Welcome to My Blog
From Cubicles to Coworking Spaces: What’s Your Company’s Ideal Workspace? [Infographic]
Workplace design is a hot topic today. People argue passionately for and against open offices, cubicles, coworking spaces, and even remote arrangements. But what office setup is the best? The truth is, that depends on who’s working there.
Research shows that three out of four American workers are not in optimal workplace environments, and it impacts their performance. By taking into account the habits and personalities of the people on your team, you can create a working environment that maximizes their talents.
True, you can’t redesign your office every time you hire a new employee, but you can consider different employees’ needs in order to build a workplace that is as comfortable for the sales team as it is for the designers. To help you do that, the folks at Quill.com put together an infographic that links common professional personalities with their ideal workplaces. Take a look to find the setup that’s best for your team.
Apple opening new office in India to develop Apple Maps, creating up to 4000 jobs
In a press release, Apple has announced it is opening a new development office in Hyderabad, India. The team located here will apparently focus on improving Apple Maps, which is deeply integrated across Apple’s hardware and software as dedicated apps and embedded in other services, like Siri. The new center will create up to 4000 new jobs in the local economy. It is currently unclear as to the nature of the workforce, as Apple has preferred to keep its core software engineering team in California with most working solely in Cupertino.
Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS, iOS Devices, Tech Industry Tagged: Apple, Apple Maps, India, iOS, iPhone, maps
Report: Apple considering Fifth Avenue retail expansion, but it doesn’t want to pay full price rent
According to a new report from the New York Post, Apple is looking to expand on its iconic Fifth Avenue retail location. While the company renovates the historic cube designed building, it will open in “some or all” of the 61,000-square foot FAO Schwarz space in the GM building. The report notes, however, that the temporary expansion could turn in to a permanent one seeing as how cramped the Fifth Avenue store has become.
Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Apple, retail
Understanding Project Management in Construction
A Construction Project Manager (CPM) needs to have a complete understanding of the designing and construction process along with the knowledge of modern business management. The CPM has to formulate the construction project with a finite time-frame and desired outcome. Construction Project Management aims at meeting the client’s requirement so as to produce a functionally and economically viable project. Specific objectives of the construction project have to be clearly defined during the strategic planning process. There may be changes in the objectives during the course of the project due to resource constraints and other conflicts. Project Management in Construction is a very challenging and complex task because construction projects are dynamic and unpredictable. There are many tasks, stages and procedures involved, all of which may change during the course of the project. You should possess great communication skills, problem solving skills and knowledge of the construction process in order to efficiently manage the construction project.
New to construction project management?
If you are new to construction project management, you have to learn about budgeting, financing, scheduling, handling conflicts and legal issues, etc. The CPM should be skilled to handle various aspects of construction such as public safety, quality management, time management, material management, cost management, calculations and working drawings. A CPM in one sector is differentiated from a CPM in another sector on the basis of the knowledge of the construction site, which could be residential, institutional, commercial, industrial, etc.
Innovative concepts first
The planning for a construction project begins with the creation of innovative concepts for a facility which will meet market demands and owner’s needs. Innovative design concepts are beneficial in reducing costs and improving the aesthetics, comfort or convenience of a well-designed facility. However, innovative design concepts should be tested for technological viability and economic feasibility, in order to provide a safe and sound facility at a reasonable cost.
The functions of a construction manager include the following activities:
- Specifying project goals and defining the scope, budget, schedule and deadline of the project.
- Strategic planning for the tasks to be completed and other aspects of the project. The CPM organizes the tasks in the following ways:
- Sequential: Here, the project is segregated into stages, in a consecutive sequence of tasks.
- Parallel: Here, independent tasks happen simultaneously.
- Staggered: Here, different tasks may overlap each other.
- Setting performance requirements and selecting project participants.
- Maximizing efficient use of resources through procurement of skilled labor, materials and equipments.
- Implementing project tasks as per the plan and schedule and controlling every possible element of the project.
- Creating a communication system to keep all stakeholders and team members well-informed about the progress of the project so as to avoid potential conflicts.
Management of a construction project involves the tasks of a traditional project manager along with adequate skills and knowledge of the construction industry. Strategic planning, strong leadership, a well-defined scope, a responsible team and healthy work relationships can make any project a success. Use the best app for task management to efficiently manage and successfully close your construction projects.
