HOW TO USE INSTAGRAM FOR MARKETING.... (PART TWO)

In the previous part, you must have read about a few Instagram marketing tips which included switching your profile to an Instagram business profile which will give you a glimpse of free tools and insights, making use of marketing tools to check out your audience's demographics and algorithm, publishing posts, reels. We also recommended you IGTV for promoting your brand to engage with your audience and posting Instagram ads to target viewers that might not follow you yet or using Instagram stories to post behind-the-scenes videos or posts to build a relationship with your audience.

To continue the journey of Instagram marketing tips, we suggest you few more powerful tools for your business all that it’s worth.

6. Collaborate With Influencers for a Wider Reach -

The quickest way to reach potential customers on Instagram is to partner with influencers who have audiences with large followings. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing where a brand pays that person to promote their product/ service to their followers.

In today’s digital era, social content add more value to brands because of public trust. They often have very engaged followers on social media. That's why influencer marketing is considered the right strategy to take your business to the next level.

Recently, Instagram has launched a new feature which is termed 'Instagram Collabs'. This feature enables you to connect with a co-content creator to multiply engagement and reach. This Instagram feature has been readily adopted by many brands and influencers to grab the opportunity to expose them to their potential customers and new followers through one post.

Influencer marketing has three main components - Relevance, Reach, and Resonance.

????????Relevance - You need a relevant influencer who shares the content relevant to your business. That influencer must have an audience which aligns with your target customers. If you build a relationship with the right influencer, you'll build lasting brand awareness with your audience.

????????Reach - Reach is the number of people who follow you or your respective influencers. Choosing the right influencer for your business is something you need to keep in your mind, as the influencer, you chose to collab with must have enough followers who are interested in your products/ services.

????????Resonance - The influencer must have the?potential to create a high level of content that can connect with an audience that is relevant to your brand.

These days, authenticity is important for brands and it resonates most with customers. Your existing customers might not be influencers, but you can still use their posts to influence people to buy your products/ services by collecting user-generated photos.

7. Collect User-Generated Content ( UGC ) -

User-generated content is a powerful and engaging form of marketing for any brand. Through UGC, you can create great content for your Instagram page.?By getting responses from your audience you can leverage your new customers to create some engaging content for your brand. UGC allows you to strengthen your relationship with your followers and broaden your online presence.

Through UGC, your audience helps you to achieve other customers' trust by generating authentic and personalized content. Many brands frequently use UGC tricks to promote and connect their brand with the audience on a personal level on Instagram Page.

8. Come up with Interactive Hashtags for Brands -

Interactive Hashtags for Brands are a great way to interact with your audience and engage with them.

There are some benefits of using Hashtags -

????????It increases exposure and discoverability - By clicking on a hashtag on Instagram, you’re able to discover all the related posts of particular brands. Making of hashtags is a great way for people to know about your brand’s existence. Your audience may use brand hashtags to show their experiences with your goods or services as a form of brand promotion.

????????It encourages audience interactions - Brand Advocacy is also very important to gain customers' trust. If you can convince your audience to use your brand’s hashtag, it helps you to know your customer's feedback and how your brand meets their needs.

????????Competitor Analysis - Hashtags help you analyze your share of voice on social media. First of all, Do you know, What share of voice is? Share of voice is a measurement of the market through which you can compare your brand with your other competitors.?It measures brand awareness and customer engagement to show you how you stack up to the competition. With the help of this, you can compare your content with your respective competitor's content and analyze where you are lacking, and curate some new ideas and implement them.

????????Content research - Hashtags help you to research different content ideas. Let's say, you want to increase your share of voice in the #fashion hashtag. You can search the different types of content by using a particular hashtag and also see the top result on the Instagram page.

????????Links digital and URL campaigns - These days, there are chances that you might come across a marketing campaign with hashtags. These campaigns either encourage you to use their general brand hashtag or a campaign one, hashtags offer an easy way to connect digital and in-real-life campaigns.

For example - Domino’s Pizza – #letsdolunch

#letsdolunch is the best example of a hashtag related to one of the most famous Domino’s Pizza social media campaigns. Domino’s 2012 campaign targeted its audience with the offer of cheaper pizza. The one-day promotion ran from 9 am to 11 am. It deduced the price of pizza by a penny every time somebody tweeted #letsdolunch . After 85,000 tweets, the price fell from ￡15.99 to ￡7.74 where it stayed until 3 pm.

If you have a popular brand slogan or phrase use that hashtag to promote your brand. But no matter what you’re posting, you need to post at the right times and avoid over-posting.

9.?Post at the Right Times -

Posting at the right time means posting during the peak days and hours when your most of your followers are online as that time is considered the best moment for your post to accomplish your goal behind that post. Sometimes Instagram Insights also gives you the best moment for your post to publish through the Instagram algorithm, but as every post and product are different they need a different spotlight. So, sometimes your algorithm can help you better than the standard algorithm.

To discover your own best time for your post, you should be experimental and actively keep an eye on your metrics.

10.?Importance of Metrics -

Firstly, you should know how well your page and posts are performing, and on basis of that only you can improve your Instagram performance and optimize it.

You should track your follower growth rate and analyze how your posts are performing in terms of metrics, as it is related to your brand’s image. Furthermore, you need to measure engagement rates, which include likes and comments.

Instagram being an image-sharing platform has influenced the social- media world which has approx. 2 billion users. It is one of the platforms where billions of likes are handed out each day. So, be careful about strategies for your brand campaign because this platform of social media has the power to boost and hinder your brand through one post.