Instagram is an ever-growing social media platform in the competitive world. It has more than 1 billion monthly users and 500 million people sharing Instagram stories every day. According to the social media statistics, Instagram is the second most used network behind Facebook.
More than 25 million businesses are using Instagram to promote their brand. 90% of Instagrammers follow at least one business account, and 83% use Instagram to discover new brands and products.
Additionally, 80% of users made purchases on Instagram, 60% of users visit business profiles every day, and 21% say they visit weekly. Every user browses an average of 53 minutes on Instagram per day.
Instagram offers a great way for marketers to enhance their business on the platform. More than 36% of B2B decision-makers are using Instagram for researching new products. Here are the 15 unique tips that help you to create a winning Instagram marketing strategy.
Tip 1: Switch to a Business Account
Before starting your business on Instagram, you need to create a business account on Instagram or a creator account. Because the Instagram business account allows you to access Instagram Insights, ads, and shopping, users add a call-to-action button on their profile.
If you already have a personal account, follow these steps to convert your account into a business account.
Step 1: Go to your profile and hit the hamburger icon at the right corner.
Step 2: Tap Setting and then Account.
Step 3: click switch to a professional account.
Step 4: Hit business and follow the prompts.
Use these steps to convert your account to a business account. After setting up your business account, you can start using Instagram marketing strategies to improve your business by having many additional features.
Tip 2: Set Your Goals
Set an objective to reach your target audience before posting on Instagram. It offers many ways for brands to market their products on Instagram. But you should aim to reach your business goals. Instagram offers different things for various marketers such as:
- Make your online presence – Keep your business account always active by responding to your followers’ comments and promote your brand.
- Brand awareness – Bring out the ways to make your brand popular among new audiences.
- Traffic increase – Make your followers visit your website and know about your business.
- Lead Generation – Gather your followers’ information who are interested in your business.
- Conversions – Convert your followers to your customers with your effective technique and improve your sales.
With the above ideas, you can refine your goals to achieve high in your business. The important point is to know where to start your Instagram marketing strategy. If you’re just starting out, you may wish to make use of one of the best Instagram growth services to help you establish good size following quickly so that your brand has the best chance of reaching as many people as possible who will engage with your content.
Tip 3: Determine Your Instagram Audience
Before starting marketing on Instagram, you need to know your target audience. Because without knowing your audience, you can’t succeed with this platform. People who like your product and are interested in following your account are your target audience.
Instagram provides some of the below targeting options, helping you to know your audience easily.
- Age – You can target your audience age-wise from 13 to 65+ age categories.
- Gender – If your post is based on women, you can select the gender as female to make your post visible to them.
- Location – Choose a specific country and state where you want to make your brand or business popular.
- Demographics – You can have a detailed target of your audience about Interest and Behaviour.
Most of the active Instagram users are between the age of 18 to 35. Know your audience’s interest to get better results. When you promote your brand with your target audience, it helps you reach your business goals and improve your business.
Tip 4: Optimize Your Profile
Your Instagram profile gives a first impression to your audience. In Just 150 characters, show your brand personality and tell people why they should follow you. Additionally, you can add many fields in your bio to show your brand. These include:
- Person name: 30 characters
- User name: AKA your handle
- Website URL: A clickable link to your website to increase traffic to your page.
- Contact information: It makes an easy way for your followers to reach you and have direct interactions with you.
- Call to action buttons: Allows visitors to land on the page where you want them exactly. This may lead to sales conversions also.
Choose a perfect and unique profile picture for your account related to your brand. If you are a marketer, you can use your business logo as your profile picture. Using the same picture in all social media helps users recognize you and your brand easily.
Tip 5: Start Using IGTV
Normally, Instagram allows you to post a video for about 1 minute, where you can give only a short intro of your business or your product. To overcome this, Instagram came up with an additional feature by introducing IGTV.
Instagram TV (IGTV) is a long-form video feature that allows you to watch on an Instagram app or standalone an IGTV app. Users can create channels and upload videos for up to 15 seconds to 10 minutes. If you are a verified user, you will get a chance to post your video for 1 hour. Create effective IGTV videos to get more likes, views, and comments.
Are you wondering how to get more comments for your IGTV videos? You can use these simple tips to get the best comments for your videos.
- Create high-quality videos
- Go vertical
- Show behind the scene videos
- Share IGTV videos to your Instagram stories
- Post at the peak time
The above tips will boost users to watch your videos repeatedly so you can easily get more likes and comments for your IGTV videos.
Tip 6: Go with Instagram Reels
One of the latest features on Instagram is Reels, and it was launched on August 5, 2020, in over 50 countries. Reels came as an alternative entertainment medium to Tik Tok. Instagram allows you to make reels for about 15 seconds.
Using Reels, show your creativity by making fun video clips and engage your audience. Many brands have already started creating reels for their business to reach new audiences. Showcase your products by preparing a reel video with the benefits of your product that helps to increase likes for your reel videos and creates brand trust for your product.
