5 Effective Branding and Marketing Tips for Instagram Success in 2019

Whether you’re running a brick-and-mortar business or looking to make your ecommerce a huge success, you need to work on your social media presence. These days, so many people are looking online first before making a decision about where to buy products and services. Even for something as simple as getting an iPhone fixed, potential customers are going to thoroughly study online reviews and check out your Facebook and Instagram pages to learn about what sales you might have going on. If you’re just starting a new business, then you definitely need to up your online presence: that’s where new customers are going to find you.

One of the most important ways to improve your online presence is by mastering Instagram. By using these following tips, you’ll get lots of followers, which means that you’ll eventually get sales by engaging with them.

1 – Post Great Content Consistently

Let’s say you have a great idea for what your Instagram’s going to look like. You’ve done your research; you know what your competitors are doing and what kind of content your ideal customers will enjoy and engage with. But that isn’t enough. Posting consistently is hugely important because that allows your followers to expect posts from you at certain times during the week. If you’re only posting when you’ve got a huge sale or just after you’ve started your business, you’re going to lose followers, which means losing potential sales.

According to research by Sprout Social, the best times to post on Instagram are Wednesday at 11 am and Friday at 10-11am, with the safest times to post being Tuesday through Friday, 10am-3pm. If it seems challenging to do this (especially the early mornings!) use a scheduling app to make your life a little easier.

2 – Use Geo-Targeting and Location-Based Ads

One of the easiest ways to boost engagement on Instagram is by geotagging anytime you post. If you’re someone who travels a lot–you’re a digital nomad or in a touring band–then geotag whenever you can. That will get local followers from wherever you’re currently posting, which helps cut through a lot of the work it takes to get their attention otherwise.

So how can a local business take advantage of Instagram targeting options? Think of something like this.

Most local services have something to offer, and are commonly purchased when a home owner or person is in need of something urgent. This can be anything from home services, home care, pest control, etc…

Take Moxie Services, for example, who wants to increase visibility for pest services in Chantilly. Since they already have an active following on Instagram, they can start targeting their followers (and non-followers) through the use of the Facebook Ads (Instagram) platform. Organic reach and followings are always great, but once you start putting some paid advertising dollars behind your campaigns, then you will start to see some real results.

Just like all options with Facebook Ads, the same can be done for Instagram as well. Moxie can then start targeting audiences within their designated town, city, zip code or other local radiuses. It would also prove useful to them to create a wide range of ad copies and split test what works best.

Considering that more than 40 billion photos have been shared on Instagram, this is a great way for yours to stand out among the crowd, while also making sure your ads are only being seen by potential customers in your area.

3 – Increase Your Follower Account Daily

Getting organic Instagram followers is all well and good, especially if you’ve already got some traction on Instagram. But if you’ve just started a new business or just don’t have many followers, using a service to buy Instagram followers can be very helpful. After all, once you’ve got enough of a following, other users will be interested in you because you’re already popular. 

However, the one thing to remember when buying followers on any social platform, is that they usually aren’t as active as ‘real and organic’ followers. That is why we often recommend using a tool like this one, which automates the engagement process and allows for a more natural flow of new subscribers and followers to your Instagram account.

With more than a billion users on Instagram, it’s not that hard to built a following once you have the right content and tools in place. Over 60 percent of users log into Instagram daily, so use that opportunity to use the right tools to get their attention!

4 – Mix Up Your Content with Images and Video

Instagram’s all about posting cool pictures, right? Wrong!

This is especially true with the rising popularity of features such as Instagram Stories, you should use video as much as you can. In addition to this feature, you should post simple videos or even GIFs to engage with your audience. Using live videos is also exciting because it gives your brand a kind of authenticity that’s necessary in today’s curated online world.

There’s a reason why there were 400 million daily active users of Instagram Stories as of September 17, 2018, and that’s because it’s a great way to engage with users.

5 – Make Sure Your Bio Looks Awesome

According to Verma Farms, “Your logo, including the colors and fonts you choose, all have an impact on how your brand is viewed and how recognizable it is. It only takes 10 seconds for a customer to form a first impression of a brand’s logo, so it’s important to do all you can to make your brand visually memorable.”

In the same way, your bio needs to stand out. So spruce up your profile photo (which, by the way, can be your logo, if that works for you), and create content in your bio that’s relatable and told in your voice. There are opportunities to play around with emojis and fonts, though check before doing this that it’s something your audience will be receptive to!

Take a look at any of the top accounts and influencers on Instagram and you will quickly find that many of them share the same basic traits — which are commonly a great looking bio photo, a short bio that delivers a message, content that is high-quality and looks great, and a nice mixture of video and image content. You will also find a custom url to their main website or a landing page, depending on the objections of the Instagram account user.

These are some of the best strategies you can use to have success on Instagram.

Whether you’re an aspiring Instagram influencer or working to make your business stand out online, these tips will get you the followers you need!

With mobile usage on the rise and Instagram continuing to reach more audiences and users daily, it’s no longer a question of if or when you should start using the social platform as a branding and marketing tool — but how.

Start implementing these tips and winning methods into your business today, and start seeing the ROI almost immediately.

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