Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms with a vast potential for marketers to grow their business. Since Instagram has more than one billion active users monthly, you need excellent marketing tips to stand out from the crowd. Engagement is the primary tool for your business on Instagram that leads to success. Without the right content suitable for your target audiences, it isn't easy to make your brand popular among broader audiences.
The brands involved on Instagram have reached heights with correct marketing strategies suitable for their business. Instagram users aren’t only active, but they also engage themselves with exciting things. Among the active users on the Instagram platform, 59% of users visit this app daily and spend 7 hours per week interacting with their friends and brands and browsing the content.
Instagram helps to increase brand awareness by promoting your business and helps to reach your new product to millions of people. The below points will give you exciting ideas to make success for your business on Instagram.
#1. Set Your Goals For Success
Before planning your content for posting on Instagram, ask yourself the need for using Instagram. If you want to see success on Instagram, you should have a goal or objective according to your business. Make your energy, time, and investment as worth with a clear plan. The objectives may differ according to your business type. The common objectives on Instagram are listed below. Choose any of the goals to grow your business and attain success easily.
- Increase brand awareness - Make your brand known to many people on Instagram with your engaging content.
- Build audience community - Bring out a good relationship with your followers and interact with them in the right way to gather audience community.
- Lead generation - Know the audiences who show interest in your business and get their contact information for future use.
- Improve sales conversions - When you manufacture a product, bring out the exciting features in the view of audiences to increase sales.
- Increase website traffic - Provide the link on your bio to improve the website traffic.
#2. Complete Bio With Attractive Content
Think of your profile as the homepage and make it attractive for viewers on Instagram. There are 150 characters provided for you to explore your creativity to gain potential followers and customers. Make a good impression for the profile viewers with engaging content and convert them to your followers quickly.
Before posting content, convert your standard Instagram profile into your business account through the setting option. You can utilize many additional features on Instagram if you have a business account. Write a killer Instagram bio by including the below points.
- A quick and short description of your company’s process.
- The niche of your industry like shopping, business services, restaurants, digital products, etc.
- Your brand personality: show it with engaging and attractive content.
- Your contact information, including mobile number, email address, and location for easy tracking by your audiences.
- A link to your website link or your landing page where you want your followers to land.
- Profile picture (e.g. your company logo) and an attractive username.
#3. Determine Your Target Audiences
Since millions of people are on Instagram, it is difficult to reach your brand to all audiences. Instead, know the people who show interest in your business, and approach them to attain business growth. Consider the following factors while finding your audiences:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interest
- Behavior
- Language
Find your target audiences by monitoring popular events and trending hashtags related to your business. Check their profile using those hashtags and engaging in the events. Also, watch your competitors' content and find people who interact with them. Approach those people directly and catch their eye-balls on your account since they already have an interest related to your business.
#4. Post Stories Regularly
Stories are one of the most exciting features on Instagram, and more than 500 million people post stories daily. Though stories appear for only 24 hours on your followers’ pages, it becomes easy for them to view content. Keep your content fresh to boost views for Instagram stories and increase audience engagement with your regular post. Most Instagram users check stories daily because it appears on the top of their feed.
Stories give you the option to post content in a carousel format for 15 seconds, where you can post multiple content. The best features on Instagram stories to engage audiences are the stickers and interacting with your followers directly. The most engaging stickers are:
- Question stickers
- Quiz stickers
- Music stickers
- Location stickers
- Poll-type stickers
- Countdown stickers
Know the advantage of each sticker and use it on your content to increase interaction with your audiences visually.
#5. Effectiveness Of Hashtags
The most effective marketing strategy on Instagram is using hashtags. It helps to improve your brand visibility among your target audiences and increase the followers count. Use branded hashtags on your content to take your business to the next level. The advantage of using a hashtag on your content are:
- It escalates the reach of your content.
- It helps to gather the most relevant audiences who already have an interest in your brand.
- It increases the visibility of your post.
- It helps to track the content related to the particular topic.
The most important thing in choosing a hashtag is that it should be relevant to your content. Select the hashtag from the search bar on Instagram by typing the related keyword. You will find the list of hashtags at the end of your search. Choose the one that suits your content.
#6. Build Consistency
The biggest challenge on Instagram is to keep your followers engaging with your content. Maintain a loyal following by entertaining your audiences with regular posts. Random content or irrelevant posts may cause your followers to unfollow you. So invest your time in preparing content and plan your ideas for future content.
Know the content that increases your engagement rate by using the Instagram insights feature. The insight feature shows you on which content your audiences spend more time and engage themselves by leaving comments and likes. With that information, plan your unique content to gain your audience’s attention. Post content at least once a day, making audiences remember you.
#7. Prefer Video Content
Instagram is well known for its visual content. The interesting fact is that 78% of people prefer watching videos online. When you convey your thoughts through video form, the performance will be more compared to the image content.
Instagram gives you the following features to engage your audiences visually.
- Instagram feed: It is a common place for viewing others’ posts like other social media sites. You can upload videos for 15-30 seconds on feed.
- IGTV: It is mainly for businesses and brands to explain their products and thoughts to the audiences clearly. The video length allowed on IGTV is up to 15 minutes.
- Reels: On reels, you can post short videos of 15 second duration. People scroll these videos for entertainment purposes. You can upload videos to showcase your talent and uniqueness.
- Stories: Before posting a long video, prepare a snippet content of the long video as a teaser and post it on stories to gain engagement.
#8. Reach Audiences Through Ads
Instagram advertisement feature provides a great way to reach your target audiences. Put your content in front of new audiences who already have an interest in your business. You have options to choose your target audiences on placement according to age, gender, behavior, interest, and location. Select the optimum bid amount to boost your content performance. Remember, the money spent on ads is an investment in your business.
Instagram gives three main advertisement options:
- Photo ad: The photo ad looks like a normal image with captions but with a sponsored label at the top right corner of the ad.
- Video ad: It displays content in video form for 15 seconds on your feed, with a sponsored label.
- Carousel ad: It is the same as a photo ad but has multiple images in a sliding format.
You can also include a CTA button on your ad like shop now, buy now, and sign up options according to your goal.
#9. Collaborate With Influencers
Influencers are the people with a huge loyal following. With their authentic and original content, influencers gain followers who trust their content. There are plenty of influencers on Instagram having different areas of interest. Find the influencers who have your target audiences as their followers and make a partnership with them to grow your follower count.
When your business is small, joining with micro-influencers will quickly promote your brand. Though they have fewer followers compared to macro-influencers, micro-influencers have already built loyalty and trust on their accounts. When they start promoting your brand, you will also gain loyal followings. The important thing to gain those followers is to publish original content.
Final Thought
A great place to make your brand popular among a large number of people is Instagram. Use your creativity and unique talent to keep audiences engaged with your content. Follow the above points to grow your business with loyal followers and gain potential customers. Instagram is the perfect social media network to increase audience engagement and promote your brand. Incorporate the correct marketing strategy suitable for your business and reach your brand name to people globally.
This is a guest post by Caterina Taylor. She is an experienced social media marketer and writer who works at PlanYourGram.com. She loves to work on content creation for social media blogs and has the potential to deliver engaging content on various platforms and networks.