Since reels are placed in the navigation bar in the center of the Instagram screen, it lets users share your reels easily. You can also recreate your TikTok videos in reels to get more engagement. When your post gets more engagement, it is placed on the explore page.
Tip 7: Post Instagram Stories
Stories are one of the best parts of the Instagram marketing strategy. Many brands are using stories to attract new followers and enlarge their business. One-third of most-viewed stories are posted by businesses on Instagram. Here are some best ways you can use stories for your business:
- Tell a story: Use stories to tell about your business in an engaging way.
- Provide values: Give valuable information, providing a way to tag you in your followers’ posts.
- Add links: Include links to drive to your website in the swipe-up option.
- Use CTA: Provide action links that help your followers to perform certain actions.
If someone tags you in their stories, you can reshare the content to your story, and it will boost your Instagram story views. With the Instagram stories, you will find a way to get more engagement for your business.
Tip 8: Use Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is an effective way to build your business and grow your followers within a short span of time. Through influencer marketing, you can connect with new people and increase your brand reach. Choose the perfect influencer for your brand to improve your business.
You can make a list of the top influencers in your industry and see whether they have an engaged audience. If you are a small business, use micro-influencers for your brands because they have 2-3% higher engagement than macro-influencers. You can approach influencers to collaborate with your brand for a certain period of time until your brand reaches many new audiences.
Tip 9: Encourage UGC
User-generated content can be images, videos, text, and reviews created by people rather than brands and businesses. Many brands will often share UGC on other social media channels and websites.
Users create and share content about your brand with their audience. With This, you can share that content with your followers to boost engagement. UGC builds trust with your audience, and 80% of people say UGC makes them buy products.
Tip 10: Research On Your Competitor
Competitor analysis or competitor research is a strategy that helps you to know what methods your competitors are using to stay strong on the platform. It also helps you to learn the type of content they are creating and find the effective hashtags to reach higher and also their consistent post to grow your business.
When you perform competitor analysis on Instagram, you will be able to find the following things:
- Able to identify the gaps in the market
- Uncover new market trends
- Promote and sell your product more effectively
- Develop new products
- Occupy the gaps in the marketplace
After knowing all these things, start creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy with higher engagement.
Tip 11: Get Familiar With Hashtags
Hashtags are the most important key to increase your visibility and discoverability. If you want to show up your post in the Instagram search, you should use hashtags for your posts. Users can add 30 hashtags per post, but for better results, you can use up to 13 to 15 hashtags in a post.
To drive traffic to your website, choose the right hashtags that are:
- Relevant to your industry or product
- Similar to your competitor
- Use trending hashtags
These kinds of hashtags can help you to reach more audiences. You can find effective hashtags in the search bar. By searching any hashtags on the search bar, you will find the number of posts using the particular hashtags. Use the hashtags where it is used in a higher number of posts to make your product visible easily.
Tip 12: Promote Brands Using Instagram Ads
One of the effective ways to get your post in front of new people is to run Instagram ads. It helps you to define your target audience and increase your brand reach. You can advertise in the Instagram stories, feed, or explore.
Users can use existing posts or upload a new post to run ads. Instagram allows users to create video ads, carousel ads, photo ads, and story ads. You can use 600×600 px for square format ads and 600 x 315px for landscape ads and for vertical ads you can use 600 x 750px.
Tip 13: Run Instagram Contest
Hosting an Instagram contest is an interesting way to engage with your audience. Content and giveaways will boost engagement and get your post noticed by the Instagram algorithm. Here are some tips that you can include in your content.
- Create a custom hashtag for your post
- Make a theme for your content
- Run the contest at least for one week
- Collaborate with other influencers and companies
- Allow people to tag and comment to enter the contest
While running contests, make sure it is related to your business and industry.
Tip 14: Collaborate with Your Competitor Followers
If a user is following your competitor, they are very interested in following your business. Analyzing your competitor followers is the easiest way to get more followers to your account, improving your business.
Make a list of top competitors similar to your industry who are active on Instagram. Select one competitor and follow 50-100 of their followers. Simply following them will not help you enhance your business but also like and comment on their post. This helps the users to follow you back, and it boosts your followers and engagement.
Tip 15: Track and Analyze Your Performance
No matter how well you are on Instagram, it is essential to measure your metrics. The best way to improve your Instagram is to track your performance and learn the ways to improve your business and promote your brand.
Many Instagram analytical tools help you to measure your performance on Instagram. Thoughts insights you can see your best-performed post and create content similar to that at the right time to get more engagement.
Conclusion:
Today Instagram has turned into an online business platform. Many marketers are using Instagram to enhance their brand reach and improve their sales. If you are a brand trying to improve your business, use these 15 best ideas to get better results in 2021 and make your brand popular among new people.
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.