10 Tips to Manage Your Business Like a Pro on Instagram

 

Instagram is primarily a visual medium for sharing memories and moments in pictures and short videos with friends and followers.

However, these days it is currently regarded for doing more than just that. It is fast becoming a business and branding tool for as many who can get a hang of it.

The Facebook-acquired app now boasts over 300 million monthly active users, so it would be great to put it to good use for business just as much as for personal purposes.

Here are a number of tips to put into use:

Set up personal and business accounts

Let there be a distinction between your individual account and a business one. Using one and the same account may not work if you have personal photos you want to upload.

Your business as a brand must have a clear consistent voice with all posts. This also goes for comedians whose humorous persona have become their brands.

Regular posting time

It may be counter-productive to not have a regular time with which you produce content for your followers. Having a regular schedule for posting keeps you organized, and accountable to a large extent.

Be focused

It’s cool to have a specific area that you will become to be known for. Trying to be a jack of all trades will not earn you a loyal following. If you are going to combine topics, then they should most probably be under the same category of interests like football and basketball. If you have a wide range of interests, you might want to create multiple accounts for them.

Hashtag Hashtag Hashtag

Hashtags are not only fun to use, they also serve a purpose, which is to let searchers interested in your type of content easily find it when they key in the hashtag with the search term or keyword. Using too many hashtags, however, is a huge turn-off to many.

A rule of thumb has suggested seven hashtags as the maximum number one should use. That’s left for debate. Just let your instincts guide you with the number of hashtags.

You could also build a brand around a particular hashtag and let people know you for it. Just make sure it fits into your brand objectives.

It goes down in the DM

Well, not that kind of going down. But, heck, whatever works for you.

Do not take for granted the engagement you get from your audience. When you can, deliberately read their comments and respond accordingly to them.

This makes you more human and puts a face to the brand, which creates a loyal following, and potential customers of your business. With DMs you get to build one-on-one relationships with your most engaging followers. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Make your Instagram bio catchy and friendly

As simple and personable as possible is what should describe your bio. You could also draw in more people with a human display picture as against a business logo, not to undermine the importance of a brand logo.

Use tracking codes on your links

When you have a link you want to share that would lead back to your website, create a URL builder and generate a tracking code to help measure the number of clicks that link gets, which would help inform your decision better.

If you are going to use a URL shortener, be sure to let your followers know the content of where you are directing them to because the shortened link doesn’t give a clue sometimes.

Have a dedicated landing page for Instagram

Asides creating landing pages that direct to your website, you could also optimize a dedicated landing page for your social media account like Instagram. Sponsored ads from a Facebook or right on Instagram can do the trick. The key is to make sure the potential visitors are going to meet what they expect on the page.

Move up with video

With video, you usually can’t go wrong. A mix of humour, a friendly presentation and of course armed knowledge of your topic will score you many views, leads and eventual customers. Video gives your brand a relatable dimension and allows the audience to get a more personal experience of behind-the-scenes moments of your business.

Analytics

Instagram analytics helps you have an overall insight into how your audience is interacting with your content. This helps you of course to make well-thought-out decisions going forward. Try out Iconosquare.

Bonus tips: Be AUTHENTIC, NEVER EVER buy followers or verifications; Take advantage of Instagram Live and Instagram Stories as much as you can.

Credit: Pulse

7 Crucial Instagram Tips for Marketers

 

According to Social Media Examiner’s annual report, in 2018 some 69 percent of marketers planned to increase their investment on Instagram and 74 percent planned to learn more about how to best use the social network.

Driving this spike in interest is a quickly growing audience and considerable popularity with younger consumers. Instagram now has more than 800 million active users, with 71 percent of US adults ages 18–24 and 72 percent of US teens ages 13–17 on the platform.

Though most marketers understand the power of the platform, actually establishing a successful presence remains a challenge. Many marketers are still unsure about which types of content to post, when to engage, how best to reach audiences and what the social network’s full range of features include.

To help, here are seven steps that every brand should grab to achieve Instagram success:

1. Optimize your business profile.

Your Instagram efforts should begin with your profile. It’s both a key to unlocking important backend platform features, as well as an essential tool for encouraging consumers to engage.

