Businesses must have an active social media presence to survive in this technology-driven world. Currently, no social media marketing strategy is complete without the use of Instagram. It has become a crucial platform for advertisers, brands, and consumers alike. This platform has nearly 1 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million Instagram profiles are active on a daily basis.
What does that mean? If you’re not properly active on Instagram, your competitors absolutely are. Brands who already have an Instagram business account set up are on the right track. However, only having an Instagram profile doesn’t certainly translate to sales. You need to come up with a viable strategy if you wish to drive sales and make real money from Instagram.
This blog will steer you in the right direction with 10 best Instagram marketing strategies
- Switching to Instagram business account
Even before you start planning your Instagram marketing strategies, make sure that you have an Instagram Business Account. There are several benefits of having a business profile. A business profile grants you to publish and create Instagram ads without the use of Facebook’s advertising tools. You can also have access to Instagram analytics tools like Insights that offer statistics about the reach for your posts.
- Having a visually appealing Instagram feed
Instagram is a visually-driven platform that honors aesthetically wowing content. Even though glossy perfection is falling out of style, the soul of Instagram is the visual content and is never going to change. Nowadays, users are gravitating towards credible expression and diverse perspectives. Nonetheless, rather than following any definitive editing style it is preferable to have a visually consistent feed. The look of your profile should match your brand identity and should be appealing to the audience you’re trying to attract.
- Creating a branded hashtag
A brand hashtag is usually a major part of a successful Instagram marketing strategy. The best starting point is to have a hashtag that should be short, remarkable, and incorporate your brand name in some form. For instance #ColourPopMe from Colour Pop Cosmetics or #FrankEffect from Frank Body.
The advantage of a branded hashtag is that it drives traffic to your profile and helps in shaping a stronger community around your brand. It will also help you construct your content, making it easily discoverable, trackable, and findable. Place the brand hashtag in your profile’s bio, so that it’s easily visible to anyone who visits your profile. You can also create different hashtags for specific contests or campaigns to encourage user-generated content.
Take the example of athleisure brand Athleta. The brand opted for the hashtag #PowerofShe, which suits right in with its vision of empowering women.
- Focusing on user-generated content
User-generated content found on Instagram is the holy grail for the marketers. It’s an opportunity for followers to engage themselves more passionately with a brand while lowering marketing costs because the content is being created and favored by your audience. It’s a proposal that has paid dividends for the effective user-generated content campaigns.
For instance, Starbucks’ #RedCupContest is a superb example of converting followers into brand advocates. Launched every December, the campaign asks Instagram followers to submit innovative pictures of Starbucks’ well-known red Christmas cup. #RedCupContest has 37,000 entries to date, so it’s safe to say it was a huge success. Virtually any industry or sector can be benefitted from user-generated content.
- Creating sponsored ads
Instagram ads have become mundane on the platform. The best part about running ads is that you can manage how much you want to spend on ads by setting an ad budget. You can showcase multiple ads or just one sponsored ad with the carousel feature.
This gives brands the capability to target their users in a whole new way. Before the option of sponsored posts, only users following your account were able to see your updates and photos. Now, brands can advertise their photos to anyone that fits in their target audience to broaden their reach further than ever before.
- Partnering with influencers for a wider reach
If you want to influence potential customers on the platform, the best way to do that is through influencer marketing, who has previously built an audience with a large following.
More people trust them and are buying products and services based on what they see in their feed from the influential people they follow.
You can get your brand out in front of your users by partnering with the right industry influencer. Most important is to try and analyze a few influencers that have an audience that is related to the product or service you are providing and then you can look forward to collaborating.
- Going live often
Instagram has a live broadcast feature. Users love this feature, and brands use this opportunity to connect with the audience in real-time. While you broadcast, users can comment, which is one of the good Instagram Marketing Strategies from all.
Make sure you acknowledge these comments and try your best to engage the viewers. This will benefit you to strengthen engagement metrics. You can give a tour of your facility, display new products, or even take a chance to introduce some of your employees.
- Posting consistently
Over-posting on Instagram leads to turn off your existing followers and it gets boring for them. If all they see are posts from your brand on their news feed, they’re possibly going to unfollow you. Important thing is to post consistently so that you are in their news feed regularly.
It is best to only post during peak days and hours when your followers are online. You can analyze when your followers are most active in the Instagram Insights feature, so your best days and times to post might be different depending on your audience.
- Organizing Contests
Organizing contests, giveaways, and giving out free stuff is remarkably helpful. Anyone would be more interested to shop a product from a company from which they’ve already won some free stuff. You can post images encouraging people to spread their content to get the word out. You can ask your audience to repost the image, tag friends, and follow the page.
- Keeping Your Customers Up-To-Date
Social media is one of the easiest and best ways of keeping your consumers updated with your upcoming events and new products. If your business makes a humongous disclosure about an exciting event or a new product, it’ll catch on and get people enthusiastic. To keep customers posted, you can share news related to the launch of new products, services, or updates or any new expansion in business.
Hopefully, this blog helps you to know more about these 10 Instagram Marketing Strategies to increase your engagement.
Also read
11 Interesting Facts about “Instagram” that you should know
Top Business Influencers Available On Instagram
Quotes from Top Social Media Leaders Who Transformed the World Digitally
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