Proven Strategies That’ll Help You Grow Your Business on Instagram.
If someone told you that Instagram marketing is the best social media marketing platform for your business, how would you react? Yes it is!
Over the years Instagram has grown from being a social networking site where users merely share selfie images and videos - to a major social media marketing platform.
Now, with daily active users of more than 400 million, and over 200 million story users, Instagram has successfully established itself as one of the best social media marketing platform in the market-place.
As a result, many marketers, brands, businesses - big and small are benefiting from Instagram's marketing prowess.
But with these staggering numbers of daily active users, many brands and marketers are finding it difficult to scale through and grow their businesses, which brings us to:
How can I grow my business with Instagram marketing?
Please continue reading to discover the best tips that'll help you grow your business with Instagram marketing.
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#• Is your profile optimized?
It all starts with optimizing your profile. Instagram is unique because it does not allow you to add links to your content.
That's why your profile must be optimized properly for maximum reach.
In other words, a well optimized profile will lead your prospects to your website or product page.
So, provide your audience with the best info about your business, add a link that will direct them to your website or product page.
When optimizing your profile, please, ensure the following areas are well optimized:
- Profile picture: Ensure to use a clear, high-quality image for your profile. It be a picture of yourself or your business logo. Let it be consistent with images you have across channels. This is important so your audience can easily identify you or your brand.
- Your bio: Endeavor to create a unique bio for your brand or business. In your description, tell your prospects what you do. Make it all about your business. If you have a brand hashtag, use on your bio.
- Your link: Because Instagram does not allow users to add links on their content, it’s important that you add a link to your bio. It could be a link that direct your audience to your homepage, products page, landing page, etc. The point is to add a link that will drive traffic to your site.
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#• Establish a content strategy
What is a content strategy?
Simply put, a content strategy is the planning, creation, delivery, and management of content.
This involves establishing a system that’ll help you maintain consistency and increase engagement.
How can I create a content strategy?
The first thing to do is to research your competitors to identify what they're doing on the platform to attract engagement.
You need to study your competitors because they're already in the game, they know the rules and best practices, as well as what types of content that increases engagement and generates leads.
When you're done with your competitors, study the market-place as well, then test the strategies you've learned.
Look for the following:
- The types of content they’re sharing on the platform.
- The types of images they’re sharing.
- The frequency of their posts - that means how often do they share content, etc.
The information you gather from your competitors will help you establish a fascinating content strategy.
Pro tips:
- Identify the best performing images relevant to your industry and use them.
- Figure out the best times to post on the platform to increase engagement and maximize ROI.
- What themes and colors are trending and relevant to your content campaign, etc.
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#• Are you engaging with your audience?
It's of great importance to frequently engage with your followers because it will help you build trust with your audience.
Trust and credibility are essential for a successful marketing campaign. So, to build trust, you must engage.
Engaging with your audience will also help you identify the types of content they love, which will effectively help you create more engaging content.
Pro tips:
- Make sure to respond to their comments.
- Answer questions if any.
- Like and repost their content.
- Regularly make comments on their post.
There're many different ways to engage with your audience. Try to identify them and ensure to establish relationships with your audience via engagement.
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#• Follow brands relevant to your industry
Follow brands and engage with them as well. You may not get a follow back from all those you followed, especially big brands.
So, take advantage of smaller brands and follow them. Search for those who post similar content and follow them.
“The good thing about Instagram is that it allow users to collaborate.”
Leverage that and find those in your niche who post stunning contents that gets massive traction and look for ways to collaborate with them and promote your business.
Repost their photos on your page, but don't forget to give them credit for the post.
How can I repost on Instagram?
Reposting on Instagram is not the same as on other social media platforms where you simply copy and paste, or click the share button and share contents that interests you.
To repost on Instagram, you'll need to install a repost app to do the trick for you. It's simple and easy.
Simply click the image you want to repost. On the top right corner of the image you’ll see the (3 dots), screenshot above. Click on the dots, then click copy link URL - see screenshot below.
