Instagram boasts over 700 million total monthly active users and eight million business profile accounts. Because of this ever-growing audience, brands should be focusing on their Instagram strategy now more than ever.
For your brand to be successful on this platform, it requires a thoughtful strategy, a well-defined brand identity, visual creativity and effective community management. To give you a helping hand, team MMN have put together a list of top tips to get you on your way:
Set strategic goals & determine clear objectives
Ask yourself what Instagram offers in comparison to other social networks. Decide which of the below objectives are the most important and the order of priority each one takes:
- Increasing product or service sales
- Driving website traffic
- Increasing brand awareness
- Increasing customer satisfaction
- Identifying and establishing relationships with influencers
- Showcasing your team and recruiting new talent
- Showcasing your products/services
- Sharing company/industry news and promoting events
Create a content strategy
The foundation of your brand’s presence is content, as well as deciding when and how often to post. By identifying a few main areas and rotating through them, you can ensure you always stay relevant. Track the results using a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite.
Set engagement guidelines for your business to interact with others, from liking and commenting on posts to handling incoming comments on your own account. If you want to remain personal, don’t automate your engagement.
Ensure visual consistency
Instagram is all about the visuals, which is why it’s so important to build a cohesive and recognisable brand identity. The platform allows you to showcase your company culture and people – not just your products and services.
You need to build a visual presence for your brand: do you use emojis? What hashtags do you want to push? The style of writing and aesthetic of photos should be distinct and consistent.
Get creative
Instagram’s “stories” feature has gained 250 million average daily users since it was introduced. Its purpose is to create attention-grabbing live stories which may be missed or disappear if it were published as a post.
Be original
Lastly, don’t mimic the strategy of other brands – stay true to your audience and cater to their interests and expectations. Research what’s working for your business within your other social networks, the content your audience shares and how they interact with similar businesses.
By following the above guidelines, your brand is sure to reach its targeted demographics, engage users and drive social value. To build a strong community and see results, remember to include an informative bio in your profile, avoid the hard-sell tactic and make use of an analytics tool like Sprout Social to see what is driving engagement.
If you need help developing your social media strategy, why not see what Make More Noise can do for you? Contact us at hello@makemorenoise.co.uk or call 0121 306 0996 to arrange an initial meeting today.
