Short Introduction on Instagram:
Instagram has more than one billion active users per month and posted more than 500 million Instagram stories. Instagram is the second accessed platform after Facebook. Approximately an individual user spends 53 minutes per day. Also, more than 25 million business profiles are there.
Based on the 2020 report, 90% of Instagrammers followed at least one business. 83% of Instagram users have discovered a new product or service on Instagram.
According to the survey, Instagram can help to enhance your business and reach out to your target audience. Instagram offers you to promote your brand, product, and services in a friendly way without aggressive selling to your customers.
Ready to learn everything about Instagram marketing tactics? Let’s move!
1. How To Create an Instagram Account for Business?
The essential note about Instagram is the design of the content. If you want to shine among your audience, your post should attract them, and you need to post regularly.
To start downloading the app from the App Store or Google Play store based on specific mobile users. You can’t upload any content from the desktop, but you can view all the content via desktop.
After you have downloaded the app, you can enter the details such as Name, Business Name(the viewers should easily recognize it), upload your profile photo, and set the username (it’s displayed on the screen).
Note: The business name & user name should be unique to your profile, then only users can easily find your Instagram account.
2. Optimizing Your Instagram Account:
Step 1: Set Profile Picture
After entering the account, you can set your profile picture of your business account. The picture should be relevant to your business and unique. Your profile picture creates the best impressions when your viewers view them. Or else, you can use the brand logo on your profile.
When you’re going to set the profile, it automatically crops around the circle.
Step 2: Add Instagram Bio
Instagram allows 150 characters maximum in your profile below. So, directly tell them to viewers who you’re and what’s your brand about. Without hiding, explain the brand to all the target audience.
Note: Instagram bio isn’t searchable, so you don’t need to add the hashtags or keywords. But you can place your website URL in your bio, which increases your website traffic.
Step 3: Managing Your Instagram Settings
Tap the three stacked lines that display on the upper right-hand side of your Instagram profile. Then click settings, which appear at the bottom of the screen. Now you can see more options, and if you want to change, you can do such as change password, see all posts which you have liked, enable notification, etc. You should check the below things right away:
- Story Settings: Tap Instagram settings -> Story to access your controls. You can give access now by clicking the icon which appears on your right side. We recommend that you will get Instagram story views from non-followers, which help to improve brand engagement.
- Switch to a Professional Account: Instagram allows you to do business and reach out to more audiences. Instagram’s Business Tools offers to make it easy for Instagrammers to contact you and provides you with in-depth insights.
Go to settings -> Click account -> Tap Switch to Professional Account to change to access these features.
- Comments: Instagram gives an excellent option for you and your brand that hides options. After posting your brand images or videos, you will get positive & negative comments from the viewers. In case you feel those comments are against brand values or offend your audience, you can hide all the comments.
From your settings, Tap Privacy > Hide Comments to update
3. Types of Instagram Posts:
Once you have optimized your Instagram profile, you can now start to post awesome content.
Let’s discuss the different Instagram post types that will suit to enhance your brand.
- Images:
The ultra common post on Instagram is posting images. You can share a variety of posts about your brand. If you post photos in different ways, it helps to engage your followers as well.
Try to shoot lifestyle shots and behind-the-scenes for brand advertisements. For instance, Nike is one of the popular Instagram brands that contains concerts, real athletes, and other types of content that promote your brand personality.
- Behind-the-Scene Posts:
These posts explain a part of the business to viewers who didn’t see the post usually. Authenticity is the key to success! Hence, every post should be important and attractive. For example, Aeronaut brewing is one of the US companies that provide their company culture and the working process by marketing its employees at work.
- Influencer Posts
Collaborating with Influencers has an excellent strategy to improve your business and quickly reach out to your business among the target audience. Who’s an Influencer on Instagram? A celebrity or famous public figure is an influencer who can promote your brand. One of the excellent benefits of influencer posts is impressing the attention of the audience.
For example, Goal zero works with the photographer and rock climber Alex Honnold using one of its solar power charging stations. Goal zero has reached several audiences, and also Alex gained five lakhs followers to their Instagram.
- Motivational Posts
Making motivational quotes for your brand will change your audience’s mind. Also, it helps you to engage with viewers and stimulate curiosity about your brand. Finally, your posts amplify your brand on Instagram with a loyal audience. If you want to add text and photos, you can use related apps such as Quipio, Typic, etc., that create consistent brand guidelines.
For instance, Myntra.com is the famous online shopping website in the world. They shared the product motivational quotes when clicking the brands via phone. So, the audience mindset is good about that product.
4. Instagram Marketing Strategy:
Instagram is a unique platform compared to all social media websites. Everyone can build a business using image posts and video posts. But, you should know what type of strategy you will use in Instagram marketing.
Here, we will talk about 5 Instagram marketing strategies that you can apply:
1. Get a Clear Idea About Instagram Goals:
Before you do anything on Instagram, you have to set your goals about Instagram marketing. When you have raised the question to common users, “Why are you on Instagram?” they replied, “everyone else there, so I am there.” It might be suited for ordinary people, but as a marketer, it didn’t set! If you want to be successful on the Instagram platform, you must have clear goals and purpose to justify your energy, time, and monetary investment.
Instagram allows you to do any type of content such as product images, user-generated content(UGC), etc. After posting every video, you can measure your performance using Instagram Analytics tools.
2. Post Your Instagram Content Regularly:
Adding a picture or videos to your Instagram profile once a month, it’s not an efficient strategy to increase your brand to the world. Even the profile wouldn’t call that an active profile. If you want to make your brand fresh and reach the audience, you can regularly post images or videos. In this case, you can make more followers to your account.
We would recommend that you post 2-3 posts per day, but those content should be related to your brand. If you share a lot of content each day, it’s the best way to share your Instagram story. According to the research, the top brands are posting content 1.5 times per day. Approximately, it comes 10 to 11 posts per week!
3. Find Your Target Audience On Instagram:
Determine your target audience you want to reach before you start marketing on Instagram. If you have any marketing strategies, you choose the right people to keep your efforts consistent. Remember that you should consider factors such as location, age, gender, interests, income, motivations, and pain points.
You don’t know where to start? Check out the popular events and famous hashtags that are related to your business. And see your competitors who’re using and engaging with hashtags and check their brand profile. After viewing the competitor’s account, you know who’s your niche. Instagram is a great place to make it easy and define your audience.
4. Increase Your Instagram Followers:
Increasing your followers to your account takes time & energy! But if you want to quick followers to your account, you have to focus on some strategies.
- Your Instagram username must be searchable and recognizable.
- Fill out the bio section (don’t use keywords)
- Add logo & profile icon (the set brand icon is good)
- Include high-quality posts ( When user see your profile looks empty, viewers get disappointed)
- Start follow related accounts to your business
- Adding your website link in the bio helps to know more details about the product.
5. Convert the Instagram followers to customers:
As a marketer, the common goal is to increase the reverence of their products. So, what are the steps you will do to convert the followers to customers?
- Promotions
- Run contest
- Release Product Teasers
- Live launches
- Do a video about product specifications.
Wrapping Up:
Instagram is a fast-growing platform at such a rapid rate, and it creates sense to use the platform as a standard method of driving sales. As you have seen the list, Instagram has great features that offers marketers to sell and buy items directly through its platform.
Author Bio
Caterina Taylor 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.