There are over 800 million active users monthly on Instagram and this is a great marketing tool to use for your e-commerce business if you know how to use this platform. It is easy to increase your followers and hit the target market on using social media platform (Instagram).
The following are the things that we need to know on Instagram on how to build your brand even without spending any amount of money for your advertising strategies.
Every post should embody your Brand Image
Instagram is all about pleasing your audiences. The photos you’re posting should be interesting to everyone who sees it on their feed. So when you’re uploading photos to your feed, it is very important to take time to review before you publish them and make sure it’s worth your audiences’ time to look at. Using a filter to make the photo look greater is okay, but it is even greater if you post them to your Instagram feed with a story to tell. Make sure that when people look at your feed, it will convince them to follow your brand because it makes them feel it is what their lifestyles or interests are all about.
For example, you’re building a women’s fashion brand, it would help a lot if you post real women wearing your styles. It would be more convincing to post hand-selected models in your style as it is more personalized and geared toward your creative fashion designs.
Rule of Thirds should be followed
To remain upright and steady to your followers and not excessively promotional, it is very important to consider the following rule of thirds technique, which includes:
- Posts about promoting your brand – includes posting the products or service you’re offering; anything that is related to your line of business only.
- Posts about engaging to your audiences – this is to persuade your audiences to become involved in a conversation. Most strategies are about questions for your audiences to answer wherein great answers are to be rewarded.
- Post Sharing – this contains sharing recent news about the industry, or a cross-promotion with experienced bloggers, your target audiences, or maybe with other companies.
Note that the best way to increase your brand’s engagement and following is to find the right balance. We know that everything needs an experiment. If you on small business, you need to think about what are the things you need to focus on and make sure it’ll work out. However, it is also more effective if you work with established influencers who are of the same line of business as you do and fortify on giving giveaways.
Tagging Products
To tag products makes it easier for your customers to make purchases. This also lets you have a distinct call-to-action. It’s a good thing that Instagram is now allowing business accounts to tag products in their posts and it’s just like you’re tagging people. Refer to this Instagram Help Page for the selected countries allowed to tag products.
It is very simple to transform your account from a social channel to a sales channel and can be done in just a few clicks. How to get started? Here are the steps:
- On your business Facebook page, you will need to setup a shop section and add the photos of your products to it. Make sure to connect your Facebook page to your Instagram. It is recommended to select the option that will enable your clients to proceed with the check out on your own website, instead of having it done through Facebook. This will help your inventory management system updated. Please note that this is not something you can make amend within your current Facebook settings, so, it has to be setup first and foremost.
- You will be notified by Instagram that you may now start tagging products. It may take a few days before you receive one, so be patient.
- You are now able to tag a product when you post an image and you will then see the option to ‘tag a product’ and there you’ll see a list that will be automatically populated and these are the products that you’ve listed or uploaded on your Facebook shop page.
Curating Hashtags
On Instagram, hashtags are very substantial because this will allow your content to emerge and appear in search results and will help you attract new customers.
It is very important to do further research ahead of time as to which hashtags are you going to use. You can have a note saved in your phone with three different lists of hashtags, one for each of the usual types of photos that your company is posting. For example, you are frequently posting product shots, motivational quotes, and your lifestyle photos, and then you will need to have a list of hashtags that are related for each of those niches. However, we also have to add a few appropriate hashtags to every post by the time we post one.
It is also a must for us to update our hashtag list because we know that the trending ones changes from time to time. Always know the user experience first and make sure not to overuse hashtags on your posts and use only those appropriate ones.
It may take us time to find our target audiences but with proper management, it’ll pay off. Just be patient and let your eagerness work with your perseverance to reach the peak of success of getting more audiences targeted toward your line of business.
Create an amazing Instagram Feed using third-party Apps
It is time consuming to grow and maintain a popular Instagram account but it’s a great help for you to save time if you use a third-party app. Social media planners like Later and Onpost allow you to organize the look of your Instagram feed using a drag and drop feature which is very functional in creating a fascinating design before you post it. Make sure to only use those apps that observes the terms and conditions of Instagram.
Always check your Analytics
Assessing your analytics within Instagram gives you the insights on how to increase your engagement. On the audience tab, you will see when your followers are online on Instagram, down to every hour, and then scheme your future posts at utmost times to get the most mileage out of them.
Also assess and analyze as to which posts are getting the most number of likes from your audiences because it will give you an insight of your audiences’ preference. Based on what they like the most – you can get basis of what they wanted and then you can post more of those that they want.
Engagement is Essential
At the early age of growing your Instagram account, this needs your patience as it takes time for you to work hard to get your account grow organically. To some, it takes about a year to get around 20000 organic followers targeted to their businesses. By working hard, I mean, this is a give and take process, so you will also have to work on commenting and liking and follow posts and accounts of your target audiences.
When you comment on a post, most especially to those that are your target audiences, there’s a greater chance of them to visit your page. The likes that we give and get are a dime a dozen, but engaging in a more sincere way captures their attention.
There are so many people offering to purchase likes and comments, but this is not going to work with our business. Yes, it may seem to have your page look great because of the engagement you get, but technically, there comes a time that you will realize that it could’ve been greater if you have gotten what you have worked for. Instagram promulgates algorithm changes, however, they don’t divulge their indicator for banning or deleting accounts. It’s better to surmise that the accounts with large numbers of followers with low engagement are obviously a red flag and may cause negative impact on an account. We all know that Instagram’s priority is to provide an excellent user experience, so we must be wary that fake accounts or accounts that have bought engagements or followers are probably to be shadow banned, meaning, the photos or accounts are to be discontinued.
Name: Alec Ketabi
Short bio:
I’m a social media marketing writer with 5 years experience working with start-up and medium-size companies. I would like to share my experience and ideas with people who have passionate about sales and digital marketing.
Gravatar email: [email protected]
