As a growing business, it is crucial to consider your social media strategies and how they affect your business. This is because a strong social media presence will result in increased visibility as well as driving more customers towards your goods or services. Bear in mind that a great social media presence involves finding ways to continuously grow while engaging with your followers and taking a specific course of action.
Instagram is one of the easiest social media platforms to accomplish this. However, it’s difficult to keep up with big brands that can afford to shell out an arm and a leg for marketing. For this reason, follow our tips to better understand how to create a strong brand presence on Instagram.
How does Instagram size up?
In the world of social media, Instagram has an exceptionally strong organic reach, especially when compared with Facebook. Further, on this platform, brand engagement is more than double. Another interesting statistic is that when posting an image or article on Facebook, it is not guaranteed that you will be able to reach all of your followers and will reach an average of only 6%. Whereas, on Instagram, you have the ability to reach 100% of people who follow you.
Even if you’re using Instagram for your business on a daily basis, there are always ways to improve branding in order to be the utmost successful on this platform. Our tips can definitely help you get there so keep reading!
5 tips to create a strong Instagram brand presence
1- Visuals are key
When posting on Instagram, we all know it comes down to the photo. Instagram users are going to react to the visuals you post right off the bat, and they’re more likely to act if they’ve become familiar with your brand. In order to achieve this, there are 4 key rules to follow and they are:
- Create visuals that have a consistent style and quality;
- Choose a specific colour scheme, and stick to it!;
- Use a uniform filter across all images, or avoid using filters at all;
- Do not overdo your captions, overcrowding them with emojis, hashtags or otherwise.
Make sure your Instagram aesthetic is clean, clever and subtle. Your prospective customers won’t want to feel as if they’re being beat over the head with your images or captions alike. If your company has a slogan, keep it at the heart of your branding so that browsers can easily recognize your content. If you have limited image resources or budget, consider posting testimonials from clients or some quirky iPhone snaps of your team members or products. Remember, although this is an important business venture, it should still be fun and creative!
2- Work with a professional
If neither yourself nor your employees would consider themselves to be overly creative, don’t put too much pressure on the team! Instead, consider hiring someone to take over your social media management, particularly someone with a bit of photography or design experience.
If you’re already working with a marketing expert, or have someone managing your social media, maybe consider outsourcing your visual content alone? In many cases, photographers, as well as illustrators and designers, can be hired to shoot a variety of images, whether these are focused on your products or services. Then, all that'll be required is for you to click and post! Although this may cost a few dollars up front, having a cohesive set of images that you can post over time will help both your visibility and your reach and in turn, the money that you pocket.
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3- Hashtags!
Although we mentioned that you should try and avoid overusing hashtags, they are still an excellent way to gain visibility and increase your Instagram following. Hashtags help people to discover your brand while crafting a stronger brand identity. The maximum amount of hashtags per post is thirty. However, we suggest you avoid maxing out and focus on five to ten key ones, much like how you treat keywords on blog posts and other online content.
Once you start using hashtags, analyze your data in relation to any new followers. Are the hashtags helping you find new clients? If not, maybe consider trying a few others and seeing how they fare. Another thing to consider is creating a hashtag that is strictly for your business or brand, therefore users can find your content without issue. Ultimately, it is important that your hashtags be relevant to your business and brand indefinitely.
4- Be entertaining, inspirational or both
Posting arbitrary images on your Instagram might gain you a few likes, but it definitely won’t have too big of an impact on your business. To gain a serious following and increase brand awareness, you’ll need an audience who enjoys looking at your images. For this reason, make sure all of your posts are crafted with care and attention, they should be entertaining as well as inspirational or both of these things. Dig deep and consider the core values of your business, how can these be translated into and reflected in the images you post? Every time you are about to post on Instagram, think about it and drive a specific action alongside your branding.
5- Engagement, sharing and re-posts
Of course, it’s called social media for a reason. This is because it is of the utmost importance to be social first and foremost, engaging with your followers whenever possible. It is also recommended that you engage with those in your field, reposting their content if it’s relevant to your own. It is recommended that you follow networks that are influencers in your field. Additionally, if customers post themselves with your goods or using your services, take the initiative and repost these images. Clients will definitely appreciate this, and it’s a great way to show that you appreciate their loyalty.
Another way to engage with your clients is to use the link in your bio. Unfortunately, there aren’t many other places you can post clickable links, so be certain to make the most of this little space at the top of the page. If all other ideas fail, use the link as direct access to your company website.
