BUILD YOUR BRAND ON INSTAGRAM WITH SOME TESTED TRICKS

Instagram is a social platform that has attained a remarkable reach and flared tremendous growth. In fact, to be precise Instagram grew to over 400 million users this past year.Despite having a proliferating reach, many business owners are still overlooking its marketing potential. As a result, unfortunately they’re leaving high levels of engagement, brand awareness, and even profit on the table.

Here are some ways to use Instagram to build your business and brand:

Grow your Instagram following with strategic ties:

One of the biggest frustrations for most marketers delving into Instagram is that they don’t know how to build a following. After all, without a large number of followers, how can it possibly be an effective marketing channel?
There’s one tactic in particular that you can use to quickly grow your Instagram following to 10,000 in just a couple of weeks: partnering with other Instagram accounts.To start, create a list of popular Instagram accounts that reach your target audience. When you’ve found them, you can then partner with them for what they call “shout-outs,” which can be either paid or unpaid. Unpaid shout-outs are usually called “share for share.” You share one another content, and you both encourage your followers to follow the other account.

You get access to their audience, and they get access to yours.If you don’t have a budget for social media, you may want to skip over this portion, but paid shout-outs can be a great way to gain thousands of followers and gain them fast.With paid shout-outs, you’re aiming for accounts that have much higher numbers and a strong level of engagement (accounts where 2-3% of their followers “like” their content).

Build your email list by converting your followers into subscribers:

As you know, email marketing is crucial to a thriving business. Your email list is made up of your customers. These are your fans, the people who will purchase your products and services.If you’re familiar with Instagram’s limitations, you may be wondering how this is possible. After all, Instagram doesn’t allow links in photo descriptions.

That’s where a well-crafted bio comes into play.Many businesses find it difficult to get followers to click the links in their bios because the tendency is to overload bios with well, junk. Break that pattern by writing your bio like you’d write a Tweet: short, useful, and packed with intention.

There’s a very simple secret: Within your bio, use a very specific call-to-action with a memorable URL that takes users to a unique page on your website.Then convert those visitors by ensuring the page they land on is packed with value.Your photo caption leads to your bio, your bio leads to your link, your link leads to a huge offer of value.

Create compelling content that’s worthy of being shared by others:

An Instagram strategy that includes creating beautiful, easily digestible content that not only resonates with your audience but also drives them to share and interact with your brand is crucial, and can explode your growth.A great Instagram post can be boiled down to a formula, and requires two elements: beautiful imagery and engaging text.
For example, if we post an image with a popular quote, we’ll include our logo at the bottom of the image.This small step has not only built brand awareness to our Instagram followers, but it also spreads as our Instagram content is shared on other platforms.

After you’ve nailed your Instagram content, and you have systems in place that will generate followers and email subscribers, it’s important to ensure that your followers are engaging with you to maximize your reach.

Foster a community of highly engaged followers:

Engagement comes in many forms, including followers sharing your content, interacting with it some way, tagging their friends, and clicking on your calls-to-action.

Post When Your Followers Will Actually See Your Content:

Have you ever posted something to social media that you think will do really well, only to be met with crickets? Nobody liked post, nobody shared it with their friends, and the only comments you landed were from Spam bots.While it’s easy to assume you miscalculated the potential of the post, it could just be that you posted the update at the wrong time. After all, networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are simply feeds: the newer the content (with some exceptions), the higher up it will be in your followers’ feeds.

To avoid this happening again, develop a pipeline of automated updates to be posted when your followers are actually going to see them. Posting when the large portion of followers are online will ensure your content is working overtime for you.

Instagram is a social platform with tremendous potential for businesses in almost any industry. And if you use Instagram strategically, it can have a significant impact on your reach, brand awareness, and ultimately the revenue of your company.