How to explore Instagram as a social media marketing platform
To boost your Instagram marketing, first of all, you need to boost your followers on a constant and stable basis. The more people are aware of your brand, the greater your chances are to potentially reach your target audience. Let’s run through the tips and tactics how to explore Instagram as a social media marketing platform to make your brand more popular.
1. Use unique, crisp, and attractive hashtag
Hashtags are not only important for Twitter; they also play a prominent role on Instagram. It’s a big way of how users can find you through their mobile Instagram searches. As compared to Twitter, here you’re not restricted by character count. You can include a few tags in your posts to get connected. While deciding on hashtag for branding, it is advisable to create brand specific hashtags. Try to keep it as unique and crisp as possible. Try multiple variant of hashtags such as brand specific hashtags, general hashtags, and trending hashtags, to get noticed in searches.
Examples of brand specific hashtags are:
#PutACanOnIt-Red Bull
#TweetFromTheSeat-Charmin
#OreoHorrorStories-Oreo
#WantAnR8-Audi
An ideal general hashtag should be prepared with two words over a single word to make it meaningful e.g. rather than #QL, #AskQL is a better hashtag.
2. Consistently interact with your followers
Once you get follower/s, do not shy away to stay engaged. Constantly post impressive content which your followers find relevant to their interest and business. Avoid throwing random posts, i.e. once in a week or ten in a go, as far as possible. At least, twice a day posting is requisite. Once your followers start increasing, you can start posting three to four times a day. Consistency matters most! According to Anthony Carbone, “If you stick to a niche and show authenticity and passion in your posts, you will find a strong following”
The more people you can dynamically involve and persuade to comment on your content (images/videos), the better for you. Since, it will inculcate the interest for others who want to contribute or comment on your content as well.
3. Do not bore your audience with information overload
No doubt consistency is inevitable, but if it lacks harmony and relevancy of content, it results in either spamming or information overload. Keep your frequency correct and consistent. Rather than preaching them, engage with them. It’s better to ask sometimes, they should feel being valued. Dig out meaningful interaction from them.
The ideal proportion of posts based on followers suggested by industry experts are:
4. Make the most use of tools that are free
Instagram also provides free analytics tools for business profiles; wisely make the most use of them to market your products and services. For example, “insights”, an analytical tool, provides you access to engagement data. If your account is initially signed up as a personal account for your business, do get switched to a business profile. That’s how you can cash advantage of the free tools that businesses use to track the shape of their brand on Instagram. ‘Insights’ assists you understand your audience, provides you data on posts with most impressions, engagements, and shares. Ultimately, you will conclude which posts are effective and which ones are not working well with your audience.
5. Repurpose content from other related sources
As stated in earlier paragraphs, effective and successful Instagram marketing needs consistent posts related to your products and services. It is well obvious that every time coming up with creative and engaging posts is not as easy as it seems. That’s where re-purposing content or curating content offers a hand of help. Providing you either tag or mention the original poster, this is a completely ethical marketing practice and does not fall under the black clouds of plagiarism. You need to ensure that the posts which you wither repurpose or curate are relevant to your followers.
Conclusion
Social media marketing via Instagram can facilitate you achieve your targeted business goals with much of the ease. Use Instagram extensively and appropriately, and grow bigger!
There are various other tips and tactics to market your products and services better on Instagram, over and above these top 5 which you should keep handy.