The post Understanding Project Management in Construction appeared first on Project-Management.com.
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What to Consider If Your Business Is Thinking of Hiring a Project Manager
A project manager is a title spanning across various industries, such as technology, architecture, and even construction. Lots of business owners and employees see similar companies hiring for this role, but many may want to know more about what the value add might be. Project managers bring organization to a team that otherwise struggles to stay on task and meet deadlines consistently. This can apply to teams large or small, and even can span departments.
Signs that your company may need a project manager:
- Employees having a hard time keeping track of what is on their plate
- Deadlines being missed on a somewhat consistent basis
- Internal disagreements over priority of work
- Issues with finding/keeping track of completed work
- Clients, other team members, and other departments “in the dark” on statuses of projects
- The key to finding and hiring a good project manager for any business is to ensure that the person has the following qualities:
- Highly organized
- Able to stop and change gears “on a dime”
- Can manage others effectively
- Builds solid relationships with clients and team members
Finding Fabulous Project Managers – Three High Level Tips
1. Chemistry is Key
As a project manager, I never fail to support and drive my team. If a project manager doesn’t have a solid relationship with the people doing the project work, the projects will suffer – either in quality, budget, or time to completion. The better connection the PM makes with the team members, the better the work will be. Make sure if you hire for this role, you introduce the candidates to the people they will be working with at the very least. If you can, include them in the interview process. The interaction and chemistry is extremely important.
2. The old adage “Time is Money”
Every single deadline that slips can cost you, and working smarter not harder is a necessity. Make sure the PM you are looking to hire has methods to evaluate how to cut down on time spent, without losing quality. The first thing I assess when I join any new team is how time is being used. The biggest culprit: Unnecessary meetings. In my most recent position, daily stand-ups were held in addition to daily scrum meetings. I cut the scrums from 5 times per week to twice a week, and added in one meeting per week for product, marketing, and design to meet to get their goals aligned for upcoming work. This freed up 3 hours of time per week, across 3 developers, one database architect and 3 engineers, for a grand total of 21 hours per week freed up, and could be used for work on the projects.
3. Seeking the Right Tools to Prepare Your Team to Succeed
There are many useful tools out there to help organize workloads, remind yourself of deadline countdowns, share progress statuses, and so on. I have my personal favorites, but they are tailored to the tech industry, so I will talk about what’s important for finding the best tool for whatever umbrella your potential PM may fall under. First, never start with cost. Start with a list of what may work best for organization of the work. Do you need a tool that allows collaboration inside of it? Does it need to integrate with an existing platform, or be as user-friendly as possible? Create a list of “must haves, nice to haves, and cherry on top.” Start searching for all the programs that meet the must haves, then see what’s affordable. If none of them meet your budgeting goals, see if the program has a way to remove some of the “nice to haves” to reduce cost, either by limiting the amount of users, data stored, or removing some of the bells and whistles that may not be needed.
Conclusion
All mentioned above are great starting points for you to determine whether or not hiring a Project Manager would be right for the company you’re at. Have a discussion with your team to see what their thoughts are on adding this extremely valuable position!
The post What to Consider If Your Business Is Thinking of Hiring a Project Manager appeared first on Project-Management.com.
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How We Grew Inbound Traffic by 300% in 6 Months
During the second half of 2015, we put together a plan to dramatically increase the amount of inbound traffic to our software as a service (SaaS) company’s website. In April we were averaging roughly 3,000 visits a day; all of this was coming via existing inbound marketing. We knew that if we could increase our traffic numbers, our daily customer signups would follow the same trajectory. But how could we do this?
Our initial goal was to double this number in just 6 months, so by the end of 2015 we would have roughly double the number of users hitting our site, and double the number of users signing up to use our product, Gleam. Our plan was to attempt to do this with entirely organic growth. No paid acquisition sources, just traffic that we could scale without needing to scale ongoing budgets.
But where do you start? What kind of activity do you focus on? How much content should you write? Most SaaS businesses have many different levers that they can pull to influence growth. In this post I’m going to share with you our favourite inbound tactics that helped us overachieve our rather optimistic goal by more than 50%.
