Instagram is one of the most dynamic social media platform out there. With over 800 million users from across the globe, Instagram becomes an essential hub for news, entertainment and business. Instagram is a visual-based feed. Most interactions happen over visual-pleasing or intriguing content. If optimised correctly, it can become an essential port for interacting with your customers.
With social media evolving rapidly, it is necessary to keep up with the trends and the changing algorithms. Instagram has huge marketing potential. More than 25 million businesses advertise or interact via Instagram. This also makes it a competitive marketing sphere. Different methods and consistency can be key to winning a pool of audience on Instagram. If you understand these methods carefully, you can proactively take charge of your Instagram business account and increase your engagement.
Here we discuss 10 effective ways, through which you can boost your Instagram visibility and customer engagement.
1. Rethink your bio:
Instagram bio is the only space in your business account where you can describe your brand within few words. However, it is critical to understand the importance of this small space. This is the solitary description place for your business so you need to be crisp and to the point. You are allowed to add URLs too, which can be of your website or the product you want to highlight.
However, the link can also be for specific webpages where you want to draw your traffic. To know more, your profile visitors are bound to click on. In other words, you have complete liberty to direct your audience. Smart marketeers usually keep optimizing this space to continuously update their customers about what’s new. With proper analytics installed, you can track the incoming audience to understand what is working best for you.
2. Consistent Posting:
Most people have this one question: how often should they post on their Instagram account? Well, honestly there is no fixed number. However, you must post consistently. Based on your niche, understand what content works best for you and start posting. Segment your content wisely so you do not run out of things to post.
Certain accounts post more than 20 times a day whereas few only post once a day. This is completely based on the genre of your business. If you are an e-commerce business, you can keep updating with various product-based posts. Whereas, if you are a food-chain with multiple brick and mortar outlets, then less than 5 posts per day is enough to stay relevant to your customers.
To understand this even better, Instagram offers an Insights option with all business accounts to analyze the customer demography. You can schedule your posts based on peak engagement timings and trending topics.
3. Create a Style:
Every brand is unique and they have their individual stories to tell. To standout, you must re-invent yourself for your social media presence. Create a theme or a template that is exclusive to your brand. Post your content around it. Once your brand’s theme gets the desired tempo, your content style will be solely recognisable without your brand’s name. For example: Netflix has their theme colors as black and red, based on their platform colors. Their posts include content with tags on corners.
4. Create Your Own Hashtags:
Successful brands on Instagram often create their own brand-relevant hashtags to start a trend. Eventually the bandwagon is joined by most of their audience, showing solidarity with their products and services. These little stunts incorporate a healthy relationship between a business and its customers.
Ensure that these hashtags are witty, fun and relevant to your brand. For example: Famous snacks vendor LAY’s was launching different flavors and they wanted their customers to submit reviews. They rolled out a hashtag called #DoUsAFlavor which is a witty pun on the word favour as they were asking favours from their customers.
5. Participate With Trending Hashtags:
Apart from creating your own hashtags, you can always rely on other trending hashtags that can be relevant to your business. Instagram feeds thrive on hashtags and content keeps refreshing based on that. In fact, Instagram has a dedicated tab called “Discover” to see content based on your most-viewed hashtag. In other words, the algorithm uses hashtags to suggest you content.
6. SEO:
SEO is the bread and butter of social-media business accounts. The only written content on your Instagram is on your bio. Make sure that apart from your username, everything else demonstrates your business and the industry you fall into. Rewrite your bio with relevant keywords in it, describing what you do best. Understand your social signals, and keep updating your bio from time-to-time.
You also have the liberty to change your name and not your username. Most brands use this to improve their search listings.
7. Instagram Stories and IGTV:
Instagram stories are the most engaged form of content on social media. A very easy-to-use feature that allows you to highlight a picture, a moment, a gif, a video or even text-posts. You can ask questions, host polls via Insta-story to initiate conversations with your customers. The seamless nature of viewing insta-stories makes it the most used feature on Instagram.
Apart from stories, Instagram also launched its own video application, very well integrated within the platform. IGTV doesn’t have the video time limits unlike the normal feature. Here you can post product tutorials, case studies, customer journeys without any hassle. The time limit ranges from 15 seconds to 10 minutes and is a good way to communicate with your audience.
8. Respond to DMs and Comments:
Instagram business account users are bound to receive thousands of queries and responses everyday. Keep your notifications on and respond to all of them. Reply to most relevant comments on your posts at the same time. These real-time interactions ensure brand authenticity and reliability. Once you start interacting with your customers, they will feel heard. They will keep the conversation going and you need to keep up! Enforce a dedicated social-media team that can take over this task more consistently. Needless to say, you need to have an omnichannel platform that integrates social media like Instagram. This will help your team to respond to customers and able to know the context.
9. Get Influencers:
One of the most repetitive bios on social media is “Instagram Influencer.” Who is an influencer? A person with a visually appealing profile and with an acceptable amount of followers are hired by brands to promote their products. The influencer has the ability to influence the purchasing choices made by the audience of his/her profile due to his/her position or association with his/her audience.
The individual needs to be well informed and actively engaged with a particular niche. Their knowledge in the specific niche acts as an essential marketing device. There are four kinds of influencers. They are:
- Celebrities
- Industry Experts
- Bloggers
- Micro Influencers.
The age-old trick in the book is to employ celebrities and industry experts to promote a product as they have a very dedicated fan following. Bloggers are not behind either as they are new informants of the millennials. Popular blogs that are influential enough often have sponsored posts to bring a product or service closer to their audience. But the most rapidly growing category is ‘micro-influencers.’ Micro influencers are typical ordinary individuals who have turned out to be known for their insight about some niche. In that capacity, they have picked up a substantial amount of followers who are also adherents of that niche. This is the most common practice in today’s Instagram marketing. These brand advocates play an essential role in rising up your conversions.
10. Instagram Ads:
We all know that organic reach is the most reliable form of targeting your audience. But Instagram is an extremely competitive platform. Thus, paid advertisement adds a huge benefit to your account.
Instagram offers multimedia-based ad formats. The variety of formats includes story ads, product collection ads, post ads and more. Play around with various formats and make the most out of the target-based campaigns. An Instagram ad cost-per-click is $0.70 to $0.80, and can vary based on your individual ad requirements. You can also integrate Instagram ads using the Facebook Ads Manager tool, bringing your two-most influential social handles under one hub.
Curate a budget specifically for Instagram marketing and increase your conversion via ads, target even more people, and demonstrate strong engagement. The more you widen your reach, the more chance of conversion.
Conclusion:
It must have been clear by now, how interactive Instagram is. You can exclusively reinstate your brand personality through Instagram. It has proven to be an essential tool for marketers, content creators and businesses across the world. So work on your content strategy, and avail all the features. Keep the engagement going while you witness your conversions rising.
