Marketing Tips to Help Grow Your Brand on Instagram
If your business isn’t on Instagram these days, you’d better have a good reason. If you sell any sort of products or services, if you have stores, or if you want people to recognize your brand, it’s time to get a business account.
Where to Start
- Make sure you have created an Instagram "Business Account"
- Fill out your profile information and include your website link.
- Think about what types of content you want to share (create a list or excel sheet)
- Try creating categories of content (so you can get a better idea of what you want to share regularly)
- Think about the Visual Aspects (how do you want your feed page to look)
- Stay consistent with your branding
- Consistently post updates. Sharing on Instagram regularly helps get more eyeballs on your feed
Use Relevant Hashtags in Your Posts
At least 70% of Instagram posts don't get seen. Use hashtags in all your posts to get seen!
Create a Hashtag list (30 on each post max)
- Some people say 5-6 hashtags are best some say 10-11 (Instagram allows 30 Hashtags per post)
- Take 30 minutes to find 30 tags (look at competitors and audience for ideas)
- Use a mix of tags that meet different audiences, it doesn’t always need to be in the millions to get views (it is a balance)
- Make sure your hashtags match each post (create categories of Hashtags you'd like to use)
Utilize Instagram Stories
To Get Started:
Try doing 1 - 2 stories a week to get a feel for it and get some analytics. Once you have an idea of what people like to see you can start creating more stories based on those analytics.
Videos on the stories can be up 3 minutes long but people seem to respond better to the shorter videos that are approximately 30 seconds long. Try keeping your videos 15-30 seconds longs to start.
Engage your audience in these videos and stories by asking them to DM to learn more or get more information on your product or service. This way you can send them links to your products which equal more engagement opportunities overall.
Here are a few story ideas:
- Share behind the scenes
- Do videos with Q&As
- Announce sales, blog posts, webinars or new products/services
- Do trivia or quizzes using the question sticker
- Utilize polls with the poll sticker - this is great if you are planning content!
- Share user generated content
How to Reach New People Through Stories
- Use the #Hashtag options
- Use the #location option
- Use the polls option
- Add a call to actions like DM for 10% off
Check your story analytics to see which stories are more engaging and on which days of the week.
Engage with other Accounts
- Follow hashtags so you can engage within your feed
- Search through your hashtags on daily basis. Like 20-30 posts and comment on at least 10 posts each day. Repeat with different hashtags as necessary.
- Always respond with a like and respond back to comments on your posts
Challenge yourself to find 1 new account every week and engage with their content! Every time you engage with others it may attract them back to you and your profile.
If you don't have time or the resources to crop each of your photos for Instagram try shooting all your photos in Square mode!
