This post covers a quality description of how to do digital marketing on Instagram. I mean the way you can use Instagram as your marketing channel or platform and still sell more.
First, let’s jump inside the topic by taking into consideration the true meaning of Digital Marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
Since the announcement of the internet’s birthday gets live in 1983 and since the world wide web was discovered in 1989 and live on the public in 1991, marketers were not sure about selling through the internet. It took some decades from the discovery of the web to the application of the web for marketing.
Let’s pose here. To understand more about the history of the internet and digital in general consider checking this post. Click here.
Digital marketing in simple meaning is the application of the web and other online platforms to reach customers. This means using the internet to showcase products and on selling.
Different reports show that the first digital product (ad banner) went live on the internet in October 1994, it was a clickable banner and made some sales. Since then, the internet experienced flooded material aiming at selling or dragging people’s intentions and attention on growing brand awareness.
According to MailChimpDigital marketing is also called online marketing. This means the promotion of brands and products to connect with potential customers through the internet using some forms of digital communication like emails, social media and the web in reaching to those potential customers.
Therefore, we have all seen the true meaning of digital marketing and some vessels that made it exist. Therefore, let’s see how you can do digital marketing on Instagram as one form of digital communication.
Why you should choose Instagram for Marketing?
Among many social platforms, Instagram is seen to have actively helped enough number of business to stand out. This is because not only does it has enough users more than 1 billion monthly active users but also 500 million are actively online every single minute. This is according to statistic.com a well-known platform for world statistics. Also, it is rich In having supportive features easier to use and which bring desired outputs.
More than 80% of people who searches for products to buy online, use Instagram as their number one platform for product information and updates, among existing social media platforms.
Another fascinating fact is that at least every Instagram user has followed a business profile (an account that intends to sell its product or advertise via Instagram.)
Instagram continues to increase its vulnerability by stretching its investment to help e-commerce and online stores to convert their engagement into sales. Through Instagram ads, reels, posts, and Instagram stories if done correctly businessmen can reach more customers and increase sales on the way.
Despite this elaboration, I believe you are still questioning yourself about how to do digital marketing on Instagram. How to make this reality seen above happen, how to sell more and even how you can increase the reputation of your business using Instagram.
Then, here is how. Use the following tips and facts to build your Instagram marketing strategy or to conduct digital marketing on Instagram. These facts will also be a pivot to success online.
Tips and facts to build your Instagram marketing strategy
Customize your Instagram profile
Create your content strategy
Know how to use well Instagram hashtags
Publish Instagram stores consistently
Run an Instagram contest
Use effectively Instagram reels
Work with some Instagram influences
Don’t skip using Instagram ads to increase engagement
1. Customize your Instagram profile
If you are looking of reaching your marketing goals on Instagram, your profile is everything. You should first understand how to handle and include all the needed basics for setting up your account or profile.
You need to fill in all your account information clearly so that anyone can understand what your account is about. Those pieces of information are your account name, an optimized profile description, a profile picture and attractive emojis, and the inclusion of hashtags and links to some destinations like your website, store or podcast. Make sure your profile picture is identifiable. Using your logo, or your picture sounds nice in business than copying someone’s logo.
Making sure all these things are set, is a great start. But, what if you want your Instagram account to perform well as a marketing account/profile?
Include clickable links on your profile. A link is something clickable that can take a person to a destination you want. Links can of products or anything that you intend your customers to see. There are several ways to ensure this, and some of those ways are. 1. Setting a “link on bio” using tools like a linktree or Buffer you can show products available on your store or even your website. 2. Linking to your bio people who you are hosting the program with, or hosting a contest with. And also begging them to link you on their profiles, is the best way to attract customers from their profiles to yours.
Make sure every post has clickable hashtags. A hashtag is the best and easiest way to increase engagement on your profile or account. They can be embedded in your profile description and even in every comment of your posts. Hashtags are added by starting with # and then writing a phrase that you want your visitor to engage with. But, to win the online game, you need to think of branded hashtags. What are these hashtags? I have discussed them a lot below in this post, continue reading. But in a nutshell, a branded hashtag is a hashtag that you have chosen to represent you or represent your brand. In addition, using a popular and well-engaging hashtag is the best way to grow your account visibility and engagement.
Story highlight. It can’t sound fine to the ear of some people, due to the lifetime taken by stories to exist on Instagram accounts. But, these stories have very significance on account growth. Do you think so? Instagram stories can grow engagement by only showing significant content. To understand in deep about stories keep reading I have narrated in deep about stories below.
