Instagram is one of the most underrated, underused social media platforms for marketers today. It no longer is just a filter tool to enhance or fix your pictures. Instead, it is one of the largest marketing tools today, and the right Instagram analytics tools can provide stats to better your social media strategies and content scheduling.
Most of the brand giants, such as Nike, Levi’s, and Starbucks, dominate the social media platforms with the use of engaging posts to draw huge counts of followers. You are probably aware of your favorite celebrity’s ruling on Instagram, but is this platform of any notable value to marketers?
The answer is YES.
Instagram holds perks for being the fourth most downloaded application in the US; slightly trailing behind Facebook’s app, Facebook Messenger, and the new entrant Snapchat. Secondly, competition on this platform is relatively low, attributable to Instagram’s limitation. Thus, your small business enterprise stands a chance to make its mark and even give the ‘big boys’ on this platform a run for their money.
Here are the 7 best Instagram hacks for marketers and small businesses:
1. Connect All Your Online Profiles
Are you an entrepreneur or marketer on Instagram? Well, you should not look at the social media platform, or any other for that case, as an isolated tool. You should work to merge and connect your Instagram profile to the rest of your social media profiles in an attempt to broaden your reach to potential followers or customers.
You probably have a strong and loyal following on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook – just to mention a few. So, why not merge all of your online profiles? Did you know that you can connect all of these online platforms to your Instagram account? Doing so puts your loyal Instagram followers in a position to follow you on your other linked social media profiles.
When setting up your profile(s), be keen to point out all the necessary details constituting your business bio; your industry, a compelling short description, and of course your website or contact information.
2. Analyze
Just as it is with every other facet of your business, securing and upholding a loyal customer base necessitates the need for you to assess, adapt, and make improvements. On Instagram, it should not be any different!
Make it an endeavor to proactively go out of your way to find out as much as you possibly can about your followers. There are better ways to assess your marketing efforts on Instagram.
Once you set up your business Instagram account, there are a number of Instagram analytics tools at your disposal through your Instagram app. Instagram Insights is one of the analytics tool you can access. This analytics tool equips you with basic statistics to help you evaluate your Instagram marketing efforts. Instagram Insights helps you track:
Top Posts: You are able to view which of your posts receive the most engagement and impressions from your followers. These stats help you to choose posts which will most likely resonate with your target audience.
Followers: You are in a position to have a look at data on your followers’ gender, locations, age range, as well as the exact time they are online.
Promotions: If you make the choice to endorse your content or post on Instagram, you are able to view stats on your campaign effectiveness under this section.
3. Engage
Amongst the benefits of social media, the most vital is the unbridled chance to quickly and effectively communicate with your loyal or potential customers. Well, guess what? It is not any different with Instagram!
Suppose you post something on Instagram, what should be your next move? Make a point to continually monitor your post to be timely aware of any comments coming in. On the downside, you can only use Instagram on your mobile phone. Therefore, ensure that you set your mobile phone to receive Instagram notifications.
That way, you are in a position to rapidly and immediately respond to comments or questions on your videos or images. You not only get to give an answer fast, but once a follower deems you responsive and approachable you get to build up some brand loyalty.
4. Use Hashtags In All Your Posts
Understand that the Instagram search command works through making use of hashtags and NOT keywords as most other search engines. In which case, if you use keywords without hashtags to post, individuals or potential customers searching on Instagram for what it is you are actually posting will not be in a position to find you.
Again, this deserves emphasis – in comparison to Twitter, where the search command permits the optional search of hashtags, Instagram primarily uses hashtags to conducts searches.
Therefore, make a point to hashtag the main words in your image’s caption or video description to better the chance of your target audience finding you using those keywords. In fact, according to Maxwell Woolf, who analyzed over 120,000 photos on Instagram, you should include up to 30 hashtags to be in a position to triple the number of likes.
Additionally, it is a great idea to hashtag your brand or company name. This way, if individuals end up searching up that term on Instagram, all of your posts will pop up.
5. Use Video Illustrations
Ever wonder why Facebook is pushing videos every other day? Have a look around! It is a total game-changer. People are more willing to just watch a video, to engage with a particular brand, than they are to make a comment on an image or to click on a link.
Perhaps, Facebook is pushing videos because the company owns Instagram. When users scroll down past your video post, on their feed, the video automatically starts to play with the option to turn down the video’s volume; this sways the user to stop and watch the video – which is an inarguable reaction with a handsome number of Instagrammers.
So, this only means that you can captivate your target audience through posting a relevant video. Ensure that you make a video that is interesting enough in communicating your message in an attempt to secure followers who can later turn to be loyal customers.
6. Get Out of Your Box
Don’t just talk about yourself! The biggest mistake that you, as an entrepreneur or marketer, can make on these social media platforms is to exclusively dwell on talk about yourself. Don’t let every post, comment, or engagement circle around you and your message.
This is not the best of strategies. Why? Not everyone is present on social media to be marketed. Most people are on these platforms to be social and in the process they may nurture the need to find good content. Even though yours may be great, most of these people on social media are suspicious of brands or companies exhibiting self-interest.
For you to successfully engage your target audience, nurture a habit to share other people’s content. In fact, this is a great way for small business startups or entrepreneurs to build up audiences when they are starting out. You can engage your perfect audience through sharing popular posts in a similar niche.
7. Create Ads
Another thing that will hold you back as a marketer or small business owner is reluctance to spend a lot of time on social media platforms and being fervently against spending your money on them. Understandably, the plan to use ads on social media platforms can spark worries of hefty price lists that are just impractical for most businesses. However, this is not necessarily the case.
Social media ads can be quite affordable; especially because you are in a position to set your budget. If you already make use of Facebook ads, you already have the option to let your ad run on Instagram. Nonetheless, because every social media platform is different, it is an even better idea to come up with custom Instagram ads.
These Instagram hacks are vital supplements to easily turn your small business active on the social media platforms. Do you have an Instagram hack of your own?
Please take a moment to share your best Instagram hack tips for marketers in the comments section below.
