Anthropologie’s Instagram, SI Swimsuit Issue for Women, Sailthru Funding

The Strategist picks the day’s most relevant and interesting stories about the world of content from around the web. Here’s what you should be reading today:

Anthropologie’s Instagram Strategy

According to Shanna Mallon of Content Marketing Institute, brands should look to Anthropologie for Instagram inspiration.

The brand has over 250,000 followers on the site and showcases staff members wearing its clothing.

“The ways staffers wear the clothes provide inspiration to customers, while also enhancing the value of the products — which makes more people want to buy them,” she says. It also shows behind the scenes happenings, which cements a bond between consumer and brand, and utilizes hashtags to build a community around it.

Swimsuit Issue for Women

According to the New York Times, this year, Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue will contain a style guide for female readers.

Magazine research found that 18 million women read the magazine, so it decided to include six pages of content and six pages of ads from Target. There will be tips in the issue, such as how to get tousled beauty hair and how to apply makeup.

Sailthru Receives Funding for More Content

GigaOm reports that Sailthru, a company that sends out personalized content and shopping offers to email subscribers, has received $19 million in funding from venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.

Benchmark, in the past, has also supported Dropbox, Uber, Yelp, and Twitter. According to Jeff John Roberts, “Sailthru pitches its tools as ‘Smart Data’ that let clients measure the effectiveness of their marketing messages; clients can rely on metrics like how many people open a given email or the amount of time a subscriber spends on a website.”

Losing Audience Trust

Barry Feldman writes on CopyBlogger about what it takes to lose an audience’s trust. 

He says that if content is devoid of dialogue and doesn’t promote interaction, people won’t respond well to it. If brands are anti-social, customers won’t be able to relate to them. If brands are never wrong, or if their websites are messy and cluttered, customers will instantly be turned off.

Google+’s Growth

Google+ is making big waves in the world of social media, according to ClickZ, echoing a sentiment that CopyBlogger wrote about last week.

Since last year, there has been a 9,400 percent increase in users. The top 100 companies on the site have a total of 20.9 million fans, which is a huge increase from 222,000 in 2011. H&M has the most fans (2.49 million), while BMW comes in second with 2.22 million and Mercedes-Benz in third with 2.04 million.

Branding Tips for Freelancers

Mike Smith of Guerilla Freelancing compiled a list of social media tactics to brand oneself.

Freelancers should use the same profile image and username on all websites, and write quality content directed at a target audience. The message needs to be consistent online, and freelancers have to be as personal and approachable as possible.

In terms of friends, they should ask friends what they can do for them and contact them when they think there is something of interest to them.

Want to Buy a Promoted Trend? That’ll be $200,000

According to Mashable, Twitter is charging $200,000 a day to purchase a promoted trend on the site.

When the program first started in 2010, brands were charged $80,000 per day. Seth Fiegerman writes, “Companies who purchase a promoted trend get a customized hashtag placed at the top of the list of trending topics. Users who click on this hashtag see a tweet from that company at the top of the page of results.”