With more than 800 million active users monthly, Instagram has grown in leaps and bounds since its creation and has become one of the best platform for videos and photos sharing. This has also made this platform a hotspot for brands to market their products.
For brands to be able to leverage the number of users on Instagram and grow, they have to follow the right plan. To make Instagram marketing effective, brands have to increase the number of followers which they have on the platform. This allows them to reach out to people from far and wide. Content is important to grow your audience online, but if you want to succeed with your marketing campaigns on Instagram, here are some tips to help you.
1. Make Use of an Instagram Business ProfileYou really do not have a business thinking about marketing on Instagram if your Instagram account isn't a business account. This should be the first thing you ensure.
If you have an Instagram account that is not a business account, you can easily switch it into a business account. The first step is to click on “Switch to Business Profile” through your settings.
Having an Instagram business account comes with many benefits for marketing. For instance, your followers can easily contact you through your Instagram page, similar to the way they can contact you from your website. With a business profile, you can create Instagram ads and publish them without using Facebook advertising tools. It also gives you access to Insight, analytics tools from Instagram, which gives you the stats about your post reach, and impressions. You can use this to understand your audience and also track the metrics of your post.
2. Make Use of Instagram ToolsThere is really no difference between Instagram business profiles and Facebook business profiles. But with this insight, you have access to various statistics such as engagement data, impressions, etc.
With these tools, you can also view the breakdown of your follower demographics. This includes all the information such as locations, age, active hours, locations, etc.
The Insight you get is not the only general as well, you have access to other specific insights on all your posts for a period of time. For that period, you will get insight on your impressions and your top-performing posts.
These tools are important for you to understand your audience and their interaction with your posts. As you understand the interaction of your customers with your Instagram posts, you can make the right adjustments to increase your content engagement. For improving your content marketing on Instagram, you may hire an essay writer at various professional writing services or dissertation writing services.
3. Post Product TeasersOne type of Instagram post that gathers a lot of attention is post product teasers. These product teasers allow you to sell and market your products better on Instagram.
Instagram is probably one of the best social networks for advertising your product. However, you need to be careful so you do not scare your audience away with too many adverts. Being pushy with your ads will make you lose a lot of followers.
But interestingly, product teasers help to increase your followers, the engagements on your posts and as well promote your product without pushing too hard. As a matter of fact, the reason these posts work so much is that they are laid back and are not so pushy.
Irrespective of the industry that you are in, product teasers are very effective for marketing on Instagram. People tend to buy a product when they are teased about it but they do not feel pushed or forced into buying it. Even if they do not buy it, they are more likely to like the post and engage it.
4. Create Sponsored AdsInstagram ads are now very common and you can easily set your budget so that you are able to control your spending. With its carousel feature, you can decide to use multiple add or run just one ad.
With this, audience targeting is a lot easier for brands and they can do this in a totally different way. Sponsored posts allow people who are not even following the brand to see the posts from the brand. Before sponsored posts, this wasn't possible.
Brands can now promote their products to people that fit their buyer persona and also further increase their reach.
If you are running a sponsored ad on Instagram, your content should be engaging and appealing to the audience that you are targeting. It is also possible for you to convert your current posts to sponsored ads, so you should watch for the posts that are performing the most. These are the posts that you send out to your potential customers and prospects as sponsored posts.
For more effectiveness and to get better engagement, run multiple sponsored ads simultaneously to target different audiences.
5. Make Use of Insta StoriesThe introduction of Instagram stories is a blessing for brands as it helps a lot with generating leads.
Instagram stories have a slideshow format and are up for just 24 hours so they are quite different from the normal Instagram posts. You can also save them on any device and reuse them. One other difference with Instagram posts is that they do not appear under the news feed but in a dedicated area above the feed.
Brands can benefit from Instagram stories in many ways. They are shown at a part of the Instagram interface that is easy for users to see as they look at it daily. Instagram stories can be used to show insider, behind-the-scenes posts.
On your Instagram stories, you also do not have to think about posting a particular type of post or content. You are allowed to experiment with your story, so you can post several kinds of content such as rewind video, short video, photos, boomerangs, or live videos.
6. Work Together with InfluencersOne of the fastest ways to reach out to a large number of people within a short time on social media is by engaging influencers. These influencers already have a large number of followers loyal to them and willing to engage their posts. As a matter of fact, influencer marketing is becoming more important and is probably the best way to market on any social network already. Because the followers trust this influencer, they tend to buy products or patronize services that the influencers recommend or refer to them.
So, you need to find the Instagram influencers that are right for your industry, brand, and target audience and put your brand out to a larger congregation through them.
However, you should know that not all influencers or people with large followers are right for you. You have to consider your target audience and the demographics of their audience, based on your product or service, to be sure that they are the right ones for you.
Partnering with influencers will definitely provide you with short term gains, in boosting your marketing campaigns and making more direct sales. But there are other long term benefits as well if you develop a long-lasting relationship with an Instagram influencer. For instance, you can continue to create brand awareness among their ever-increasing audience.
7. Use Branded Hashtags that are InteractiveSince you are looking to grow your brand on Instagram, it means that you are also looking to get instant engagement. One of the best ways to achieve this is by using interactive hashtags. These hashtags allow you to easily pull out all posts that include your hashtag by searching for the hashtag.
Customers can also post user-generated content for your brand using your hashtag. You will find these content easily since they include feature your hashtag and you might even repost some of them on your brand page.
When you create a hashtag that’s easy to search for Instagram users, as much as for your company, you’re actually running a free advert. Each time that a person makes a post that features your company hashtag, they're giving your brand some exposure and opening you up to more followers.
It is easy to develop an interactive hashtag for your brand on Instagram. You can turn a phrase or slogan that your brand already uses into a branded hashtag.
8. Only Post your Content at the Best TimeThere are two things that you have to avoid when it comes to posting your content on Instagram. You must avoid posting them at the wrong time, and you must avoid over-posting your content.
These two are very detrimental to you. When you post at the wrong time, you won’t get as much engagement. But over-posting is worse. It quickly turns off your followers. If their news feed is too full of posts from your brand, they're most likely going to unfollow you.
However, you also have to be consistent with your post, so that you can have your post on their feed and remain relevant to them. This is where the timing of your post comes in. As much as possible, post when your audience and followers are online.
According to a study by SimplyMeasured, the best days to post your content on Instagram are Mondays and Thursdays, while the worst days are Wednesdays and Sundays. A study by CoSchedule also revealed that the best hours to post in a day are 2 am and between 8 am and 9 am.
Conclusion
Instagram is the go-to network if you are willing to improve the presence and visibility of your brand on social media. But to successfully grow your brand and be successful with marketing, these are 8 tips you must take.
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