Rethinking Our Approach To Blogging
When we first launched our blog we focused on the fairly narrow topic of sweepstakes marketing. Whilst meaningful to some, we ended up alienating much of the marketing world looking for actionable advice (and crossover into commonly used techniques). We made the decision to rebrand and focus on tactics anyone can use to grow your business. This instantly opened up to a much wider variety of possible content ideas, and really ignited a fire inside the team to build a blog that was both engaging and useful, and helped grow our business.
We didn’t write a large volume of articles, but set ourselves the task of writing at least two really epic ones per month. One way we thought about it was to create evergreen articles that would be as relevant yesterday as they are tomorrow — which means it will consistently bring value for years to come. Much of our new content was built around these 5 content pillars: Engaging, Inspiring, Emotional, Trusted and Simple. Our most successful articles got upwards of 100K views over several months!
So how do you get there? In addition to keeping the 5 content pillars in mind, here are some specific tactics you can use to determine a good topic:
- Use a tool like SEMRush to identify what users are searching for
- Write good long-form articles (at least 1500 words) addressing users’ search terms. Get tips on how to get the formula right here.
- Take the time to get your headline right — they say don’t judge a book by its cover but if your title doesn’t grab attention immediately you won’t get that click through. Use a tool such as CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to help you here. Here’s one we optimised:
- Make your posts actionable — give users something to do
- Use imagery: visuals break up your content and provide additional color to your content
The result of implementing these tactics drove 40k visits per month to our blog (and it’s growing by around 10% each month).
Want ROI? Use Evergreen Content.
I mentioned evergreen content previously, I think it’s important to go into this type of content in more detail – if done right it can provide huge ROI. evergreen Content is content that will always be fresh, or can easily be updated to stay fresh based on market changes. Our product focuses on lost of different market segments. Growing your business on social networks, building your email list or just marketing your business. A quick search on Google Keyword Planner reveals that there’s just over 6k monthly searches for keywords relating to “How to Grow Your Business”.
Once you know the area you want to tackle you now need to think about the sort of content that will provide huge value for that search. For evergreen content this can usually come in the form of a list or a long-form article.
When writing your own evergreen content try to come up with the ten most important words you’d like to rank for in search engines. Then, start building your content around those topics. Your top evergreen content will drive steadily growing traffic to your blog each month — so invest in it. In fact, our evergreen content makes up over 80% of our total blog visits.
Nurture Your Email Subscribers
Now that we were seeing an increase in blog traffic, we needed a way to continually engage and market to those users. The absolute best way to do this is to pay attention to your email subscriber list. We have grown our own list from 2k to 10k subscribers in the last 6 months. How did we do this?
You need to provide value for the subscriber. What are they going to get from you that will help them?
We decided to see how well our product performed by implementing it on our own blog:
- We created a Growth Tips Newsletter, in which we send out the best tactics to grow your business each month
- We display how many other users are members of our list for social proof
- We make the list feel like an important members only club
- Creating in-post notifications with bonus content
- Creating educational pop-ups that show when users have engaged with a specific article
- Incentivizing users to leave a comment with prompts at the end of the post
Optimising this workflow allowed us to increase our opt-in rate by 1000%: before we were collecting around 10 emails per day via traditional opt-in forms, whereas now we consistently do over 100 (sometimes 500 when running a contest).
Leveraging Integration Partners
We are lucky to have the resource to focus heavily on Integrations. We currently integrate with over 50+ services – including social networks and email providers. But when you integrate with another business there’s a couple of ways you can approach it.
- You can silently announce the integration without their knowledge
- You can attempt to work with their marketing department to do a joint launch
One of these methods works much better than the other (guess which one), but also takes a lot more time and effort to execute. Launching an integration properly can allow you to:
- Get exposure on the partners’ site
- Get featured in newsletters to increase your reach
- Get the integration announced on social media
- Do joint webinars or case studies
Our current most popular integration has over 5000 joint customers using it.
In fact, you can see a HubSpot writeup their experience with our product. This wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t already have a HubSpot integration. Integrations can also allow you to break into adjacent markets. These are new verticals with new types of customers that use your product in a slightly different way, or a complimentary way (when combined with another service). A good portion of our growth can be attributed to tapping into some of these markets in the last 6-12 months:
- Event Marketing (We added an Eventbrite integration)
- E-Sports (We added Steam + Twitch integrations)
- Subscription Boxes – We had the this happen organically via a few big Reddit Posts
Kick-ass Product Guides
An important part of growing your business is understanding the type of content that your core demographic is looking for. For us, many of our customers are looking for guides on how to run a contest. So we built out a whole section with really in-depth guides on what people are looking for.
