Want to Learn How to Get the Most from Your Instagram Business Account in 2017?

Is your business one of the over 600 million accounts currently on Instagram? Are you part of the force that contributes to the 95 million photos and videos shared daily on Instagram? Are you one of the 48.8% of brands currently making their presence felt on the platform? By 2017 the number of brands on Instagram is expected to rise to 70.7%. This means that Instagram could very well overtake Twitter this year! Have you optimised your Instagram business account to get the most out of it for your brand? Here are 11 tips to speak Instagram fluently…

1. Use a Consistent Filter

Instagram is all about the power of the visual, so create a unique “look” for your brand. You want followers to be able to immediately recognise and identify your visual style. A WebDam social media report found that 60% of the top brands on Instagram always use the exact same filter for every one of their posts. Whether it’s Gingham, Lark or Juno – keep it consistent and apply to all of your images all of the time.

Image: Mashable

2. Strategically Use Hashtag “Keywords”

When you use hashtags, your posts get seen by more people, not just your followers but others who might be doing hashtag searches. When you also use a trending hashtag that relates to your industry, product or service – you widen your reach. Be sure to only use trending #’s that fit with your brand otherwise you could end up losing followers who feel duped. You can cleverly craft your content to align with the trending subject matter which can show your brand’s creativity. Ideally, you should try to also create hashtags that are genuinely unique so you are able to effectively track your content’s efficacy.

Remember the maxim: less is more. You don’t want a post that just looks like a long string of #’s. Keep it to 2-5 per post. Instagram posts that sport at least one hashtag average about 12.6% more engagement (Simply Measured Study). Keep up-to-date so that you’re consistently using popular hashtags. This means you need to stay on top of trends. These are actually quite traditional SEO techniques. You might not think that Instagram is a search engine but it most certainly has a robust search function. But on Instagram, you don’t have to worry about things like keyword density. You just need to be using the right hashtags at the right times for the right posts. You can use  WebSta to get a clearer idea about the most popular hashtags on Instagram and by location.

3. Use Instagram Live

This brand new feature is perfect for connecting with your target audience in real time. It’s so easy to use the Instagram Live Video within Instagram Stories. When you decide to go live with a product demo, interview, event etc. your followers will receive a notification so that they can join you live, right now! The video disappears as soon as you finish your broadcast. You have three awesome options to choose from including “Live” (gone when the broadcast ends), “Normal” (photo or video that disappears in 24 hours) or “Boomerang” (time-lapse video generated from a selection of photos).

Image: TechCrunch

4. Create Visual Based Competitions

We all love winning prizes. If you give away a great prize on Instagram, you’ll almost certainly see a surge in followers. Remember that this is a visually driven social media app so create contests that ask for visual submissions. Create a hashtag for your competition and get people to display their photos. Obviously, the best picture wins.

5. Use Instagram’s Advertising options

There are a range of options for paid adverts on Instagram – photo, video, carousel and stories. You can also use the insights option on the app to see how well your ads are doing. There are all the usual social media metrics –impressions, engagement and shares, insights, reach etc. to be able to gauge how well your campaign is faring on the platform.

Image: Icono Square

6. Be Active in your Community

Team up with a charity of your choice and create a campaign where you can bring awareness to their cause by donating profits, fundraising or engaging your employees in acts of kindness initiatives. You can share photo’s of your work with your chosen Nonprofit to encourage your audience’s participation.

7. Forge Friendly Partnerships

You can reach out to complementary companies (not your competition) to work together on Instagram to share each other’s posts.

8. Engage in Influencer Marketing

We’re talking about power users with big followings. These influencers (who can be celebrities or just brilliant bloggers) have built up trust with their followers over a period of time. When you partner with these prominent Instagram influencers, who operate in your product niche, they can bring dramatic exposure to your brand. Influencers dominate the native advertising space by spreading their recommendation of your brand to thousands of people in a very natural way.

Image: Later

9. Personalise Your Brand with the Stories Feature

This feature allows you to put a human face to your posts. We can see a “day in the life” story about how your business operates daily. Stories are a great way to bring your brand identity to life. It’s a great alternative to basic image posting.

Image: Mashable

10. Link Your Instagram Profile to Your Other Social Media Profiles

This just means that every time you post on Instagram it will automatically be posted on your other social profiles like Twitter and Facebook (and vice versa). This can help you to increase your traffic across all of your platforms with just one post.

11. Increase Your Exposure by Embedding Your Instagram Content in Your Website.

This is how you do it:

• Click on the specific post on your Instagram profile that you want to embed on your site.
• Click the ‘…’ symbol located on the bottom right corner and then choose ‘Embed’.
• The embed code will be revealed and you can then copy and paste it into your website’s HTML.

Image: Instagram

Instagram is all about creating visual stories around your brand. Keep posting relevant, eye-popping, creative content to get the best out of this social media app. And that’s how you crush it on Instagram!

As always, we’d love to hear from you so please drop us a line below or send us a message on Twitter (@thewebsitegroup ← Click to Tweet Us).