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The Beginner’s Guide to Instagram Marketing

instagram marketing

With over 2.8 billion users worldwide, social media is the most effective way for companies – both big and small – to establish their brand awareness, build customer loyalty, and improve their marketing strategy.

Instagram alone boasts 700 million users and is perhaps the perfect platform for your online store or brand’s presence.

And since you’ve made up your mind about jumping onto the Insta ship, let’s take a deeper look into the proper ways of making Instagram work wonders for your ecommerce marketing.

Why Use Instagram?

As stated earlier, Instagram’s list of followers just crossed the 700 millionth mark earlier this year, which is a 75% growth over last year. It’s really catching fire and it’s imperative that you have presence there, but the key is to focus on user behavior instead of the numbers.

Research shows people respond better to images than just mere words. And since Instagram is all about pictures and images that millions of people share, the levels of engagement are off the charts, and that’s what most businesses and brands need.

Now let’s get down to business.

Make an Instagram Business Profile

Step 1: Download and Install the App

Download the Instagram app from the respective app store. For example, if you’re an Apple user, you can get the app from the App Store and if you’re an Android user, then you can get it from the Google Play Store. Once you’ve installed the app, go to the next step.

Step 2: Sign Up

You can login to your account by choosing the ‘Log in with Facebook’ option or do so via your phone or email. Your phone number serves as backup in case you forget your password, so make sure you create that backup.

Step 3: Activate Your Business Profile

Go to your account and access the settings by clicking on the gear icon from the top right corner.

Once there, scroll down to ‘ACCOUNT’ section and find the option that says ‘Switch to Business Profile,’ and tap on it.

Continue and login using your Facebook account.

Connect to your Facebook page and choose the business page you are the admin of.

If you don’t have that kind of page, then you can select “Don’t have a Facebook page for your business? Create one” button at the bottom.

Step 4: Edit Your Profile

Now you have to edit your profile picture, add a short piece of description about your business, a call to action, and a link to your business site.

To do all that, click on the “Edit Profile” button.

Now upload your logo by tapping your profile picture and picking one of the given options to add an image.

You can even change your images with Instagram’s in-built tools, especially if they are too small for your customers to view.

Ensure that your Instagram bio is short but sounds great and to the point. Be advised that it must grab attention in under 5 seconds to be effective.

Insert a call to action button in case your followers wish to interact with the brand afterwards.

Devise an Achievable Goal

Now you must capture the attention of your audience. You need to figure out whether you want to build a targeted following, to reach out to a new audience, or follow another plan.

If your plan is something basic like “My goal is to gain followers,” it won’t work.

Have a plan like “I want to target followers who are between ages 20-35 in the region of London who are avid gamers.” Now you’re set for something achievable.

Visually Appealing Content

You can tell a great story about your brand with photos and videos that showcase your products, services, and crew members.

The content you share has to be relevant with your brand. Keep in mind that the most important part of your content is that users ask for more.

For example, if you like a song, you want to hear more from the one who sang it. As long as you know how to handle a camera, you will be just fine. And using your camera to tell stories is a key factor in driving actual business results.

After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Use captions to talk about your brand and what it does. It has to be authentic to your brand.

If your brand is about iPhones then don’t post pictures of Android devices. Take pictures or make videos about customers using your stuff in real life and how it benefits them. It shows that you’re not selling a lie.

Follow the work of other well-known Instagram folks and see how they do it and learn from them as well.

Add a Trackable Link to Your Product

When you post a photo, reference the link to your users so they know where to go and click on it. You can use Google’s URL Shortener or Bitly to shorten your links to make them seem more approachable, and then add them to your Instagram profile description.

If you want to track click-throughs with Google Analytics, add your UTM parameters by using Google URL Builder.

Use Hashtags

Nobody has time to go through so much content. That is why you should use hashtags. You have to place them on your product images and videos and that way, your users will find your content easily.

An example of this could be #cats. If you use this tag, you will find a number of photos and videos with cats in them. By getting your photos and videos on the top of the search, you can get plenty of exposure.

The pictures you see at the top of Instagram are the ones with the most comments and likes. If you’re new to Instagram, it could be difficult to get your content at the top, but it’s not impossible, so be persistent.

Use top quality content and keep in touch with your users. There is plenty of advice online that can tell you how to use popular tags, but that alone won’t help you gain targeted followers. Using hashtags that target your content and audience can work.

Perhaps one of the best places to find tags that relate to your niche is Tagsforlikes.com, and about 3 to 5 hashtags are enough for brands.

Schedule Posts at Optimal Times

One of the mistakes that beginners tend to make is posting all the time. The problem is, your audience may be asleep or inactive a lot of times. Hence, you need to track the activity of your audience so you know when the best time to post is for it to be effective.

In this case, use tools such as Viraltag. It allows you to manage all of your content in one place and you can even edit your photos and prepare your captions for them to post later.

Best of all, its functions allow scheduled posts and publish them even when you’re asleep.

Latergramme is another great example of Instagram sharing. It lets you upload your images from your desktop and then schedule the posts on Instagram.

Interact With Your Audience

Social media is all about communicating with your audience. With Instagram, it is a must since users are always looking for information.

Mostly people who are younger than 30 or in their teens use Instagram. Checking every comment can be hard, but it is necessary to know what your users want.

If you want, you can use Iconosquare to monitor the comments. It displays the most recent comments and allows you to reply straight from your screen.

Embed Instagram feed on website

One of the powerful marketing strategy is to embed Instagram feed on websites. It can enhance user engagement and boost your brand’s online presence. By showcasing real-time and visually appealing content from your Instagram account directly on your website, you can captivate visitors and provide a dynamic browsing experience.

This strategy not only allows you to highlight your brand’s aesthetic and storytelling through user-generated content but also encourages website visitors to follow and interact with your Instagram profile.

The embedded feed serves as social proof, demonstrating the popularity and credibility of your brand. Implementing this strategy can effectively drive traffic, increase conversions, and foster a strong connection with your audience, ultimately leading to business growth.

Final Thoughts

If you went through the entire article and absorbed all the information given, you’re no longer a beginner in Instagram Marketing. You can use the tips above and your Instagram marketing ecommerce will grow exponentially and give your brand a much needed exposure. However, if you’d like to make any suggestions, give me a shout in the comments below and I’m all ears!

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