These guides are read by more than 50k users every month. We also focused on writing guides that show people how to use our product. You’ll notice above that one of the guides has been read over 100k+ times in the last 6 months. We link to this guide in:
- Almost every email that we send
- On all social media channels
- In employee email signatures
- In nearly every support email
- Even in our Linked-in profiles
It is vitally important that you have guides that show users the potential of your product.
Write Compelling Case Studies
I don’t know about you, but I usually find most case studies really boring. We purposely wanted to make our case studies engaging, so we decided that we would add 5 Key Growth Takeaways to each. Quite often these takeaways are completely unrelated to our product, but they really add value to the case study and make it much more actionable and enjoyable to read. Here’s a quick example of just one of the takeaways in a case study:
This has really helped our case studies be….less like case studies.
Run Promotions Utilising Your Product With Partners
Where possible we always try to use our own product to an advantage. This means that if ever there’s a partnership opportunity we will try to do some joint marketing or giveaway our own products.
Why do this, I hear you ask? It’s possibly the cheapest form of marketing you’ll ever do, if you can get free exposure to another businesses entire customer-base and also provide huge value to them. Then it’s a huge win win situation. Gleam makes it super easy to do partnership marketing campaigns, just work with your partner to decide on the prize, how you want users to enter. Then get everyone involves to promote the campaign.
If you’re stuck for ideas we’ve created this huge guide on promoting these types of campaigns. Our most recent contest drove over 10k social actions in just 24 hours, with an actual monetary outlay of around $500. When we compared this to the ROI on what we spend on Google or Facebook Ads it outperformed them as a channel by 500%.
Maximise Your In-App Branding
Probably our biggest driver of growth involves users that are exposed to our campaigns that contain branding. This accounts for over 30% of referrals to our marketing site. Over a year ago we split tested our footer branding to see what could be better than Powered By Gleam.
Then we spent almost 6 months split testing which combinations of branding would get the most benefit out of this traffic. We knew as we added more customers we would see the incremental gains come in (and be able to forecast easier).
Things we tested included:
- Widget branding
- Links in emails
- When users interacted with our demos
- Notification emails post entry
- Examples in our guides or blog posts
One caveat here is that this entire marketing channel is much easier to optimise when you have a free user-base. But the downside is that you increase your support costs, your running costs and a number of various other factors to consider. For Gleam though, this method drives an additional 1M+ visitors through our inbound marketing channels every 6 months.
What Can You Do To Get Similar Results?
Obviously every business and website is completely different. My biggest suggestion is to continually test what you think might work, then scale all the things that do work as hard as you can. Here’s a quick list of ideas to try:
- Get better at collecting emails
- Get better at sending emails to customers/prospects
- Write more engaging content that is actionable
- Build great docs that really teach your customers how to use your product
- Work on your on-boarding to increase conversion rates
- Build dedicated landing pages for key terms that users search to find your products
- Write guest posts for other blogs in your industry
- Convert your popular posts to slideshare presentations
- Run regular webinars to educate potential customers
Now get to it, and have fun growing your own business! Here’s a more detailed look back at how we grew our business in 2015 💪
Happy Hour Podcast 067 | Instagram’s radical redesign, Google’s Gboard, and Tim Cook’s world tour
This week Benjamin and Zac react to Instagram’s radical new icon and app design, unpack Google’s new third-party Gboard keyboard for iOS, and detail Tim Cook’s globe-trot from China to India to Amsterdam and beyond. 9to5Mac’s Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
Filed under: Happy Hour Tagged: Happy Hour
Google I/O roundup: Google’s ‘Assistant’ Siri competitor, Google Home, Allo & Duo messaging apps & much more
Google kicked off its Google I/O developer conference today with the usual keynote address where executives showed off a number of upcoming hardware, software and developer tool products. It started off with its new voice controlled Siri competitor— Google Assistant— which also ties into its upcoming Amazon Echo-like device for the home called Google Home.
The company then demoed a brand new messaging app called Allo, and a new video messaging app companion called Duo, both of which will be coming to iOS devices. The new Allo app will be the first place that users will get to experience the new Google Assistant features that the company plans on bringing to several devices across platforms including to vehicles through Android Auto. And it highlighted a focus on security for Allo with an “incognito mode” like its Chrome browser, while giving a demo and talking up reliability of video calls for the Duo app.
