Instagram is a world full of opportunities. From content creators to businesses, everyone who has been consistent on Instagram, has made progress. Instagram marketing has become crucial lately as the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to transform digitally, and it is the easiest way to accomplish a successful business. Anyone who has a vision and a mission to grow can hack their growth by following some simple tips on Instagram Marketing.
Let us look at what the ten best Instagram Marketing tips for 2021 look like:
1. Optimizing your Profile: The primary thing to do when you start an Instagram profile is to set an objective for it. Your profile could be a business profile where you can market your brand, or it could be a personal blog where you create content by yourself. This helps your audiences find you and enables you to make use of the features that Instagram has to offer you.
You also need to optimize your bio. The bio is meant to give a brief description of your profile. You can tell something unique to your audiences to lay out a foundation for your brand and communicate your value proposition. Therefore, you can see some free hashtag generator tools here.
You can also use Instagram highlights to boost your reach and engagement. When your audiences navigate your profile, the Instagram highlights provide them with a sneak peek of what you have to offer. You must make wise use of this feature.
When you start a business account, you need to set your goals. This will help you in moving towards the objective without any hindrance. For instance, if you want to direct more traffic towards your website through Instagram, you must mention your website in the bio.
If you want to sell your products on Instagram, you should sign up with Instagram business and enable product tagging.
2. Hashtag it: Hashtags are a great way to increase traffic and engagement on posts. A lot of people use relevant hashtags in their posts to increase engagement and get noticed. What is interesting is that you can even use hashtags in your bio to get even better traffic.
This helps you get noticed when somebody searches for a relevant keyword. If you make content around food, you can use hashtags like these- #food, #foodie, #foodart and so on.
3. Engaging via captions: When you are marketing your business on Instagram, you can’t just post pictures with random captions and a few hashtags. It is imperative to incorporate some elements of copywriting (at least) when you are writing the captions.
Here are a few tips to write the perfect caption for your post:
Attracting, not interrupting: You are not looking to create the loudest post that interrupts your audiences while they are scrolling through their feed. You are looking to attract them and make them stay.
Engagement: In the words of Mary Smith – “Content is King but engagement is queen, and the lady rules the house.” Your post could be all contrasting colours or beautiful food pictures, but if the caption does not connect the picture with what you have felt about (as a person or a brand), then the audiences might not engage.
Asking a question: The best way to see a bump in engagement is by asking a question in the caption. This makes the audiences engage by answering in the comments. It is really useful for retaining a good relationship with your audience.
4. Image SEO: Anyone who has been involved with Digital Marketing knows what SEO is. Websites usually optimize their content in a way that it ranks on the first page of the search engine results page. Image SEO is similar. On Instagram, you can optimize your image by following simple ways so that your content is found as somebody searches for it.
- Alt-Text: Alt text is the alternative text. It is used to describe the picture to somebody who is visually disabled. Adding alternative text helps the content or posts to get found on Instagram. You can go to Advanced Settings and add alt text to your pictures.
- Location Tags: Location Tags are really helpful in helping your content get found. When you click on a location on Instagram, you can see all the publicly available content with the same location tags. If you are a business that works around tourism, this will help you substantially.
- Hashtags: Hashtags must be used wisely as they are instrumental in increasing the organic reach. There is a limit of 30 hashtags for a post. You can add hashtags in the comments too. You must ensure that you are not spamming the hashtags or using irrelevant hashtags as it is a black hat SEO practice, which is not considered ethical.
5. Tell a ‘Story’: Instagram Stories are a great feature for any business. You can keep your audiences updated through this feature. It enables you to post 30-second stories in video, gif or picture format. They have a validity of 24 hours. However, you can fixate these stories in the introductory part of your Instagram profile by adding them to the highlights.
6. Get real with Reels: Reels are the most incredible way to see growth on Instagram. You can make reels for up to 30 seconds and experience an exponential increase in your reach. Reels are short-form content that audiences can consume regularly and stay updated. Reels can help you experience virality if you are consistent with them.
7. Stream Live: Live Streaming is an excellent way of building connections with your audience. While you live stream, you can answer questions about your products and connect with the audiences in real-time. This will help you convert more prospects through your Instagram.
8. Repurposing your content: You can post content in the form of pictures, reels, videos under 1 minute or videos longer than a minute on Instagram. Repurposing content essentially means using the same piece of content and resizing it into different formats to suit the preferences of diverse audiences.
For instance, when you stream live, you can expect only a certain percentage of your audience to be viewing it. You post the live stream as an IG TV video. This is a video longer than a minute which is why it is in IG TV format. You can share the most exciting parts by cutting them short into 30-second clips and posting them as reels.
You can also post some stills from the video to Instagram stories so that you update your audiences. In this way, one piece of content can be repurposed to fit into the diverse attention spans of your audiences.
9. Aesthetics for the win: Your Instagram profile is the window the entire world peeks into. Make sure you make it aesthetically pleasing. A pop of colours can help you revive your feed. A lot of people try various themes and colour schemes on their profiles.
Spotify primarily uses popping colours that are usually seen on the Spotify app. Brands like Burger King and McDonald’s use red, white, and yellow on their Instagram posts that are the main colours of their logos. Netflix uses a lot of red and black while Amazon Prime uses blue in their posts.
10. Instagram Insights: Instagram is an incredible platform especially because it offers so many insights on your branding and marketing journey. The Instagram Analytics offers information regarding the following things:
- Demographics of the audiences (age, gender, location, etc)
- What time is the most successful time for posting in a day?
- What are the most successful days for posting in the week?
- The number of people who saw your posts i.e Impressions;
- The number of people who engaged with your posts i.e Engagement;
- Numbers of shares and reposts; and so on.
You must make use of these insights to grow and strengthen your brand image. The Instagram analytics offer great insights into the algorithm of Instagram for brands to market effectively.
Conclusion
The article has discussed some of the most essential tips that you must be aware of while you start your marketing journey on Instagram. In a short span, you will analyse what works and it will help you develop a style for your business. “Master the topic, the message, and the delivery”- when you communicate with your audience, you understand what your audience likes to see and how they are willing to see it.
Comprehending your audience and your business is the preliminary step to brand building. After this, you can embark on a journey of getting to know your audiences more as they understand your business better. This will help you in brand building and creating a long-term relationship with your audiences. Glossier, Etsy, Shein, Recess, Teva, Haus and Madewell are some brands that grew majorly because of Instagram marketing
Author Name:- Harikrishna Kundariya
Biography:- Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.
