Instagram, one of the most successful and interactive social media platforms, is an outstanding marketing and brand-building tool. Its large, active user base offers an excellent opportunity for companies to create a viable customer base.
Instagram is highly competitive, however, with millions of registered business accounts. Therefore, you need to be aware of the right marketing strategies to place your company in people’s eyes and make sales to get favorable results in such a competitive climate.
In this article, you will learn thirteen Instagram marketing tips proposed by leading experts and entrepreneurs with which you can use to grow your business.
Be Strategic With Your Bio Link
Instagram is merely fun and spontaneous for personal use. But, according to Jim Belosic, CEO of ShortStack, if you want to use it as a marketing tool, you have to be a bit more calculating with the tool.
Companies that do extremely well on Instagram schedule their posts well in advance (like Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nike, and others). You can still grow a significant presence on Instagram whether you are a smaller brand or a one-person show.
However, it’s not just businesses and brands that need to focus on their social media marketing efforts and branding, it’s all organizations of all types. To see how this can be best accomplished, take a look at the visual below from the ME to WE organization on Instagram.
Not only did we highlight their use of a social profile link, but also their brand logo and username as well. These other areas will be referenced later on, but are pointed out now to give a clear visual on how a great Instagram profile should look.
Tip: Use your bio link to connect to a landing page that includes the same posts you placed on Instagram that allows you to collect leads, promote your eCommerce site, gain blog subscribers, collect giveaway entries, etc.
Cross-Promote Your Partners
Whenever you can, cross-promote! According to Lisa Karl, partner and founder of Savvy Digital Company, the trend on Instagram is to share love, so to speak, by tagging others or even openly supporting other businesses, products, and services.
The results are threefold: greater visibility for those concerned, increased followers (who tag the companies during visits), and increased local business traffic and sales.
Take Advantage of Trending Hashtags
Users can now find posts linked to trending hashtags using Instagram’s Explore function. According to Jim Tobin, the president of Ignite Social Media and the author of Earn It, if these trending tags are essential to your brand, include them in timely posts to help discovery.
Instagram also introduced the ability to search via emoji on the subject of search. Therefore, if emojis make sense for your brand strategy, make sure you think about how they can be a fantastic channel-appropriate way to communicate what ad copy can’t and how they can help in discovery.
The great thing about using hashtags on IG, is that you can create your own, or pick any that are currently being used or trending. And through the use of the search box, this is extremely easy.
In the example below, you can see how #getresults would likely relate with working out and being motivated. If you or your brand have something related to fitness or health, it’s a great hashtag to include in your updates.
Track Traffic with a Customized Link Shortener
As a marketer, it’s crucial to know how your Instagram account drives traffic and leads back to your website. Sadly, when users visit your website from their mobile Instagram account, Google Analytics can’t track this traffic accurately.
Use a personalized bit.ly link (or a link from another shortener) specifically for the URL in your Instagram bio to track accurate click rates. With that, you can check your bit.ly data to know how many clicks are sent to your website via your Instagram account.
And as highlighted at the beginning of the article in the screenshot of the WE to ME (WE Charity) social profile, they are using a Linktree URL page and shortener as their profile link.
According to Jenn Herman, a social media trainer, writer, and Instagram advocate, you should create a separate bit.ly link each time you adjust the link for a new landing page, campaign, or default page to continuously track active traffic leads.
Drive Instagram Users into Your Marketing Funnel
Most brands need to engage in follow-up marketing on Instagram, but it’s only one step in the overall marketing funnel. Consider identifying ways to collect your followers’ emails to drive your users down the funnel further. Asking for it is one of the easiest ways to catch email from your followers.
Share a picture, add a caption and a call to action, attractive and compelling enough to get users to click the link in your bio to download an ebook or subscribe to your newsletter.
According to Ross Simmonds, founder of Foundation Marketing, Hustle & Grind, and Crate, if the customer takes this action, you will have the capacity to communicate with them on a one-to-one basis and take the connection to the next level.
Tip: Create a dedicated landing page tailored specifically for this purpose.
Mix Videos and Photos
According to Sarah Quinn, a copywriter for content marketing agency Wyzowl, her hottest Instagram marketing trick is to mix up her posting strategy by including images and videos.
Bringing all of these elements and content types together is ideal for big name brands that want to appeal to the needs of their users. ESPN is a perfect example of a brand that is loading their IG stream with images, quotes, videos and more.
It’s a powerful tool used to engage fans, grow followers, and drive traffic, considering that a video can produce three times more inbound links than written posts. As marketers, you know that Instagram is about visual storytelling, but you can bring your story to life with a video.