Head below for our roundup of everything announced courtesy of our sister site 9to5Google, and keep checking back for more as the event unfolds.
Filed under: iOS, Mac Tagged: allo, developers, Echo, Google, Google Assistant, google home, Google I/O, Messaging
Possible Siri for Mac icons preview OS X 10.12’s voice assistant ahead of WWDC
9to5Mac first reported back in February that Apple is planning to finally bring Siri to the Mac starting with OS X 10.12 later this year. Apple’s voice assistant started on the iPhone in 2011 and has since made its way to the iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV, so bringing it to the Mac is expected to be a tent pole feature in the next major software update. With the next big update to the Mac operating system set to be introduced in a few weeks at WWDC, new images have surfaced purportedly showing how Siri’s iconography will appear on the Mac.
Filed under: Mac Tagged: OS X 10.12, Siri
TwelveSouth’s signature BookBook case for 12.9-inch iPad Pro is now available, 9.7-inch edition coming soon
TwelveSouth announced back in February that its iconic BookBook case was being adapted to fit the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and today the South Carolina-based accessory maker says its book-style case is now available for order.
Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: BookBook
9to5Toys Lunch Break: 15″ Retina MacBook Pro $1,600, iPhone SE Cases $3, Dash Cam w/ 32GB microSD card $100, more
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
TODAY’S CAN’T MISS DEALS:
Save $399 on Apple’s 15-inch 256GB Retina MacBook Pro, now $1,600 w/ free shipping
Outfit your new iPhone SE or iPad Pro with one of these stylish cases from just $3 shipped
Vantrue 2K 2.7-Inch LCD Dashboard Cam w/ DVR + 32GB microSD card $100 shipped (Orig. $160), more
Best Buy hands Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad Pro its first significant discount, 128GB model now $650
Apple 12-inch MacBook 1.1GHz/8GB/256GB (2015): $899.99 shipped (Orig. $1,299)
Apple 13-inch MacBook Air 1.6GHz/8GB/128GB (newest model): $850 shipped (Reg. $999)
iTunes $50 Gift Card for $42.50 shipped – save 15% on games, apps, subscriptions, more
App Store Free App of the Week: King Rabbit goes free for the first time (Reg. $1)
Adventure/platformer Swordigo goes free on iOS for the first time in over a year (Reg. $3)
Call of Duty iOS titles matching all-time lows: Strike Team $2 (Reg. $7), Zombies $1 (Reg. $5), more
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MORE NEW GEAR FROM TODAY:
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LifeProof FRĒ Waterproof Case for iPhone 6 (Various Colors) $30 shipped (Reg. $60)
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Roundup: The best power strips w/ USB ports to quickly (and safely!) charge all of your devices
NEW PRODUCTS & MORE:
Black + Decker launches app-connected Bluetooth batteries w/ USB port
- Garmin’s new vívosmart HR+ opts for GPS-tracking and heart rate monitoring over battery life
- The Tap Bluetooth wearable turns nearly any surface into a functioning Bluetooth keyboard
- The Vuze Camera brings an affordable point-and-shoot design to virtual reality
- Review: Samsung’s KS9500 65-Inch curved 4K TV is pretty amazing [Video]
- The newest Garmin Fitness Tracker delivers a ‘Suffer Score’ after each of your workouts
- The Thin Ice wearable cools your body in hopes of burning an additional 1,000 calories per day
- This Hybrid Tube Amp system for Raspberry Pi is ideal for DIY Audiophiles
- Vans and Nintendo team up for epic new line of NES-themed sneakers
- NERF’s upcoming Terrascout RC Drone Blaster is going to be a menace in your home
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- Garmin goes classy with its new smartphone-connected vívomove fitness tracker
Filed under: Tips and Tricks Tagged: 9to5Toys, Amazon, app deals, Best Buy, Daily Deals, Dash Camera, free apps, Gold Box, iPhone SE, MacBook Pro, video games
Review: Naim mu-so Qb, the AirPlay speaker with design borrowed from a $150,000 amp
When a well-respected audiophile brand known for an amplifier costing a cool $150k launches an AirPlay speaker system, you can be sure of two things. One, it’s going to be pretty special. Two, it’s not going to be cheap.
