Promoting your businesses on social media is prevalent, and one of the more popular platforms to do it on is Instagram. There are over 1 billion active users on Instagram monthly, and about half of that is on there daily. Your brand could reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers when you use social media platforms such as Instagram to promote your product or services. Of course, businesses in specific industries will do better using Instagram than others. Typically companies with attractive products or services will do better promoting on this platform, but any business can stand to gain by advertising on Instagram. Brand awareness is a benefit any company can achieve by using Instagram correctly.
What Is Instagram
If you need to familiarize yourself with Instagram and the platform, here’s a breakdown of how it works. Instagram was founded in October 2010, and it started off as a free online photo-sharing app where people could post photos and like other photos that people have shared. The platform soon grew in popularity, and in 2012 Instagram was bought out by Facebook.
Instagram allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. Users can add a caption to each of their posts and use hashtags and location-based geotags to index these posts and make them searchable by other users within the app. Each post by a user appears on their followers’ Instagram feeds and can also be viewed by the public when tagged using hashtags or geotags. Users can also make their profiles private, so only their followers can view what they posts. Instagram has also introduced a feature called Stories. Users can post short clips or images on their stories that will last up to 24 hours rather than post them on their feeds. This trendy feature can get more engagement than posting on your feed.
Promoting on Instagram
As we mentioned earlier, anyone can benefit from using Instagram to promote their business. In fact, if you have a free business account on Instagram rather than just a personal one, you can see insights and analytics of your audience and content. To have a business account, you must have a business Facebook account, which is also free. You can see how people engage with your content and even convert some of your followers into customers. 60% of people say they discover new products through the Instagram app.
The Instagram business offers many tools and features to help companies to promote their products, including connecting photos of products to your online store and offering paid advertisements to help you reach a bigger audience. With Instagram ads, you can promote the content on your profile to a targeting audience outside of the people who follow you already. You can direct your targeted audience to your profile or website to increase traffic. You can do an engagement ad for as little as $2 and see tremendous engagement and brand awareness on your profile. The more engagement your content gets, the better you’ll do on Instagram. While Instagram, much like Facebook, is becoming a monetized platform, there are still ways of getting more followers and engagement without paying for it.
Mastering Instagram
Growing your following on Instagram isn’t easy and doesn’t happen overnight, but it is possible. There are a handful of things you can consistently do to see your following grow, but you must be willing to put in the work for it. The main thing to remember is to use Instagram’s algorithm to your advantage.
One of the things you have to be willing to do is have engaging content. Yes, having amazing videos and images is great, but you need to be able to do more than just catch the eye of your audience. You want them to follow you and build a relationship with your company. This would require you to do a little research. Who is your audience, and what is their interest? Remember that Instagram is a social media platform, so there is probably a very young audience on there. I would say most people on Instagram are between the ages of eighteen to fifty live all over the world. That’s not to say that everyone on there fits that description. Whatever content you create, just be sure it appeals to your audience, or you won’t see much engagement.
You should also consider using influencers to promote your brand. Influencers have a reasonably large following and often produce content that others really like. They are the celebrities of the social media world, and some of them are actually celebrities. Reach out to influencers on Instagram who have an engaging audience and have the same audience or a similar one to the ones that want your products or services. For example, if I sold pet toys, I would reach out to an influencer who has a lot of pet content on their page or is a page entirely for animals (yes, they have those) and ask if they would be willing to collaborate. There are many influencers who will promote your business for free products or services, while others are looking for paid compensation. It just really depends on the influencer and what their terms are.
Another thing you’ll want to do is be as active as you can on your Instagram. That means engaging with people who engage with your content, responding to direct messages you receive, responding to comments, etc. You’ll want to post quality content at least once a day, or at least consistent enough for your audience. Remember that only about 10% of your followers will see your post organically. You’ll want to use a good amount of the features that Instagram offers, like going live on Instagram TV, posting your stories and using the different features on your stories, tagging people in photos, sharing your location, Instagram Reels and all of that great stuff! Be sure you also include hashtags in each of your post. Make sure the hashtags are relevant and not overused. You want to be doing everything you can on Instagram because that tells Instagram’s algorithm that you’re an active and popular profile.
This all sounds like a lot, and if you’re doing it on your own, it can be very time-consuming. Don’t worry, though. Bear Necessities Marketing is here to help. If you are interested in finding out more about social media tactics or need assistance marketing, contact us here, and we’d be glad to help!