Establishing a business is a difficult task. This is especially true if you have set out to do it on your own without much help from others. Depending on the project or service that you are offering, you need to look into the procurement of raw materials, production process, staff management, setting up a physical store or website, and a lot more.
Amidst such hustle and bustle, you cannot afford to miss out on your promotion and marketing plans. Understand that no matter how great your product or service is, you will not have buyers unless your target audience is aware of its existence. Conveying the product in a manner that will make people realize how badly they need the service is primal to your business success.
As a solopreneur, you might not have the luxury of devoting a lot of time to your marketing strategies. Moreover, if you have recently set up the business, you may not have the luxury of a huge advertising budget. It is here that social media marketing comes into the picture. Not only is access to marketing on social media free, but you can achieve this single handedly. Not much technical expertise is needed, and platforms are continuously evolving to support business marketing.
Understand your Target Group
Before you set up your business, you will have a target group whom you expect to be interested in your product. The first step to using Instagram for marketing is identifying what your potential buyers want to see.
Use the Instagram Insights tool to find out the number of unique accounts that have viewed your posts, the number your posts have been viewed or saved, and how many people click on your website link from your Instagram account. Use a listening tool to find out what people discuss about your brand on Instagram.
Hashtags created by your competitors, industry-relevant Instagram keywords and content styles that work well with your target audience are other things that you must pay heed to. If you have all these details, you will be in a much better position to understand customer expectations and give them what they want.
Indulge in Active Engagement
If you want to make the most of this social media platform, you need to know that its algorithm gives higher priority to posts with more engagement. Simply put, the more the comments, the higher will be the number of feeds it appears in.
One of the easiest ways for you to harness the potential of engagement is to show appreciation when your followers post good content. This will bring to light your brand’s humane angle making people more likely to connect with it. If your followers post photos wearing your products (and tagging you), try to repost the same to encourage them.
Know When to Post
Posting too often may lead many of your followers to unfollow or mute your status. This defeats the very purpose of Instagram marketing. Try to post quality content at regular intervals that are a little spaced apart.
If you are a B2C company, you may want to post on weekdays, whereas Wednesdays and Thursdays work the best for B2B firms. While 7-9 pm may be the best time for Instagram engagement, 3-4 pm is definitely the worst.
The exact day of the week (or time of the day) when you will get maximum engagement will vary from firm to firm. It is suggested that you use a social listening tool to monitor the Instagram engagement of your followers to arrive at the day and time most appropriate for you.
Give Your Post an Aesthetic Appeal
Unlike other social media platforms where you can post links, websites, and a lot more on Instagram, it is all about pictures, and that is why you should pay special attention to the aesthetic appeal of your posts. Start by identifying a theme for your brand or product line and ensure that every post is relevant to the theme.
Keeping to the theme, go ahead, and experiment with the type and subject of your posts. From user-generated content to DIY solutions and behind the scene photos, there is a lot that you can experiment here.
By giving your followers access to a platter of content, you will be driving home better results as compared to simply sharing pictures of products or services that you expect your followers to purchase.
For the technical aspect of creating an aesthetic feed, there are several free editing tools available online, and you can make your pick. Most often, technical expertise if not needed for the operation of these tools, and you can single handedly complete the job.
Initiate Call to Action
By now, you know how to get Instagram followers and are keen to jump to the next step wherein you tell your followers what to do. Call to Action is a little challenging on Instagram because the platform allows you to only share one link at a time. However, there are ways you can work around it to get the results you want.
The most used method to drive Instagram traffic to your website is by posting ‘Link in Bio’. Here, your bio description will contain the link to the page you want your followers to go to. Although this might sound a little cliché, this is a time-tested method of driving home efficient results.
You can also choose to have Instagram promo codes wherein you post an image with a product, details of where it can be purchased from, and a promo code. This has dual advantages. Getting something at a lower cost because of the promo code will prompt more people to make a purchase. As for you, the promo code makes it easy for you to track where a buyer came from.
Instagram marketing requires proper planning, and it is only when you start using it that you will realize the finer nuances of the game. However, the icing on the cake is the fact that you can work things out from scratch without any help. This makes Instagram the perfect marketing medium for independent solopreneurs like you.
