It’s 2020 - More users than ever are turning to Instagram to check out brands instead of searching on Google. The landing page on your website is now just as important as your Instagram feed. To make people click the follow button, it’s imperative to polish your feed and curate engaging content, transforming casual customers into committed followers.
Every brand NEEDS a strategy for Instagram marketing.
And it’s gotta be perfect.
First, let’s explore Instagram Business profiles. As a business on Instagram, you can use a business profile instead of the standard personal account. When you switch to an Instagram business profile, you get access to a ton of advanced features, like Instagram insights, promoted posts, and a ‘contact us’ button to gain access to your followers.
Let’s start with tip Number 1!
1. KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
I know you want your product or service to have a wide reach. But it’s impossible to reach everyone at once!
Spend time to decide who your target audience is. Adults? Teens? Children? Office workers? Fitness lovers? Gadget users? It is useful to know their needs and purchasing behaviour, so you can better develop marketing strategies catered to them. Mass marketing strategies are ineffective nowadays as they do not resonate closely with your consumers.
Interested to know how you can better identify and understand your target audience?
TRY SOCIAL MONITORING
Social monitoring refers to the identifying and monitoring of your social media channels for mentions about your product or brand. Keeping track of these mentions are not enough, you need to know how to respond to them appropriately.
You may think, what are these mentions that I’m talking about? The answer is: Anything! Your customers can mention your brand name, product names, relevant hashtags or even competitors’ names.
Knowing what people are saying about your brand will give you a better idea about what social media strategies you can adopt from now on. You can determine what are the best ways to improve your social media accounts more efficiently and effectively.
For starters, try listening tools like Hubspot or Sprout Social. These tools are comprehensive management tools, but are definitely easy to navigate for beginners out there.
2. INTERACT WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS!
Treat your followers as if you’re trying to sell to your friends. You wouldn’t bombard your friends with only commercial content. Make your content interesting and engaging, so that customers would feel more compelled to share and comment on your content. So what is one way you can facilitate engagement?
RUN CONTESTS
Source: Wishpond
One of the easiest ways to engage a consumer is by organising contests supported by giveaways.
Some examples of Instagram contests include:
“Tell us how you feel about this brand”
“What is your most memorable moment”
“How do you feel…”
Bring out the creativity among your audience by rewarding the best answers with a free product, discount codes or gift vouchers.
3. AESTHETICALLY PLEASING PICTURES!
Are visuals important? YES. The harsh reality is that consumers focus on visual appearances when purchasing things. It is important to have nice pictures. But taking nice pictures will not guarantee you a beautiful Instagram feed. So, how do you make your Instagram posts more attractive?
USE PHOTOGRAPHY TOOLS
There are a wide variety of photography tools out there to help you edit pictures and images, making your photos pop and thus attracting social media users’ attention.
Adobe Lightroom makes professional photo editing tools easy to use, especially if you’ve downloaded presets. Presets refer to a standard set of editing adjustments that you can easily apply to photos. You can choose the most suitable preset for your photos from the thousands of choices available on Adobe Lightroom and download it easily!
Source: Adobe
Fun Fact! VSCO is more than just a picture and video editing app, it is also a community with VSCO memes, hashtags and weekly competitions. However, VSCO is still well known for its extensive filters. Subscribers are also granted access to specialised software which include Kodak and Fuji.
TOOLS FOR INSTAGRAM STORIES
Have you heard of Canva? If you haven’t, you are missing out!
Canva is an amazing graphic design tool that can be used to design Instagram posts, stories, or even infographics and presentation slides. It provides access to more than 60,000 free and personalised templates in its collection, including recent and seasonal updates.
If you are fretting about not having a strong graphic design background, no worries! Use Canva’s templates to easily churn out Instagram stories for your account.
Source: Canva
4. INFLUENCER TAKEOVER
Influencer’s endorsements are necessary if you’re trying to develop an Instagram presence while increasing profits. However, finding the right influencers is very crucial in order to attain this. Engage influencers who have followers that consist of your target audience.
They ought to be influential. It is not enough to just have a big following.
Need help finding influencers? Try marketing platforms such as Tribe, HYPR, and Grin. They allow you to source for influencers, and you can even adjust different search settings to make sure they fit your brand well.
Once the influencers are selected, you will have to contact them. But do take note that not all of them will accept your collaboration proposal. So how are you going to get influencers to collaborate for you?
FREE GOODIES!
The promise of your product (for free, of course!) might convince some influencers. If you let influencers keep your merchandise forever, they would be more than happy to promote your item using an Instagram post or story. Other influencers, however, would be more accepting to a paid collaboration.
TIME TO GET MOVIN’!
So there we have it, 4 quick tips to get your Instagram ready for business and increase revenues! All it takes is a little trial and error at the start, but once you’ve mastered it, you’ve got it.
Let’s get hustling!
If you would like us to help you thrive on Instagram, drop us a message here!
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