Followers are the lifeblood of Instagram and all activities on the platform focus on getting more followers, more shares, more likes, and more engagement. All these elements are critically important for both brands and marketers who must adhere to the trends that follow the best practices. Instagram has evolved from a simple photo-sharing app and is a powerful marketing platform today. Regardless the size of the business, from big corporations to small businesses, having a social media presence is must for promoting brands, and if you have not yet included Instagram in your marketing strategy, you are surely missing out on big opportunities. However, you must have the knowledge of using Instagram features by analyzing trends so that you can build your campaign to generate the right vibes that bring the right results.
The highly visual nature of Instagram and simplicity together with its excellent display on mobile devices is one of the reasons for the success of the platform. Marketers are fond of the platform that is not only easy to use but also allows telling stories that generate engagement. Since visuals have more appeal to the human brain, there is also a seductive attraction of consuming visual content without taxing your brain by reading. And the attraction goes up many more times if you use videos.
The current trends
Studies have shown that to gain maximum mileage invisibility and earning more ‘likes’ and followers there is nothing better than video posts that garner twice the attention over other visuals. Since videos have the strongest appeal among all visuals, this is not surprising at all. You must optimize your efforts to ensure that you get the returns and keep away from overdoing that can lead to frustration. Tags enhance engagement, but it does not mean that you can use tags at random. Use tags judiciously and restrict it to 5 tags per post because anything above it does not increase engagement and turns superfluous. It assumes a lot of importance if you take into account the fact that the engagement rate is the key performance indicator (KPI) of a campaign for 80% brands.
In this article, we will discuss what you should do to succeed with Instagram. Indeed, success would mean different for different people depending on what they want to achieve. Some people might want to get free Instagram likes and followers while others might aim for increasing engagement that is so much necessary for building brands. Naturally, the focus of the latter group will be on conversation, likes and shares provided there is already a base of followers ready to add value to the efforts.
Create video strategies for Instagram
To stay tuned to the trends and capitalize on the high engagement generated by videos, your main thrust should be on developing more video content for posting on Instagram. If you find it difficult to create video content you can add slices of videos along with the standard images that look stunningly beautiful. And remember that videos are not only good for Instagram, but it works wonderfully on all other social media platforms too.
People simply fall in love with Instagram videos that create playful moments with its share of humor that tells a story and draws them close to the content while keeping them hooked to it with its effects lingering in the mind for many days. Build your content around some theme and keep it simple with all emphasis on the visuals to tell a story that viewers find interesting and useful. Focus on an idea and build the content around it but avoid complication and execute it beautifully. Maintaining simplicity is at the heart of Instagram that will enhance the appeal of videos.
Use hashtags judiciously
Hashtags can make or break your Instagram campaign, and you must learn how to make the best use of it without overdoing. Create hashtags with some thought so that you remain within your boundaries yet achieve the maximum outreach and higher engagement. Hashtags help to highlight your content and bring it in front of the target audience so that it becomes visible to the right people. It means that you must have the audience in mind also when creating hashtags because the hashtags must be relevant to what the audience is searching for.
Once you have created the hashtags, you must apply your mind about using the optimal numbers in the posts. Do not get obsessed with the number of hashtags by creating plenty of them but aim for quality hashtags that resonate with the audience. Spread the hashtags across the post but do not use more than 5 in a single post because more numbers do not increase engagement.
Tagging generates engagement
Businesses can expect a lot from Instagram as studies have shown that Instagram users have 60% more chances of buying something that they viewed online. Tagging is a big part of Instagram because it creates engagement. And engagement is what marketers are looking for. The biggest takeaway from Instagram is the engagement it generates which has huge potential for business and naturally tagging becomes an all-important aspect of Instagram. The right tagging strategy ensures wide exposure of Instagram posts to targeted users, and at the same time, the chances of converting those users into customers are very high too.
The strategies for tagging revolve around hashtags, location tags, and product tags.
Hashtags consist of selecting the trending or most relevant word or phrase and define it by placing the # sign before it. For example, #realityshow describes the relevance of the post or picture with television programs.
For facilitating Instagram posts to show up in location-based searches, using Instagram stickers or some other identifiers as location tag can bring the post in front of the right audience. By using product tags, you can link the product and pricing information as the item appears in the post. Read more: Digital Marketing Agency
Knowing how to use these tags in conformity to the best practices should help to derive maximum outreach and visibility that translate into followers and likes and lead to engagement by building communities.
Walter Moore is a notable management consultant and digital marketing expert. He is quite experienced in the field of web marketing as well as website designing.