As far as I know, Instagram is a very powerful tool for social media marketing. And this goes in favor of online businesses that get a platform that is focused on visuals with active followers and a high level of engagement. The trio buy Instagram followers, buy Instagram likes and buy Instagram views can help you increase your Instagram account. It has become popular in the last few years like other platforms say Facebook, Twitter, etc. by using new tactics at a lightning speed. The new features used by Instagram have made it friendly and valuable to end-users and business owners.
This article will help enhance your knowledge of the basics for marketing on Instagram. I’ll try to focus on using hashtags to optimize your profile, get a high level of engagement, achieve better results with regard to stories and reviews, and lastly justify your progress on Instagram.
The first question that keeps haunting me is what’s the use of Instagram? or why one should use this tool for marketing? Well, to get started, let us focus on –
Why use Instagram?
Instagram is the essence of every marketing campaign. It uses some robust advertising tools to help set up and run a business. It has a wide range of audience who wants to engage with brands at a higher level.
You can learn from the studies and research that marketing on Instagram is beneficial for increasing your sales.
This platform ensures a big win as the audience can find new products and are happy to purchase them through this platform. The viewers are very active, and nearly 60 – 80% of them have bought products that are featured on Instagram.
Moreover, Instagram’s effort to use e-commerce has directly translated into leads and sales. The Instagram ads are similar to the tools used on other social media platforms. So in order to track campaigns, you need to choose your ad objective to target the audience and prepare your ad format under Ads manager. You can also re-post your content on Instagram for business growth.
Instagram is valuable as it provides space to the products that are visually strong and help business owners and e-commerce traders expand their business.
How To grow your business on Instagram
Expand your Niche:
To grow your business on Instagram, you are required to create awareness, share stories to keep the audience engaged, and boost your customer’s number.
You can convert your posts into ads to encourage customers to buy products from your small niche. You can reach a new audience with visual inspiration i.e., making your ads look more appealing. You can also complement your text with interesting stories to connect with the larger audience.
You can use photo ads to make your story simple, clean, and creative. The photos that you use can be in any format may be square or landscape. In order to get the same visual quality as photo ads, you can add sound, motion, or sight power and share videos in any format. In a single ad, you can use Carousel ads in your campaign as the additional quality to make people swipe to view your content more.
To visually inspire and encourage your audience to discover new products and purchase them; use of collection ads with an integrated story can be fruitful. You can also create your own ad to reach people by enlarging your feed ads and the people who are interested in following your account.
Instagram Profile:
Most of the business accounts are affected by several changes regulated by Instagram. For a great start, almost all the business owners are aware of the basics about optimizing their online profile. Therefore most of them fill out their address, description of keyword optimization, an identifiable profile photo, etc.
But in order to get maximum out of your Instagram profile, the following points should be considered.
Hashtags that are clickable
The use of branded hashtags can be a good choice for most businesses. You can add # to your profile description along with the desired statement/phrase when you post a video/content on Instagram.
Clickable links
In your own Instagram bio, adding clickable profile links to other people is another option to optimize your profile. You can use this tactic to drive traffic, in the case of two different profiles for a sister concern. This feature can also be used to add people to your profile if it goes well with your branding.
Story Feature
Story Highlight is a new feature that allows you to add expired stories to various categories. This allows you to display some content like UGC or your brand’s story post. Instagram Optimization Instagram Hashtags: Hash tags are the main element of Instagram marketing. You can turn a word or a phrase into a clickable topic by the # symbol in an Instagram content, story, or bio. The public posts with hashtags reach all the users when they click. Moreover, users can follow hashtags significantly that interest them so even if they don’t follow the poster, they get a stream of content through hashtags. It’s a user-friendly way to find content they’re interested in and for business owners who want to make their content go beyond reach.
Types Of Hashtags
To enjoy better results and reach targeted audiences for Instagram marketing, using appropriate hashtags becomes necessary. There are in-all six types of hashtags to incorporate into the marketing strategies for e-commerce /online businesses.
An Entertaining # –
These hashtags help entertain your audience and promote your brand. Though they’re clever and purely funny but don’t help you with the maximum reach. These can be grouped together or used one by one, for storytelling too. Eg. ‘#iknowitstooearlyforchristmasstuffy #thisiswhywealthatemonday #toobad #itshereanyway. etc. For best results, either use hashtags in combinations for your posts in each category or go through these hashtags to find the most appropriate one.
This is a great way to make your branding strong and reach a wide range of audience.
Timely Hashtags –
Seasonal holidays and current events can be good for making hashtags, especially when it comes to selling holidays like Christmas / Valentine’s Day. People search for relevant content in these times so, you can use # stocking stuffer hashtags / #valentingformyvalentine.
Branded #:-
Most brands use branded hashtags that are unique. This # is found in their post, on their profiles, and are there to encourage users to put them on the posts they’re sharing.
The user-generated content doesn’t need to have your brand name included.Hashtags for General Appeal –
Among diverse and large audiences there are some hashtags, very popular. They help promote your content reach larger audience because they can be accessed easily; some of the examples are #ilovemyjob #antiques etc.
Contest Related:
These are a kind of branded hashtags designed for some specific contests. These are used to
learn about the entries for submission of photos to generate an overall awareness regarding any contest. Along with the branded hashtags, it’s always better to incorporate Content hashtags that are general, like #instacontest and #giveaway.Specific hashtags for business/brands:
Every business or industry has a tagline (a phrase or keywords) to connect with their targeted audience.
In comparison to the general appeal hashtags, the Niche-specific hashtag won’t help you reach your target, but they’ll help you drive a more authentic and relevant audience.
How to use hashtags?
Using hashtags is the most reliable factor to justify your progress on Instagram, but it seems to be a bit difficult. The following practices will help you optimize your reach and results.
