Did you know that Instagram boasts an estimated one billion active users, making it the second most popular social media platform, second only to Facebook? In other words, if you are not already using it to boost your digital marketing efforts, you are missing out on a notable opportunity to increase sales, maximize reach, and engage with your customers.
Luckily, it is not too late to get started! Here is a list of five hacks for successful Instagram marketing to put into practice immediately, but first, we explore why you should be using Instagram for marketing, and the key stats you need to know.
Why Use Instagram for Marketing?
Instagram is an incredibly significant social media platform that is useful not just for personal networking but for businesses, also. The ability and opportunity to reach a global audience is only one of the features businesses love about the app. As the stats below show, the number of users both daily and monthly is outstanding, and if your business isn’t on this channel, you’re missing out. However, competition is fierce on Instagram for businesses. Over 60% of the world’s top companies use this channel for marketing, from Apple to Nike, KFC to Virgin Atlantic.
Luckily, it is possible to make a name for yourself on Instagram if you are worried about competing with global names. Your business can use Instagram to showcase your unique personality and brand values. You can build key relationships with fellow businesses, as well as customers.
What’s more, you can use this platform to change current views of your brand by posting images and ‘stories’ which are tailored to your brand voice and imagery, helping people to see the ‘real you.’ After all, Instagram is, first and foremost, a ‘storytelling’ app, meaning you can provide a detailed brand journey, showing where you started to where you are now.
Important Instagram Stats You Need to Know
- Instagram has 1 billion users every month.
- An incredible 500 million people log into Instagram to use their ‘stories’ feature daily.
- Potential advertising reach on Instagram is 849.3 million users.
- 200 million users visit business profiles daily.
- Instagram is the second most downloaded free app.
- It’s the fastest growing social media platform in Canada.
- In 2019, 37% of American adults used Instagram.
- Learn how to navigate hashtags
Hashtags improve the searchability of your content and your business profile, hence the reason why some brands include around 30 in every single post that they publish. It is a great idea to lookout for and use a free online tool to research various popular hashtags relevant to your posts. A good example of one of these tools is Hashtagify.
Along with researching relevant hashtags, experts also suggest that you create a hashtag specifically for your brand. Use it in all posts going forward and eventually your customers will start using it too.
- Use your customers’ photos
If a customer posts a picture or a story of them with your product or says something positive about your business, it is always a good idea to ask for their permission to repost it. This is called leveraging user-generated content. Just remember never to use customer photos in your Instagram ads — doing so could cause you to run into legal trouble.
- Embrace all content formats
When one thinks of Instagram, ‘photos’ will likely be the first association to come to mind. However, Instagram actually makes it possible for individuals and businesses to explore with a diverse range of content formats. You can create interactive stories, post videos, engage with customers through carousel posts, create ads based on your budgets, and your best performing posts as highlights. Brands that embrace all content formats tend to grab and hold their followers’ attention with greater success than brands who simply post pictures.
Having trouble? It can prove helpful to approach an internet marketing agency, like Click Intelligence, for guidance to ensure that you’re making the most of all the relevant Instagram features.
- Schedule posts to go out at peak times
Do some research into when your followers are spending the majority of their time scrolling through Instagram and schedule your posts to go out at those specific times. The great news is that you can now use HubSpot and Buffer, along with several other social media marketing tools to schedule posts ahead of time. In doing so, you will likely notice higher engagement rates and a drastically improved reach.
- Experiment with frequency
Contrary to what some websites may tell you, there is no ‘perfect’ number of times to post per day or per week. This number varies significantly from industry to industry and from business to business. The best way to find out your company’s ‘perfect’ posting frequency is to experiment. Post once per day everyday for a week, then post twice per day everyday for a week, etc. until you notice which approach seems to be generating the most favorable results.
Good luck!