Social media marketing is one of the most important aspects of your business these days and Instagram has truly become one of the main vehicles for promoting your products and services. Having an online presence on Instagram is imperative these days, however if you don’t have a following you might as well stop right there.
Building up a following on Instagram can be a difficult thing, and sometimes it’s tempting to buy into the services that offer you followers. What does this mean? Well, you can find online companies that offer up followers on a monthly basis, but here’s the thing… when you buy followers, that’s all you are buying. How does this benefit you? Well, it really doesn’t. Sure, when someone visits your company’s Instagram account it will show how many followers you have but that’s it, and it doesn’t really help your marketing efforts.
Creating social media content is imperative and when used properly this marketing tactic can be extremely beneficial for your business. The goal of social media marketing is not to have a certain number of followers (albeit this used to be the case). These days, what you require is organic activity from your Instagram account. You want people (followers) to interact by liking and sharing your posts. The more activity your account has, the more it will show up in feeds. This is exactly what you don’t get when you purchase followers – mainly because the followers you’re purchasing are bots.
Now that you know my stance on buying followers, you’re probably wondering how to start building out a following and creating content for your Instagram account. Here are few tips:
Prep
Once you have created your business Instagram account, your best bet it to curate a set of posts that you’re going to use for a couple weeks or even a month. By planning ahead of time, you’ll be guaranteeing activity on your Instagram account – people want to see an activity, Instagram algorithms want to see activity. The more you post, the more you’ll show up in news feeds! While preparing your posts, keep in mind what you’re trying to convey, keep it simple, aesthetically pleasing, professional and fun. Don’t forget, you’re not just preparing graphics or photos – you’ll want to prepare your description for each photo and this includes #hashtags. Hashtags on your posts are incredibly important, here’s a great article on them: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-hashtags
Post
Now that you’ve created a pool of posts plan how often you want to post them, I would suggest scheduling 2 posts per week based on the pool that you have. This gives you ample time in between to post fun things that you’re doing allowing you to build content that is more personable to your followers. If you’re in a shop, post about what you’re doing, if you’re in an office, snap a picture of something cool in the atmosphere, add a catchy description, load up your hashtags and have fun with it! Remember activity is key, and followers like relatable content.
Stories
Instagram Stories have really taken flight over the past couple years and they are great ways to share snippets of your company, whether they are actual videos, images of promotions, things that you’re excited for… posting Instagram Stories are key as real-time marketing tactics. If you’re having a sale or about to launch a special promotion, do it via a live story where you can very well reach your target audience in real-time and convince them to act.
Followers
As I mentioned earlier, building an organic following takes time, but it really does benefit you in the end. Share your account with your family and friends, and just like the good old days, word of mouth will help you boost your following. Encourage your followers to share your content and tag you in posts as well – I do this quite often myself, if I buy a product or get great service from a company and I have them on social media, I’ll be sure to share with my friends and family by tagging them in a post or a story!
Now that you have your plan in place make sure that you have your Instagram profile link on all other marketing material, let people know how to find you by sharing you Instagram name and handle on your website!
While we’re on the subject, feel free to follow REM Web Solutions on Instagram, we post often enough to keep you informed on what’s going on with our team, new blog posts and featured clients.
