There are holidays devoted to these undeniably smart animals in many countries. In most parts of the world, Cat Day is celebrated on August 8. But for some countries, this date is different. So, in Russia, it is celebrated on March 1, in Poland — February 17, in Japan — February 22, and in the U.S., they are honored on October 29.

The purpose of this holiday is not only to honor our pets but also to raise awareness about the problem of homeless cats.

Cats were and are one of the most popular pets in the world, second only to dogs. In 2018, 370 million people owned a cat compared to 470 million dog owners. Meanwhile, in Europe, the cat was the most popular animal in the same year: 75 million cat owners vs. 65 million dog owners.

So it makes sense that today, we will dedicate this article to these beautiful animals. So, these are the top 15 Instagram post ideas for International Cat Day!

Idea #1. Post a cat (it’s that simple)

The easiest way to celebrate International Cat Day is to post a cute cat photo and write a greeting. You can also make a slightly more informative post, write about the holiday’s purpose, give some statistics, and other useful information. Users will really appreciate it! And don’t forget about the hashtags!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/todayscatss/

Idea #2. Make a support post

Write about local shelters or volunteer organizations that help homeless cats. Encourage your followers to help them. Or you can even donate a few percent of your revenue for that day to one of these organizations. This will greatly increase your audience’s trust and build your image as a socially responsible company.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/_animalheroes_/

Idea #3. Organize a giveaway 

Have a joint giveaway with a cat supplies manufacturer or retailer. Such publications are a proven way to bring you a new audience and increase activity in your account. Invite Instagram users to subscribe to you and your partner, share the post in Stories, or tag friends in the comments. You can also invite them to be creative: have followers write an original International Cat Day greeting and choose a winner based on the number of likes.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/arriemae_inspires/

Idea #4. Post about top 10 famous cats

Collect the top 10 most famous cats. These can be both cats who have become famous for something throughout history or just the most popular cats from Internet memes. Don’t forget to share a bit about each of them — Instagram users love this kind of stuff!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/le.chatnoir.mystique/

Idea #5. Spread the word about the health of cats, nutritious food for them, or a little bit about their upbringing

There is an incredible amount of information on the Internet today about raising or feeding cats, how to take care of them, and what to look out for. And often, it is very easy to get lost in this flood of articles, notes, and blogs. Help your users and collect for them the most relevant and verified information on how to take better care of their pets.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/alex_the_cat_nurse_/

Idea #6. Organize a cat party

Invite employees to bring their own kitties and have a real party for them! Prepare treats, fun costumes, and decorations. You can even get a professional photographer to capture the party for all your followers!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/chiichiirella/

Idea #7. Tell about your volunteer work

Share with your subscribers how your company helps homeless cats or local shelters. Prepare a photo report. Maybe there’s a kitty near your office that you love to feed — your audience will appreciate the gesture!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/togerd/

Idea #8. Let your audience post for you

Invite your followers to post funny pictures of their cats. Collect the most original ones in your account or Stories! You can even reward the most creative users with a promo code or a discount on your products.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/barkingstore/

Idea #9. Collect the top of the funniest cat videos

The Internet is primarily a place to watch cat videos. Remind your followers of this by compiling the top 10 funniest cat videos ever!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/loveyoustepan/

Idea #10. Conduct an interview with the cat

If a cat lives in your company or an employee’s cat has become your office mascot, “interview” it. For example, you can tell about its “working” day in the office or at home.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/cattownoak/

Idea #11. Make a selection of recipes that your followers can make for their cats

Instagram is full of a variety of recipes. But how often do you see recipes for cats? A hearty soup, tuna treats, flavorful fish? Your followers’ cats will absolutely love it! But be careful and do not touch the subject of cats’ diets — a specialist should only do it!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/felightuk/

Idea #12. Have a live stream with a veterinarian or other cat specialist

A Q&A session is always a winning option. Ask your audience to help you put together a list of questions they would like to ask a well-known expert. This could be a veterinarian, a volunteer from a local shelter, or other experts who deal with cats.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/chewy/

Idea #13. Tell about how your employees celebrated International Cat Day

Find out which of your employees have cats. Ask them to share pictures of how they celebrated this holiday with their pets. An ideal way to do this is also to accompany pictures with little stories about what they did and how their cats reacted.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/eatdrinkcat/

Idea #14. Put together a post of the most hilarious medieval cat paintings

Have you ever seen cats drawn in the Middle Ages? One can’t help but laugh because they are hilarious! Impress your audience on International Cat Day with a selection of the funniest medieval cat drawings, and your followers won’t forget you!

