9 Instagram Marketing Tips for Greater Exposure

With the commercial industry getting more competitive than ever, small businesses must step up to the challenge or get drowned in the competition. One of the best ways is to jump into the digital trend and start building a strong online presence via social media. Getting more people to see and interact with your brand helps generate leads and boost sales. By leveraging social media platforms for publicity, you build meaningful relationships with customers and gain better insights into their needs and preferences – you know, all the good stuff you cannot do with traditional marketing methods! Now that we’ve convinced you to go digital, the next step is to determine which social platforms to use. And for that, we have one word: Instagram. Why Instagram? Why not?! First and foremost, Instagram is the 4th most popular social network worldwide, generating 6.15 billion visits in 2021. It has been around for 12 years yet becomes the most downloaded app in 2022. Consequently, Instagram has a massive audience base. The latest report shows that the social network has over one billion monthly active users. And guess what – 90% of that audience pool follows at least one business. If you can get even a fraction of Instagram’s audience base to visit your page, imagine how many views you can turn into leads in just a month! 9 Best Instagram Marketing Tips for Organic Growth Marketing your company on Instagram takes more than just posting content every now and then. Here are a couple of tips and tricks to bring your Instagram marketing to a whole new level. 1: Set Social Media Goals For effective Instagram marketing efforts, you need to have more specific goals than just promoting your brand. It’s because your goals determine your content strategy for the long run. Do you want to establish an online presence? Are you looking to attract more traffic to your business site and generate new leads? Or do you want to boost the sales of certain products or services? Whatever that is, be specific! 2: Identify Your Target Audience Since each demographic group has different preferences and needs, narrowing down your target audience helps you create better content that speaks to them. Age is the first demographic factor you should consider as it determines your tone of voice and topics of discussion. Knowing your audience’s occupation lets you measure their buying power, making it easier to pick which products or services to prioritise in marketing. You might want to look into other demographic factors, including gender, ethnicity, and nationality. 3: Use a Business Account If you already have a personal Instagram account, you can convert it to a business account for free to access Instagram for Business features. Doing so allows you to leverage the platform to the fullest extent. For instance, businesses may tag products in feed posts and Instagram stories to drive sales. Business accounts also come with analytics tools, giving you better insights into what works and what doesn’t. Plus, you get to include more company info in your Instagram profile. 4: Optimise Your Profile Your Instagram bio only has 150 characters to make a positive first impression, so you better make it work. The goals are to make your account easier to find and encourage new visitors to follow it. To achieve both, we recommend adding this information to your profile:

• Company or brand name

• Username (handle name)

• A clickable URL of your website

• Business category

• Location (plus contact info if your company has a physical building)

5: Decide on Your Brand’s Look Yes, we’re talking about creating your brand’s aesthetic. Besides making your account look appealing, choosing the right colour scheme helps influence visitors’ buying decisions and brand recognition. Alternatively, experiment with post templates to differentiate your brand from your competitors. While you’re free to pick whatever colours you like best, we recommend sticking to your brand logo’s colour scheme. You’d want people to associate that colour scheme with your brand. 6: Create Visually Appealing Posts Your posts’ visuals are the first thing that people see. Making your posts look visually appealing indirectly encourages users to click on them. This practice also helps make your posts stand out in users’ Explore feeds and leave an impression on new eyes. Boost your posts’ recognizability by keeping them consistent in design, font type, and colour scheme. Don’t overcrowd your posts with too many texts and unnecessary elements. Instead, keep them clean and minimal for better readability. 7: Write engaging captions Instagram might be a visual medium, but that’s not an excuse for neglecting your captions. Use it to establish your brand voice and offer value to encourage likes and follows, so make sure the caption is worth the viewers’ time. The platform provides up to 2,200 characters of space to work with, but we recommend going down the “short and sweet” route with your caption length. Since people tend to scan Instagram captions, writing blocks of paragraphs will only make them scroll away. 8: Research Hashtags Adding hashtags to your Instagram posts helps increase their discoverability on the Explore page. This feature makes your content visible to people outside your audience base, expanding your reach. While there’s no specific rule on how to use hashtags, the best practices would be to use the ones relevant to your content and niche. Avoid using spammy hashtags like #likeforlike and #followforfollow as they can make your posts look cheap, hurting your branding. 9: Take Advantage of Instagram Stories You're missing out big time if you’re not leveraging your Instagram Stories feature. According to Hootsuite, 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories daily. With 58% of Instagram users claiming to be more interested in a brand after seeing it in a Story, this feature helps establish your online presence on the platform much faster. Try to tell a story through one or a series of short scenes and provide value within the first three seconds. Create Highlight albums to save your top Stories content and design custom covers for each album. Your Highlight albums appear under your bio so making them appealing encourages visitors to click on them. That Sounds Like a Lot of Work! As beneficial as it might sound, Instagram marketing does take a lot of work. Having another task added to the already full plate can be challenging and sometimes frustrating for small business owners. This is where we come into picture. Virtually Social provides social media management services for small businesses who want to take their social accounts to a whole new level. Our team of social media experts will take care of the content production and posting for you, leaving you with more time to focus on running your business. Get in touch – we can take your social accounts to a whole new level!