Sure enough, Naim’s first wireless offering – the mu-so which I reviewed earlier this year – came in at $1500. I did, though, consider it worth every penny. It’s a true replacement for a hifi system, delivering room-filling sound that I couldn’t fault. The design is fantastic, build-quality first-rate and it offers every input source you could ever want: AirPlay, Bluetooth, UPnP, Spotify Connect, Tidal, wired Ethernet, USB, optical and 3.5mm analog.
If you liked the sound of it but thought that $1500 was pushing things a little, there’s good news and bad …
Filed under: Reviews Tagged: AirPlay, AirPlay speakers, AirPlay systems, Hifi, Naim, Naim Audio, Naim mu-so QB, Naim mu-so QB review, review
TermHere: a new Finder extension that points new Terminal windows to the current working directory [Video]
TermHere is a new app available on the Mac App Store that serves as a Finder extension. Once enabled, right-clicking inside of the Finder will present a new shortcut to jump to a Terminal window pointed to the current working directory.
TermHere may feature a straightforward premise, but it’s very nice to have if you’re a developer or avid Terminal user. Watch our brief hands-on video inside to see it in action. more…
Filed under: Apps, Mac Tagged: App Development, Mac App Store, Terminal
Cook meeting with major carriers in India to forge ‘strategic partnerships’ for LTE rollout
The Economic Times reports that Tim Cook is meeting with the heads of major carriers in India in order to form ‘strategic partnerships’ as the country accelerates its LTE rollout. The smartphone market in India has so far been constrained by slow data speeds in most parts of the country.
Cook has said the advent of high-speed 4G networks in India will expand the market for iPhones, flagging elsewhere, making it a key market for the company.
Cook is said to be meeting with Bharti Airtel, the largest carrier in the country; Reliance Jio Infocomm, which plans to roll out LTE services nationwide this year; as well as Vodafone and others …
Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS Devices Tagged: Apple India, India, Tim Cook
Kickstarter: Pebble wristband adds 7-day power and on-board GPS for outdoor adventurers
While the Pebble smartwatch range may not compete with the Apple Watch in terms of functionality or display quality, it can be a good option for those who want multi-day battery-life. Third-party company Powerstrap is now aiming to boost that life even further with a powered strap that claims to add a full week of power through a 250mAh battery, as well as an on-board GPS module.
Filed under: iOS Devices
17 Inspiring Instagram Video Examples From Oreo, Spotify, BuzzFeed & More
Remember when Instagram first started allowing users to post videos back in 2013?
The first Instagram videos had to be recorded on your phone and could only be up to 15 seconds long. Those were the days that people compared Instagram video to its Twitter-owned counterpart, Vine.
Instagram’s come a long way since then, and it’s blown Vine out of the water. Like most of the other popular social networks, the folks at Instagram have made changes to its platform that make it easier for people to post and share videos.
In late March 2016, Instagram announced they’d start rolling out the ability for Instagram users to upload 60-second videos. For iOS users, they added that users will soon be able to make videos out of multiple clips from your camera roll.
Thanks to these changes, marketers can use the Instagram app to relate with their fans and customers, to communicate their business’ personalities and brand stories, and to express artistic creativity.
There are a lot of brands who are posting great photos on social media. But what about videos? While brands have been slower to adapt to Instagram’s video platform, many of the ones that are experimenting with it are doing it really well. Check out the examples below.
17 Inspiring Instagram Video Examples
Click anywhere on the videos to play them, and click again to pause them.
1) Oreo
Oreo is known for its simple, creative social media content — and its Instagram videos don’t disappoint. The video below is a great example of a fun, creative video that works perfectly for the platform.
While we love the sound quality in this video — how satisfying is the sound of pen on paper? — it doesn’t require sound to make sense. This is a really smart move because when you’re viewing any video on Instagram, you’ll hear sound only if your device’s volume is turned on. If your phone is set to silent or vibrate — which is the case for many people, especially when they’re perusing Instagram in public — then the video will play with the sound off.
Keep this in mind when you’re planning your next Instagram video: It should either be eye-catching enough to draw people to turn on the sound within the first few seconds, or it should be able to play without sound.
2) Burger King
Here’s another Instagram video that doesn’t require sound. In fact, it’s completely silent — and the reasoning is very clever. The Burger King (yes, that’s the name of their mascot) is famously silent.
