Instagram Is a Growing Platform
Successful Instagram pages are based on inspiration, driven by photo and video content that captures the true essence of a brand. But there is actually an art to creating a page that consumers want to view. There is an enormous opportunity to grab attention (and engagement!) on the platform, as the users are 50 times more engaged in their feeds compared to Facebook users. And it’s not a platform that is going to go away.
Instagram is steadily growing and gaining more and more users every year, and has become a phenomenal channel for companies to market their brand. It’s an effective and affordable way to organically reach out to both existing and new customers. But there are some tricks to leveraging the platform to its fullest. In this blog, Hollywood Branded provides 9 tips to organically market your brand on Instagram to increase follower engagement.
How to Organically Spread Your Content
Beyond the content you post, it is important to keep an open and engaging conversation with your followers and make sure totake the time to answer their comments. A lot of successful brands on Instagram publish posts at least one time per day to regularly engage their followers. Another thing that you should think about while posting is to use hashtags. Studies show that if you use more than 11 hashtags on a post, it will be more interactive than posts with less hashtags. Hashtags on Instagram work the same was as keywords on a website, it helps users to find your profile and your content can be spread organically. It’s all about SEO!
Social media is no longer a “nice to have” part of a marketing plan. It has in fact become a “must have” tool in a brand’s marketing arsenal. It even helps the company be able to become established globally and manywell-known brands have millions of followersbuilt from this organic marketing practice. So let’s take a look at 9 ways you can up your Instagram marketing game!
9 Tips On How You Easily Can Market On Instagram Organically
1. Add A Link to Your Website.
Make sure that your Instagram profile clearly shows the link for your website. This is where you have the opportunity to open the door to your website where you can capture existing and potential customers and help send them on the purchasing pathway.
2. Partner with Influencers
Having an influencer being a part of your marketing plan is not only cost effective, but it also provides amazing results. Studies show that a post from an influencer gives 5.2 times more shopping feels for consumers compared with a banner campaign. You will need to partner with influencers who have some kind of connection to your brand and who your costumers and followers could possibly relate to, in order to keep the partnership authentic.
3. Take Advantage of The Hashtags
Adding the right hashtags will help you get your post and brand in front of your desired target group. If a potential customer searches for that hashtag they will see your post. Using hashtags on an Instagram post works the same way as using keywords for your website – both long tail and short. So go ahead and do a long hashtag on occasion if they make sense!
For this post Nike used hashtags that they know their followers and customers typical search for, and it helped them reach an incredible amount of followers – with almost 800k likes on this post. Of course, this goes back to that whole influencer thing mentioned above… Cristiano Rinaldo is a celebrity influencer for the brand, and his own brand causes Nike’s to be widely embraced.
4. Post At Least Once A Day
You need to be active on Instagram, and update frequently -- preferably every day. You can post photos of products, customers who uses your products and videos or photos of how your company looks behind the scenes, with some fun photos from the office that give a glimpse behind the scenes of your brand. Things that people might not normally see. Try to mix different topics so the followers feel that the page does not get boring, and you have a wider interest potential.
5. Use Instagram Stories
No longer ‘new’, Instagram Stories allow brands to really get in front of a lot of people. In your story post you can insert hashtags and even your location. And the best part? You can link!!! Joy oh joy you can link on Instagram!!!! That was a long time coming. Your stories can become incredibly powerful for your marketing purposes. You can theoretically insert an image or clip with a hashtag and/or location that becomes searchable to others using Instagram, so not only your followers but anyonecan see your story. You can then add a link to your web-shop or website to get traffic there. You can own the conversation and simply open the door to your company for others to step through. In other words, there is really tremendous potential to reach out to new customers with this feature!
6. Run A Contest
Having a contest is something that can increase the flow to your account. If you are organizing a contest, make sure that it has some kind of connection to your brand and that you broadcast the contest on your other social channels too. This way, you will lead traffic to your Instagram account and optimize the chances of attracting more competitors.
Before the launch of the movie Black Panther, Marvel created a contest to get followers and fans involved and engaged. It worked.
7. Use Live Video
Live streaming is a great way to reach out and connect with your followers and customers. In your live video you are able to directly interact with your followers and viewers since they can comment with questions and other thoughts they might have. With live videos, you get to be a little more casual, and talk about things that really speak to your customers. It’s ok to make mistakes, and it will help you create authentic and unique content for your brand.
8. Reply to Comments. Be Open for Feedback
It is really important to reply to comments in order to interact with your potential and current customers. Replying to visitors who leave comments should never be under estimated. It’s going to be where you hit gold for your brand. Maybe skip some of the crazy ones… which you will always have. Or come up with an easy turnkey answer for those tougher moments. By responding to comments, you will actually lead to getting more paying customers and even more committed followers. Using Instagram for customer service is a great idea because it's a way to create a more “living” page and give the brand a personality. Also, you may be able to prove to an unsatisfied customer that you are a good brand and make them rethink that nasty comment they left. And boy can they get nasty! Just smile and reply back.
9. Know Your Followers
Getting to know and study your followers is a really helpful way to grow your reach on Instagram. If you know what your followers want to see and what they like, you can adapt your posts and make them more suited for your target market.
Get More Attention... And Pay Less!
To find the right audience and customers, and to get your posts to reach more people doesn’t always mean you have to use paid media. And at the least, you should have a rock solid foundation for your Instagram before you start purchasing social media driven ads. These practical 9 steps are easy to implement in your daily use of Instagram, and show that even the small things you do can make a tremendous impact in growing your company’s following organically.
If you are looking for more information about marketing your brand using social media and influencers, check out these posts our team has written…
- Why Brands Can Benefit from Micro-Influencers
- 10 Ways to Create More Successful Instagram Posts
- 5 Ways to Use Your Instagram Stories to Promote Your Brand
- 5 Steps for Your Brand to Stand Out on Instagram
And Be Sure You Get Our Latest Report!!!
Hollywood Branded's Influencer Marketing & Brand Partnerships report is an in-depth report for brands and their agencies. This report is chock full of statistics, graphs, analytics, insights and over 300 bite sized direct influencer suggestions for brands to make campaigns run better. Get it now!!
