saying the meanest things’: Family whose dog went missing could be the target of a scammer

New Delhi , April 15 (ANI-Businesswire India): Hyundai Motor India Ltd, (HMIL) the country’s car exporter and second largest passenger car manufacturer, received an overwhelming response for its first-of-its-kind innovative digital campaign ‘Comebackpedia’ on the newly launched 2017 Grand i10.

The campaign garnered over 6.7 million views across social media. Based on Humour, around 10,400 interesting Memes were generated by users and shared on social networking sites.

« We believe Hero Content always makes the brand distinctive and engages the user effectively. We took humour as the campaign driver by engaging the popular Humour Artists to do the Meme sourcing with fun elements. We are glad that Comebackpedia has received huge popularity and appreciation from our Customers, social media fans and Critics, » said Senior General Manager and Group Head Marketing, HMIL, Puneet Anand.

« Comebackpedia » campaign is the first of its kind done by an Auto Brand has utilized Meme marketing to capitalize on the huge popularity of these humour artists amongst the youth with the New 2017 Grand i10. « Comebackpedia », is a unique encyclopedia of comeback memes with branded video content of popular humour artists like Cyrus Broacha, Vir Das, Mallika Dua, Amit Tandon, Vipul Goyal, Kaneez Surka and Rahul Dua.

The campaign was designed to invite fans to log on to www.itswowsome.com and create a MEME using the expressions of their favourite humour artists, by simply adding an interesting reaction to a comeback and share with their friends. The most unique MEMEs featured in the video series created by the artists and participants also got a chance to win #Wowsome merchandise.

Campaign related Video content was released in three phases. First phase – humorous videos of the artists inviting fans to create comeback memes and engage with the brand. Second phase – ‘The Comebackpedia Show’, was released which featured winning memes and Artist’s hilarious versions of Comebacks in a two episode show.

The third phase included a dramatic, upbeat and humorous video which concluded the entire campaign with brand integration highlighting ‘The Drive with Besties’ when one buys a new car. (ANI-Businesswire India)

This week’s ‘Skim: Instagram Stories officially surpassed Snapchat’s users base… in just nine months; Facebook introduced a free version of its professional-focused collaboration tool, Workplace; Twitter launched a data-light version of its platform to court a new slew of users; and LinkedIn unveiled changes to its revamped desktop design.

Also: what digital marketing tactics small business are investing in, free social media tools your brand might be missing out on, and much more…

Skim to catch up over Easter break!

1. Instagram Stories is now bigger than Snapchat

Facebook seems to be the only social media company that can get ahead without a first-mover advantage, instead waiting to see what works well elsewhere, then building it into its own platforms and watching the enemy lose. Case in point: Instagram Stories now claims 200 million daily active users, more than that of Snapchat’s 161 million that company announced during its IPO.

Workplace collaboration tool Slack just found a new level of competitor in Facebook’s Workplace, with Facebook release of a free version of its messaging service for businesses to help employees more chat and share files.

The free standard version won’t include IT administrative and monitoring features like integration with other business tools (think Google G Suite), but it will offer one-to-one and group voice and video calling, video streaming, and chat for users on desktop or with iOS or Android mobile devices.

Currently, though, the paid version of Workplace is still free, through September, so it could be a good time for your company to give it a whirl!

3. Twitter introduces a lite version for the data-conscious

Twitter is reaching for a new market: those with mobile-data constraints. The company introduced Twitter Lite, a slimmed down version of its mobile app that uses much less data and loads much more quickly for users with slower connections.

The product brings all of the social network’s key features—timeline, notifications, and direct messaging—to users even on slower 2G networks, and it also has an added « data saver » function that can be enabled to blur photos or videos before users decide which ones to download themselves.

Twitter Lite can be accessed via mobile.twitter.com, and it could be a way for the social network to gain more users everywhere, but particularly in emerging markets.

Twitter Lite is a faster, data friendly way for people to use Twitter to see what’s happening in the world.

?? https://t.co/AIUgyCAFj0 pic.twitter.com/9EIG7pgK6O

— Twitter (@Twitter) April 6, 2017

4. LinkedIn unveils more changes to its desktop platform

LinkedIn’s new desktop experience, launched in January, has finally been rolled out to all users, but the social network still had a few changes in store based on user feedback.

Users can now customize notifications to ensure only the most valuable types for you are delivered, and profile photos now have a new editing tool that enables users to crop and enhance with the click of a couple buttons. Messages can now be sent from anywhere on the desktop site, and finally, LinkedIn has introduced a new way for those who publish long-form articles to enable or disable comments. Check out the changes below!

