Promoting your online business can be as simple as using Instagram for your marketing efforts. Here are five of the top tested ways to achieve the best results:
1. Create Content With Your Audience In Mind
Instagram offers a form of visual advertising that’s perfect for complementing your Twitter and Facebook posts. You need to put careful consideration into creating photos and graphics that visually attract visitors and makes them want to share. It’s a good idea to research what your competitors are doing right to help you gain a better perspective.
Mediocre images appeal to no one, and unfortunately, that’s what most photos are without the proper editing. Instagram has a fantastic filtering technology that will allow you to optimize your images and make them click-worthy for users. Here is a great piece of content on using trends well on Instagram for Agency 2
2. Be Smart About Your Only Link Placement
Unlike other forms of social media, Instagram doesn’t allow the insertion of hyperlinks in the photo or comments sections. However, if used wisely, your bio allows for one link of up to 150 characters maximum. This is the space that smart business owners use in order to either promote their business websites or their latest marketing efforts.
As a word of caution, don’t paste links into your images as users prefer links that they can easily click. Plus, it doesn’t look professional! However, if you choose a paid advertising option available on Instagram, you can use links in other ways.
3. Use Minimal Text Descriptions
The fortunate thing about using Instagram as a marketing platform is that you don’t have character limitations like you do with Twitter. However, professionals would advise you to cut the clutter and keep your text minimal. A picture is worth a thousand words, and that’s the adage you should employ here! You’ll do plenty of content writing on Twitter and Facebook, which is more than enough.
Captions can make or break your pictures, which is why they should be interesting while being succinct and straightforward. By creating awesome titles, you can increase engagement. If you’re planning on writing longer posts, keep your most important bits of info on top.
4. Use Engagement Tactics Wisely
Try out different hashtags and see which ones get the best response. If you’re stuck in a rut, check out bloggers and others in your niche to see what types of hashtags they have good luck with.
Get more people to follow you on Instagram by sending out a message to your existing clients or supporters, and placing Instagram buttons in smart locations across your website. Don’t forget to follow others that you admire and accept any follow requests that you may receive.
5. Analyze Your Results Regularly
Instagram trends and policies seem to change with whirlwind speeds, which is why staying on top of everything is important! Know of all of the recent changes and updates that may affect your campaign. Change can be a good thing as new marketing tactics emerge, and you can smartly implement them for your own business.
Just like you would use Google Analytics for your website, Instagram also offers a tracking tool. This tool can help you analyze your performance to see where your strongest and weakest points lie. Areas you should consider are post frequencies, success rates of hashtags, your top action words, best captions, and your call-to-action conversion rates from different campaigns.