Source: https://www.boredpanda.com/ugly-medieval-cats-art/

Idea #15. Ask your in-house designers to make cute and funny cards

Cards with original illustrations for all kinds of holidays are very popular on the Internet. Have your design team make a selection of your corporate postcards with cats that can be published on Instagram. The themes can be very different — moments from the life of cats, cats who work in the office, etc. Show your creativity!

Source: https://www.instagram.com/pinkcatcartoon/

So, these were the top 15 creative Instagram post ideas for International Cat Day! Choose and act. It’ll have a good impact on your social media presence!

The post Top 15 Creative Instagram Post Ideas for International Cat Day appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Facebook is showing strong dedication to helping small businesses and their customers stay aligned with the changes that are happening due to the pandemic situation. Now, with the features they recently announced, it’s even easier to share updates.

Launching Shops both on Facebook and Instagram

As soon as the pandemic caused ECommerce to explode, Facebook reacted with the launch of it’s “Shop” feature. As positioned by the company, it helps businesses adapt to the crisis while helping customers “experience the joy of shopping versus the chore of buying.”

Facebook Shop is easy-to-setup. You can add products one by one or export from a file, create collections, set prices, and include product descriptions. The best thing about Facebook Shop is that it’s customizable. Sellers can set a cover image for each product and highlight colors that meet their brand standards.

Shops are available both for Facebook and Instagram, and customers can get in touch with sellers via WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram Direct. It creates a feeling of transparency and improves the shopping experience.

By promoting Facebook and Instagram shops via Stories or ads you will encourage interested customers to view your products. All they need to do to make a purchase is click on a product, add it to their cart, and place an order. It will be charged to the credit card attached to their profile.

Introducing Businesses Nearby section

In order to help businesses become more visible to potential customers and grow virtual foot traffic, Facebook is developing a section dedicated to posts made by local businesses within a preset radius (from 1 mile to 500 miles). Users will be able to see actual hours of operation, delivery options, and quickly find the products and services they need.

Adding #SupportSmallBusiness stickers and hashtags

When times are tough, your customers can volunteer to help your business not only with positive reviews, but also by using the #SupportSmallBusiness hashtag on Facebook or the sticker on Instagram. Other users see in shared Stories all the posts from people they follow, so this feature will definitely help businesses spread the word about themselves.

This type of support obviously requires good relationships with customers. As soon as the concept “we’re all in this together” is in full swing, you can ask them directly to show their support and use these hashtags or stickers.

The features announced by Facebook provide opportunities for transparent communication and improved customer experience. To learn how to maintain trust and relationships with your clients by utilizing digital marketing, subscribe to our Emergency Marketing Center and get a weekly digest of the latest updates.

The post Facebook Supporting Businesses: New Features You Can Leverage appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

As COVID-19 has given a boost to digital commerce since more and more people are moving online, digital giants like Facebook and Google have adjusted their services to support businesses and meet their needs.

The Instagram tray now offers “Gift Card” or “Food Orders” Stories stickers

Instagram has provided not only tips for businesses to reach out to potential customers by utilizing Stories, but also features that can be of service. All you need to do is choose a delivery partner and add a link to your product. After that, users can buy from you by just clicking on your Stories.

You can also add “Gift Cards,” “Order Food,” or “Donate” buttons to your Instagram profile. These features are available for business accounts only.

Messenger Rooms and Lives for online events by Facebook

In his latest Facebook Live Stream, Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook’s top priority is helping users stay connected with people they care about. These people can be your customers, too.

As the popularity of video content has been growing during the lockdown, Facebook has announced upgrades in functionality for video conferencing and running online events.

