Tag: social media strategy

Seeking to make an innovative change, five friends chose to pause their studies to pursue a dream. While studying Computer Science and Image Processing in the PhD program at Hebrew University, they discovered there was a gap between research in the academic world and what was available in the market.

After the discovery,  Zeev Farbman (CEO), Amit Goldstein (CFO), Nir Pochter (CMO), Yaron Inger (CTO) and Itay Tsiddon (Director of Business Development) founded Lightricks.  Shortly after, Eran Yacobovitch joined the team as Lightricks’ Marketing Analyst.

Well known for their photo editing apps Facetune and Enlight, Lightricks is producing the next generation of content creation tools. Founded as a bootstrap company, they needed to ensure their venture was profitable from the start. Launched in early 2013, Facetune was Lightricks’ first app, and at the time of their launch Facebook had just released the Mobile App Install ad objective. An amazing opportunity to acquire new users and capitalize on their paid application business model, Lightricks built a marketing strategy focusing on country- based burst campaigns.

Beginning with no budget, they invested 500 dollars into Facebook advertising. They were able to optimize their campaigns, and reach top ranks in multiple app stores. The duo quickly learned that this was a great opportunity to acquire new users with the best ROI, so they continued to invest most of their profits and scaled with Facebook – a strategy that is still in place today.

Soon, both Facebook and Apple recognized Lightricks’ accomplishments, the company scaled and Facetune quickly became the fifth most sold app in the AppStore, reached #1 in over 128 countries and was one of Google’s best apps in 2013 and 2014.

In March 2015, Lightricks released Enlight, the most powerful suite of image processing tools on mobile that was recently named as Apple’s App of the Year for 2015. Later that year, Lightricks received an investment from Carmel Ventures that allowed them to scale and make their vision come true faster. The talented team is currently working on 4 new apps, all in the field of content creation on mobile.

We sat down with Eran to get the inside scoop on Lightricks, and pick his brain on Facebook advertising strategies:

1.What’s your ultimate mission?

“Our goal is to provide mobile users with all the necessary tools to create and edit mobile content. We’re currently working on four new products, all centered around content creation and editing on mobile. Aiming to empower the creator in everyone, we continue to deploy research grade technology to create an ecosystem of mobile first creativity tools.

2.What do you love about living in Israel? What do you love about the startup culture in Israel?

“Born and raised in Israel it’s hard to imagine myself anywhere else. I grew up in Tsfat, and never thought I would move to Jerusalem. University is what originally brought me to Jerusalem, and Lightricks is what has kept me here. Jerusalem is the perfect place to found a startup in- there are organizations like Made in JLM that help startups grow, and foster communities, and the city itself is calm enough to allow entrepreneurs to channel their energies to their ventures.”

3.How do you use social media to reach your audience?

“We give our users value with our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. We’ve found that Facebook is the most effective platform for our goals, and we use the platform consistently to increase our user acquisition. I love the accessibility of social media. Every user has the ability to contact their favorite brand, and we can effectively communicate with our audience and help them better understand our product.”

4.What are your top Facebook Advertising tips for startups?

• “Test, test, test. Channels, targets, creatives, prices, etc. You’ll never know what will work best. That’s pretty much our marketing department’s motto.”

• “Don’t always settle with the currently available tools. It’s not always the easy thing, but if you have the resources and you think you can do it better, build the tools that fit the way you work.”

• “Be sure to use all available ad types: Image ad, video ad, carousel, and others.”

• “Instagram proves to be a very good channel – check it out.”

• “Keep yourself updated with relevant blogs, pages and users. Online advertising and Mobile App Advertising in particular are very dynamic and ever-changing realms.

5.What’s one thing no one knows about your business?

“Our best hidden secret is our garden. We have the best office garden in Israel, and we invest a lot of time and money in maintaining it. Some of our many plants are tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, passion fruit, and many species of flowers. Each month we send an internal newsletter to the staff explaining a new aspect of the garden to them!”

Read more about Lightricks’ Facebook accomplishments here:

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/facetune/429375/3

Want to join Lightricks’ team? They’re hiring: http://careers.lightricks.com/

In 2007, Nadav Reis traveled to Israel for eight months to study at Yeshiva. Flash forward to 2016, and that eight month trip still hasn’t ended.

During his college years, Nadav’s built-in entrepreneurial spirit led him to open a tee-shirt printing company, his first taste of creative design. After officially moving to Israel, Nadav became a freelance web designer. Completely self taught and having honed his skills based on client needs, Nadav quickly became a Photoshop and Illustrator pro.

After years of doing web design in Israel and “meeting some of the most awesome people in the world,” Nadav connected with Clark Valberg, Co-Founder of InVision, a platform taking the UX design world by storm. Nadav’s creativity and persistence led him to his current position as InVision’s Educational Partnerships Coordinator. Nadav is in charge of building and maintaining relationships with accelerators, startups, universities and professors.

“Most people don’t dare to dream, but when you do, things do happen; it does work!”

InVision’s social media presence is top notch. Their newsletter is sought after, and they’ve built strong both B2B and B2C communities. Nadav explains they use Twitter to connect to their users, and also keep an eye on what’s going on in the design world. Nadav explains “Social media allows you to have access to other people …it makes the world a very small place.”

