Twelve ways to effectively promote your account on Instagram

It’s quite difficult to make a conquest of the audience. You must find the way to promote your brand, the way to reach as much people as you can. If you succeed, the reward won’t be long in coming. Herewith, it’s not necessary to be a PR specialist to become popular on Instagram, and here are 12 tips that will clearly help you on your way to success.

Why Instagram?

For marketers this is a must-have network. The audience of this social network is quite young. Along with sharing photos, commenting and liking, users are inclined to use Instagram as an online shop. However, marketing in this social media isn’t as traditional as that on Twitter and Facebook. Visually the application itself is not also alike all other networks. Anyway, videos and photos from brands always drive engagement and help business owners in their promotion.

More than 60% of users say that they prefer to buy something from companies they follow on Instagram and other social media. Herewith, research shows that exactly on Instagram people are most active in their interaction with brands, so this network is ideal to boost the engagement of your target audience.

Showcase the brand, not yourself

If you are going to promote any brand in social media, you should make a distinction between two types of accounts — business ones and personal ones. Never upload your personal photos on your brand’s account. Though it seems obvious, many users surprisingly ignore this rule. Think about your audience: people want to see your products, not you or your friends.

On another note, that doesn’t mean that your Instagram feed must consist of products only. You may post photos of people and even pictures from your everyday life, but with a focus on your brand, not your personality.

Your username should be simple and searchable

Your task is to let your customers find you quickly and easily. Don’t try to make the search harder using several profile names in all the networks. Try to make your username:

• simple and easy for spelling;
• relevant to your company and its values;
• same across all networks.

Never use numbers and any special symbols.

Don’t forget about bio and link

Like username, the bio of your brand page should be simple, short and must match your company. At the same time don’t forget to inform people what your company is and what it does. It is extremely important to include link in your brand’s bio, but don’t forget to shorten your link with one of special web-tools. The link may lead to your company’s website as it is or to any promotional pages. In such a way you will link your Instagram page and your website.

Always use hashtags

Hashtags are one of the main search tools on Instagram. If you want to make your brand visible, you shouldn’t ignore this instrument. It is useful to search from time to time the new hashtags in your business sphere. Hashtags don’t have to interrelate with your brand directly, but they nevertheless should be relevant. Choose some appropriate variants and use them in your promotional campaign to attract new followers and get extra reach.

Do you know that seven in ten hashtags on Instagram belong to certain brands? That is the reason why you should look for unique hashtags to make your brand more visible. Besides, combining common hashtags and branded ones, you will track engagement.

Finally, try to monitor your competitors and trace the hashtags they use. Even if you don’t want to compete on one or another hashtag, you still will be able to discover new ways to reach your customers.

Show your location to users

Always use geotagging to make your brand seen throughout the world. If your company has many locations, geotags will help you to promote your business in various regions. Due to geotags you will be able to track user-generated posts showcasing your products or your business at whole. Geotags will also help you to communicate with customers and show them your acknowledgement.

Geotags are always important, whether you are promoting cosmetics, taxi services or brick-and-mortar store. Thousands of customers will use your geotag in their posts. Such tags will give you fair opportunity to engage your audience.

Never use hard sells and concentrate on recognition

Take Instagram as an instrument of promotion helping to drive traffic. When you promote something on this social media, be careful, so that your page didn’t become a billboard full of advertisements. Try to mix up the feed and avoid the overabundance of hard-sell posts. Making them after all, avoid lost as well as overbearing messages.

If you are not a prominent brand with total recognition, be subtle with your promotion. Do not sell directly, engage people instead. Your Instagram photo must talk to people, inform them and arouse their interest. There is a variety of ways to sell without looking like an intrusive salesman. Be smart selling your products: don’t try to persuade your potential customer that he needs them, but awake his interest.

Prefer bright and blue colors

Here is a useful trick that you will appreciate while promoting your page on Instagram. Curulate, the marketing analysis platform, undertook a professional research. It showed that pictures with gradations of blue generate more likes as compared to orange and red ones. In addition, bright-colored pictures significantly increase engagement as opposed to dark photos. Of course, we don’t recommend to post blue photos only, but take the psychological aspect in account while filling your feed. Primarily the advice is relevant to those users whose posts usually receive between zero and ten likes.

Use other social media to promote your page on Instagram

Promoting your brand, don’t try to focus only on Instagram. To promote your products there efficiently you should create links to your Instagram feed on several social media — Facebook, Twitter, maybe LikedIn and so on. Though Instagram is the most effective tool of promotion, never put all the eggs into one basket.

Make your page different from all others

The attractive look of your page becomes your advantage. If you are going to show your brand in a favourable light, never post poor pictures. Create your Instagram space exactly for your target audience. If you amaze people, they will trust you, follow you and communicate with you. But don’t forget about your path at the meantime. Some companies use Instagram too freely and this isn’t good. Your posts should always resonate with the essence of your brand.

It’s all right to use popular ideas

Though unique post ideas are often great, it’s quite hard to find them, so it’s okay to try something popular. Trends on Instagram and other social media change constantly, but if you trim the sails to the wind, you won’t fail.

For instance, people now often use face filters when they post selfies. Or take Instagram Stories. This tool will help you to create fun and unusual content with popular stickers and effects. Thus you will showcase your brand personality and promote your business. It is necessary to keep an eye on social media trends because they will let you drive traffic and increase brand awareness without creating unique ideas.

Don’t forget to track your success

Otherwise, you won’t know whether you do everything correctly or you must change your marketing strategy. The instrument that will help you to analyze the effectiveness of your promotion is called “Instagram reporting”. Using it, you can easily evaluate the performance of your posts. Monitor your social media activity, and you will be aware about your ratings and your audience growth.

Use external resources — such as Zen-promo — to analyze and grow your social profile’s performance. Trying to promote your company blindly, you won’t understand which of your posts was really successful and which of them was a failure. Track all the key metrics and gradually you will learn how to make successful posts and attract new followers.

The popularity of Instagram is on the rise, so make a point of taking your slice of this pie and get in the game. Visual content is the most effective tool of promotion nowadays. Do all you can to make your Instagram page visible.