By now, digital marketers have understood how to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to do business and brand promotions, but have you ever explored Instagram effectively for this purpose? Instagram is identified as a fast-growing and flexible platform now, and many companies are keen on establishing a winning presence on this platform for better user engagement.
For the purpose of this article, we have interviewed some social media experts who shared some of the hottest 2017 Instagram tips, which we have listed out below.
Expert Instagram marketing tips
1. Get your photos right
By Gerard Fitzpatrick - SMM expert.
You should know that an Instagram feed is only as good as the photographs you use. So, while thinking of Instagram marketing, you should start with premium quality photos to enjoy the desired results. Some tips are:
- The best way to save time and compose an ideal photos for Instagram is to do click square photos. Most of the new-age digital cameras and even smartphones have this feature. Doing this will not only help you save time on cropping it later, but it will also make sure that the essential elements of the photos are not missed after cropping.
- There are many apps available to shoot Instagram photos like SmugMug for iPhone and Android with rule of third grids to follow.
2. Track traffic using customized link shortener
By Jim Herman – Social media trainer and marketer.
A crucial thing social media marketers should know is how effectively their Instagram account drives traffic and valuable leads to their website. Google Analytics can be used, but the primary deficiency of this tool is that it cannot accurately track the traffic while the users access your site from mobile Instagram accounts.
- To get a more accurate rate of clicks, business marketers can use the customized bit.ly link or a similar link by another shortener for URL of the Instagram bio.
- One should create a unique bit.ly link every time while creating new landing pages or campaigns to effectively track traffic.
3. Try cross promotions
By Jeanette Karl – Digital Market Analyst.
The latest trend in Instagram when it comes to personal of business networking is to share by tagging others or directly promoting other brands, organizations, services, and products.
- For example, in case of local bars which serve quality beers of different brewers in the region, both the parties can take advantage of Instagram marketing by tagging each other.
- Associate businesses like dealer-supplier, service providers-clients of any sort can support each other with tap takeovers.
As a result, one can enjoy a higher recognition among the target audience of various businesses, and in turn get increased traffic and improved results.
4. Strategic approach to Bio Link
By Tim Vandal - CEO.
Instagram is a lot of fun for personal use, but if you want to use it as a marketing tool effectively, you need to be critical and analytical about it. The top businesses which fully take advantage of Instagram such as Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Nike, etc. plan their posts strategically in advance.
- You can strategically plan for a notable presence on Instagram despite being a relatively smaller brand.
- You can effectively create your bio with a link to get connected to a good landing page through which you can collect prospective leads of Instagram followers, promote ecommerce portal, or gain subscribers to your blogs etc.
5. Get benefited from the trending hashtags
By Vladimir Rushnov - Member of Social Media Consortium.
Instagramers widely use the Explore feature on this platform to find relevant posts related to the updated and trending hashtags like #SolarEclipse, #LoveWins, etc.
- Check if you can find such trending tags, which are relevant to your brand, and include them in your posts to make them more visible.
- Instagram also introduced the feature to search by emoji. If you can think of ways of how these emojis can contribute to conveying your message, it can be effectively incorporated with Instagram promotions.
6. Get the Instagram into the marketing funnel
By Simon Rosendale – Sales Strategist.
Getting followed on Instagram is important for businesses, but you need to understand that this is only a single step in the overall marketing funnel. Your actual goal is to move the users deep into the funnel, for which you may have to explore ways to capture the user information/email, which you can ask for in many creative ways.
- Try to share an image with an integrated call to action for downloading an e-book or subscribing to a newsletter. Once you get the communication address, you can better engage with the users on a one-on-one basis to move to next level.
- To plan this effectively, you can create some landing pages which are custom tailored to be landed directly from your Instagram followers.
- From that level, engage with the email subscribers by delivering them valuable information and offers to help them move down in the funnel. Supplement this effort with blog posts and parallel social channels to keep your followers up to date with what you have to offer them.
7. Create a fine mix of photos and videos
By Sarah Marker – Copywriter cum Content Marketer.
The hottest marketing tip she shared is to mix your posts strategically by including attractive videos in addition to the photos.
- It is a proven fact that videos tend to generate three times more links than written posts and pictures. Videos can be more engaging to the fans and in turn drive in more traffic.
- We know that Instagram is specializing in the art of visual storytelling, and you can bring your stories to life with good videos.
You can have a look at the McDonald’s or Oreo videos on Instagram to get some insight into how stop motion videos are actually used.
Along with these top 7 tips from the experts, we also got a few other random tips to be tried out for Instagram marketing.
- Find relevant Instagram marketing tool that helps you in finding right hashtags, gives insights & tips to effectively manage profiles
- Leverage the effectiveness of sponsored ads and sponsored posts.
- Create share-worthy graphics to post.
- Create an editorial calendar and genuinely follow it.
- Try to partner with the top Instagram influencers.
Conclusion
No doubt that it is an effective move regarding social media marketing to give a boost to your business by being active on Instagram. This platform itself is always making a lot of improvements for individuals and companies to tap more benefits out of it. Additionally, there are tactics and hacks which you need to explore to enhance reach, engagement, and following.