Add aviewshop button. The Instagram shop button works fine if you have an online e-commerce website or an app. With this button, you can easily direct users or visitors to your store or an app for them to make a purchase. See this image below. They have tried to compile all the tips we have discussed above.
That is all about the Instagram profile. Remember, a winning profile is that which describes itself properly and gives the same service. Do not mess up, by describing something out of your ability.
Conducting successful marketing on Instagram starts by understanding what you should post on it. Not everything brings the right results on Instagram. Therefore as a marketer, you need to research the content that performs well and how to engage them.
Bear in mind that, more than 70% of users log in to their accounts and spend at least 20 minutes a day. So to perform well starts by understanding how are you going to attract all these people. Instagram is all about attraction, therefore, your content is an important tool for your achievement or success. It has to be brilliant and more helpful, for you to get good results.
According to a thorough investigation I have gone through I found that people on Instagram love types of posts which include, life quotes, promotional posts, motivational quotes, product photos, original natural photos, and even user-generated posts.
Remember, a post that goes viral or gets more views, likes and comments, is the one that has awakened people’s attention or a post published by Instagram influencers.
There is no way you can escape the influence of influencers in the journey towards online success. Knowing how to play the game by taking advantage of the power that Instagram influences have, adds more than 30% to your success online.
Success is not a one-time event but a continuous process
3. Know how to use well hashtags.
Twitter started using hashtags in 2007 invented by its user Chris Messina, before any social media platform. Twitter introduced this service and no one could have predicted how useful it was going to be nowadays.
In fact, without the use of hashtags, selling online becomes complicated. Hashtags play more than 20% in satisfying your desire to reach the audience you are targeting.
Using hashtags is so easy, but knowing the best phrase that can push your post to a huge community needs deep research to be undertaken. Deep research will strengthen your brand and even enable you to reach a huge and relevant audience by discovering the right phrase to use.
The good news is that Instagram itself has simplified this task. It supports people to follow a certain hashtag of their interest hence simplifying the task of reaching them. Instagram did so because using hashtags is the easiest way for a user to reach a certain type of content of their interest.
Types of hashtags.
In addition, as a digital marketer who wants to use Instagram effectively, knowing the kinds and types of hashtags is very important. Therefore here are the types of hashtags.
Niche-specific hashtags. These are hashtags that are specific to a certain industry. For example fashion, and news. They are always targeting taking their audiences to the content relating to the same industry and not any more. In relevance to this narration. Each industry has its kind of hashtags. For example hashtags like #tech #africanart #fashion #motivatio #news.
Branded hashtags. These are the kind of hashtags that most brand has, the hashtags that are written on every brand’s post. These kinds of hashtags intentionally help to differentiate brands and connect brand lovers. For example #googlemeet, #cnn #entrepreneur #huffpost #goalhall.
Timely hashtags. On Instagram or even on other social media, current events are always making a headline and even taking people’s attention and awareness. These events are also even presented in their own ways to help and connect their engaging audience. Hashtags that take headlines on such seasons are called timely hashtags, they do not have enough life but they can be repeated if the same event or season happens. For example #valentine #christmass #valentineday.
Contest hashtags. These are hashtags created for a specific online contest. They always help to define contest entries. For example in photo-submission contests. Examples of this kind of hashtag are #instacontest
General appeal hashtags. In other name, these are all popular hashtags representing a general audience or a large population without considering an industry. They are very useful for your growth and as a marketer. They can easily help you to reach a huge audience whether targeted or not but they can fly your post to be seen by a huge audience. For example #love #nature.
Entertainment hashtags. These are kinds of hashtags based on entertainment matters. These kinds of hashtags won’t help you enough to reach your marketing goals but rather take your audience to funny content or posts. If you want to build a branded voice online, do not escape these kinds of hashtags. They are also good at building engagement and a brand voice.
Knowing all of these kinds of hashtags is very important for a marketer. You will have I wide range of choices of the best kinds of hashtags you should walk through to achieve your marketing objective. It’s advisable, for the best results and rewards a marketer must know how to integrate his post in this wide range of hashtags. Doing so helps to reach a huge audience and even build a huge community. Here is a list of the most popular hashtags and the addition of hashtags’ best practices.