Next, open repost app and click the repost button.
Finally, click the “open Instagram” button, edit as desired and share your content. That’s it.
There are many tools that can help you repost other people’s content. But I recommend Repost, because it repost your contents and automatically credits the original content creator.
#• Are you using engaging images for your campaigns?
Instagram is an image sharing platform where millions of images are being shared on the platform each day.
With these amazing crowd of images that are posted every minute, “how can I stand out from the crowd?” Create engaging images!
“If you want to step up your Instagram game, take better photos and curate an enviable feed.” -- Kylie Singh
You need not panic about how to get the best high definition camera for your images. You can use your phone camera.
All you need to do is, as mentioned earlier, identify what types of images your audience love to engage with, and with your phone camera, take photos, edit them appropriately and share with your followers.
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#• Use relevant hashtags
The use of relevant hashtags is important because it will help to enhance your post visibility to a larger targeted audience.
It makes it easier for your target fans and clientele to find your content.
Further, it helps you connect with other Instagram users in your niche, including your target fans and influencers.
When you make your brand more visible by using the right hashtags, you will upgrade your opportunity to attract followers and increase engagement.
In fact, it will skyrocket your Instagram engagement and improve your ROI.
How can I find the right hashtags to use?
How many hashtags can I use on each post?
To find the right hashtags, search for your competitors and find out the types and number of hashtags they're using.
Also search out influencers in your niche and learn the types of hashtags they're using.
Experiment with your own hashtags as well. From your findings you will figure out the right hashtags and the number of hashtags to use.
There's been much controversy surrounding the number of hashtags to use on Instagram posts.
The maximum Instagram hashtags are 30 per posts. Some say use all 30 hashtags on a post, while others say otherwise.
A post on Buffer shows that Instagram posts with 11 or more relevant hashtags saw increase in likes and engagement.
A research by Track Maven found that posts with 4, 5, to 11 hashtags tend to get more engagement.
An analysis conducted by Piqora and published by Jason Keath of Social Freah, of 150,000 Instagrammers revealed that 7 hashtags per posts produce more likes and engagements.
It also shows that 73% of brands are using too many or too few hashtags, which results in less engagement.
As you can see, the stats vary in numbers and suggest using not more than 11 hashtags.
The point is, test your own hashtag strategy and compare results. This will help you identify how many hashtags works best for you.
For a complete Instagram hashtags guide, please read this post.
#• Follow and connect with influencers in your industry
Here’s Michelle Janes, a small business success coach in a photo with top digital marketing influencer, Gary Vaynerchuk.
To follow and connect with influencers in your niche can bring amazing benefits.
Michelle connected with top influencer Gary Vaynerchuk, the results has been the terrific.
When you connect with, and build relationships with influencers, you're setting yourself up for a remarkable partnership that can lead to increase brand awareness, trust and credibility, etc.
This will effectively improve engagement and increase sales - because they already have loyal audience and customers who will follow through and promote your brand.
So it's a win win strategy that must be implemented.
Forbes points out that influencer marketing is growing faster than digital ads. Brands are taking advantage of influencers’ followers to help grow their businesses.
Forbes further stated that brands are using influencers to promote their products and services for a considerable amount of time - much longer than the traditional ads campaign.
As you can see, influencer marketing is here to stay. Make it an important part of your marketing campaigns.
So, connect with influencers in your niche and build relationships with them. The benefits are incomparable
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#• Are you cross promoting your content?
Its likely that you have other social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.
Are you taking advantage of these platforms - by cross promoting your Instagram posts on these channels?
Simply link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and reshare your Instagram contents.
Buzzsumo conducted a study where they analyzed over 1 billion posts from 30m brand pages on Facebook and found that images posted on Facebook via Instagram generated 23℅ more engagement.
Therefore, take advantage of this opportunity, repost your Instagram content on Facebook and other social sites.
