Instagram is a treasure trove for businesses, but you cannot get success in Instagram marketing without a few strategies. It is the engagement rate that measures your success. Is your Instagram engagement decreasing? Do you want to improve it? Here are some important tips that you need to act on –
1. Use Instagram Stories Stickers
They are wonderful tools to grow your engagement, increase brand recognition, generate sales, and increase traffic to your site. Instagram stickers include location stickers, hashtag stickers, music stickers, etc. How do these stickers help? Take the location sticker as an example. Are you planning to run a location-based event? If so, sharing an Instagram story with a location sticker a few days before the event will help you attract a larger audience to the event.
2. Post More Videos
A single image can never convey the in-depth meaning of a story. Videos offer more storytelling freedom than images. They are the best option to promote brand awareness and to generate sales. Are you worried that you have no idea on how to create videos? There are many tools for creating and editing videos. You can create amazing videos and keep your audience engaged easily. Explore all the Instagram video formats. Find more ideas on – http://www.videocreek.com/make/movie-maker.
3. Make Sure Your Instagram Bio Is Complete
A complete bio is one of the best ways to increase engagement. A good Instagram bio should
- Tell who you are and what your core business is
- Link your audience to your website
- Provide details on how to contact you
- Showcase your brand by matching the style to your site and products
- Have ‘call to action’ buttons to suit the needs of your business
4. Be Consistent in Posting Content
Are you in the habit of posting only one image or video once a month? It is definitely not going to help. If you want your audience to remember your brand, you have to post at least once every day. Never make the mistake of making too many posts in a single day. This will cause negative effects.
Making 10 to 11 posts per week is ideal. The time of posting is also important. Maintain a schedule. Find out when most of your followers are active on Instagram. This increases the chances of high engagement. The higher the engagement, the higher is the chance of success.
5. Create Instagram Ads that Stand Out
Do you know that there are more than two million advertisements on Instagram? Make sure yours stands out. Use an Instagram ads tutorial to guide you.
6. Use ‘Instagram Live’ Feature
The Instagram live feature allows you to engage the audience in real-time by broadcasting live video streams. When you go live, your profile gets highlighted with a button. This alerts followers that there is a live broadcast. You can stream live videos. You can also have a replay of the video on Instagram stories. Plus, you can react to the comments of the viewers and reply to their questions. This helps to develop a bond with the viewers and increases engagement.
7. Use the Right Hashtags Wisely
Instagram statistics show that posts with at least one hashtag get more engagement than posts with no hashtags. Conduct intensive research before choosing the right hashtags. Research your audience, your competitors, and relevant topics to come up with the best ones.
- Using a special day-based hashtag is a good idea. For example, Monday Blues, Motivational Monday, etc.
- Place hashtags in videos and images. Video editor tools help in placing hashtags in videos.
- Use special niche hashtags to narrow down the search of your potential customers.
- Using branded hashtags will increase brand awareness.
8. Encourage User–generated Content
Instagram is the principal platform for User Generated Content or UGC. Users create posts featuring your brand and share it with their viewers. They write reviews, share images, and create videos promoting your products and services. For example, if you own a clothing company, you can ask your customers to post photos of them wearing your clothes. Also, ask them to tag your account.
9. Make the Stories Funny and Interesting
Adding an element of fun to the stories helps in improving engagement. Why should you be always serious and sales-oriented? Posting too many promotional posts will create adverse effects. You can have fun at times. For example, you can introduce your employees in a funny way. Let your posts be casual at times.
10. Use Subtitles and Captions for Videos
With the option of muting videos on Instagram, most people view videos without sound. So, subtitles and catchy captions are very important. This increases the effectiveness of posts even if the videos are watched with sound off. Also, unique captions grab the attention of the users and make them see the video.
11. Add GIFs to Stories
Adding GIFs makes your stories entertaining and engaging. Instagram allows you to add GIFs to photos, videos and texts. They help make images come alive and make videos funny and interesting. Make sure you don’t go overboard with GIFs. This will annoy users.
12. Measure Performance
Analyzing your performance is important for all social media marketing. Instagram is no exception to this. Keeping tabs of the performance of your posts will help you to decide where and how to improve. You have to measure the engagement rate, follower growth, reach of your content, and hashtag performance. You also have to analyze the success of the stories, advertisements, and posts. There are many analytical tools available for this.
Conclusion
Instagram keeps on changing. More and more features are regularly added. Keep yourself updated on the changes and make sure you make use of them. Follow these tips to make your Instagram marketing a huge success!