Instagram has radically changed the ways consumers and brands communicate in the 21st century. Most customers today expect brands to speak visually, and that has popped a new challenge for companies to resort to revolutionary digital marketing practices. In fact, it creates an exciting platform for brands to extend and connect with their target customers seamlessly and inconspicuously.
It is no more a secret that your brand has to be active on Instagram. With over 500 million account holders, Instagram offers vast marketing opportunities with customers belonging to every part of the world. Are you mulling ways to enhance your Instagram marketing tactics? The obvious is to maximize your follower count consistently. Once online viewers get to know about your brand, they decide to follow you based on the value you offer them. Discussed below are seven smart and easy Instagram marketing guidelines to expand your brand reach for free!
1.Leverage the free Instagram tools
Much like Facebook, Instagram has now introduced business profiles.This feature is packed with a smart contact call-to-action that enables users to call, text or email the brand. Business profiles can also resort to analytics or Insights, as it is officially called, having access to engagement and impression data. So, users planning to use Instagram for business can switch their personal account to a business account and leverage these tools. As you develop an in-depth understanding of the ways your audience consumes your content, you get better at enhancing the engagement.
2.Communicate with the followers to up the number
People love it when their comments get a response! So, if an online user has commented on any one of your posts, take some time out to type in a quick, short, warm reply. A "Thank You" works fine in case of compliments. This one gesture can make a random, curious online visitor become a loyal brand promoter for you.
You should also integrate clever hacks to encourage your followers to start a conversation on your post. You can get this process started just by tagging three individuals whose views and opinions matter for your band's image. It will decrease the resistance level, as it is you who is engaging them to start a conversation. Chances are they would share their views happily, and this would fetch you further visibility when it comes to followers. Alternatively, you can also decide to buy Instagram followers and likes as many brands do by partnering with a concerned service provider.
3.Choose to connect with your customers creatively
Posting images that are creatively arranged is a smart way to get in touch with the followers. It works better than a conventional "sales" oriented approach. FedEx once made a fascinating post with a photo of a FedEx truck standing beside a street lamp placard that had the caption "Elvis Slept Here". People are aware that this brand ship packages. This post was curated in a way to enhance corporate branding and also to showcase the brand's delivery vehicles. As a post, this was an out of the box idea, thereby invoking curiosity and the fun element that would make most users love the post and follow the brand's Instagram account.
4.Refrain from overwhelming your customers
It is essential to stay active on Instagram, but at the same time, a brand should avert from spamming the timeline. An excess of posts might just overwhelm the followers, and they might decide to unfollow your Instagram account as your recurrent posts could seem like a publicity game having no value addition.
No brand till date has been able to arrive at a "perfect magical Instagram postcode." Trial and error is the best way to assess what works best for your brand. However, as a standard practice, you might want to share not more than 2 or 3 compelling posts regularly and check out the audience response. As you go ahead on your Instagram marketing roadmap, check if fewer posts work for you. This experimentation will help you arrive at the desired number. However, post frequency optimization is an ongoing task!
5.Bring Instagram users to the marketing funnel
For the majority of companies, procuring an Instagram follower base is crucial. However, it is just a tiny aspect of the entire marketing funnel. If you wish to get users down your marketing funnel, it is essential to have access to email addresses of the followers. The best way to get it is to ask for it.
Wondering how to go about it? Go ahead and post a picture content adding the call to action in your visual and caption, and ask online viewers to click on a link that you have in your bio for signing up for a newsletter or downloading an eBook, mp3 and the like. When followers do as guided, you have the chance to interact with them personally and drive the communication to the next stage.
6.Go square with your images
On Instagram, the photographs you share need to be impressive. That is a no-brainer, given that it is a photo-sharing social platform. Hence, ensuring that your images are of HD quality and are edited thoughtfully is the first step. Also, a neat way to have stunning images for this site is shooting square images. Most smartphones and digital cameras have this mode available. When you edit this picture, you do not have to waste time cropping it to fit the standard Instagram frame. Since most users find clicking pictures through Instagram restricted, usingCamera Awesome from SmugMug team is ideal. It is available for both Android and iPhone.
7.Using cross-promotion of posts
Instagram marketing reaches a new level with this tactic. It also helps users to attract new followers without much labor. All you have to do is merely post on all your social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and request your friends and followers to follow you on Instagram. It certainly brings in better brand visibility.
Instagram is already bringing unique and exciting changes in the ways marketers interact with their customers at large. The new age social media users are a learned mix, and they demand unconventional means of communication from brands they are interested in. Following these seven easy tips will help brands to market their business on Instagram efficiently without being labeled as dull.
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