DIY: Instagram Marketing In 2021
‘Every lid has a pot’. Does this sound familiar? Since the minute we’re born, we constantly pursue our ‘second halves’. This applies to both finding a partner for life, or just a BFF’s, for starters. In 2021, we can safely say that this principle runs the world.
By now, the aforementioned ‘perfection rush’ doesn’t amount to interpersonal matters alone. Today, it also touches upon the marketing field, where we never compromise on the items added to our shopping cart. How many times have you mentioned a product, and a few minutes later, Instagram showed you an ad for it?
Marketing In The Wake Of A Global Pandemic
Marketing (and consumer habits altogether) changed tremendously due to COVID19 and the redefined reality is forced upon us. The pandemic taught marketers a great lesson about social media platforms’ remarkable, direct impact on brands’ revenues and profits. And guess what: there’s no better time than now to scale up your social presence than now.
Why won’t you board our DIY train and write down our 9 useful, practical tips to promote your business on Instagram?
#1 Know Your Audience Better
First things first, you should find what type of content your audience prefers to consume and upgrade your Instagram page accordingly.
When the content doesn’t correspond with your customers’ interests, there’s no sense in complaining the page does poorly. Ask any number of digital marketing experts. They’ll tell you that this is the first step toward remaining relevant at all times (especially in more competitive niches).
#2 Run Targeted Ads
Targeted ads (based on different criteria such as gender, age, etc.) get you noticed among potential clients more efficiently. Why shoot in the dark in the most important marketing stage when you could hook new leads instead? There’s no need to spend time and money on ‘guerilla’, unfocused promotion anymore when targeted ads sport such indispensable boons.
#3 Consistency, AKA The Best Policy
Getting to the top of the pack in a thriving sphere as Instagram won’t be possible for the lazy ones. Becoming a highly-ranked page requires high maintenance, determination, and the will to work hard toward your goal. Therefore, you should enrich your audience with valuable content. Ideally, it’s best to aim for at least 3 posts weekly. On top of this, finding the peak times (best time to share new content) will maximize its potential.
#4 Blend Hashtags In Your Future Posts
While this deed might seem insignificant, it’s notable for making your page/posts appear more often from some buzzwords search. Simply choose a bunch of hashtags and add them to your post’s caption. Another word about hashtags: inserting a mix of popular hashtags along with unpopular ones is preferable to going ‘all in’ with the former.
#5 Cross-Promotion For Expanding Your Brand’s Outreach
It’s good that you’re on Instagram, there’s no denying that. However, why not make the ‘good’ excellent while you’re at it? Here’s a perk for those who have more than one social media handle (other platforms besides Instagram, that is). By sharing your Insta-content on other social media platforms, you ultimately affect your brand awareness. How so, you wonder? Cross-promotion is another form of a ‘shout out’ to anyone who doesn’t follow you on Instagram to start doing so.
#6 Produce Nothing But Top-Notch Quality Posts
In case you didn’t realize this yet, Instagram is a platform that treats visual content with the utmost seriousness. This principle should never leave the back of your mind. So be careful the next time you share a post from an iPhone, for Instagram might have reduced its quality.
What Does It Require From You?
Make sure every post you share is a ‘content jade’ worthy of everyone’s time and attention. The key to becoming an Instagram page others look up to lies in producing excellent content. No; the secret recipe for the latter doesn’t last in merely being informative. The visual, creative side should also be extraordinary so as to generate as much engagement as possible.
#7 Partner With Social Media Influencers
Apropos of all this talk about your audience’s needs and demands, here's another piece of advice. The next promotion strategy to consider is: use the services of a leading influencer in your niche. How's it beneficial for you, do you wonder?
- Influencers promoting your product in a ’signature’ approach is a highly recommended means, especially for Instagram newbies who seek rapid growth.
- Your business page will get to new peaks sooner than you thought. To begin with, we recommend reaching out to influencers whose profiles have around 10K-50K followers.
One final point about such a partnership: make sure any post featuring your brand isn’t too ‘salesy’. In short, it doesn’t motivate your audience to add any item to their shopping cart.
#7 Two-Pennies About Buying Fake Instagram Engagement
Yes, it’s arguably a most accessible and tempting solution to address the engagement issue, but don’t fall for this trap. The impressive numbers provided by third-party sources don’t amount to much at the end of the day. Rather, they bring up another entanglement altogether. A suspicious likes: followers ratio, namely an unbalanced one, could be problematic in the public’s eye.
- Those who know a thing or two about Instagram will understand there’s fake engagement involved with this profile soon enough.
- Engaging with sources providing the bot engagement in sharp spikes could put you in a tight spot with Instagram. This way, your brand’s credibility will also be at risk.
- People could suspect you bought fake engagement for your Instagram page, hurting your business’s reputation through this.
#8 Scouting = Learning
Whenever you run out of new content ideas, a feasible means to find inspiration lies in your competitors’ social pages. By scouting their pages, there’s a lot we could learn and adapt according to our brand’s essence/our will. Sometimes you’ll find that some trends caught fire to the ‘imitators’ who adopted them, rather than for their original creators. It’s time to show your competitors how to get things done on the best side.
#9 The Answer Lies In The ‘Verified’ Checkmark
Where credibility and reputation are concerned, the famous blue ‘V’ icon is a big deal. Getting one is worth at least a thousand followers, so it’s an achievement you should set your sights on. Legitimate profiles passing the following ‘checkbox test’ could expect to get their verification mark soon:
- The profile at hand represents a highly-searched figure. It is a unique, complete account that doesn’t include outside links to other social media services. Of course, it also has a bio.
- The account has to be the exclusive, official one of the identity it displays.
Conclusion
Instagram is one of the most trending apps today. Any business that doesn’t establish a prominent presence there loses a wonderful marketing opportunity (‘spreading the word’) and make money. Be sure to follow the steps this article covered to help your ‘baby’ and yourselves grow. We hope you’ll remember us when you reflect on your way to success.
About The Author
Yuval is a content writer at SEOMADEZ LLC, a company whose sites master the digital marketing field (Instaperfecto is one of them). When creativity has a ‘bad hair’ day, Yuval plays a favorite album such as Greg Dulli’s Random Desire to get things going. Check out my LinkedIn.