Instagram is a great way for brands to connect with their audiences and grow their business. Its algorithm helps you find the right audience for your content and is constantly evolving to make your strategy more effective.
The first step to Instagram marketing is establishing your brand’s visual identity on the platform. This includes picking a color palette, developing a design, and selecting images that represent your company’s values and brand voice.
Creating a visual identity on Instagram will help your posts stand out and be more memorable for your followers. It will also make it easier for them to identify the photos you post as belonging to your brand.
Once you’ve crafted your aesthetic, start to develop a strategy for releasing content. You can do this by creating a calendar, outlining the types of photos you want to share (professional photos, candid shots, videos, and memes), the hashtags you’ll use, and the captions that go with them.
You can also use third-party apps to track your analytics, including followers and engagement over time, optimum post times based on previous posts, and performance against selected competitors. These tools are a great way to learn from the best Instagram accounts and stay on top of trends and new strategies.
Hashtags are a great way to increase your post’s visibility. However, it’s important to use different hashtags for each post so you can reach different types of audiences. Using too many hashtags may be considered spam by the Instagram algorithm. To avoid this, try to limit your hashtag usage to a maximum of 30 per post.
User-generated content is a powerful Instagram marketing strategy that saves you money and allows your audience to share their own stories about your brand. In fact, this strategy has been shown to increase engagement, boost conversion rates, and improve cost-per-click metrics and click-through rates for paid ads on Instagram.
The coffeehouse chain Starbucks employs user-generated content in half of its posts, and it’s been shown to generate up to 28% more engagement than standard posts. Other companies like Etsy use this method to curate collections and create product catalogs that tell their story on the platform.
If you’re a small company with little or no budget for Instagram, user-generated content can be an excellent way to build your brand and reach a larger audience. Just make sure to include tags that describe your products or services and encourage your customers to tag you in their images.
IGTV is the place to go for mobile users who love video content on Instagram. It’s a great platform for sharing short, on-the-go videos that can be up to 15 minutes long.
It’s also a great place to showcase your brand’s unique culture and community, as well as the people behind it. For example, shoe company Allbirds regularly features animal-themed posts on their Instagram account.
Hashtags for current events and seasonal holidays are another great way to promote your products on the platform. These hashtags are likely to be searched by the people who are looking for content related to those topics.