If you’re looking for ways to improve your company’s social media marketing strategy, I hope you have considered Instagram. While it is still new and often overlooked by businesses, it is a great platform for increasing brand awareness, creating relationships, and ultimately driving traffic and sales. If your business isn’t already using it, my first tip is to stop what you’re doing and create an account.
Once you have established your presence on the network, here are some ways to improve your Instagram marketing:
Create a content calendar
Here at THAT, we create social content calendars at the beginning of every month for each client, and Instagram is no exception. Creating a content calendar helps you to plan in advance what you will be posting, and stay organized. It is also extremely helpful if you are managing multiple accounts, and will save you lots of time in the long run.
Post great photos
Your Instagram feed is only as good as your photographs, so make sure you’re posting ones that are interesting and high quality. Here are some tips for taking and posting engaging photos:
- Shoot square- this will save you time on cropping and ensures that everything will look good on Instagram’s screen.
- Experiment with filters- A recent study found that Mayfair, Rise, Valencia, Hefe, and Nashville are among the ones that receive the most engagement.
Utilize hashtags
Not only is hashtagging a great way for new prospects to find your photos, but it’s a great way to take advantage of trending hashtags. Instagram users can now use the Explore tab to find posts related to what’s trending, such as #TheBachelorette, #LoveWins, or FridayThe13th. If these hashtags are relevant to your brand, include them in a properly timed post to be discovered.
Also keep in mind that you can also hashtag and search by emoji! If there is one that’s relevant to your brand, that may also be worth testing out.
Partner with Instagram influencers
Instagram’s ad platform is currently only in its infancy stage, and open to a handful of select large brands. Until their platform opens to all brands and we can access it, my favorite way to get huge amounts of exposure is through influencer outreach. We do this by finding Instagram accounts that are relevant to my client’s brand, and have massive followings of users who would likely be interested in my client’s products. From there I reach out to these influencers, tell them a bit about my client’s brand, form a relationship, and ask for their sponsored post pricing. It’s not always a fit, but if it is, I often send them product, and from there they share a photo to their huge following.
This tactic is the cheapest CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of any ad platform right now, and it’s a great way to gain thousands of followers in your target demographic within a few hours.
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