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Posted on: Sep 11, 2018 7 min read
Instagram is one of the largest and most utilised social media networks in the world today. With a monthly average of over a Billion people, it is the second, only after its parent company, Facebook which acquired Instagram for $1BN back in 2012 when IG was just 500+ days old.
Soon after, Instagram became the aesthetical social media platform of the millennial generation. It is now safe to say that Instagram is the future for business and private use, and when you mix both, it generates a space full of potential.
Over the last 3 months, DubSEO’s digital marketing experts in London have been analysing certain behaviours and traits in Instagram users that we have put together into this blog which will provide you with 6 marketing tips for Instagram if you are a complete beginner that will give you the competitive edge.
Although this may look pretty straightforward, people still manage to not quite get the idea behind a great Instagram profile and make the most of the features that are currently available. Don’t stress, we are here to help.
With Instagram, it’s all about aesthetics and colour matching. Starting from your logo, and profile biography to your page theme.
Instagram currently allows you to use 150 characters for your biography; therefore it is important that you squeeze in the most important snippets that your potential followers need to know while making it aesthetically appealing. You can also use emoji’s.
If you have a website, your bio also allows you to place one clickable link. This is currently, unfortunately, the only way you can have a clickable link on Instagram.
Pro Tip: Use stories as much as possible to show authenticity and keep things raw while being professional with your posts. Don’t forget to utilise the highlights feature.
We have already mentioned that Instagram is all about being creative and creating aesthetically looking content. No one and I repeat no one, wants to see pictures or images that are not quality or look like a spam. Why? Because there already are thousands of pages out there that are absolutely killing it and you will just be one of the many that people will never recognise or follow because there simply is a lot of competition.
If you want to be among the best and truly have potential, you need to put in the effort to make sure that your page is fire throughout, every single post, all the time.
Asking for opinions is not a bad idea either. Discuss your posting strategy with your friends and family to see what they think.
At the end of the day, you will be able to judge what your audience like by the amounts of likes and comments you get.
Instagram is the most engaging platform to have ever excited in web 2.0. Cross-promoting your content with a page similar to yours that has a similar amount of followers is a very important step when it comes to organic and authentic growth on Instagram.
If you have a following elsewhere, like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook; be sure to tell them about your Instagram. There is a very high chance that your current Facebook fans have an Instagram profile too. Don’t be afraid to ask for a follow.
Starting a new Instagram profile can be very exciting which may lead you to post 10 times a day. Although being active and consistent is fundamentally important, you need to make sure that you have a schedule and that you don’t post more than 4 – 5 times in 24 hours because some people will deem that as spam, regardless of how valuable your content is.
What we recommend is that you make sure that your content is quality and that it brings value, quality will always be more important than quantity on Instagram.
If you are not sure when to post and how often to post, experiment,test your audience for a couple of weeks and then take a look at the analytics. This should give you a good indication of what works.
Growing your Instagram account with a healthy follower base can be quite hard in 2018 because of the amount of competition out there, however, the best tip for organic growth that we can perhaps give you is being part of the community on Instagram.
Commenting and providing value to as many people as possible around Instagram will slowly but surely bring you in quality followers that may become customers of yours in the future.
Don’t spam, just be friendly, leave feedback or compliments and if someone has an issue or a problem, be there for them, help them out. You may have heard the saying, “what goes around, comes around”, this heavily applies on Instagram.
Hashtags are the fuel of Instagram. They are the reason this platform is so popular and they are the reason why so many pages literally explode in the matter of months.
Knowing what hashtags to use for your content is incredibly important if you want to reach the audience that you desire to have.
Instagram have recently brought out a feature that allows users to report accounts that are using irrelevant hashtags, therefore, make sure that you keep everything nice and healthy and within your industry.
At the end of the day, there isn’t a shortcut, it requires a lot of hard work and mainly time. You just have to be patient with Instagram.
You are currently able to use up to 32 hashtags, either in the comment section (to appear less spammy) or in your photo description.
