Instagram is a viral social media platform with over 2.35 billion monthly active users. This is definitely a huge number with more engagement and revenue. If you are familiar with Instagram marketing you will definitely know where you stand.
This platform is quite easy to use and you can accomplish your goals with the right marketing that can help you achieve more. There are several strategies that you may use in order to increase your visibility but there are certain criteria or you may say best practices to avoid common mistakes.
Let's talk about some key points of best practices and what are the mistakes to avoid.
What is Instagram Marketing?
Instagram marketing refers to strategies and techniques brands use to promote their products or services on Instagram in order to drive engagement, increase followers, and ultimately boost sales. It involves creating and sharing high-quality content in the form of photos or videos along with relevant hashtags on Instagram to promote your brand or business.
Why Instagram Marketing is Important?
With 76% of Instagram users being Gen-Z, Instagram marketing is a great way to reach your target audience. It can be a very effective tool that is relatively low cost to increase sales, and profits, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website. There are the following benefits of using Instagram marketing:
Reach to Larger Audience: Instagram marketing is necessary as it has the potential to reach a larger and more targeted audience with successful marketing campaigns.
Build Relationships: You can also build relationships with your customers through direct feedback and interaction.
Promotion: Promoting your products and services through brands or helping you promote your business with successful advertising can make your budget cost-effective but highly beneficial in your favor.
Analytics and Insights: Instagram has a variety of analytics and insights tools that can assist you in tracking your progress and measuring the success of your marketing campaigns. Instagram insights can also be vital to knowing your users more efficiently and help you refine your strategies.
5 Do's of Instagram Marketing
In order to best utilize your Instagram business account and gain more followers, we've compiled the top five things you should do. Let's begin straight away.
Create a Strong Instagram Profile
Always remember Instagram is all about visuals make sure you will create an everlasting impact on users so that they may start following you. Create and upload high-quality photos or videos that define your brand identity. Make sure to use stories, feeds, carousels, reels, IGTV, and other features as well.
Furthermore, write your bio with a clear and concise introduction of your brand, including what you are and what you do. Make sure to add your website link under your brand name to make your bio stand out.
Post High-Quality Content on a Regular Basis
It is important to post engaging, high-quality, informative, humorous, and visually appealing content. You can also share user-generated content for the purpose of promotion and education. You can take ideas from your competitor's profile but should avoid stealing them.
Consistent posting is an important part of social media marketing. If you are too busy to follow your routine, you can schedule posts at the time when your users are most active.
Use relevant hashtags
Hashtags are the key to improving your visibility on any platform and helping you increase Instagram followers. Ensure that you are using relevant hashtags and avoid ones that are irrelevant and misleading. You can create your own brand-related hashtag as it will be easy for people to access your account.
Hashtags should be the voice of your brand. There is a limit of 30 hashtags but you can use 3-5 in order to avoid stuffing. When people search for a specific hashtag, your content will be visible in their feed, which can increase your post engagement.
Interact with Your Followers
Direct communication with your users can foster meaningful connections. People engage with your content through responses by liking, commenting, and sharing your posts on their walls or stories.
Replying to comments and DMs will promote positivity and people tend to learn new things about your brand. Your followers are your assets make sure to make them loyal. Running contests and giveaways can make your profile more visible to new users as well.
Analyze your Instagram insights
Your performance insights on Instagram inform you everything about your audience, including their daily active times, which post they interacted with the most, and how much time they spent on your profile. In addition, you also get an idea about the demographic of your Instagram followers.
You can use this data to refine your marketing campaign strategies to increase your visibility. People engage with content that they find meaningful and visually appealing, making Instagram likes increase instantly. Avoid posting content that does not resonate with your target audience on the platform.
5 Don'ts of Instagram Marketing
After having an idea of how Instagram marketing works, let's now understand what thing you should avoid while running your Instagram marketing campaign to get the best ROI:
Don't Post Without Caption
Despite the fact that Instagram is a visual platform captions are still significant. Instagram captions are indexed by search engines, consequently, when people use relevant keywords your content will most likely appear in search results. Make sure they are easy to read and comprehend.
Captions are the key tools for reaching your target audience, interacting with your followers, and achieving your marketing objectives. You can use them to describe your post, ask some questions, and highlight your product.
Ignore Negative Feedback
Instead of taking negative feedback personally, perceive it as an opportunity to improve the flaws in your marketing strategy. Professionally respond to the critics to get an understanding of their furious behavior.
This shows that you are committed to improving and providing a pleasant shopping experience to your potential customers.
Be Too Promotional
Avoid posting content that is too promotional. Advertise your content but do not make it look too salesy as it makes the prospect uncomfortable and unresponsive. With time, people feel disconnected and avoid visiting such pages.
Your posts should provide real value and useful information to your followers. Make sure it is closely related to your target audience, and don't forget to include a clear call to action.
Post Less Often
Less posting frequency on Instagram can easily cause your followers to forget you. Your relevance and timely posting do matter a lot. Keep yourself active when working on marketing strategies. Posting infrequently can make your engagement less.
If you are not sure how much content you should post, start with posting 3-5 times a week and track your performance to refine your strategy.
Ignoring Trends
If you want to stay in the market, make sure to follow the latest trends and challenges that are relevant to your business. Make use of every feature that Instagram has to offer you to test your strategies.
When you follow trends you are more likely to be visible on search results for those trends. People who are interested in such trends have a higher chance that they will view your posts. Take advantage of these trends and grow your business on Instagram.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Instagram Marketing
There are some mistakes that you should avoid in order to develop a successful Instagram marketing strategy:
Don't have clear goals: When you don't define your goals you are most likely to be shifted to the back-forth. Knowing what you want to achieve can help you better understand the market.
Not using relevant hashtags: In Instagram, if you don't use relevant hashtags, you are missing out on a lot of organic leads due to your posts being less visible to the users.
Not using Instagram stories: Instagram stories have now reached 996 million people worldwide. Make use of Insta stories for your competitive advantage i.e. share behind-the-scenes videos, highlight new products, and announce contests.
Not analyzing your Instagram insights: Ignoring Instagram insights can never help you refine your strategies based on your target audience.
Not interacting with the followers: if you are not interacting with users you are probably using the major fact of direct communication.
Final Thoughts
Leverage the power of Instagram marketing to build an audience in order to achieve your goals. By following these simple Instagram do's and don'ts, you can increase your brand's presence on Instagram. Creating more engaging and captivating Instagram experiences for users can lead to increased brand awareness, loyalty, and sales.
