Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms where business-minded people have gathered to promote, market, and brand their products and services. Contrary to the general belief that Instagram marketing is a matter of taking photos, shooting videos, and posting on the platform, successful Instagram marketing strategies go through rigorous brainstorming, execution, and analysis. Here are five elements of a successful Instagram marketing strategy.
1. Effective Hashtag Strategy
Placing hashtags within your Instagram posts is one way of drawing attention to the products or services you’re marketing. You may post the most captivating content regarding your business. However, if you don’t get an audience to enjoy, interact with, and eventually purchase your products or services, you won’t get the most out of Instagram.
1 1. Effective Hashtag Strategy2 2. Engaging Content3 3. Collaborations4 4. Promotions5 5. Authenticity6 Conclusion
Hashtags work to label and categorize your content among the billions of posted content. Having grouped your content, the hashtags help Instagram’s algorithm suggest the content to Instagram users that may mostly be interested in your content. For example, if you own a restaurant in Germany, a hashtag such as #restaurant may drown in the millions of posts that use the same hashtag. If you, however, use an anchoring hashtag specific to your product, Instagram helps you target the audience you most likely gain from. A hashtag such as #germanfood is more targeted and strategic as one of the several hashtags for a post. Forming hashtags may be difficult as you’ll be pressured to stand out from the competition. Additionally, you may not always know the trending hashtags at the time. With this, you can consider using a hashtag generator tool to help you stay on top of the hashtag strategy on Instagram for the best possible marketing strategy.
2. Engaging Content
If your hashtag strategy is on point, but your content is left wanting, you won’t get a loyal audience that may convert into customers, meaning your conversion rate will be low. You want to be in a position where Instagram followers turn into website visitors. Here are some tips for creating engaging content.
Create Unique Content
Back to the restaurant example, if your competitors are mostly posting videos of completed dishes laid out on the table, you can uniquely market your dishes by posting the process of making the dishes in a quick how-to-cook-it caption video. You may generate interest from the audience regarding how the dishes are made instead of pretty photos of already-made food.
Use Quality Equipment
The equipment you use to market your products matters just as much as the product you’re marketing. A low-quality image or video won’t keep a potential customer engaged, regardless of the quality of the content. Invest in high-quality phones and cameras for your content creation.
Interact With Your Audience
The job mustn’t be considered done right after uploading the content. Post-upload strategy is equally important. When your audience comments on your content, consider responding in a manner that encourages further interaction. The more you interact with the audience, the more chances you get to encourage them to visit your website or shop.
3. Collaborations
A collaboration on Instagram is when you pair with another profile to market your products. It’s the process of getting together to make a video, host an Instagram live session, or form a discussion post together. Forming collaborations means coming together with a profile with a larger following than yours hoping that you also win followers from their profile. Direct competitors will rarely come together to form a collaboration, meaning you have to be strategic about who you collaborate with.
4. Promotions
As you market your products and services, consider offering promotions as a part of your marketing strategy. Promotions encourage followers to try out a product or service simply because it’s offered at a lower cost. Once they try your products and enjoy these, they may become repeat customers. However, you must be confident that your product is quality and that the customers will continue purchasing from you after the promotion. If that’s not the case, you risk simply making a loss from running promotions without recovering the costs tied to this strategy.
5. Authenticity
Instagram followers can tell when you’re simply on a mission to make a profit. When you create content that they deem as engaging and interactive, they feel appreciated from an entertainment point of view. Hardcore sales on Instagram may drown as people mostly log in to Instagram to be entertained. Try to form a rapport with your audience to the point where they enjoy interacting with your profile, not just for your products but for your authenticity and professional engagement.
Conclusion
An effective hashtag is one of the most important elements of a successful Instagram strategy. The hashtags have to accompany creative and engaging content. You can also form collaborations with more popular Instagram profiles while offering promotions and being authentic with your audience.
