Every social media platform is a little different. Instagram tends to be one of the most appropriate platforms to show off the creative side of your business and communicate what makes it unique.
More than
1.16 billion monthly users are active on the site, and 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business, making it a worthwhile platform for most companies to spend energy on. There are many routes you can take when marketing your business on Instagram, but here are 4 key steps you don’t want to skip:
Get to know your audience
Just as every social media platform is different, so is every business. The audience you are targeting on Instagram may vary depending on your specific product or service and your
buyer personas, but you also have to keep the site itself in mind:
- The most active Instagrammers are between 18 and 29 years old
- 25-to-35-year olds represent the largest advertising audience
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The United States is the largest market
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43% of women in the U.S. use Instagram, compared with 31% of men
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Most users in the U.S. live in urban areas
Everything you post doesn’t necessarily have to target one of these buckets, but keeping
key demographics like these in mind can help you tailor your content to better serve Instagram’s audience base.
Create engaging content
Instagram tends to be less formal than platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This is your opportunity to tell your audience what makes your business special in a more personal tone. Creating content that fits your brand while driving engagement is key. Here are 7 ideas to help you get started:
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Incorporate visually pleasing photos and/or videos.
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Create polls, quizzes, contests, or games.
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Keep captions conversational.
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Don’t be afraid to post long form content (i.e. paragraph form text, carousels, series of stories).
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Repost user-generated content.
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Partner with an influencer.
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Give them a reason to like, comment, or follow!
Utilize all delivery methods
Posting content to your Instagram feed is important but utilizing Instagram Stories is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses. Instagram stories are used by
500 million users every day, one-third of the most viewed Instagram stories are from businesses, and
one in four consumers will make a purchase after they see a story on the platform. Stories are a great avenue for content that needs to be posted in real-time, such as events, contests, giveaways, reactions, statements, and more.
Instagram Reels (the platform’s response to TikTok) is a fairly new feature. It lets users create and share short-form video content with music, filters, and special effects. As with every other major social media platform, short-form video content is seeing huge success on Instagram.
Your business can use Reels to educate your audience, showcase your personality or values, and highlight what differentiates your products or services from your competitors.
Take advantage of free Instagram marketing tools
Business profiles (if you don’t have a business profile, stop right now and switch!) have access to impressions and engagement data through
Insights. You can track what your top posts are and how many impressions you earned for a specific time period. This goes for posts on your feed as well as Instagram Stories.
Insights also allow your business to gather information regarding the age, gender, and location of your followers. You can also see which hours your followers are most active, so you know when to post. Keeping tabs on your audience and how posts are performing is key to developing future content.
Instagram is all about connecting with your audience
Businesses are interacting with followers on a more personal level on Instagram than on other social media platforms. If you take away one thing from this article, it’s that you should always be looking for ways to relate to and communicate with your audience.