Best Practices and Tips for Businesses Using Instagram for Marketing

Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular websites/apps used by tech-savvy teens and adults worldwide, however it still leaves many marketers and CEO’s scratching their heads when it comes to how to use Instagram for marketing.

First of all, every company and industry is different, and Instagram quite honestly can be challenging for some markets. Furthermore, it may not be appropriate for every company. It all depends on your target audience and goals.

Find Your Audience

If you want to use Instagram for marketing, it’s important first and foremost to find your audience and begin to follow these user accounts. Do not just come up with loose guidelines for following users however, as following too many people too quickly can be viewed as spammy.

As a tip, it’s best to find power users and follow these accounts to start. Try to really form an authentic relationship with these power users by introducing yourself and offering valuable information/content that relates to their lifestyle and interests. Since you have identified them as power users, most likely there is going to be an aspect of their life that fits well with your company content.

Give Love to Receive Love

Once you have established good relationships with your audience on Instagram, you need to start using these relationship to benefit your company goals. Essentially, you need to give love to receive love! For example, shout-out to your top influencers in your posts and they will be much more likely to return the favor and even share your posts with their audience.

It’s also important to stay up to date on best practices and avoid spam tactics like paying for followers or using spam hashtags like #followforfollow. Leaving ridiculously long comments is also not great and often results in your comment being removed, so keep your messages short and sweet on Instagram.

Get Creative

Many B2B companies struggle with using Instagram because their products or services are not image-friendly. In instances like this, you can brainstorm creative ways to utilize the photo-marketing platform. For example, create a graphic template where you can plug in interesting facts and statistics that relate to your market. Like we do on Instagram.

Hashtag Research

Next, do some research to choose the most relevant and highly-targeted hashtags that relate to your industry. Beyond that, look for hashtags that relate to each individual post in order to further tailor your Instagram marketing campaign.

Cross-Promote and Track

Once you have done your preliminary research done, grown your list of followers, and published your fabulous content on Instagram, it is vital that you cross-promote your posts on Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else that is appropriate. You’ve already spent your time and energy crafting your Instagram marketing campaign, you may as well leverage it across multiple platforms to get the most out of each post.

Finally, as with any digital marketing campaign, you need to track success using Google Analytics and other marketing analytics programs. Make note of specific posts that perform better than others and try to identify underlying themes that make them more popular so you can incorporate this knowledge into future campaigns.

Do you have any challenges, tips or stories about your experience with Instagram marketing? Feel free to share with us.

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