How to use hashtags (Hashtags best practice)
We have seen in detail or in deep about the meaning of hashtags, their kinds and how effective they are in reaching Instagram marketing goals. But we haven’t touched on how to use these hashtags to reach the results we intend. Now here is how.
Make sure your profile(account) has a list of hashtags presenting your brand. These are called branded hashtags. They are very crucial in introducing your brand and dragging people’s awareness towards your brand. Also, your profile is the only better place to make sure people understand you or your business when they come across it. So listing your permanent or brand hashtags sounds great.
Explore each hashtag before using it. You won’t understand if your post will bring the right result if you don’t study a hashtag before using it. Exploring a hashtag can also help you get the best hashtags for your post. So do not skip this.
Remember many hashtags on a single post are noisy. Use a limited number of hashtags on every post. Instagram itself has a limit of 30 hashtags per post, but for the best practice and better results use between 3-5 hashtags per post.
“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.” – Joe Chernov
4. Publish Instagram stories
Do you know posting stores never started on Instagram? Instead, Snapchat was a parent app. Instagram borrowed the use of stories from Snapchat. After this launch, stories seemed to score high and bring value and results to Instagram users.
Some investigators present Instagram stories as the most effective feature of Instagram nowadays. Jacqueline Zote author of Sproutsocial wrote about the effectiveness and popularity of Instagram stories.
She wrote that, 80% of digital marketers are planning to use stories as their most common way of reaching customers on Instagram. She continues to portray that, stories are user-friendly and time-sensitive which makes users easily get engaged.
The introduction of Instagram stories grew the marketing industry on Instagram. It’s now an essential feature of an Instagram marketing strategy. Do you know that Instagram stores led to story ads? Also, In supporting stories as an effective feature, Instagram created highlights. This is another feature that might help your stories to be live for a long time on your Instagram profile.
Therefore, to succeed in using Instagram stories, let’s discuss some marketing tips that might bring you effective results.
Marketing tips for using stories on Instagram
Be real. The presence of stories means showing something effective that has little lifetime online but will make value to you. So being real means presenting something effective that is within your scope. I mean showing useful things, and fun is key. Post things that make value in reaching your marketing objectives. For example, posting images, and videos about your brand sounds most creative with Instagram stories marketing.
Insert links to thedestinations wherever necessary. If you have a store, a website and things that you want your followers to see, then consider adding links. Stories give the option to add one link per post. Therefore, there is a great chance of taking the Instagram audience to your store, e-commerce website, blog or to any destination they can get involved in if you are using links effectively. Adding links is very easy. If you don’t know here is a guideline. Adding links to Instagram stories is highly reported to bring good results. This is how your link will look like, see the image below
Post some user-generated posts to increase engagement. This is another way to increase engagement with Instagram stories. Sharing someone’s post to your account sounds great, and makes your followers feel valued, appreciated and respected. Hence with this tricky formula expect an influx of engagement and growth. Keep this in mind, people love to see that you care about them and they are a part of your growth. So taking the time to share their post to your Instagram story section, makes them feel valued.
5. Run an Instagram contest.
The Instagram contest is a well-known way supportive for Instagram marketing success. Simply because people love to win, or to how lucky they are. That is why gambling companies make tonnes of dollars every sing day. Every person takes a chance to participate in giveaways and contests to see how lucky he/she is. That is why contests are seen as having potential in marketing.
Before you launch an Instagram contest as a market is important to understand the guidelines, rules and regulations that are abided by Instagram contests. Unfortunately, I won’t narrate them here but for your time, you can take a chance to read them. click here.
Types of contests
There are several types of Instagram contests that you can engage with or run on your Instagram account. But unfortunately, each contest brings a different result and benefit. Moreover, it’s sometimes depending on your tricky when running them.
Being creative is very important if you are looking for high results with contests. It is very important to mix your tricky to see what brings the most vulnerable result.
Here are some of the types of contests that are frequently run on Instagram profiles.
Photo contests. They are the number one well know form of Instagram contest. This is because they usually bring the likely outputs. 5 over 10 Instagram profiles can not escape running this form of contest. This kind of contest asks a user to submit an original photo to a natively attached hashtag or through contest software. This aims at giving giveaways to a winner, but in return growing your reputation and using submitted photos as your posts later. This is very effective to be understood by any Instagram or online marketer.
Follow us. This is a usual contest on Instagram. It’s a kind of contest which is frequently run by marketers aimed at gaining new followers and growth. Growth through gaining followers is the primary goal of this kind of contest.
