5 Ways to Utilize Instagram Marketing To Increase Your Online Presence
Nearly any business can benefit from having a strong, active presence on Instagram. What may have begun as a simple photo-sharing app for teenagers has morphed over the years into a social media platform used by over 1 billion people every month. User demographics vary widely, and many people even expect to see content from brands on the platform. In fact, 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business.
Instagram marketing can be a valuable piece of your marketing mix, but there are a few things you need to do to ensure you’re getting the most benefit from using the platform. First of all, if you’re using it for a business, create a business account. This will unlock many new features, like analytics and the ability to add easy-contact buttons to your bio. You’ll also want to prioritize putting your best foot forward all the time. It’s true that done is better than perfect, but your posts should be thoughtful and well-crafted rather than thrown together at the last minute.
5 Ways To Use Instagram Marketing For Stronger Online Presence
Those first couple of tips were just teasers. Now we’ll dive deeper into how you can use Instagram marketing, specifically, to grow your presence online.
1. Define Your Goals
As with any new marketing tool, you need to clearly define your goals. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with specific Instagram tools, but this is crucial so you can later evaluate how well Instagram worked for you. Are you looking to gain a certain amount of followers in your first two months? Or are you more focused on how many visitors you’ll get on your website who are referrals from Instagram? There’s no right or wrong answer here, but you need to take some time yourself or with your team to discuss your goals for Instagram and put some parameters around them. Then, as time goes on, you can revisit these goals and see if you need to change your strategy and tactics to better reach those goals in a timely manner.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
We said earlier that there are over 1 billion Instagram users. Who’s your specific audience? Who are you trying to target on Instagram? There are ways that you can engage with specific people to try to grow your following. You can also just start posting content and see who follows you, and then work on growing your following from there. But it’s always good to have a starting point, so it’s worth putting some time into identifying other accounts whose followers are similar to those you want to have. These accounts would be competitors, complementary brands, or even influencers in your industry.
3. Optimize Your Bio
Your bio is the first thing anyone will see when they visit your profile, so you want it to be a good representation of your brand. Make sure you explain who you are, who you serve, and what you do in your bio. But you’ll also want to optimize the rest of it. Did you know that the section for your name is actually searchable, and you can use SEO tactics to improve your searchability? You can also add contact buttons so your audience can easily get in touch with you. Pick a good quality photo for your profile picture, and develop your highlights strategy, so you share some of your best information there.
4. Create Engaging Content
You certainly need great content to be successful on Instagram. That’s not a secret. This means images that are scroll-stopping, captions that are enticing enough for people to click “read more” and compelling enough to inspire your audience to save, share or comment. There are many tools like Canva that you can use to create impressive graphics you can use in your posts. Then, turn to a scheduling platform so you can plan out your grid in advance and schedule your posts. This is a great way to keep up with a regular posting schedule that your followers can come to depend on.
5. Grow Your Instagram Follower Base
Growing your following is one of the most important parts of Instagram marketing because if you don’t have a following, you’re likely not going to generate many customers from Instagram. Growing your Instagram followers also helps you establish social proof and increase authority in your niche. However, growing your following can also take a lot of time. One of the best ways to do it is through engagement marketing, where you go and like posts from people you’d like to have following you. This is a very time-intensive process, but an Instagram growth service like Kicksta can automate that process and do it for you.
Why You Need A Strong Online Presence
We’ve been talking about how Instagram marketing can help you grow your online presence, but now we should focus on why having a strong online presence is important. In short, it can help you grow your business and increase revenue. Let’s take a closer look at how that can actually happen.
1. Get Discovered
Even if you already have a pretty large customer base, there are so many people out there who don’t know your business exists. They might be very willing and perfect customers, but they’ve never heard of you. Having an established Instagram account can help you get in front of new people who might convert into loyal customers.
2. 24/7 Marketing
You only have so many hours in a day to spend on marketing your business. Having an Instagram account is a way to continue marketing, even in the off-hours. People are scrolling on Instagram at all hours of the day. They might come across your post through a hashtag search, through a share from a friend, or even a boost from the algorithm. You could even schedule your posts to go live in the middle of the night or before work hours in the morning. Instagram can help you continuously market.
3. Be Seen As Legitimate
Believe it or not, many people turn to social media first to check out a brand when they hear about them for the first time. First, they’re looking just to see if they have a social media presence. Then, they’re looking to see how many followers the brand has and how much engagement their posts are getting. This is what really shows if a brand is popular on Instagram or not. By establishing and growing your Instagram presence, you’re making your brand look even more real.
4. Increase Conversions
This is the next level of social media marketing. Once you have followers who are engaging with your content, it’s time to focus on conversion rate. When you first join Instagram or any social media platform, you’re just looking to build up engagement on the app. This helps the algorithm know your content is valuable and that it’s worth promoting your page. But, after you’ve been growing your presence for a little while, you want to focus on conversions. By educating your audience well and intelligently promoting your products or services, you can begin to convert your Instagram audience to customers. Instagram even makes it easy with its shopping features so people can make purchases directly within the app.
5. Analyze Buyer Journey
Being active on Instagram can give you a look into the beginning of the buyer’s journey. As people begin to discover your brand and interact with you, you can see what kinds of content resonate with them and what they like the most. You also have the unique opportunity to engage in a one-on-one conversation with your audience on Instagram. Through direct messages and in the comment section, you can get feedback directly from your customers and followers, which is incredibly valuable.
Boost Your Social Presence
Clearly, having an online presence is important for any business in 2022. Instagram is a key player in that marketing mix, and most businesses should at least do significant research into the platform before they decide not to use it. Sure, it takes some work and effort to get it set up in the first place, but once you have systems established, it can become an important part of your marketing that makes a big impact on your business.
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