Very soon you’ll be able to try new forms of interaction with customers by opening Messenger Rooms. They’re similar to Zoom rooms, you just don’t have to schedule them. It’s an opportunity for genuine communication with customers—you can create kind of a virtual cafe, and instead of dropping by for a small one-on-one chat, people can now feel the atmosphere by tasting delivered coffee along with other “visitors.”

Also, Facebook has brought back the Live With option, so you can invite guests to Live events. For example, you can run a workshop with a manicure artist, chef, or yoga instructor to attract subscribers to your brand page with fresh useful content.

Facebook developers are currently working hard to make it possible to run online events live. This feature is about to be announced, so you can already start planning ways to leverage it for your business.

Google has removed Reviews and Q & A from GMB, but has enabled free selling

Google My Business asks brands affected by the crisis to label themselves as “Temporarily closed,” emphasizing this won’t lead to a decrease of local search ranking. It encourages businesses to provide credible information without taking risks.

Google is currently focusing on making information on Google Search reliable and “prioritizing critical services.” As a result, some features have been removed from Google My Business. New reviews won’t be visible on GMB pages and there were no announcements as to whether they will be after the quarantine. The Q & A feature has been removed, too.

Having said that, Google is actually aiming at helping small businesses. Starting this week, it’s free to sell on Google. Retailers can connect with millions of potential customers via free listings even if they don’t advertise. This initiative puts merchants on equal footing and makes it easier to switch to online sales.

These updates are a gold mine for getting creative and experimental and leveraging social media marketing to build relationships with customers. To get a regular digest of the opportunities for franchise and multi-location businesses during the crisis, subscribe to our Emergency Marketing Center.

The post 3 Major Social Media Platform Updates Your Business Should Utilize During Lockdown appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Instagram says that posts that make it into the feed of a hashtag follower are selected by an algorithm that includes the quality of the post, and how recently it was posted. And, as a follower of a hashtag, you get a vote as to whether or not a post that makes it into your feed belongs there. You can downvote posts via a drop-down menu that is available in the top right corner.

Since spam and inappropriate content are a concern on any social network, Instagram is aware that there could be people or bots looking to corrupt the system. So, the network’s automated system for flagging bad posts is combined with an operations team that monitors the automated and user-generated flags and will block the offenders. In the last few months, Instagram has improved how it sources and ranks content with hashtags so that what is shown on those pages is OK. Teams of hundreds of people analyze trends in hashtags to keep their finger on the pulse of content that is posted.

This may eventually have an impact on advertisers, since it would be easy for Instagram to collect follower data and create some pretty amazing ad targeting options, but right now that’s not the plan. Currently, this option is great for people who don’t want to follow a lot of users, but have niches and subcultures they’re interested in. Viva la Instagram!

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The new options exists in the People tab. You can choose the option, “Connect to Instagram” and the integration will add your Instagram contacts to the people you can reach via Facebook Messenger. The integration will only import Instagram contacts that you follow and that also follow you will be imported, so accounts that follow you, that you don’t follow, won’t be able to access you via Messenger, as the connection works both ways. This is important because there are so many fake Instagram accounts.

This integration is possible because of Instagram Messaging, a feature that is used by 375 million people. This is great for small businesses that are marketing on Instagram and Facebook, and want to leverage Facebook’s multiple mobile areas to send marketing and promotional messages to users on both platforms.

The option is not yet available to users, but it’s being tested by Facebook/Instagram and will not be formally announced when it is completely deployed. This is just one of the ways Facebook is helping small business marketers build larger and more engaged social networks.

The post Importing Instagram Contacts to Messenger: A New Way To Automate Marketing appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Another bonus to this is that, as we know, Messenger supports payment, message bots and more. So you won’t need a web solution AND a Facebook solution. You can manage your chats and messages right from the app – and it will integrate with your website. You’ve never been this connected!

Customers who connect with you this way will be able to continue the conversation via Messenger from their tablet, phone or computer. And, because all the messaging is in one place, it takes the pressure off internal support for technical issues and leaves the informative and sales communication to the person who manages the Facebook page. Perfect for companies selling via Facebook, but maybe not so good for companies that use chat features for tech support or to collect leads via chat. Of course, Messenger itself is a great lead generation tool, and you can segment and sequence from the information within Facebook.

