Instagram was introduced to the world as a unique mobile and web app for social media that allowed users to share images and videos on October 6, 2010.
On that day, Instagram experienced an uptake of 25,000 users. Due to its popularity and growth, Facebook acquired Instagram and is home to billions of active users.
It is important to note that Instagram may have started out as a simple photo and video sharing platform for users, but today, it is being effectively and successfully used as a free and paid marketing platform.
Promoting your brand is more than aimlessly posting content every day and expecting your target audience to engage with your content. While it is crucial for you to consistently post content, there is more to it. One of your goals should involve creating a credible and trustworthy brand and presence.
The following information will help you promote your Instagram account like a pro.
1. Know Your Audience
Who are you marketing to on Instagram? The elements that will help you find your ideal audience include the following:
- Average age
- Location
- Profession
- Active Instagram Times
- Interests
- Challenges
Demographic data helps to create relevant content. This is how you attract relevant users and is helpful for prioritizing your audience demands so you can consistently engage them and help build relationships that will lead to loyal customers.
2. Create People-Centric Content
Never forget that even though you want to promote your brand/business, Instagram is still essentially about people sharing their experiences with people. Therefore, your posts should drive organic growth from interested users.
Your content should be interesting, focused on people and not just your business, high-quality, and unique. Some image and video ideas for people-centric content include showing them how to use the product by creating videos using a free online video editor, showing the product in interesting locations, taking selfies with the products.
3. Complete Your Profile
Being a visual social media platform, Instagram profiles need to have cover, profile, and other video and image related content. A profile void of such content is suspicious at best and fake at worst. Do not let your profile be incomplete.
Input for your profile should include:
- Relevant business/brand information
- Quality display image
- A bio that reflects your business and your personality
- Your website link in your bio
All these items should obviously be related to your brand/business and relevant to your audience.
4. Frequency of Your Content
You must create and post on your Instagram feed to attract your audience. You can use short videos, memes, customer photos (with permission, of course), workplace pictures, home office pictures, and other business or personal related videos or images.
Content creation includes:
- Experimenting to test and learn more about what your followers or target audience wants to see
- Consistently publishing relevant content
- Posting at least once per day
- Frequently using Instagram Stories
- Remembering that Instagram is substantially more dynamic nowadays and is constantly evolving for marketers
Post as much as you want, but do not go over the limits of the platform and risk looking spammy. You want to build credibility, so you do not want to overwhelm your audience or Instagrammers with too much content. You will learn as you go what works and what does not by monitoring your engagement analytics.
5. Share User-Generated Content
Sharing user-generated content on Instagram has been shown to be successful for promoting businesses/brands. For this, you will collect content from various related users from across the world, share it on your profile under your handle while giving them credit for the content.
Remember to make use of hashtags to highlight shares from other users. Content like marketing tips, digital marketing, news, and other content relevant to your niche or to marketing in a niche work quite well.
6. Collaborate with Other Brands
Partnering with other brands often results in expanding your audience since it is likely they will follow you since you are partnered with a credible brand.
Influencer marketing is another collaboration that works well for reaching out and/or expanding your audience. You will need a good budget to work with influencers, so this is best used after you have some experience under your belt.
If you are having trouble gaining followers, you can use a service such as Growthoid to give your Instagram account a boost without looking spammy. This is a reliable and safe service for promoting your Instagram presence.
Final Thoughts
It is worth mentioning that around 80 percent of Instagram users have a business account, making the competition on this platform a challenge. However, by using these strategies combined with your unique content, you can be successful at promoting your Instagram account.
