No company’s marketing strategy is complete without social media. Instagram is the fourth most popular social media platform, with over a billion monthly active users, which means that Instagram marketing is a very important part of any strategy.
Knowing the ins and outs of Instagram will help your social media marketing strategy succeed and allow your brand to stay relevant on the platform.
By learning a few simple tips and tricks, your business can use Instagram as a great marketing tool and drive your reach, audience engagement, and even sales.
Here’s 12 of the best tips to boost your Instagram marketing strategy.
1. Create a Business Account
Before you can begin to create your Instagram marketing strategy, you need to switch your profile to an Instagram Business Account.
Fortunately, making the switch is very easy to do. Simply go to your profile settings and click on “Switch to Business Profile”.
There are many benefits to having an Instagram Business Account. A business profile gives you access to Instagram Insights, the ability to create Instagram ads, and adds a contact button to your profile that consumers can use to get in touch with you.
Once you’ve switched to a business account, you can take advantage of these tools and begin to develop your strategy.
2. Post High Quality, Engaging Content
More than similar platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, Instagram completely revolves on great visual content. There are no posts on the network without an image or video accompanying them.
For inspiration, try scrolling through the Instagram pages of some popular brands. Their content will most likely be dynamic and full of colour. When using imagery to capture the attention of your audience, nothing beats high-quality photos and videos.
Instagram’s focus on imagery provides brands with the unique opportunity to show off their personality and tell their story. Consumers enjoy following brands that are relatable to them, so use this to your advantage.
3. Make the Most of Your Bio
Your bio is where consumers will gather all of the information they need about your business. In this section, you should have a description of the product or service you offer, where you’re located, and any other vital information.
Adding in keywords to your bio is a relatively new feature to take advantage of when marketing on Instagram. Before, your bio didn’t contribute to your SEO. Now, by inserting two or three important keywords, you can boost your reach on the app.
One aspect of your bio that you absolutely must take advantage of is the link.
Marketing on Instagram is unique because the app doesn’t allow you to put links into your posts. Instead, you are only given one place where you can link to your site: in your bio.
This can make it difficult for marketers to provide relevant links to their audience, like a new blog post or event that you’re promoting. If you put those links in your bio, you have to remove the link to your site’s home or shop page.
In order to have more than one link accessible to their followers, many business Instagram pages use a LinkTree. This is a bio link tool that when clicked on, opens up a landing page with up to six custom links.
For many brands, LinkTree is a must for their Instagram marketing strategy.
4. Use Stories, Reels, and Other Features
Instagram offers a ton of different features that allow its users to post content in different ways:
- Stories – Photos or videos that are shared on your profile for 24 hours. Instead of being in the feed, they are displayed at the top of the app or on the profile picture of a user’s page.
- Boomerangs – A burst of photos that are stitched together into a mini-video that plays forwards and backwards, similar to a GIF.
- Story Highlights – Allow you to permanently add your stories to your profile. Multiple can be created to separate stories based on their content or purpose.
- Instagram Live – A live stream, located at the top of the app or on the profile picture of a user’s page. They are viewable for 24 hours after the Live is finished.
- IGTV – High-quality videos that can be uploaded to a separate feed on a user’s profile. These are capped at 15 minutes when uploading from mobile and 60 minutes from web browser.
- Swipe Up – An addable link to an Instagram Story post that directs viewers to a web page. Users need at least 10,000 followers to use this feature.
Reels – 15-second multi-clip videos that are posted onto your feed. Users can add audio, effects, music, and more to these. Reels often mimic the content found on TikTok.
5. Partner With Influencers
One of the fastest ways to reach potential customers on Instagram is to partner with an influencer who has already built a large following.
Influencer marketing is effective because of the unique relationship between influencers and their followers. When they promote a product or service, their viewers see it more as a recommendation from a trusted friend rather than an advertisement.
To find a good influencer to partner with, try to look for one who has an audience that is relevant to your brand. When you find an influencer that fits with your brand, you have the opportunity to create a mutually beneficial relationship and lasting brand awareness with their audience.
When you are looking for an influencer, make sure their following is organic. Some influencers will buy bot followers to make them look more famous, but these bots do not engage with their content. To avoid this, scroll through their page and check out their actual engagement figures as well as any other brand promotions they’ve done.
6. Post When You Audience Is Online
All social media networks share something in common. They value quality posts over quantity of posts. In order to get the most out of your content, posting when your audience is online is a great practise.
