Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms right now. For example, massive brands like Target, Ikea, and Coca-Cola invest heavily in their Instagram presence to keep up with millennial trends.
21% of adults reported that they engaged with an advertiser on Instagram. This is significantly higher than engagement rates on other platforms. And with a whopping 20 million advertisers already creating content for it, Instagram easily overtakes every other social media agency.
Do you, too, want to enjoy the perks of e-commerce on social media? It’s time to take fresh, bold steps and transform your Instagram game.
Instagram has shown us that we can have fun and make money while sharing photos and videos. Your brand needs to stand out from the rest and make the online statement you want it to.
Here are ten fresh tips to help grow your Instagram brand.
- Establish Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is how you represent your brand to the public. It is how people see your business. It involves the distinct elements of your brand, such as color scheme, design, and logo. These are what consumers use to identify and distinguish a brand.
Your Instagram profile should represent your brand in every sense. It is from establishing your brand identity that you come up with the purpose of your brand. When you understand what your brand is, that’s when you’ll know who your target audience is and how to attract them.
For example, @innocent’s target market is the young and urban professional. Because of this, the brand comes across as simple, pure, and trustworthy. Their brand’s tone is straightforward yet joyful, radiating positivity across all of their communication media. To convey their messages, they will employ clear language and simple, natural imagery.
- Touch up Your Content Strategy
It is no news that content is king. Content is what will help you attract more followers, real Instagram likes, comments, and shares. If you want all of this, you must revamp your content strategy. Here is how:
- Create entertaining and high-value content: Make sure that your posts meet your audience with value. It should also be as engaging and entertaining as possible. After all, people go to Instagram to be entertained. Also, your photos and videos should be high-quality.
- Always feature your products/services: Most Instagram users come online to see photos and videos. They want to see what people are doing. Use this to your advantage and post images and videos of your products for your audience. It will easily influence your audience’s buying decision. @fentybeauty is one brand that visually feeds its audience with its products.
Image source: Instagram| @fentybeauty
- Create visual content that is brand-consistent: A Part of building your brand identity involves putting up visuals that tally with the aesthetics of your brand. Stick to a color scheme for uniformity, and have a cohesive theme that will attract followers. Use the same filters for your photos. Make sure that they are suitable for your brand color.
- Avoid crowding your images with text: We understand that texts play a role in giving out more information but be careful not to overdo it. Too much text, especially on product images, will give your post a clumsy look. Consequently, it’ll distract viewers from the product details and leave a wrong impression.
- Get a professional: You can top up your creativity by hiring a professional if your budget permits. A social media manager, a designer, or a photographer can help uplift your brand outlook. It will improve the quality of your content and pay off in the long run.
- Explore other Instagram content creation formats: Instagram stories, Instagram highlights, Reels, IGTV, and IG Live are channels you can use to post content. They are entertaining and interactive. The more channels you explore, the higher your chances of hitting jackpot.
- Use Instagram Shopping
130 million Instagram users click on shopping posts every month. This means the Instagram shopping feature is an incredible way to boost your sales.
With shoppable posts, Reels, and Instagram stories, you can use product tags, then link your posts to your product catalog.
Shoppable posts will encourage people to visit your page or website. It makes it easy for your customers to make purchases, especially with the Instagram check-out feature.
- Don’t Forget Hashtags
Hashtags can completely change your impressions and engagement on Instagram.
Like links, hashtags will lead those who click on them to a hashtag feed. The hashtag feed contains posts that have used a particular hashtag.
You must create hashtags that are specific to your brand, i.e., branded hashtags. They should be simple and easy to use.
For example, @prada is using a branded hashtag, #pradalinearossa, to promote its new sports line, Prada Linea Rossa.
Image source: Instagram| @prada
Tapping on the hashtag #pradalinearossa, will lead you to other posts where they have used that same hashtag. This is a great brand awareness strategy.
- Use Instagram Ads
Advertising has always been a brand essential. Instagram knows this and has long introduced Instagram Ads to cater to business owners. These ads are posts you pay for to advertise your products.
Instagram ads have the potential to reach more than 850 million people on the app. Different ads formats make advertisements more accessible. These ads forms include image ads, video ads, collection and shopping ads, Instagram stories ads, etc.
You should use the ads format that best suits your products/services. Ensure that the photos and videos you use for ads are enticing and high-quality.
- Consider Partnerships
Partnering with other creators and businesses will draw more eyes to your brand. It will give you access to an already engaged audience. There are many partnership ideas you can use. Examples include:
- Paid partnership with influencers: with over 90% of consumers engaging with influencers across social media, a partnership is definitely a good idea. You can sponsor a post or pay the influencer to create content about your products/services.
Image source: Instagram| @andieigengirl
- Instagram collabs: Collaborations just got easier with the Instagram collab feature. It lets you send a collaboration request to creators or brands you want to partner with. You get to share the engagements made from a collab post with the other collaborators.
- Other partnership ideas are Joint product releases, Affiliate marketing, product shoutouts, and Takeovers.
- Promote Your Instagram Everywhere
Most Instagrammers also use other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, etc. The beauty of this is that you can create more awareness for your business by promoting your Insta page on these other social media platforms.
Interestingly, Instagram can link with Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. This way, you’ll be able to share posts on those platforms easily.
Tip: use the same profile picture across your social media for easy identification.
- Interact With Your Audience
People want to associate with brands that communicate with their consumers. Interacting with your followers will help you build a loyal community. Make interactions by replying to comments and DMs, running giveaways, and reposting user content.
GIF from Giphy
- Be Consistent
It is not enough to put out great content. Take a step further and be consistent. To help with consistency, you can make posts and schedule them to air when you are unavailable. If you go MIA on your followers, they may not take you seriously.
- Measure Your Performance
If you have a business profile, then the Instagram insight feature should be your close companion. It will guide you in measuring the performance of your posts. You need to know how your posts are doing to see and change whatever strategy is not working for your brand.
Go and do better!
Taking your brand to the top may not be the easiest thing to do, but it is sure worth it. Your Instagram account will take high steps in the right direction if you practice these tips. So if you are lagging, go and do better!
About the Author
I read this blog and find it very useful for Instagram growth. If you have a strong social media influence then your brand will be more powerful. Social media is a community of almost 5 billion and alone Instagram has an audience of 1.2 billion.