Leave a comment. It’s usually a caption contest. It’s usually done by asking visitors and users to leave their views, ideas or opinions and even share their experiences by referring to a post. This kind of contest is well known for bringing a lot of engagement and it’s easy to track its results. Simply because it’s also super easy to engage in such kinds to contest.
Tagging other people In the comments. This kind of contest is designed to help a marketer to reach new people and to increase the number of followers. It doesn’t guarantee good results. But if you tag someone interested in your business you can be like some on who has hit a jackpot. Do not underestimate this method. Tag as much as you can. Keep in mind that followers are very worthy in marketing and tagging is one of the worthwhile methods to get them.
6. Use Effective Instagram reels.
On its growth, Instagram continued to come up with different versions of the feature to achieve its users’ goals. In 2020, Instagram introduced its feature called reels to reach some goals and make it more efficient for its users.
Now before we go deep, you may be asking yourself, what is a reel, is it more effective on an Instagram marketing journey? Here are some elaborations.
Reels are 10 – to 60-second form video posts separate from the other post archive and usually, they are in a vertical format video. They are known for creating a chance to be seen by enough people compared to normal Instagram profile posts. So their value can’t be compared simply because they can reach a huge audience within a short period.
With that fact, will you leave reels from being a part of your marketing plan? I think the answer is no, reels must be a part of your marketing plan to get good results in Instagram marketing.
Keep in mind that, reels are videos, so creativity is key to increasing a chance for engagement. Using reels you are not limited to what kind of video you should publish. But an important thing is to understand your objective and how should people define you or name you. As it’s easy to score with reels, then make sure each of your videos/reels makes value when seen.
For example, what can a digital marketer use with reels to reach a marketing goaL.
Here is how.
To teach his/her community/followers how his/her products work
To inspire viewers and present his/her marketing agenda
To repost user-generated posts. To show value and appreciation to his/her users.
You can use reels to introduce new products, services, contests and giveaways to your followers and users.
The values of reels are endless, the way you will play the game of marketing determines how far you will success or get likely results.
7. Work with some Instagram Influencers
Who is an Instagram influencer?
An Instagram influencer is an Instagram user who has a reputation around a specific niche. For example, a user with 1 million followers and tonnes of engagement on every post, is considered to be an Instagram influencer.
Influences are meant to build their empire on Instagram, these people have a huge community who trust what they are doing and even they sometimes get trust to promote big brands’ products.
Understanding who is an influencer on Instagram is sometimes challenging. But by looking at the number of followers and engagement rate you can understand who is and who is not.
There are multiple advantages to a new marketer who is looking for a reputation on Instagram if has a connection to some influencer. Just imagine if your post gets featured or posted on a profile with 2 million followers what do you expect?
A report from Hypeauditor published in 2021. It was about the influence of influences on beginners’ success. They explained that wherever you invest 4.8 dollars in paying an influencer for marketing, you will receive something worth 10 dollars in return. They found using influencers sounds better than traditional advertising and Instagram ads.
Reaching out to influencers is important for every new up-and-coming business that somebody wants to create. We realized early on that micro-influencers were such an awesome way to create potential customers.
Lana Mushamel
Do you need to start looking for influencers who you can work with business? Then if it’s your desire here is the post by Shopify.
8. Don’t skip using Instagram ads to increase engagement.
Do you know that most people trust more about Instagram ads more than normal campaigns and posts? You should know it from now. A third quarter of buyers on Instagram, trust more to buy on ads than on normal posts.
Never skip using ads. Do all the strategies and tricky but do not forget to place some ads to boost your engagement. Instagram itself allow you to design your ads in such a way that will attract enough audience. It allows you to set and target your audience or a location where you want your ads to be displayed.
Instagram ads have
A reasonable price and so many can afford
Has a pre-defined audience targeting or you can select and choose yours
They are easy to create
Detailed reporting about their progress
I mean you all have control and ensure everything you need before an ad gets live. With that opportunity of deciding everything you have a chance to get a reasonable result.
Therefore ads are very important in boosting your success or reaching your goals as a digital marketer.
Conclusion
I am sure I have added some new potential for Instagram marketing to you. And I am sure you are going to level up your digital marketing skills from now.
Now, I want to hear from you, how was this post? Have you ever tried some of the above-listed strategies before? What were the results? What were the challenges?
Share your thoughts and arguments by leaving a comment in the comment section below.
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