Leverage Sponsored Ads
According to Stuart Elleray, social media manager for Coca-Cola GB and Fanta GB, one of the hottest marketing tips for Instagram right now will be to look for access to the ever-growing paid feature on the website.
Instagram sponsored ads are becoming a regular occurrence on Instagram users’ timelines, whether it’s one ad or multiple ads using the carousel feature.
This is offering brands a whole new dimension to reach their audience. Before, only individuals following the account could see photo updates, but now, brands can advertise them to everyone within their target audience.
Direct Users to Your Most Valuable Content
Although Instagram now gives advertisers the option to add clickable links to their carousel posts, URLs in photo descriptions are still not clickable.
Thankfully, there’s a way to get around this so that marketers can steer followers to their most valuable content. According to Bryden McGrath, senior social media coordinator at Precor, you can use the link portion of your Instagram account’s bio.
You may choose to guide users to a permanent page such as your website’s homepage or blog. But linking to your most recent material, whether it’s an essay, blog post, or promotion, is an even better choice.
Shoot Square
According to Peg Fitzpatrick, speaker, social media strategist, and co-author of The Art of Social Media, the richness of your Instagram feed is as good as the quality of your images. So starting with high-quality images makes your Instagram marketing more effective.
Shooting square images is one of the easiest ways to save time and compose better photos for Instagram. This is in the settings of many digital cameras and smartphones, so it’s straightforward to do. This helps you save time on cropping and guarantees that no later cropping of the picture’s critical elements.
Tip: Taking photos inside the Instagram app can be restricting. But you can use the SmugMug team’s Camera Awesome on iPhone (also available for Android users).
Use Sponsored Posts
According to Richard Lazazzera, a content manager at Shopify and founder of A Better Lemonade Stand, the number one Instagram strategy for getting massive exposure and creating a large audience is to find major Instagram accounts that are already catering to your demographic and pay for sponsored posts.
The reality is that tens of thousands of Instagram accounts are built solely to sell featured shout-outs to businesses and brands. Many times, in a range of niches such as health, fitness, cars, sports, fashion, nutrition, and many others, one person runs multiple accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.
If you find one that targets and follows your ideal audience, Instagram will show you “similar accounts. If there’s an email address in the profile, you’ll know these accounts allow paid sponsored content. It will usually say something such as “For Business Inquiries.”
Tip: If you choose to work with a particular account, make sure that you check their previous posts to see what form or style of images get the most engagement, and remember this when designing your ad image and copy.
Develop an Editorial Calendar
According to Christian Karasiewicz, Social Business Manager at IBM and founder of Social Chefs, to transition from a laptop to using a mobile device for posting new content, he suggests making an editorial calendar.
To schedule your Instagram updates, you use your editorial calendar once. All you need to do is curate and post your content to Instagram. Batch content is great because it saves time.
You can choose to add these tasks to your list of tasks, post them from the native Instagram app, or use some of the available scheduling tools.
The great thing about using this method is that you’ll be able to scale it up to meet your business’s demands as your business grows and you use Instagram more.
Make Graphics Share-worthy
According to Poppie Pack, a senior designer and social media manager at Canva, combining photos with captions is an efficient way of reaching the audience. He said they combine striking graphics with a piece of shareable material, such as an inspirational quote or a practical design tip, for Canva’s #dailydesigntips.
Tip: Complete the picture with a comprehensive caption and relevant hashtags, and the whole combination results in a persuasive post filled with nuggets of information.
Partner with Instagram Influencers
According to Kate Talbot, content marketing manager for Revfluence, you need to find influencers inside your particular vertical who will highlight your products in a fun and creative way.
All verticals, including fashion, beauty, health and wellbeing, home decor, food, and more, are represented by more than 40,000 Instagram influencers.
Modern-day celebrities are Instagram influencers and produce high-quality digital content. They have a broad base of followers and are trusted with their views on the latest goods and trends. Align your brand with the right influencers, and you can boost brand recognition and the reach of followers.
Tip: If you choose to work with an influencer,
- Ensure the Instagram post of the influencer contains your brand’s handle. The influencer can either tag your brand name in a photo or copy.
- Ask the influencer also to include some necessary calls to action. Shop Now or Learn More on our Website are traditional calls to action in Instagram marketing.
Final Thoughts
There’s no better way than to be involved on Instagram to step up your business game. The site is continually making updates, so people and organizations can get more out of it. Plus, apart from Instagram itself, there are strategies to improve organization, interaction, and exposure. Explore these tools and tips and see the ones that work best for you and your business.