5. Instagram grows its social-commerce efforts

Facebook’s Instagram has introduced new features meant to help brands close the gap between Millennials who are simultaneously highly influenced by the online shopping research they do yet averse to buying directly via social channels.

To remove obstacles that block consumers from buying, Instagram has created ways for users to easily access details of products in photos by clicking on the logos, as well as a way for them to go directly to purchase pages without having to navigate to another platform.

The initial pilot program of the feature led to a dramatic increase in clickthrough rates to brands’ sites, so we’re thinking the new feature will be popular.

6. Instagram revamps messaging with photos, ephemeral video for Instagram Direct

The Facebook-owned social network revamped its private messaging feature to allow users to send ephemeral photos and videos in addition to permanent image and text within the same one-on-one or group conversations.

After introducing ephemeral messages as a separate part of the platform from permanent ones back in November, Instagram’s Direct climb from 300 million to 375 million active users in April; the social network saw enough potential that it decided to merge the two message formats into one inbox.

Now Instagram Stories’ stickers, doodles, and text overlays can spice up private and group messaging on the platform in ways that SMS can’t. Yet.

7. The free social media tools your company might be missing out on

Between all the changes in the social media advertising landscape and all the chatter around social’s becoming an increasingly pay-to-play arena, it’s easy to forget the suite of helpful tools available to brands to help them navigate the social waters—for free.

From Facebook Insights and Social Mention to help your brand keep track of performance and maintain a close eye on sentiment and engagement, to managing multiple accounts and social media scheduling with TweetDeck and Buffer, check out the list of eight great tools that can save your company time and money.

8. Facebook crosses 5 million advertiser milestone

From college-based startup, to social behemoth with nearly two billion users worldwide, Facebook has now reached another milestone: five million active advertisers, a dramatic increase from February 2015, when it claimed two million.

The social network took advantage of such a press opportunity to highlight the tools and features it’s rolling out to help businesses—big and small—such as the ability for Page owners to reinstate high-performing ads with a single click via mobile devices, and easily switching up targeting.

The company also launched a new website for its Small Business Council to assist brands that might not have the same resources and time to commit to learning how to work the platform in favor of their business.

9. Five free Instagram analytics tools for marketers

Instagram’s becoming an increasingly important platform for marketers, particularly as it makes a concerted effort to increase social shopping. But Instagram’s native analytics tool doesn’t provide the same caliber of insights many other social platforms’ do, so we’ve got a list of five great options to ensure your content plan is optimized for more engagement.

Instagram Insights provides basics like impressions and demographics on users, but other tools like Social Baker, Simply Measured, and Union Metrics provide free reports that give more details about top posts based on engagement, what filters are performing best, and much more.

Give your brand an Insta boost by checking out various tools and how to set them up!

10. More small businesses plan investment in social than other digital channels

Recent research from Clutch finds that half of small businesses will spend more on marketing and advertising this year than last. The study also shows how and where small business plan to invest in digital marketing in 2017, with social media coming out on top: 58% of businesses cite it as where they’re putting more marketing budget this year.

Some 56% of respondents plan to increase their spend on their websites, as well, with email marketing, SEO, and mobile apps rounding out the top five channels. But how many smaller brands already plan to dedicated more budget to augmented and virtual reality? Check out the full article to find out!

11. Teamable plans to help business find talent by connecting to social networks

Teamable wants to connect your employees’ social networks to its recruitment software in order to increase referrals to open positions, harnessing the power of data on social platforms to help you hire the right people to grow your business.

The company, which this week announced funding of $5 million, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to suggest candidates based on the data linked to the Teamable software via employee social networks—job requirements, skills, experience, and more.

Recruiters can then track conversions to interviews, offers, and hires, and incorporate that data into their algorithm to improve future results.

Fun fact? The startup has its roots in tiny Armenia (and San Francisco, of course).

12. We’ll wrap with the lesson United Airlines learned the hard way… again

It seems painful mistakes don’t always lead to a learning moment. United Airlines faced social media backlash before social media backlash was really a thing (back in 2009), and now an even more shocking video has made the brand the center of social media fury.

The company overbooked a flight and, in accordance with its policy, when not enough passengers volunteered to leave the aircraft to make room for United employees, a doctor was literally dragged off, unwillingly, through the aisle, seemingly in the harshest way possible.

The public relations disaster led to over 762,000 brand mentions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter the day after the video went public on April 10, likely because a video of the event existed and it wasn’t just a 140-character text post on Twitter.

As The Drum states, it’s paramount to remember that these days every passenger is a publisher. And, if your brand treats people the wrong way, it could wind up with a savage sketch on Jimmy Kimmel: