Welcome to Instagram,
Whether you have established your brand’s presence on Instagram or you’re thinking about it, this article is for you. Fret not, it might seem challenging at first but it’s not difficult. I will walk you through some basic actions you can take to grow your page. Organically, of course.
CREATE AN AVATAR: it’s the key to a positive marketing result.
An avatar is simply a representation of who your ideal audience is. This is the very first step one should take before making any marketing effort, whether online or offline. An avatar is a fictional character created out of the characteristics your ideal customers have. You can know these characteristics either by research (asking your customers to fill out a questionnaire) or by using best-case scenarios. I have a free video on how to create one for your business. It is well-detailed and filled with marketing strategy ideas and a bonus. Get it HERE.
WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR INSTAGRAM?
Ask yourself why you’re opening an Instagram page. What do you hope to achieve with it? How do you think you can achieve it? What actions are you going to take on Instagram to ensure you reach these goals?
CREATE AN INSTAGRAM MARKETING STRATEGY
Now that you know what you hope to achieve with Instagram, create a map of how you can achieve that. E.g let’s say you want to create awareness (an Objective) for your brand, what you want to do is send traffic to your page, Increase your followers and profile visits, shares, likes, and mentions (These are called KPIs or metrics). These can be achieved by various strategies, e.g, you can increase traffic to your page through paid ads, influencer marketing, collaborations, etc. You can increase shares, mentions, and tags by conducting a competition.
Now that you’ve gotten your objectives and KPIs, next thing is to set up a goal. Make sure it is Small, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T goals). E.g, “Get 2k followers before December 31st, 2022”. The next step is to create an actionable plan on how to achieve these goals.
E.g;
- Week 1: Create a content calendar and get all the content ready
- Week 2: Set up paid ads, and begin running the campaign
- December 31st, 2022: Analyse campaign results
Now that we’ve gotten the marketing part of it out of the way, Let me show you how to do other stuff!
INSTAGRAM PAGE SET UP
There is a right and a wrong way to set things up. First, you want to be sure you set your account to “business account”. Here is how to do it:
Go to your profile. Click on the hamburger icon by the top right.
Select “Settings” from the menu that will pop up.
Select “Account”
Scroll down to the end. If your page is on a personal account, choose “switch to professional account”. If you’re yet to open your business page, select “add new professional account” and follow the prompt.
REMEMBER: Do not combine your personal page with your business page until you’re established. This is to ensure there is no clash of interest and you can dissociate your personal life from your business life.
Now that you’ve set up your business page, what next?
It’s time to optimize your bio. Make sure your bio says exactly what you do, so when someone comes to your page, they will easily know what you’re about within 5 seconds or less.
INSTAGRAM POSTS
Do not forget that Instagram is all about visuals. Pictures, videos, and everything that the eyes can see. It is not a text-based platform like Facebook and Twitter. So in visuals, kill it. Let your pictures be crisp and clear. Let your videos be clear and let it convey your message in under 1 minute. Videos on the platform have a time limit for their different channels. Make use of all the posting channels as well. The Instagram story, post, reel, live, and IG Tv, make use of all of them to boost your brand’s visibility.
Have a content strategy
Yes, you need a strategy to work efficiently on social media. Plan out your content with a content calendar, research topics, events, etc. surrounding your niche and target audience, and create content around this stuff. Always keep in mind, this is all about your target audience and not you. Remember the customer avatar you created? What do you think they want to see? How do you think they relate to your products/services? How best can you market your product to them? What problems can you and your product help them solve?
Never be too sale-sy
Do not appear to be saying “buy buy buy” all the time. Social media isn’t primarily a sales platform. People use it primarily for entertainment, to be informed, and for social interactions. Make sure you bridge these gaps first and they will naturally want to buy from you.
If you’re wondering about the best post format to use for your posts, I would advise you to focus more on videos. People consume video content a lot more than other post formats. But here is the catch: you have 60 seconds to deliver your message. Make it count. Instagram rolled out reels, maybe to compete with TikTok, but right now, as of when this article was published, reels have no algorithm limitations. Reels presents a way for you to reach your target audience faster by using a tone that’s trending with your target audience. Use a song that is still new to the trend list.
Here is one way to know an “about to go viral sound”: it contains less than 6k reels. Jump on those sounds creatively and push your brand. Be creative. If you’re not so sure how to jump on it or what the trend is about, take time out to watch other reels with that audio to have an idea.
ENGAGEMENT ON INSTAGRAM
This is where the bulk of your work as a business owner with a social media page is. Your actions in engagement can determine how fast or how slow your page will grow. You need to have an engagement strategy. Map out the minimum daily actions you can take on your page. Examples of those actions are:
- Engage your hashtags: Click on those hashtags your target audience will most likely be using and engage on posts you see there. Like and comment on these posts.
- Spy on your competitors: This is the most foolproof method. Look for your competitors and check out their followers. This group of people has already shown an interest in what you do. You can get their attention by either following them, liking their posts, or leaving comments under their posts.
- Comment on pages where your target audience is: Find those blogs, authority figures, celebrities, etc. that your target audience is interested in, follow them, and put on post notifications so once they post, you can leave a MEANINGFUL comment on their page. Read their post first and leave a creative and meaningful comment. Do not trend negatively on sensitive issues.
You can select the minimum times a day you can perform these actions, or the minimum number of accounts you will interact with every day.
BE CONSISTENT ON INSTAGRAM
Always show up. Consistency is not all about posting every single day. You can consistently kill your business or consistently grow it if you post without an avatar, a strategy, and no guide on what you should do and how you can be consistently killing your brand. But when you have these things in order and you have a structure, it is easier to post what’s working and what’s not. You double down on what’s working for you and scratch out what’s not working for you.
USE YOUR INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS
Your analytics is the result of your actions on your page. With your analytics, you can learn what’s working and what’s not. Let’s say your analytics tells you a particular post has gathered many likes and comments, while another has no likes and comments. This tells you the posts your audience likes and what they don’t like. Pay attention to your analytics and adjust your strategies accordingly.
USE INSTAGRAM PAID ADS/INFLUENCER MARKETING
Having used both of them, I would always recommend influencer marketing. But know this: not everyone who has a huge number of followers or anyone who calls him/herself an influencer is an influencer of your brand. An influencer is someone who can influence people’s buying decisions simply by recommending your brand or showing interest in your brand. Any other person with a huge number of followers who only brings traffic to your page but has no real influence is an advertiser. Choosing the right influencer for your brand is very essential. To know who can influence your business, you must master your customer avatar and find out who the authority figures they listen to are. That is your influencer right there. You can as well use paid ads to target your ideal customer audience if you know how to target them properly. For ads, I recommend putting up your ads through the Facebook business manager on your laptop rather than using the promote post button. This is because the business manager has a lot of targeting options that will bring better conversions for your business.
Growing your page on Instagram can be daunting at first, but when you get a hang of it, it becomes easier. Remember, DO NOT JUMP THE ROPES. Do not buy followers as they affect the quality of your account. Focus on quality and longevity. It might take time for your account to grow, but once it does, it can only keep growing from there. Going through shortcuts will only affect your account in the long run. You either have a huge number of followers with no meaningful conversion or Instagram can be disabled if they sense funny activities on your account.
To run your business smoothly on Instagram, obey the rules of the land, which is the Instagram community guideline. Don’t know the rules? READ IT HERE
I hope this long read helps your business…
