In September 2015 Instagram reached 400 million active monthly users.

As Instagram’s popularity increases, it is more important than ever to make your account stand out.
Here are some helpful tips to get you started.

1. CREATE A DISTINCT LOOK & FEEL

Maintaining consistent use of a particular color palette, theme, filter, purpose or subject matter will assist in giving your Instagram feed a unique look and feel. This will allow your followers to easily associate your images and image style with your Instagram account.

Some example techniques together with Instagram accounts effectively making use of the respective technique:

a) BLACK & WHITE FILTER

Some accounts such as @nazaret apply a black and white filter to all of their images. Other accounts such as @Microsoft utilise the black and white filter as a visual cue. For example, a ‘Behind The Scenes’ shot. Either way, the result is captivating.

b) SPECIFIC COLOR PALETTE

Accounts such as @love_aesthetics ensure all their photos stick to a specific color palette. When viewed altogether on your profile the result resembles a carefully curated artwork. Another example is @charlottelovely.

c) THEMED BY SUBJECT MATTER

Some accounts are well known for their creative use of subject matter. While it may seem repetitive, what is great about these accounts is the story they tell. One great example is @theballoondiary where the viewer is essentially led on a journey by the girl with the pink balloon. Another example is @andrewknapp who tells the story of his dog, Momo; often hiding him in photographs and encouraging viewers to ‘find Momo’.

d) USE OF TILING

Tiling is the process of cropping an image into squares and uploading them to span across multiple tiles on your profile. While this method does require a fair amount of planning and strategy, there are plenty of tools to help you achieve this effect. Some apps to try would include: Tile Pic and nSquares. This is a popular method for photographers, particularly when showcasing a panoramic shot. A great example of an account that does this is @isaiah6559.

e) CREATE INSTAZINES

Insta-zines are essentially single page brochures cropped into squares and arranged strategically on your profile. While this makes a strong impact, it removes the freedom of posting regular photos and thus is not recommended for personal accounts. However, larger companies such as Contiki are embracing this technique by opening new accounts dedicated to insta-zines. For example, @contiki_instazine. This is effective because unlike paid ads, the user does not have to leave Instagram to receive the marketing message.

2. FOCUS ON THE PHOTO

Instagram is a photo sharing application thus the quality of the photo itself is important.

An effective Instagram account will be comprised of photos that evoke an emotive response and therefore generate follower engagement.

The following questions can be used as a guide to help identify quality photos.

• Is this photo relevant to my chosen audience?
• Is this the best photo I took today?
• If somebody else posted this photo, would I like it?
• Is there anything I can do to this photo to make it better?

You should also consider editing your photos. Maybe you’ve captured something at a strange angle, or the lighting is dull. These minor glitches can often be the difference between a low and high engagement Instagram post. You can correct these issues by using Instagram’s default filters and editing functions. There are also a number of great applications such as VSCO-CAM or SnapSeed that allow you to enhance photos on your mobile device.

As you can see in the example below, simple filters and slight changes to the brightness, exposure and contrast can be a quick and easy way to improve the quality of your image. Image enhancement below is via VSCO CAM iOS app.

Original Image

Optimized Image

3. CURATE YOUR PROFILE

It is important to note that Instagram posts are not exclusively viewed in the Instagram live feed. In fact, the first thing new Instagram followers do is view your entire profile and gallery in attempt to get to know you. The challenge is that you only have a few seconds to make an impression and convert your curious visitor into an avid follower of your Instagram account.

Therefore, your profile image and bio should be as genuine and informative as possible. Your bio should communicate what you and your account are about in the least amount of words.

Some tips for creating a great Instagram profile include:

• Answering the following: Who am I? What do I do? What is unique about my account?
• Reveal something quirky or personal about yourself.
• Do not include hashtags in your bio unless you are known for one.
• Do link to your website or blog if you have one. (Note: This is the only way on Instagram to share a clickable link — besides a paid Instagram Ad).
• Look authentic. Use an honest headshot or a logo for your profile image.

Let us know your favorite Instagram account in the comments below!

You can also check out the ManageFlitter Instagram account: @manageflitter_IG.

Originally published at www.manageflitter.com on January 7, 2016.

1. How To Quickly Find The Right People Who Follow You On Twitter

There are so many types of people I want to talk with on Twitter: influencers, people who share my interests, people who work in my field, and potential clients.I could just reach out to them directly, but it always helps to have a prior connection. I’ve seen this prove true many times.

If the people I want to talk to are already following me on Twitter, they’ll be more likely to respond when I reach out to them.

This means that people who follow you are more worthwhile for you to reach out to. If I want to look for potential clients on Twitter, for example, it would make sense to first look through my Twitter followers. If a potential client is one of my Twitter followers and I reach out to them, there is a better chance they’ll respond to me if I reach out to them compared to someone who isn’t following me on Twitter.

Part of the psychology behind this is the “Availability Bias” as described by Tversky and Kahneman in 1973, which says that our minds give precedence to anything that comes quickly to mind. If someone is following you on Twitter already, you will be somewhat familiar to them, and therefore more interesting.

2. The Value of a Twitter Follower

People often wonder how much a Twitter Follower is worth. For instance, is it worth the $0.60-$1.00 you pay for each Twitter follower you get by running Twitter’s follower growth ads? It’s hard to say.

But it is true that there is some value in having someone follow you — they have signified interest in your brand.

This is why talking directly to them can be much more valuable than talking to people who have not signified interest in you and / or your brand.

3. How To Use ManageFlitter To Find Targeted Users Within Your Followers

There are two ways to look through your Twitter followers:

1. Manually scroll through hundreds or thousands of accounts and look through each bio.
2. Use ManageFlitter’s “Search Your Account” feature.