We sat down with Nadav to learn more about his story and to discover more about InVision:

How does Israel inspire you?

There is so much history here, Israel is the land that we’ve been given, and it is a place people want to be. I feel very fortunate to live here and be part of the history. As far as Israel’s technology scene, it is a very exciting time to be here. Our tiny country is booming, and the world is looking to us for future technologies.”

What’s one thing no one knows about InVision?

Everyone at InVision works remotely. We get to hire the best talent globally, and work with people with extensive experience. Right now we’re at 200 employees, and we’re growing fast. 

What’s Invision’s ultimate mission?

Clark Valberg and Ben Nadel, InVision’s founders, created InVision to build an interactive platform to combine mock-ups and portray the look and feel of using the app. Their mission is to cater the platform to the design process, and provide their users with the tools they need to build the product they want. From the whiteboards used for the initial brainstorming stage, to their new service, Inspect, which will allow the user to hand off the design to developers to help them code, InVision is truly an all-inclusive platform.

What do you love about living in Israel? What do you love about the startup culture in Israel?

I love the closeness of everyone in Israel. Everyone I meet is very open and willing to help, and it is very easy to build connections and relationships. Everyone is like one massive family!

Learn more about Nadav, Invision and design everything by visiting InvisionApp.com.

Maybe it’s a bit mad, but the Passover Haggadah and Facebook are basically the same thing.

Besides the obvious fact that they both revolve around a ‘book’ of sorts, they are also storytelling tools which happen to eat up hours of our lives at a time. They even share the same core value of freedom. The Haggadah tells us the story of how the Jews became free from Egypt, and Facebook was created by one of us Jews and offers people an online freedom which never existed before.

While Passover only comes once a year, millions of us rely on social media everyday – and I got to thinking about how much freedom social media truly provides us – personally and professionally.

 

It’s a hot topic none of us can deny. For the good or bad, social media is in and it’s not going anywhere. Once we embrace the power of social media, there are endless possibilities to how we can use it to our advantage.

Inspired by the Haggadah, we decided to put a social media spin on the famous Four Questions as the Four Sons asked – the wise one, the evil one, the simple one, and the one didn’t know how to ask a question.

1.   SO OVERWHELMING. With dozens of mainstream platforms and new ones being created every day, it’s hard to keep up with the best way to get ‘social.’ How can we stay on top of the game when we constantly have to learn new ways to play?

• TIP:  Focus in on your audience and where they spend most of their time on social media. With your audience at the top of your mind, it’s easy to remove the overwhelm and ensure you stay on the platforms where you need to be.

2.   NO RULES. While there are must-know things across all social media platforms, there are no concrete rules to ensure success. As the social media scene evolves, we must evolve too. Because of the endless ways to communicate and continuous updates, creating your own rules is the first rule of good social media.

• TIP: Social media is all about trial and error. It’s crucial to monitor your insights to determine what’s working for you, and what isn’t. As you analyze this data, tweaking your content and strategy will ensure you are steps closer to achieving your goals.

 

1.  OPEN COMMUNICATION. Social media isn’t just wise – it’s pretty genius. In just one moment, you gain access to the exact target audience you want, with the chance to reach newer and larger audiences in an instant. Forget passive communication, and take advantage of the direct way to connect with your users.

• TIP: Target specific posts to your audience. Create a few versions of one post – one for loyal users, one for potential leads, one for PR channels, etc. Speaking to them individually offers greater value, and also increases the likelihood that the people who you want to reach will see your post.

2.   REAL-TIME FEEDBACK. Social media allows businesses to meet customers ‘face to face’ and provides a quick way to meet the people behind the screen. Though most businesses don’t take advantage of this gift, social media offers the opportunity to get feedback NOW.

• TIP:  Be active. You have the opportunity to learn key factors about who your audience is, their interests, likes and dislikes, etc. Pay attention to them. Listening to your customers is the number one way to get the answers you’re looking for to create quality products and services people really want and need.

1.  COMMUNITY BUILDING. If done properly, social media is the best way to build a worldwide community of people who share the same values as you and your business do. It’s a stellar way not only for you to connect and engage with your audience, but to encourage ways in which they can join as one community, support one another and feel like part of something bigger than themselves.

• TIP: Find ways not just to give information or value to customers, but to involve them in the process. Asking trivia questions, hosting a giveaway, or running a hashtag competition are all ways to engage your community to connect with your brand and with one another.

2.  FREE RESOURCES & REPORTS. Though we already mentioned that there are no rules in social media, most platforms provide free resources and reporting tools to help you understand if your strategy is working or not. While these tools are commonly flashed right in front of us, understanding how to leverage these insights can be time-consuming and difficult.

• TIP: Check out our new platform made to simplify stats, specifically Facebook Insights. By providing a simple way to actually understand the numbers and content behind your page, it allows for an easy way to optimize your strategy and make the most of social media.

And for the ones who never knew how to ask a question…

Okay, we know. We Israelis don’t really need to ask questions anyway, we know it all – but when it comes to social media, it’s important to understand – and we’ll help keep it simple. Stay updated on all things social media with the team at BOMAH. We empower you to use social media to share your stories, build new and large audiences, and achieve your goals, whatever they may be.

Get in touch with us for a free consultation or to ask us anything about your social media – https://bomah.mhdzn.net/contact