If you want to do social media marketing, you should consider using Instagram in addition to Facebook and Twitter. Instagram is a visual platform that can be used to capture your audience’s attention.
Now, with a user base of over 700 million, Instagram is a powerful marketing platform for companies from a wide range of industries. However, as with any other marketing effort, you need to take steps to increase your success on a steady, frequent basis. The more you grow your following on Instagram, the more sales opportunities you’ll have.
This post outlines some ways to filter your Instagram marketing strategy for success, with tips that will help boost brand authority, enhance engagement, and draw in profits.
1. Use the tools available.
If you want to get the most out of Instagram, you should take advantage of the resources that they have designed specifically for business users.
Instagram is working on new tools to help businesses get more out of their accounts. These tools are similar to what is offered on Facebook business pages. They include contact call-to-action solutions that let users call, text, or email your business directly.
Business profiles on Instagram have access to analytics tools, called “Insights”, to help them evaluate the success of their marketing strategies. These tools provide data on engagement and impressions, which should help businesses make informed decisions about their future campaigns. The more businesses know about how users interact with their social content, the more precise their engagement efforts will be.
2. Find your personality, and be consistent with it.
You need a posting strategy. If you’re just starting out on Instagram, it might be tempting to post anything you think is pretty or interesting. However, if you want to be successful, you can’t just post photos without any direction. You need a posting strategy.
If you want to be successful on Instagram and gain lots of followers, you need to follow some of the same principles that are important for developing any kind of brand. It’s important to have a personality that makes your followers see you as someone they can relate to. You also need to be strategic and patient as you increase the number of your followers and learn how to use Instagram most effectively.
The images you share on social media can say a lot about your personality.
For example, the pictures that you post might tell a story, or the type of imagery, colors, and filters you use might have a distinct atmosphere.
You need to be consistent with identification of your personality and infusing it within your posts.
If you want your followers to associate certain characteristics with your brand, you need to show it to them in every post. For example, if you want them to associate your brand with dogs, then you need to post pictures of dogs in every post.
3. Use hashtags (But Be STRICT).
If you are constantly using hashtags on Instagram, you may be seen as a hashtag abuser. This means that you rely on hashtags too often to get your point across.
Hashtags can be a great way to enhance your brand on Instagram, but make sure you are aware of the rules of using hashtags before you use them.
It’s all about being STRICT:
- Specific
- Targeted
- Relevant
- Innovative
- Concise
- Thoughtful
Don’t just use hashtags for the sake of using them – really utilize them to get the most value out of them.
4. Craft a content strategy that speaks to your ideal customers.
Although it is important to have a strong social media presence, brand awareness is more than just increasing your follower count. The best way to reach and attract your ideal customers is to focus on a content marketing strategy.
From here you can see a return on your investment and build brand awareness by targeting ads to your interested target audience.
The thing is, only a small number of Instagram users will be interested in your business and what you have to offer.
This is why you need to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is and what their needs, goals, and challenges are. Once you know this, you can create a content strategy for Instagram that is relevant and valuable to them, and that aligns with your brand voice.
To get you started, here are a few practical tactics to attract your ideal customers on Instagram:
- Tap into content pillars:Â every type of content you share on Instagram should be crafted to meet a brand or business objective. With content pillars, you can group your posts under themes or topics that are relevant to your audience and valuable to your business, such as:
- Content that educates and informs
- Content that inspires and entertains
- Content that engages and converts
- Focus on value-first content: when building brand awareness, you don’t want to focus on the hard sell. Instead, it’s important to design a content strategy that solves your audience’s problems, educates them and inspires them to trust and remember your brand.
- Design share-worthy content: the best way to build a loyal and engaged audience on Instagram is to inspire social sharing. So, inject a strategic call-to-action at the end of every caption that calls on your followers to share your posts with their own friends to boost your reach with high-value new audiences.
To make sure your Instagram posts reach and attract your ideal customers, all you need to do is think strategically.
5. Proactively engage with your audience.
Instagram is a platform designed to be social. So, along with sharing high-quality content, your business needs to prioritize fostering an engaging community of followers.
Proactive community management can help you create a plan for how to respond to comments and DMs and encourage conversations with new users who are not already following your brand.
Here are few proactive ways you can foster an engaged community on Instagram:
- Assign a team member to your social media management: having a dedicated community manager in your team is what will ensure you’re dedicating time every day to respond to comments, engage with user-generated content and foster new connections with potential customers on Instagram.