Do posts in the afternoon get more likes than posts from the morning? Play around with your first posts and see when you’re getting the most engagement or look for the data in your metrics.
Once you’ve found the sweet spot where most of your audience is online, schedule your content by using a social media content calendar to help stay consistent. There are also many apps you can use to schedule posts to go live even weeks in advance.
Another great way to interact with your audience while they’re online is to respond to any comments you get. This doesn’t mean you have to reply with a paragraph, sometimes a quick response and a smile emoji or just liking their comment will do the trick!
7. Use Hashtags
Simply posting great content doesn’t always boost your reach on Instagram, especially if you don’t have a large following yet. By using the tools and tactics that the platform provides, you can greatly increase your chances of being discovered by new consumers.
Instagram’s Explore Page is one of its biggest features. Here, users can scroll through posts that are relevant to their interests from profiles that they don’t follow yet.
To drive engagement with your followers and increase your brand’s visibility on the Explore page, use hashtags that highlight the main topic of your posts. These will help you get discovered by new audiences, keep an archive of your posts, and jump on relevant topics.
One important thing to avoid when it comes to hashtags is using one that is oversaturated with posts. If you only use hashtags that millions of others have used, it is very likely that your post will get lost in the sea of other photos.
Instead, use hashtags that are relevant to your brand and have anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 posts, so there’s less chance of your content being overwhelmed by a ton of other posts.
You can even create a fun and engaging hashtag for your brand. These can be great for driving user generated content, especially if the hashtag is interactive and customers are able to instantly associate it with your brand.
8. Post User Generated Content
User generated content is great for your Instagram marketing strategy because it makes work easier for you and your audience will relate more to its authenticity than to commercial ads.
Encourage your followers to post photos of themselves with your product, and choose one or two each week to post. A great way to do this is by encouraging your audience to use your branded hashtag, so you can see all of the posts they’ve made.
When you choose a photo to repost onto your page, make sure to tag the customer in your post. This gives them an incentive to post user generated content because consumers enjoy feeling recognised and it may also grow their following to be shared on your page.
User generated content is easily a win-win for both your brand and your audience.
9. Interact With Other Instagram Accounts
A great way to grow your audience is to form relationships with other Instagram users. Whether the users are your competitors or not, interacting with them can lead to partnerships, new followers, and more engagement.
Search for profiles that share the same interests as your brand. Then, like and comment on their posts. Smaller, local pages are more likely to follow you back and return the favor.
However, it is also important to interact with bigger accounts because they generate more views and engagement. Their followers will see your comment and probably visit your page if you share their interests.
Another way to generate more interaction with other Instagram accounts is to ask questions!
Reply with a comment on another brand’s page showing genuine interest, or create a caption for your post that asks your audience a question, and respond to their answers. Consumers love feeling like a brand actually cares about their opinions.
10. Add in Your Branding
Because users can’t add links to their Instagram posts, it’s important to make sure your content is branded and easily recognisable as yours.
To do this, include the key colours, fonts, and logos that your audience associates with your brand. Not only does this work to make sure your audience knows they’re looking at your content, but it also protects your imagery from being stolen and reposted.
11. Analyse Your Instagram Marketing Efforts
After you’ve upgraded to a business profile, you will gain access to Instagram Insights, the in app analytics tool.
With this tool, each of your posts and stories will be given its own metrics that you can use to track your success. Instagram Insights also allows you to view statistics about your followers, including their location, gender and age distribution, and the hours and days when they’re most active.
Instagram Insights is a largely visual tool, providing you with bar graphs and charts which make understanding your engagement easy.
12. Keep Up With Updates
Instagram is always changing and adding in new features to their app. In order to get the most out of marketing on Instagram, it is very important to be knowledgeable about these updates and make sure to use the new features.
Although it may take a bit of time and research to effectively stay on top of Instagram’s updates, it is worth it. If you fall too far behind, your audience will assume your brand is behind on the trends that they’re using everyday.
What Are the Best Instagram Marketing Practises?
Instagram is dominating the social media world and has become many people’s go-to platform for photo sharing. There is much to gain from having a successful Instagram marketing strategy.
From creating high-quality content, to simply keeping up with the latest updates and new features of the app, these tips are sure to boost your profile to new heights.
To improve your social media marketing strategy, contact ProfileTree today.
