Whether you are a new business or are looking to branch out with your marketing strategies, Instagram is an ideal social network to use. For newbies to Instagram, the app boasts a free, open to all platform for sharing information in a visual format with users across the globe. By combining a sleek and easy to use platform they have provided new opportunities for marketing and features such as hashtags, location tagging, and stories open the possibility to reach wider audiences with every post.
So, what exactly should you be doing to achieve your marketing goals using Instagram? Here we will discuss and share some of our top tips for success. When using Instagram there are some Do´s and Dont’s
First Impressions count
To begin,let’s address what your goals are, whoever you are, whether you are marketing your image, a product or a service, you need to create a captivating image for your profile that draws users to it. One of the most important factors and one that is underestimated highly is the name of your account. Your name on Instagram should match that of your business or should refer to the business genre that you are aiming at. Equally important is the Image you use for your profile, this should be consistent with your company´s logo or a relevant and current photograph of yourself. Not forgetting the information that appears in the bio section just below your name, this is also very important as it is the first thing people are going to see when they enter your profile, this is a great space to use for links to other social media networks, websites and blogs.
Creating your Account
When creating your account, you should consider all of the above and aside from the written information you should also think carefully about the aesthetic that you want to achieve. Successful Instagram accounts all have one thing in common; they maintain a constant. Oftentimes that constant is the editing style that they use throughout the images they upload. Take for example popular Instagram user Aleksandra Zeewho´s feed has a distinctive style. She uses the same editing technique throughout all images to achieve the collected and organized signature style that allows followers to distinguish her posts within their general feeds. Whether your style be sticking to a specific colour pallet or using the same filters you should try to keep a constant style throughout.
First Steps to Securing Interaction and Excitement
If your Business is one that offers a product or service a great tip to use when starting out on Instagram or even to boost traffic is to promote an offer or giveaway. A popular way to do this is to upload a photo along with information explaining what consumers must do to qualify. Usually this includes Liking the photograph, tagging a few friends with whom you would share the experience, product etc and sometimes reposting the image on their own accounts.
Get to know the consumers
It´s important for customers to feel connected to you, like they matter or have a more personal level of interaction, you can achieve this by asking questions, and if you see appropriate sharing about yourself. It can be as simple as a quick questionnaire, there are heaps of templates for this or that or fill in the blanks style questionnairesmade by artists that you can use as long as you tag them or why not create your own and find out what you want to know about your customers. Another way to stay connected with your customers is to keep an eye on the comments section of your posts, often people will ask questions and start conversations here and this is a great way to keep customers informed and to answer and queries they may have.
Maintenance
Maintaining your Instagram shouldn´t feel like a chore and to ensure this there are several things you can do to make life easier later on. When you are posting photos it´s crucial to use hashtags. One thing to be aware of when using hashtags is not to overdo it, you don´t need to list everything in the photo through use of hashtags but it can come in handy for highlighting the key point of the post. For example, #competition, #giveaway, #20%off. As well as these it´s a good idea to keep track of the current or favourite hashtags that people use. A good example of this is #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT for short, this refers to a photo that shows something that happened some time ago. Using popular hashtagswill mean that more people are likely to see your posts.
Another key feature that Instagram offers is location tagging, this allows you to pinpoint on the map the location of the photo. This can be useful for referring to a direct location as well as referring to an area in general. For example, if you tag the location as Los Angeles, a lot more people are going to see it.
Also keep an eye out on what types of posts are most popular and consider if you might want to buy likes on Instagram to boost the posts that are less popular.
When uploading to Instagram it is important to consider the times that are most productive, Instagram does not have a constant flux of views throughout the day and there are certain hours that are much more productive for gaining views and interactions. For example, during the morning between 8 am and 10 am and in the evenings from around 7.30 until 10 pm. Studies show that during these times there will be more users browsing Instagram.
Another thing to keep in mind is keeping a good routine and uploading new posts regularly, to begin we suggest uploading at least 3 times a week. The most traffic packed days for traffic on Instagram are Monday mornings and evenings and strangely, Thursdays.
Next Steps
Once you have established your account, your style and how you plan to achieve your goals, you can also think about reaching out to work with other brands or influencers. Influencers are a great way to boost views and can be as simple as sending a free sample of your product for the influencer to use and give their opinion.
Overall the best way to manage your account is to go with what works for you, pay attention to what the people like, what works for others in your field and strive to always improve, stay up to date with new features and make use of all the features Instagram has to offer.
