Engage and grow with your social media audience.
Instagram is a versatile platform used by many businesses to help improve their online presence and engage with their audience. But are you making the most out of all of Instagram’s tools and features? Not only does Instagram have incredible marketing tools on its own, but there are also platforms to help step up your social media marketing to an extra level.
With a ‘Professional Instagram Account’ you can:
- Learn about your followers – get insights and see how your posts are performing
- Reach more people – create promotions on Instagram to help reach more people and build your audience
- Receive more contacts – adding contact buttons to your profile makes it easier for people to het in touch with you
The basics of a professional account are tools which most are aware of, but how can you use these tools to improve your online presence and build your Instagram audience even more, and how can the other features of Instagram benefit you?
Posts
The most obvious tool on Instagram is the posting feature. You can select a post, add a filter, add a caption, and share it to your followers. But there are more ways to make the most of this feature:
- Canva – a creator tools that will allow you to create specific sized content using templates. Instagram is known for its distinct square posts, and this may cut off some of your content. With Canva you can create content using a blank Instagram post template and view a range of elements or upload your own phots, add text and even animations before saving or posting directly to Instagram from Canva.
- Hashtags – like SEO for your Instagram. Users can search specifically for hashtags, and posts using these will appear in the search results (much like a website using keywords). You can research keywords and hashtags associated with your business and be sure to add these hashtags to your future posts and make them more discoverable to users. Be sure to limit yourself to twenty hashtags, going over this will actually damage your discoverability. Do not use hashtags which are not relevant to your business or the post as you will not attract a relevant audience.
- Planoly – if you have trouble finding time to sit and post on Instagram every day, you can use Planoly – a free content planner which will automatically post your content for you. Using tools such as Planoly or similar, allows you to plan your content in advance, add captions and hashtags and even tag other Instagram users and then schedule your post for ‘auto-posting’. Just set a time and a date and Planoly will do the rest for you and as a result you can focus on other elements of your job.
Insights
- If you know how to use insights correctly then you are on your way to success. But if you just use insights to see how many views you got on your last post, then you can do so much more.
- See how many likes, comments, shares, and saves you got on your post as well as the accounts reached, content interactions, profile activity and reach. These figures can help you understand what was successful about your post by comparing to other posts. If you have a really successful post and then a post which did not have the same reactions, notice anything you did different. You can even conduct a form of A/B testing, test which elements of a post you think are successful against other elements.
- Account insights – accounts reach, accounts engaged, and number of total followers can be viewed here. You can compare new insights to old insights and see how your account has grown over a set period of time. You can use insights view the overall success of your account as well as specific information such as your top performing post and follower growth.
- Set goals – insights are an essential part of setting goals, if you do not know the facts about your account you will not be able to set goals. For example, if you set a goal to increase your followers by 5% in the next 4 weeks, you monitor this goal using insights.
Shop
Instagram shop is a great way to sell your items directly through the platform and highlight some of your best products, but it can also be used to promote sales, products and generally market your merchandise. ‘Shop’ can be a paid promotion of its own and users can purchase products straight from the ad. To learn more about how to start selling on Instagram Shop, click the link:
https://business.instagram.com/blog/introducing-shops-on-instagram?locale=en_GB
Reels, Live, and Videos
Video content is one of the best ways to improve engagement and reach with organic content alone. Instagram users prefer watching video content to still images. Video content can t=come in the form of a reel, live stream or with video posts.
- Reels can be up to sixty seconds long and have their own dedicated Instagram section where users can scroll through reels, or they can appear via the explore page or on a home page.
- Live streams allow users to stream live content right from their Instagram page. Users can invite others to join in with the live stream or even send notifications out to followers about going live. Live is a brilliant way to engage users in latest content and involve them as part of your brand.
- Videos can be posted on your story or on the main grid of your profile and are a fresh way of adding engaging content to your profile.
Use Instagram tools to optimise your social media marketing and go beyond the idea of just follows and likes and make your business shine above the rest.
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