Instagram as a social media platform has grown substantially since its beginning, now having around 1 billion active users on the platform monthly. 60% of its users are under the age of 30, making it a great platform to market to a mostly younger audience.

As a Cleveland social media agency, we have a ton of experience with social media campaigns on multiple different platforms, but Instagram is one of the social media platforms we work with the most. As pros, we can provide you with all of the best advice when it comes to gaining more followers for your business on Instagram. 

How Does Instagram Marketing Work?

Instagram marketing is one of the ways that businesses can connect with and engage with their audience using image and video-based content. As a platform, Instagram is a great tool for brands that want to show users their brand identity and market their products and services in a new and exciting way.

When you market on Instagram with a good strategy in place, it attracts new customers while also building brand loyalty and establishing a strong brand identity. Instagram offers free insights into user analytics for all business profiles, so you can track user impressions and engagements on all of your stories and posts with the additional option to look at demographic information such as gender, age, location, and active hours. 

Marketing on Instagram is perfect for any business that wants to convert more users into leads, boost sales, create brand loyalty, and position themselves as influential thought leaders in their industry. Instagram marketing allows you to deploy key marketing strategies in several creative ways that can reflect your brand, including influencer marketing, advertisements, giveaways, and others. You just have to make sure that you shift social media strategies from your old habits to some updated, Instagram-specific strategies.

Best Cleveland Social Media Agency Tips To Follow 

While Instagram is a widely used social platform, some business owners and marketers are less familiar with it than they would be with Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. What works on other social platforms isn’t always going to work on Instagram, and certain strategies work better on Instagram than on other platforms. 

Post Frequently 

To start, if you want to have a solid Instagram presence, you have to make sure that you’re posting regularly. The top brands post about five times per week on Instagram. While this can lead to spamming when done incorrectly, as long as you vary your content and stay creative, this regular posting rate is actually ideal.

It’s vital that you’re at the forefront of your customers’ minds — both current and potential. Posting frequently helps users feel more connected with your brand, see more of your products or services, and learn more about your business as a whole.

Promote Your Instagram

Most social media users are on multiple different social platforms, so you should always let your followers on your other pages know about your Instagram account. If they like your content, they’ll probably add you on that platform too – and that gives you at least two ways that you can gain their attention.

An Instagram business account is also required to be linked to Facebook, so you can always share your Instagram posts on your Facebook page seamlessly. This will give your Facebook followers a sneak peek of what they can expect to see on your Instagram feed.

Utilize All Formats

One thing that allows Instagram to stand out from other popular social media platforms is its different formats. These options keep the user’s attention and let you show off different facets of your brand. So try to take advantage of all of the below methods:

Feed posts: This includes photos and videos on your regular feed.

Stories: This method involves temporary content. It’s more in the moment and off the cuff.

Reels: These are videos with an emphasis on entertainment and clickbait methods.

Lives: These are real-time videos and are great for tutorials and AMAs, as well as showing off company events.

The more aspects of your business a customer can get familiar with, the more likely they are to begin to like and follow you. 

Use Popular Hashtags

Much like Twitter, Instagram is hashtag-driven, and utilizing the right hashtags at the right time can make your posts much easier for users to find. In fact, posts that have at least one hashtag see 12.6% more engagement on average than posts without any hashtags. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags on one post, but that doesn’t mean that you have to use them all. In fact, using too many can make you come off as inauthentic or untrustworthy to users. Instead, you should check your competitors’ Instagram accounts to see how many hashtags they’re using on average to get a feel for how many you should use on your posts.

Of course, you should always make sure that you double-check a tag’s meaning before you use it, and only use tags that suit your brand identity.

Create A Brand Aesthetic

When you look at your Instagram profile, do all of your posts look cohesive? Do they create an aesthetic for your brand? Will they catch the eye of your followers? These are questions you need to ask yourself when looking at your business page.

When the photos you use for your posts look cohesive in terms of style and filters, your profile will look much more professional, and it will help you get more followers. Just make sure that all of your images work well together and create a flow of color and composition.

Optimize Your Page

Your business page is your company’s public face – and there’s a lot to do with it to make sure it’s in top shape.

Your brand page is your biggest opportunity to introduce yourself to Instagram users and get some additional traffic to your site. Linking directly to your homepage from your profile bio is the way to go, and a promotional landing page, especially for Instagram users, might be even more effective.

To fill out your brand page, you’ll need a branded username, complete bio, profile picture, and captions for all of your images. You should also add important contact options depending on your industry, such as a phone number or email. These will all show up as clickable buttons on your page.

Engage With Users

The guaranteed quickest way to increase your follower count quickly is to focus on the followers of your closest competitors. Typically, the more local your business, the more effective this strategy is, but it still works with businesses of all sizes.

Engage directly with users by following them, liking a photo of theirs, and leaving a comment. You can even repeat this strategy multiple times over time until you see them respond in some way.

Research conducted on this topic shows that when done correctly, this method is amazingly effective. Out of 100 users you engage with, on average, you’ll find nearly a third will follow you back.

Shift social media strategies from your past into new effective social media strategies for the future of your business.

Shift Refresh is a Cleveland social media agency that enables businesses to smash their competition and emerge as a leader in their respective industries with the help of our retail digital marketing services. We are ready to help your business not only grow but thrive. To learn more, call us at 1-888-467-3249 or visit our website to get details on packages.