The social network is too popular to ignore. It’s in the hands of your buyer – via their phones wherever they go. If your business isn’t on Instagram these days, you better create an account now. Having an Instagram account and blast it is not enough, you need an Instagram marketing strategy, and it needs to be good.
To help you get more engagement with your audience, we’ve put together these 8 business marketing strategies for Instagram. Whether you’re brand new or have been using Instagram for years, you’ll find a lot of valuable information.
1. Understand your audience
This is a vital strategy no matter what marketing you produce. Take the time to find out who your existing audience is, and think about who you’d like them to be. You need to consider whether they are potential buyers or can help you build your brand in some way.
Additional tips: Use Instagram insights to get to know your audience background. This tool offers some interesting insights such as the total number of reach, website clicks, follower activity, video views, and how many people saved your posts.
Insights also includes demographic information, so you can see where your followers come from, their age, and their gender.
2. Engage with followers as much as possible
You need to talk with them, not spamming your followers with nothing but sales material. For one, it makes your company feel more human and less corporate. Also, the more that users share and comment on your content, the easier it is for new users to find it. Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes content with higher engagement, and you want to appear in as many feeds as possible.
Additional tips: Share their images to show some appreciation to your followers. Prove that you listen to your audience and want their feedback in order to build a better image for your brand. Don’t be afraid to repost your followers’ images with credit.
The best way to get interaction from your audience is with contests. People love the chance to respond and who doesn’t love free gifts!
3. Use relevant hashtags
Hashtags help you organise and categorise images and video content. They’re a simple way to tag your content to make it easier to find for others. You can use from generic to the very, very specific hashtags.
Additional tips: Here are a few hashtag best practices, don’t overdo it. Try to avoid overused tags and never, ever spam. Keep the hashtag relevant to the image.
4. Know the perfect timing to post
The best time post on Instagram is believed to be between 7-9pm daily. If that seems too simple, then you can try and error and observe when is the peak time to get higher engagement. It takes a little research to figure out what works best for you. Monitor your posts and your competitors’.
Additional tips: Aim for non-work hours which is during lunch and evenings. Weekends are a perfect time if you are a B2C company. According to surveys, Wednesdays and Thursdays seem to be best for engagement. 3-4pm is generally the worst for engagement.
5. Create beautiful visuals
Posting great content is always vital for social media marketing. It’s what makes them engage with your brand, and keeps them coming back for more. You can do a lot of things when it comes to social networks but for Instagram, images are the important essence. The buying process is based on visual appearance, so good images are vital.
Additional tips: You need to choose a theme that inspires or intrigues followers. Try to find an overall theme for your Instagram account and for instance, establish a specific theme on your photo postings. You can post behind the scenes or sneak peeks to catch audiences’ interest. Motivational images and quotes also play a big part in getting more engagement.
6. Add Calls-to-action
Calls-to-action (CTAs) tell the user what you want them to do. On Instagram, this can be slightly tricky. The network only allows one link – the one in your bio. So you can’t insert links into image captions, comments, or the image itself. Make sure you establish a good calls-to-action in every post rather than just a dry post.
Additional tips: You only have one link to spare and you have to get users to click on it. The simplest method is to tell them where they can find more info, which is the link in your bio. Give users all the other information they need since you can’t put a link in the image. Promo codes are perfect because you can easily track them.
7. Tell Stories
Instagram now has the stories feature where you can share a post that lasts for 24 hours only. It locates at the top of follower’s feed, a strategic location to get your audiences’ engagement. Users can scroll through the stories to find the ones they wish to see. So use this wonderful gift to the max.
Additional tips: Offer something different, you may show sneak peeks or glimpses of your product or brand to make the content feel special. Do the stories in a narrative way, with a beginning, middle and end it with a killer Calls-to Action.
8. Work with influencers
Influencers are industry VIPs, and their word goes a long way with buyers. Whether you’re trying to build your Instagram presence or make sales, their endorsement is just what you need. Work close with some social influencers who can give your product or brand a great exposure. They may promote your product on their Instagram feed and you can share it to your Instagram account.
Additional tips: Choose a good influencer who has a suitable audience that has the potential to be your actual buyer. They must be vocal and visible in your industry and also have a history of influencing their followers’ decisions. Just having huge followers isn’t enough.
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