Many brands around the world have realized the potential that Instagram has as a marketing platform, which is why there are over 25 million businesses using Instagram each month. The thing that makes Instagram so attractive, aside from the large user base of over 1 billion people, and the many growth services, such as Growthoid, is that it doesn’t use traditional marketing methods that people have come to dislike and avoid.
Instagram is a great way to help a brand or small business, but there are rules to follow and certain practices to adhere to. If you would like to try Instagram for your brand, here is how it can help and what you should do.
Connect with customers
One of the biggest benefits of using Instagram as a brand is the ability to connect with customers. Before the days of social media, the only methods people had of communicating with a business was through email, visiting a website, or a phone call. In terms of forming a connection, that wasn’t really possible, and the only advertising was through television, radio, emails, magazines, or newspapers.
With Instagram, a real connection can be formed, and people can learn about brands as a personality, which means that you now have the opportunity to let people know who you are. This can be done through multiple ways, such as; photos of products, behind the scenes videos, replying to direct messages, having live video sessions, and replying to questions.
There are influencers
An aspect of Instagram that many brands take full advantage of is the presence of influencers the social media platform has. At the moment, there are around 500,000 influencers on Instagram, which dedicate themselves to a variety of niches, such as fashion, beauty, comedy, politics, and many more. Any brand can find a suitable influencer because even though you might have only seen big brands using the most expensive, they range from micro to mega.
For small brands that are just starting out, you will be happy to know that micro-influencers don’t charge all that much for their services, and you will be getting a lot of new followers by using their already large follower base. This is a quick way to get your follower count rising without actually doing any real marketing of your own.
Know your customers
Perhaps one of the greatest reasons why brands should, and already do use Instagram, is because it is a treasure trove of analytical data waiting to be discovered. This means that once you have established yourself and grown a sizable following, you will be able to use analytics to learn about who your audience is.
The more you know about your audience, the more you are able to shape your content to suit their needs. There are many metrics available, such as the general age of your audience, what kind of posts generate the most engagement when they are most active, how many follows you get after posting what.
This means that you could learn when to post to get the most engagement or to reach the most members of your audience, in order to get engaging followers. You could even start posting more content that receives the most engagement and stop posting content that doesn’t seem to be doing anything to grow your account.
Generate traffic
Aside from the benefits that gaining followers gives you, many brands are now using Instagram to not only market, but to direct traffic to their websites, online stores, to use apps, and more. If you have an online store that could use a few more visitors, Instagram is a great way to generate that traffic.
One of the most popular ways that brands use to generate traffic is by stating that there are discounts available, only on their online stores, and then provide a link to the site. Another method that is very popular is Instagram Ads, which are non-intrusive, and look like organic marketing.
An Instagram Ad looks just like a regular post, but it says sponsored in the corner, to let people know that it is an advertisement. Most brands tend to use videos for their ads, since videos seem to create the most engagement, and capture the attention of an audience more. Be sure to use a good call to action phrase when using one of the ads for the best results.