Option 1 takes hours. Option 2 takes a few seconds. Here is a walkthrough of option 2:

1. Log in to ManageFlitter.
2. Go to “Search Your Account” under the “Search” tab.

3. Click “Refine”.

4. Unclick “People you follow”.

5. Enter your search terms into the Bio field. If you’re looking for clients, you can try “CXO” combinations (CEO, CTO, CIO, CMO, CFO, etc) or “VP” + “other keyword” or “President” + “other keyword”. People commonly signify their job title in Twitter bios so you’re likely to pull up a decent sample.

6. You can then click “Order” to sort and filter the results by Influence, Followers, Follower/Following Ratio, and more.

The insight you can gain from running this search can drive real business results.

4. What To Do With Your Targeted Followers

i) If you’re looking for influencers who are following you:

1. Reach out to influencers to thank them for following you.
2. Ask them to check out an article.
3. Be sure to follow them back.
4. Add them to a Twitter list (use ManageFlitter: select the results and click “Update List” on the right panel).

ii) If you’re looking for business prospects:

1. Thank them for following you.
2. Ask them a question about their business or about something interesting in their Twitter bio.
3. Add them to a Twitter list and stay in touch.
4. Nurture the conversations over time to drive leads with Twitter.

These are highly tactical strategies, but they have valuable applications among businesses of all sizes.

Despite the unstructured nature of its data, Twitter is becoming an increasingly powerful channel for Business-To-Business sales and market research, especially as tools like ManageFlitter develop into solutions-oriented software modules.

And tools like ManageFlitter continue to make Twitter’s unstructured data more accessible and… well… structured.

Originally published at www.manageflitter.com on September 17, 2015.

This means that if you follow a specific Twitter account they don’t necessarily need to follow you back in order for you to see their tweet stream.

Whilst most Twitter accounts have been set up and are managed by legitimate individuals or businesses, due to the open nature of Twitter it is possible for someone to set up a “fake” or “spam” Twitter account.

In fact, by some measures there are over 20 million fake accounts on Twitter!

It is even possible to pay to have a collection of fake accounts follow you to boost the perception of your popularity on Twitter. WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU NEVER DO THIS!

Fake accounts, whether they follow you, or you follow them, don’t add any value to your Twitter experience.

Fake accounts have one or many of the following characteristics:

1. No profile picture
2. Little to zero tweets
3. A higher number of following over followers
4. A replica of another legitimate Twitter account
5. Their tweets are “spammy”, irrelevant and repetitive

Removing fake or inactive Twitter accounts will assist in optimizing your Twitter user experience.

With ManageFlitter, you can identify fake and inactive Twitter accounts and either unfollow them or block them.

Below is an example of how to use ManageFlitter to identify and unfollow fake accounts that you are following.

Step One — Log into your ManageFlitter account

Step Two — Select the ‘Fake Following’ option under the ‘Unfollow’ menu

Step Three — Click the Unfollow button

There is also a feature that allows you to block fake accounts that are following you, we will cover this feature in future blog posts. Watch this space!

Originally published at www.manageflitter.com on March 25, 2014.

Up to 40% of Twitter users are inactive. Here’s how to identify and unfollow those accounts.

A recent study revealed that up to 40% of users on Twitter are inactive. ManageFlitter’s inactive filter allows you to detect and unfollow inactive Twitter accounts that you are following.

Unfollowing inactive accounts on Twitter is important for the following reasons:

• Inactive accounts do not engage in conversations on Twitter.
• Inactive accounts do not retweet accounts on Twitter.
• Following an inactive account increases your Twitter “following” count — which subsequently affects your Twitter ratio.
• In some cases, following inactive accounts decreases the authority of your Twitter profile or influence measure.

ManageFlitter offers a powerful inactive filter that discovers Twitter accounts who have not tweeted in the past 30 days or more.

You can easily remove these inactive accounts using ManageFlitter’s unfollow feature.

We show you how to find and unfollow inactive accounts in the 3 easy steps below:

1. Log into ManageFlitter & navigate to the unfollow page.

2. Click the “Inactive” filter located on the left hand side

3. Click the button “Unfollow”

We hope you enjoy using the inactive filter! Please do not hesitate to contact our team if you have any questions.

Originally published at www.manageflitter.com on November 24, 2013.

With a free ManageFlitter account you can unfollow up to 100 of your Twitter account followers per day.

You can remove these limits by upgrading to ManageFlitter Pro.

Alternatively if you prefer not to upgrade to Pro you can increase your daily limit up to 2000 unfollows per day through the Bonus Unfollow system.

Options to increase your unfollow limit include:

• Follow the @ManageFlitter Twitter account: +200 daily unfollows
• Tweet about ManageFlitter: Bonus: +200 daily unfollows
• Sign-up for the ManageFlitter newsletter: +300 daily unfollows
• Invite your friends to try ManageFlitter via email, Twitter or Facebook: +1200 daily unfollows (+200 per referral)

(Please note that an invitation only unlocks additional unfollows if the user hasn’t used ManageFlitter before — this invitation is only for people who are new to ManageFlitter)

We have put this bonus system in place to give some of our power users some easy options to get more out of their ManageFlitter account even if they don’t want to go Pro.

To access the Bonus System, simply log into your free ManageFlitter account. You will see a banner appear at the top of your navigation bar which indicates the number of unfollows you have available to unlock.

Once clicking on this banner a new window will appear displaying several options to ‘unlock’ your bonus unfollows.

Once you have unlocked the additional bonuses you can unfollow 2000 accounts per day with a ManageFlitter free account.

Remember with a ManageFlitter Pro account you are able to unfollow as many tweeps as you like along with access to all additional Pro features. You can upgrade for as little as $12.

Originally published at www.manageflitter.com on February 25, 2013.