Before doing anything else on the social network, ensure that you’ve got a business account, not just a regular one (watch this video to see how). Business profiles give organizations a set of tools—advertising options, analytics insights and additional contact information fields (call now, shop now, email and directions) that aren’t available to standard users.

Once you have a business profile, develop it. Because Instagram is so visual and light on text, its profiles do much more heavy lifting compared with other social networks. This is a valuable chance to tell your brand story in your bio, engage with a good avatar and include a link to an external webpage.

2. Focus on high-quality, beautiful visuals.

What do younger consumers want to see from brands on Instagram? To find out, parent company Facebook polled 11,000 people, ages 13–24, from around the world.

The survey uncovered a clear preference: people want high-quality, beautiful posts.

As the researchers said in the report:

Instagrammers appreciate aesthetic quality in visual content and will often make the effort to transform the banal into a thing of beauty. Brands seeking to engage teens and young adults will want to offer an organic experience by aiming for quality, too. Images and video will ideally be beautiful, thoughtfully composed and artfully presented.

Keep in mind that your images and videos don’t have to be perfect from the start: Instagram has a range of powerful tools available—including filters and collages—that can help turn content pieces into things of beauty.

3. Share a mix of photos, videos and stories. 

Should your brand be posting photos or videos to Instagram?

The answer is both. An analysis by NewsWhip found that average engagement on photo posts increased by 46 percent last year and the average engagement on video posts increased by 53 percent. The researchers also found that photos tend to get more likes and videos tend to get more comments.

Also, don’t forget about Stories. The vanishing content type that Instagram copied from Snapchat has been a smashing success, and more than 300 million people are now daily active users.

4. Experiment with posting times.

What are the best days and times to post content to Instagram?

Often the research is contradictory and confusing. For example, a report from Sprout Social states: “The best time to post on Instagram is Wednesday at 3 p.m., Thursday at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 to 4 p.m., and Friday at 5 a.m.”

What’s a marketer to make of this odd mix?

The first takeaway is that general rules aren’t very useful. Each brand has a unique audience with unique behaviors and it’s only through trial and error that you’ll find the best schedule for your specific content.

The second takeaway is that the most effective slots are often unexpected. While people do tend to use the platform more on certain days and times, these periods are also when competition is greatest. By experimenting with when you post, you may find opportunities for higher engagement that you didn’t know existed.

5. Tap into the networks of other users. 

It’s impossible to talk about Instagram marketing without talking about influencers—and with good reason. The number of sponsored posts has more than doubled on the platform since 2016 and the Instagram influencer market is expected to reach $2.3 billion next year.

What’s powering this incredible growth? Fundamentally, it’s being driven by the fact that brands recognize that the best way to reach larger, and/or targeted, audiences on Instagram is to engage followers beyond their own.

While influencer marketing has its challenges, it’s a highly effective approach on Instagram when executed well. Also, marketers should keep in mind that it’s only a part of a wider range of tactics that engage the networks of other users. For example, creative hashtag campaigns have similar effects in terms of extending reach.

6. Integrate e-commerce directly into posts.

One of the powerful and relatively new features that’s sometimes missed by marketers is theShopping on Instagram offering. Once enabled, this lets you create “shopping posts” that allow for the tagging of up to up to five products with details and pricing.

You can also add a “shop now” button to your profile that will bring people directly to your external digital storefront. This lowers the barrier between consumers engaging with your posts and purchasing products.

7. Use Instagram’s sophisticated ad platform.

Finally, don’t forget that organic posts are only part of what makes Instagram such a powerful marketing tool.

The platform has a wide range of different ad formats—including photo ads, video ads, Carousel ads and Stories ads—that enable brand managers to creatively and effectively engage audiences. All of these options are powered by Facebook’s impressive Ads Manager tool, which gives advertisers precise targeting options, useful performance insights, and robust campaign management capabilities.

Michael Del Gigante is the founder of MDG Advertising. A version of this post originally appeared onthe MDG Advertising blog.

Source: PRDaily