But with a myriad of Instagram accounts today, how can you make your brand’s Instagram marketing stand out?
Let us look at what you can do and what you should avoid when using Instagram.
Nail a theme
One of the first few key things you need to do is to nail down the theme of your account.
Are you hoping to appeal to sports enthusiasts or foodies? This will help narrow the scope of your Instagram account and prevent you from posting unnecessary, unrelated and unpopular pictures that will not help with your marketing.
For instance, if you are trying to connect to foodies, you can “romanticise” the idea of food by talking about having breakfast in bed or talk about the favourite foods people enjoy having on their anniversaries. Moreover, using a similar colour filter for your photos will also help build consistency for your account and help people identify your photos to your brand.
(Photo: Instagram/@mikekus) This Instagram user focuses on capturing daily moments and he utilises only one filter to ensure consistency for his account.
Be picture perfect
Always be ready to snap a photo – anywhere and anytime. This is because you never know when one of those photos would turn out to be suitable for your account.
By increasing the pool of photos you have, it will automatically expand the number of ‘picture perfect’ photos that you can use for your account. Remember, it is important to put up a photo that is portfolio-worthy in order to stand out from the crowd.
Otherwise, you could also plan for a photoshoot session with your brand ambassadors and play around with the theme of the photoshoot session each time. If you are selling bags, capture your brand ambassadors using the different range of bags you offer from a clutch for dinner, to a roomy bag that can be used daily to match any outfits.
Quality over quantity
Do not spam your followers! This is a big no, no. Unless you are one of the Kardashians, no one would want to see more than one or two posts from you in a day.
Users also tend to dislike being spammed and may end up unfollowing you if they feel you are not bringing across the post they would like to see.
Ultimately, it is about quality and not quantity. So why not spend your time perfecting your one or two photos using third-party apps like VSCOcam or Camera+, and draft an interesting caption to go with them?
Once you have a good photo, you may entice users with a caption like, “Thinking of ways to show your mother how much you love her? What about a full spa session at only $50?”
Blogger Lian G. connects with her audience by talking about the brands she uses and her photos are all highly curated to only depict ‘casual-luxe’ (Photo: Instagram/@fashionhoax)
At the same time, think about what would be a good time to post your updates. If you are targeting office crowd, you may choose to post during the commuting hours or during lunch because this is when you would be able to catch their attention during the lull period. This would definitely help your account gain more traction than mere “over”-loading of pictures without factoring your audience’s pattern of Instagram consumption.
Keep your hashtags short, sweet and specific
Adding hashtags to your photos can help you gain new followers because people may search for certain goods or services using the hashtag. For instance, girls tend to use the hashtag #makeupartist to look for good makeup artists whom they can engage for events or even #sgootd to look for the latest blogshop outfits popular amongst others.
Meanwhile, guys tend to look up for hashtags like #soccerboots or #gopro to see the latest soccer boots and shots taken by users of the GoPro camera before deciding to buy one for themselves.
Complicated and lengthy hashtags are not only difficult to read, but it is also unlikely that any user would be able to guess such “creative” hashtags like #thebestsaltedcaramelwafflesevermade. So avoid them!
Have a call-to-action
At the end of the day, take a step back and review your progress.
How far have you come from your main objectives? What is it you would like to achieve out of this? Do you wish to increase awareness of your brand or do you wish to reach out to a specific audience?
Once you have reviewed your Instagram account, tweak your posts and firm up your call-to-action in order to achieve your intended goals.
These are some of the best practices you can follow to build up your Instagram marketing. Nonetheless, do not be afraid to try something novel and unconventional (short of going against Instagram’s rules) and experiment and test to see what brings.
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