Although Instagram has 800 million monthly users, the competition on the social meda platform is less compared to other platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This makes it easier for you to promote your business if you are a small business owner. There are certain ways in which you can do that. For example, you need to search online to get real Instagram likes to make sure that your engagement rate is higher.
It requires some effort on your part if you want to promote without ads on Instagram. If you are wondering how to increase your marketing efforts, here are some pointers to help you out.
#1: Follow & Interact with Your Customers
Finding your target audience or your customers isn’t that hard on Instagram. Also, make it a point to follow your followers back and interact with them. Tag them in your posts, respond to their comments and like their photos when you see something interesting. This not only helps you to grow your profile, but also shows that it is a credible profile.
So, how do you find your customers on Instagram? Simple, all you need to do is check out your competitors and see their followers and follow them. For example, if you are a fitness coach, you can check out the audience and follower base of other fitness coaches, and follow them. Some of them would follow you back, while others would be intrigued by what you share and then start following you or sharing your posts.
#2: Create Visually Appealing Content
There’s no way around this. You need to create visually appealing content, which your followers are going to love and would want to share. Before you create content, you need to know what your target audience would like. Once again, this requires extensive research of your competitors’ accounts. So go ahead and stalk them, and see what they are posting, and which ones are having the highest rates of engagement. Once you have that knowledge, you can easily create content and entice your users.
In case you are confused or out of ideas, here are some types of posts that you can try, irrespective of your niche:
- Inspirational content
- Behind-the-scene videos
- Instructional videos like makeup tutorials or DIYs
- Products sneak peeks
- Employee pictures
- Blog post images
- Any special announcements or services you might launch
#3: Strategic Bio
You are a business, or might be an individual trying to build out a business. So, you need to be strategic while filling out your bio. Remember one thing, Instagram isn’t a professional platform like LinkedIn. So, you don’t need to go all out with that, and you wouldn’t have enough space to cram in all your information.
Go light and informal on your bio. However, if you are representing a company profile, make sure you don’t go too informal, as it might reflect badly on your business. You can use emojis for representing your thoughts, because that is one of the cool features Instagram offers you.
#4: Use Hashtags
Well, you need to be visible on the social media platforms that you are using. So, make sure that you use hashtags to describe what types of posts you are sharing. For example, if you have a fitness blog, you can post a motivational photo for weight loss and use the hashtags #weightloss, #stayfit, and #motivated, or something similar.
Make sure that you do not overdo it, as it would look clumsy. You can use tools like the Hashtagify to help you decide on the hashtags.
#4: Use High-Quality Photos
Instagram is a popular photo sharing app. You need to make sure that your photos are shareable, which means that they need to be of a high quality. Don’t worry, you don’t need to hire a professional to do your photo shoots. You can do them yourself, if you follow some basic rules.
Here are some pointers for you.
- Use natural lights to your advantage. Yes, you can use flash functionality, but natural lights have a different glow
- Don’t use your front-facing (or selfie) camera if you can help it. This is because it comes with very little modification options and your pictures would look bad
- Edit your photos using a photo editing app and not Instagram’s editing options. If you are not good with Photoshop, you can download any other easy-to-use apps
#5: Offer Discounts or Giveaways
People are more likely to share your posts if you offer a giveaway or some sort of discount. You can keep the rules simple like tagging three people in order to be qualified or sharing your post in order to be eligible. Also, make sure that you actually offer the discount or the giveaway to the winner, because not doing so will reflect badly on your profile, and it might get reported.
So, now that you know about the ways to increase engagement in your Instagram account, and improve your business, it is time to get started. If you make sure that your profile is coherent and cohesive, you can also run an ad campaign with Instagram to gather more followers. At the end of the day, the reach matters, and you can learn and grow your profile easily once you understand the basics.
