Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world with million users on a monthly basis. According to Statista, the number of Instagram users is projected to reach nearly 1.2 billion users globally, as the most recent forecast suggests. Instagram is largely dominated by Gen Z and Millennials with users ranging between 18 and 34 years old. In other words, Instagram plays an important role in influencing millennials for their purchasing behavior, implementing brand stickiness and raising brand loyalty. Below are 5 powerful Instagram marketing strategies that can help you get more active followers and engaged audiences. Learn with us and start boosting your Instagram account today!
1. Standardize Instagram Visuals
A visual brand identity is all about how your business looks and feels on social media. Keeping the post style consistent can build a stronger brand image and impress more users. A brand identity is made up of different elements such as logo, imagery, typefaces and colours. Standardizing Instagram posts by using a consistent tone of colour, filter, house style helps to make Instagram layout look more appealing. Instagram accounts with strong brand identity often gain more lifelong followers.
Enchante.io and haato.co are two Instagram shops that possess good examples of standardizing Instagram visuals by using earth tone.
2. Use Instagram #hashtag Strategically
Hashtags help to increase your Instagram discoverability and to get new followers. However, creating too many #hashtag #with #every #single #possibility would not help. As social spaces become increasingly crowded, it is essential to create hashtags that are more engaged and effective. The Hashtag Pyramid breaks down the tags by the size of the audience, from broad to niche. Analyze your targeted audiences by using the Hashtag Pyramid and create hashtags that are suitable for community, demographics, and interests. You can refer to the example below and try to create a hashtag with the provided template below.
Stacking a combination of hashtags by selecting just one from each level of the pyramid. This strategy will help you to reach multiple audiences without alienating the people most likely to follow you. Plus, you’ll #avoid #looking #spammy.
For example, The Faceshop Malaysia is using trending brand hashtag #THEFACESHOPMalaysia, general topic hashtags #CSR, expression hashtag #SpreadTheLove and community hashtag #relaybersamajiayou to call for fellow Malaysians to stay strong as a unit to brace through this pandemic by spreading cheers and helping one another. Consumers get to help communities in need while acquiring their daily essential beauty products during the Malaysia Movement Control Order (MCO). The Face Shop Malaysia created a community hashtag #relaybersamajiayou with 3 different languages to reach more audiences and engage with followers.
3. Manage Instagram Stories Actively
As mentioned, there are nearly 1.2 billion Instagram users globally and half of them are active users of Instagram story, according to Statista. Instagram stories provide great opportunities to engage with followers and build connections. There are many features on Instagram stories like Q&A, voting, repost and redirect links that help you understand what your followers like. So remember to create content for Instagram stories and manage feeds actively to identify your followers and convert them into future customers.
4. Maintain Constant User Engagement
User engagement is important for Instagram marketing. As long as the comments and direct messages are replied by real users or followers, it doesn’t matter if the comment or message is just an emoji. In the meantime, Instagram algorithm is able to identify spam comments by robot or user. Therefore it is not worth it for us to cheat. . Try to encourage users to comment and be responsive. It helps to get active followers on your Instagram.
5. Creates Save-worthy Contents
Instagram algorithm cares about high-quality contents besides constant user engagement, and the amount of the saves plays an important role here as it indicates users find the content worth revise again. The Instagram algorithm therefore shows the posts to more people. Informational content is the most likely type of content that is save-worthy for revisiting in the future. If your brand is related to education, try to create contents such as infographic that provide knowledge and information on your Instagram. Instagram is a highly visually-oriented channel with a community that shows high affinity, so please keep in mind to create contents with nice visuals and align with brand concepts at the same time.
In fact, there are still many strategies to do Instagram marketing as new features are constantly being introduced. If you wish to learn more about Instagram marketing and other social media marketing, you can take courses below for more guidelines, strategies and references. Hope everyone can get your own way to manage powerful Instagram marketing strategies!
Courses recommendation:
Udemy is a world-renowned open online learning platform. Users can find courses in the field they want on Udemy at any time without restriction of time and distance. There are many Instagram marketing and Instagram management courses under Udemy, which can be selected according to your own interests and needs.
Coursera is special because most of the courses provided are offered by university professors, including Stanford, Yale, etc. There are many social marketing courses on it, but not many of them specializing on Instagram operation or Instagram marketing.
Skillshare is an online course platform that focuses on creativity and art. Therefore, there are many Instagram visual design and Instagram photography courses, which are suitable for people who want to focus on learning Instagram visual related skills.
Growth Marketer Academy (GMA) is the first growth marketing school in Asia, with footprints in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore. The most popular course in GMA is the 3-month growth marketing training bootcamp. GMA also provides many short-term programs with topic-based courses such as Instagram workshops, SEO courses, etc. Offline teaching is offered by GMA, therefore you can interact face-to-face with lecturers, solve problems directly, and get to know many other marketers.