But on the 199th anniversary of National American Sign Language (ASL) Day, he broke his silence both on Instagram with the video below, and on YouTube with a longer video — a great example of paring down a longer YouTube video to fit Instagram’s platform.
In the video, the Burger King calls on their deaf fans to ask what the official sign for their famous burger, the “Whopper,” should be. The video encourages fans to submit ideas via social media using the #WhopperSign hashtag.
When a winning hand sign was picked, here’s how they changed their logo to celebrate:
Image Credit: AdAge
3) Spotify
Here’s a video from Spotify that’s sure to make you chuckle. The content is delightful because it’s funny and unexpected. Not only is the idea clever, but we also love the tagline at the end: “Over 75,000 new fans every day. Not including the ones in private mode.”
It shows how much they know their customers: They know people tend to listen to songs they’re embarrassed about on “private” mode so it hides it from others. A customer might see this and laugh, and maybe even tag a friend who knows his or her “secret” music tastes.
4) Reebok
Inspiring content tends to do very well on social media, especially Instagram. This video is clearly the work of professionals, which not every brand has the resources for. But the message, which is part of a larger campaign shared across their website and other social networks, is both beautiful and shareable: You have 25,915 days: What will you do with them?
5) BuzzFeed Tasty
The videos BuzzFeed Tasty puts out on Instagram and Facebook are simply perfect for those two platforms: They’re visual, helpful, shareable, light-hearted … and, best of all, they’re simple. When I watch these videos, I want to save them somewhere so I can refer back to them when I want to make the recipe myself. (Plus, I love the music they use.)
“We want people to be able to watch the video and feel like they can pull it off at home,” Andrew Gauthier, creative director of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, told CBS.
The folks at BuzzFeed have published more than 500 “Tasty” videos since last July, and they’ve been viewed 14 billion times, mostly on Facebook. But these videos are perfect for Instagram’s visual platform, too. Thanks to Instagram’s decision to extend video length to 60 seconds, BuzzFeed is able to post full recipe videos along with a caption explaining exactly how it’s done.
6) Livia Sala
Here’s another food- and recipe-related Instagram video that took a different approach than BuzzFeed Tasty. In this video, Milan-based food stylist Livia Sala captured the process of making ravioli on video, complete with cute “commentary” from some of the ingredients on the list.
Instead of using fluid video, Sala uses a series of still shots, one after another. This is called a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone. This is a great video because it’s delightful and fun — are you seeing the trend here? The post was a Shorty Award finalist for Best Instagram Video in 2013.
7) Allstate
Think insurance companies are limited to boring content? Allstate has always set themselves apart from the crowd with their entertaining commercials and social media presence.
But they don’t just put out the same videos on every one of their social outlets. Instead, they carefully cater their content to the platform they’re publishing on. (For example, this YouTube video of theirs looks like a normal commercial, but turns into a “choose your own adventure” type game.)
On Instagram, some of the videos they post are video memes — this is a meme format we haven’t seen many brands use. People love memes on Instagram because they’re funny and shareable, and folks tend to tag their friends in the comments, thereby expanding the post’s reach. That’s exactly what happens with Allstate’s video memes, like the one below.
8) Ikea
Here’s an example of a short, snackable video that showcases a product in a funny way. In this case, Ikea’s showing off its anti-slip mat with a scene of a dad chasing his son (who happens to be wearing a hilarious monster costume).
This video is great because it doesn’t just show what the product looks like. In fact, you barely see the product itself. Instead, it shows the product’s benefits — and in a way that lets viewers see the brand’s personality. Instagram users love seeing personality behind Instagram content, which is why it does so well for engagement. So the next time you want to showcase a new product, consider showing it off in a humorous way.
9) Camp Brand Goods
This Canadian outdoor adventure apparel company consistently posts great content on Instagram. Not only is their Instagram content always high quality, but they use it to showcase the lifestyle they build around their products, not just the products themselves.
“[On Instagram,] it’s less about the product than it is about sharing good times,” said Camp Brand Goods’ Leslie McNeilly. “We tend to post an even mix of scenery shots and product shots. We created our own hashtag [#keepitwild], and we award a T-shirt weekly to an Instagram user who is caught keeping it wild.”
While they haven’t done many videos, the one below is a great one. It has the same look and feel as their photos on Instagram, especially with that vintage, faded look, with perfectly matching music.