- Display your branded hashtag on your personal profile. At the beginning of your hashtag list display your entertaining hashtags so that they’re easily read.
- Use at least 30 hashtags per post. Various case studies have proven that if you use different hashtags, the sweet spot for each post is somewhere between 8-11.
- Never use the same hashtags but switch up on with every post. You can create groups for different posts. This will enhance your visibility among different viewers and will also prevent your account from being notified as spammy by Instagram.
- keep exploring each hashtag to discover new ones, and make sure that you don’t get involved in using banned hashtags or get stuck accidentally with an unknown topic.
Using stories
This is an add-on feature taken from Snapchat where the photos and videos shared with your followers disappear within 24 hours. But actually, it’s designed to be an essential part of Instagram. Stories transformed into story ads on Instagram live long due to a feature called Highlights.
Highlights and Stories lifespan: Just like the Snapchat feature, stories would be emulated or would disappear within 24 hours. Instagram discovered that the content was losing ROI as the end result, and so it developed a feature like Highlights to give stories stability on the platform.
Highlights appear on the profile page and after 24 hours stories can be added to them. Using user-generated content for best effect, you are free to create multiple highlights. For Eg. for brand storytelling and one for Conference events. The users find it easy to search the content they’ve been looking for as soon as they click your profile. As business owners, you earn their trust quickly. Adding a name to your Highlights and selecting stories that you want to add, you need to click on the icon with the black + located just above your gallery. You are free to edit these stories whenever you like and also extend their lifespan.
How to use stories?
This powerful feature can be used for promoting your business on Instagram.
There are seven ways to proceed:
Insyructional/Module:
In simple words, it means tutorials, and it’s a very easy way to make the most of this feature. A module or tutorial could be a short way for a product demonstration.
It is something that helps you create a video in the interest of your audience on Instagram.
For followers, stories are more likely to keep them engaged and responsive. The snapshots of step-by-step kitchen recipes, make-up brand tutorials, etc., can be the best examples of this feature.Polls:
This interactive feature has the ability to engage users and capture information for marketing efforts in the future. By running quizzes and polls regularly on Instagram, business owners can convert followers into subscribers on their page. It helps drive a lot of traffic to grow your sales and, ultimately, your business. Swipe up to finish” is a link that can be used to encourage participation.
Announcements and Promotions:
Stories shared on Instagram make the perfect place to run announcements and promotions prominently. You can launch a new product using a story feature to make it a desirable channel for distribution. You can use the “swipe to link” feature in stories for brand promotions.
User-Generated Content:
(UGC) In comparison to brand-generated content or ads, UGC is the more memorable feature. The reason behind this is very simple because UGC displays the feelings of customers who actually consume or utilize your services or products. Another way to support user-generated content is to use a hashtag in your stories. The story Highlights- company hashtags encourage people to use their products and increase their sales.
Positive feedback and testimonials by customers can also be used for highlighting benefits.
Reviews:
For higher levels of engagement and enhanced interactivity, Instagram stories should be customized in order to receive customer’s feedback. You can run a Q&A session for interaction if you are looking for a quick product/service review from customers.
Discount:
To create urgency and boost your follower’s action, a mini promotion can be incorporated. The best way to benefit from Instagram stories is to offer a time bond discount or deal to the customers so that they don’t disappear and stay connected to your site for long. On a few occasions, the urgency factor of Instagram stories can do wonders.
Humanize your brand:
For building trust among your followers, it’s very essential to bring your audience or employees into the limelight. If you incorporate behind the scene features into your working, it will certainly help in humanizing your brand. This kind of story can help uplift the level of your business.
These are seven tips to enhance your marketing efforts using Instagram stories. But sometimes, you fail to improve your performance and so need to work on Instagram stories. Let us focus on some issues that can help maximize your performance. You must learn to design, create, engage and distribute this feature.
Best Practices For Instagram Stories
Here are some tricks to inspire you to incorporate Instagram stories for business growth.
Tip:-
- Always remember that a consistent visual identity is one of the features responsible for your ranking when it comes to landing a story on your explore page. This is a key factor in developing a good relationship with your viewers; they should identify your style/pattern before reading your username. To start with, the use of consistent colors, Instagram story templates, fonts, and approved gifs should make the difference. Using on-point full-screen visuals will help your brand’s tone unified. And even if you lack a visual arts degree or fail to have a designer to assist you, don’t worry because there are stories-focused design apps to rescue your business at this crucial stage.
- Make sure to tag other’s accounts in your stories; this is how you can show your appreciation and build your community. Whether you’re working with others or reposting old content, tag their account so that your audience comes to know more about your brand and your collaboration gets more views.
- Instagram has recently started using AR filters, which has allowed people to make real experiences that are augmented. The Spark AR studio is a new and complicated tool for businesses to use. But with little time and effort, you can also create your own Instagram AR filter. When this element is added to your story, it becomes a boon for both your audience as well as your niche/brand. As the users share their stories with your AR filter, it gives you a chance to win new followers.
- Take time to create great stories so that your audience finds them valuable. The best way is to include your Instagram stories in your content calendar. There are numerous ideas available on social media if you’re looking for inspiration. Don’t try to DIY because this may affect your relationship with your audience or your Instagram analytics. So you should always plan ahead and make use of time to create impressive stories.
Conclusion
Therefore, if you wish to become a smart social marketer, it is advisable to get social media advice from experts or professionals and use appropriate tools to promote your Instagram marketing. If you use hashtags, stories, and other features, you’ll get high engagement from enthusiastic followers on your platform. Follow all the basics of Instagram marketing to optimize your profile, earn engagements and harvest good results by becoming popular among users.