Pro tips: Post your Instagram content on other social channels, add your Instagram handle on your blog, email signature, business card,etc. The benefits are phenomenal.
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#• Maintain consistency
Consistency is the hallmark of a successful marketing campaign.
Yes it is, because it helps you build trust with your audience and prospective clients.
These loyal audience love the content they're getting from you, and can easily be converted to loyal customers.
Consequently, be consistent on the platform. You can choose to post every 2 or 3 days and maintain the frequency.
Instagram is not like other social media sites where you post every. However, you can post everyday. But for maximum results, post about 3 or 4 times a week.
There are tools that can help you maintain consistency on Instagram. Tools such as buffer, HootSuite, and Statusbrew.
These tools will help you drive massive traffic to your website, improve your Instagram marketing campaign, and maintain consistency.
For more tools, please check out Elna Cain's article on Adam Cornell's space, bloggingwizard.
There you'll find a list of fascinating Instagram tools that'll boost your marketing efforts.
How can I schedule post on Instagram?
Instagram does not allow users to schedule posts directly to the platform. The above tools will help you in this aspect.
Here's how to use buffer to schedule your Instagram posts.
All you have to do is open buffer app, upload your image(s), add captions, hashtags, and all that's necessary and schedule your post.
When its time to post, buffer will notify you via push notification on your phone. Open the notification and select open on Instagram and share your post. That's it.
#• Use Instagram’s editing tools
With 400 million daily active users, 200 million daily stories users, and 91℅ photos posted daily on the platform, yow have a great competition on Instagram.
If you're not careful your posts may all disappear in the noise.
To help you stand-out and maintain a unique brand identity, frequently post engaging content that reflects your brand.
Instagram provides you with a mass of editing tools that can help you achieve these goals. These include filters. Filters enhances colors and other aspects of your images.
To truly understand the importance of color, a research published by COLORCOM found that 62% to 90% of respondents said they make a subconscious decision about a person or product based on color alone.
While 52% of consumers do not return to a store if they're not impressed with its artistic style.
The study further shows that over 92% of customers make purchasing decisions based on visual aspect, and 84.7% of consumers said color is the main reason they purchase a product.
Instagram editing tools will help you define the style of your posts and it's aesthetic feel.
One of these is the Style Guide. The style guide helps to ensure consistency across all channels.
Areas to look at when creating your Instagram content are:
- Fonts
- Filters
- Color palette
- Captions
- Composition, etc.
Use these tools to create irresistible photos that your target audience will love.
When you use the same colors, style, filter, etc, you will have a consistent brand that is easily recognizable.
It won’t be difficult for your audience to identify your brand on the platform.
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#• Are you utilizing call-to-action?
Does your followers know what you want them to do with your content?
You have successfully built loyal followers who're following you for what they getting from you.
What do you want them to do with those contents? Tell them to share your posts and they'll be happy to do it.
Call-to-action has amazing power. You cannot underestimate the power of call-to-action.
“Whatever form it takes, a call to action provides your reader with an actionable task.” Without a call to action, you’re wasting your best efforts.”” --Julie Neidlinger
Julie said it all. Use calls-to-action in your marketing campaigns to get your contents out to more prospects.
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In conclusion
There are many other ways to grow your business on Instagram, but not all will work for you.
Therefore, try to identify the ones that works best for you by testing each strategy.
Why is Instagram marketing the best social media channel for your business?
A major reason why Instagram is the best social media tool for your brand or business is because the engagement rate surpasses those of other social media platforms. How so?
A study by Yotpo shows that Instagram accounts for the most engaged traffic on social media, beating other social media sites with an average of 192 seconds on site per visit.
This simply means that engagement on Instagram stays longer than on other social media platforms.
This article originally appeared on https://www.mossmedia.biz
Moss Clement is a blogger and digital marketing freelance writer. He delivers high-quality content to individuals and businesses via services such as: blog post writing, article writing, ghostwriting, etc.
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