10) Ben & Jerry’s
Here’s an example of a great product announcement video on Instagram from Ben & Jerry’s. We love that the video shows a fictional way the product was made — as if it were as easy as putting cookie dough and Oreos in an empty pint and shaking it up. It’s another great way for a brand to show its personality using short videos.
The video’s playful tone is perfect for Instagram — and so is the length. Although Instagram is starting to allow longer videos, it’s important to remember that users are often scrolling through their feeds when they come upon a video, and many may not want to watch for more than ten or twenty seconds. This would’ve been a great video to share on Facebook, too, because of that playful tone and short length.
11) Wistia
How-to videos are a popular video format for many brands — but the key is making these videos interesting enough for the Instagram platform. The folks at Wistia did a great job of using cool angles along with text to capture viewers’ attention right away — without them needing to turn the sound on. (In fact, this video doesn’t have sound at all.)
Then, they used the caption to point viewers to the link in their bio for the full instructional video. (Note: When you ask people to follow a link in your Instagram bio, make sure you make that link trackable.)
12) CBRE
Nothing like a breathtaking time lapse to mesmerize your followers on Instagram. You might not think a commercial real estate and investment services firm like CBRE would have beautiful content to post, but it’s videos like this that have the ability to showcase the more visually pleasing sides of the industry.
Even if you work for a “boring” industry, you can come up with creative ideas that cater to what type of content your audience wants. One key thing to keep in mind — especially on Instagram’s platform — is to make your content relatable and approachable. In other words, make it human. No one who’s scrolling through their Instagram feed wants to see a cut-and-dry product update. They’ll scroll right past it and on to their friend’s video of his cat.
Instead, produce videos that help you form an emotional connection with your fans, as CBRE did with this stunning video, the beauty of which anyone can appreciate.
13) Califia Farms
Califia Farms is another brand that consistently creates awesome Instagram content. They tend to post a solid mix of photos and video content, including fun, playful videos and GIFs like the one below. Here, they’re announcing a new product with a sort of “slow reveal” — but one that’s visually compelling enough for users to stick around.
If you like the idea of posting animated videos to your own Instagram account, they aren’t actually all that difficult and expensive to create. Here’s a list of 10 easy-to-use tools for creating animated photos and videos to get you started.
14) Flixel Photos
Here’s a stunning image from Flixel Photos. … Or is it a video? It’s actually something called a “cinemagraph,” which is kind of a combination of the two.
A cinemagraph is a file format used to create short, infinitely-looping animations for the web that look like images with a moving component. The effect is really cool: It’s like experiencing a living moment.
Creating a cinemagraph isn’t as hard as it looks. Read this blog post to learn how to make one in seven steps.
15) Dunkin’ Donuts
A video doesn’t have to be long to be successful. In fact, the video below from Dunkin’ Donuts is literally three still images put together into a video. This is another example of a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone.
While this video is super simple, what makes it great is its timeliness (in celebration of Mother’s Day) and that it’s funny, unexpected, and therefore shareable. Donuts given like flowers? Yes, please.
16) WeWork
Another great use case for Instagram? Showcasing your company culture. Instagram’s a great platform for positioning your brand as a friendly face and building a voice and personality to build a relationship with followers. It doesn’t hurt for recruitment, either.
Here’s a wonderful and whimsical video that cuts together short clips from WeWork’s company party. Kids breakdancing, someone dressed up as a snowman, employees talking and laughing … they did a great job of showcasing the employees’ personalities and making the party look really fun.
17) Saturday Night Live
The American TV show Saturday Night Live produces great video content by its very nature — but that’s not the only reason why their Instagram videos are so good. They have their Instagram promotion down to a science.
“It’s found a successful formula for extending each show way past the broadcast date, and for re-purposing TV content for the online generation, with micro-video playing a huge part of that,” writes Carla Marshall for ReelSEO.com. “Take the 2nd April show, which featured Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, and singer Gwen Stefani. Both appeared in a very odd little sketch called ‘Space Shorts/Pants’ which SNL then uploaded to Facebook, and YouTube, and to Instagram, where it generated over 70K views. By using its social media presence, the brand was able to extend the buzz around the sketch for days, even weeks, after.”
What are your favorite examples of Instagram videos? Share with us in the comments.
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