- Look outside your existing network:Â scout out the users that are following and engaging with your competitors, and take the time to comment on their latest posts, react to their latest Instagram Story or even ask them a question via DMs(Direct Messages).
- Harness platform features to start conversations: using Instagram Stories stickers (such as questions and Polls) will foster two-way communication with your audience and build powerful brand awareness with your current followers.
If you want your brand to do well on Instagram, you should focus on being proactive instead of reactive. This will help you keep your current followers happy and also attract new, high-value users.
6. Strategically use hashtags.
Hashtags can significantly boost engagement on your posts. On average, posts with hashtags receive 12.6% more engagement than posts without hashtags.
Your engagement rate is not the only thing that will improve from using hashtags on Instagram. If your followers are more engaged, they are more likely to share your content with their own followers, which will help make your content more visible and increase brand awareness on Instagram.
It’s beneficial to do research on hashtags in order to improve the reach of your posts on Instagram. By having a specific list of hashtags, you can use up to 30 per post, which will make your content more visible and easier to search.
You can get your brand in front of potential customers on Instagram by using the right hashtags in your captions. This will help you reach people who are interested in what you have to offer and more likely to make a purchase.
7. Team up with Instagram influencers.
Influencer marketing can be a great way to reach more people on Instagram. A lot of people are influenced by what digital influencers say, so if you can get them to say good things about your business, you can reach a lot more people.
There is no better platform than Instagram for executing your influencer marketing strategy. With Instagram being the second most popular social media platform for influencer marketing, you are sure to reach your target audience.
Influencer marketing is an effective brand awareness tactic because it allows you to associate your brand with a new group of relevant users. If executed correctly, you can expose your products and services to hundreds or even thousands of new, high-interest users through a trusted influencer.
Some things you might want to consider when making an influencer marketing strategy are who your target audience is, what kind of content you want to create, and what platforms you want to use.
- Select the right talent: selecting an influencer who has an audience similar to your ideal customers is the best approach. So make sure to do your research and find talent that has an engaged community that aligns with your target audience.
- Be clear on your messaging: make sure you provide clear guidelines to influencers about what key ideas and messages you need them to communicate (including branded hashtags, product names and brand taglines).
- Set up content approval processes: the best way to safeguard your brand’s reputation during an influencer partnership is to review all posts before they go live. This allows you to have the final say over every image and caption that goes out and ensures you catch any errors before the influencer hits publish, too.
If you partner with the right people, influencer marketing can help your brand become visible to lots of new users on Instagram. This will increase awareness of your brand and improve potential customers’ trust in your brand.
8. Inspire and encourage user-generated content (UGC).
User-generated content has a huge impact on what people buy.
UGC can be powerful for brand awareness even before customers are ready to convert.
In essence, UGC is any sort of content that your customers produce on your behalf concerning your brand. This can include things such as reviews, social posts, video testimonials, etc.
If you have your customers speak for your brand, it will help build trust with new audiences and make your business look more authentic.
What can you do to motivate your customers to produce UGC?
- Run a competition:Â one of the most effective ways to encourage your customers to create UGC is to give them the chance to win a prize through a competition. Try running a monthly competition for UGC on your Instagram feed, using a branded hashtag to collate entries. With these pieces of UGC on hand, you now have a bank of valuable content you can easily repurpose on your Instagram feed, too.
- Offer incentives: similar to our last tip, giving your customers a reason to craft UGC is a great tactic to boost participation. It can be as simple as a discount code or even a chance to be featured on your Instagram feed.
- Host UGC challenges: if all else fails, another smart UGC tactic is to set regular challenges for your customers. Make the guidelines clear and easy to follow and use a branded hashtag to track every piece of content your challenge generates, too.
9. Run a growth marketing campaign on Instagram.
Increasing your number of Instagram followers is a smart way to make your brand more visible on social media. You don’t need to spend money from your digital marketing budget or invest in Instagram ads to make it happen.
With a few strategic organic Instagram marketing tactics, you can increase your follower base on Instagram with ease, including:
- Run a competition: this is a proven strategy to grow your Instagram following organically. Simply offer up a prize to incentivise entrants and make sure a condition of entry is to follow your brand on Instagram.
- Host a giveaway:Â pull together a prize pack that will capture your ideal customers and give them the opportunity to win by following your brand (and tagging their friends in the comments on your post to expand the reach of your account).
Filtering for Success
As stated, Instagram can be a great way to interact with your target audience; however, it is important to post content that will interest and engage your followers. The tips above can help you use Instagram and post content that will result in better brand awareness and profits.
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