This feature is in closed beta right now, but you can get notified when it’s available for your company. You can read Facebook’s announcement here to understand what is so exciting about this upcoming feature.

The post Exciting News Coming to Facebook Messenger: New Customer Chat appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

This is an improvement over the other way of screen sharing on Facebook Live. Previously you had to use third-party Open Broadcaster software and it was more complicate that Facebook Live’s new functionality.

Set It Up

To use it, click the Share Screen button that will appear when you enter the Facebook Live module on your computer’s desktop.

A pop up will appear to ask you if you want to add the Facebook Screen Sharing extension.

Then, you’ll be asked if you want to share your entire screen, a specific tab or a specific app.

It’s not perfect and the video quality isn’t super, but it’s still a big improvement and we’re sure Facebook has more updates in the works.

The post Screen Sharing With Facebook Live appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

It’s easy to use. Just take your photo or record your video, then choose the poll sticker and put it anywhere. Then you can customize the questions and possible answers. Either/or and yes/no questions are all that are possible now. But really, that’s plenty! You’ll see people’s votes (plain or sprinkles? Red or blue?) and people can watch the story later in the day to see which option won.

Poll results don’t stick around. They’re gone after 24 hours, so make sure you take screenshots if you want to publish results to other social audiences.

The post How to Make A Poll With Instagram’s Stories New Stickers appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

To use updates, please download/update Facebook Pages Manager Mobile App (iOS, Android) or see a notification from Facebook in Messenger on web version.

• Save time by responding to all enquiries: Messenger, Facebook and Instagram comments

Now you’re confident that you aren’t missing an important message or comment.

• Personalize

Simply tap the person’s name to see their publicly available profile, as well as their previous interactions with your business. You can also create your own labels and apply them to people based on what they messaged you about.

• Reply to Comments

You can reply to Facebook comments, visitor posts, reviews, messages and Instagram comments directly from the updated inbox by tapping on the content you want to answer.

Understanding how important messages are for sales with Social, Facebook enhances messaging services to make this experience better.

• Pop-Up Messenger

Facebook offers you pop-up instant messages if your response rate is higher than 90%. Seeing that you use messages actively, the network sets an instant message to provoke visitors ask you business questions or simply start conversation. Make sure you respond actively to make this feature available.

Not only are the comments, messages and other non-automatable communications vitally important to a brand’s image, they can also offer an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with fans and followers. That can only lead to increased engagement, and better sales. And, with apps that make it easier to manage all your messages, comments and posts, how can you go wrong?

The post Facebook’s Improved Inbox for Messenger, Facebook and Instagram Comments appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Small businesses, entrepreneurs, artisans, creators, and big brands will benefit from this update because:

• Videos can help better tell a brand’s story
• Users prefer to consumed video content
• Your brand will have the opportunity to highlight your creativity

What to highlight in the video:

• Product/service
• Inspirational video
• An overview of your company

What you need to know about Facebook Cover Videos

• Users will upload a cover video in the same way they upload a cover photo now
• Facebook Cover videos can be 20-90 seconds in length, no longer, no shorter
• The recommended video crop is 820 x 312 pixels
• Cover videos auto-play and auto-loop
• In the bottom right corner there is a mute/unmute option
• Facebook Cover videos start playing with the sound muted

Does your video need to be professionally produced and super sleek?

Video content on Facebook is about connecting to people in a real and tangible way. You can’t spend a ton of time and money on videos that are cold and unrelatable. Create fun videos that people will relate to. No need to be a professional video producer.

Don’t want to bother with videos? Create cinemagraphs on your own!

Cinemagraphs are pretty much made for cover videos. Traditional video, filled with lots of different cuts, scenes, and chatter, may appear busy on a Facebook Profile or Page. Cinemagraphs, on the other hand, have a more classy appeal. They require no sound, contain a perfect loop, and draw attention without screaming for it.

You can use Cinemagraph Pro to create and share your free Facebook Profile Video! Check out our tutorial below to learn how. And don’t forget you can try Cinemagraph Pro for macOS or Cinemagraph Pro for iOS free.

The post Facebook Cover Videos and Cinemagraphs are Here! appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.