Whether you have 400,000 or 400 followers, creating a visually captivating Instagram profile can be a challenge. However, Instagram can be a create tool for increasing brand awareness, and boosting your revenue. It opens up a whole new platform to engage your audience and provide them with valuable content. Visual content marketing has taken over, with visual posts generating 94% more views than text-based posts. This is why it is critical to invest in using Instagram for you business.
It’s on thing to use Instagram for fun, or simply to share beautiful life moments, but integrating your account into your marketing strategy is a whole other approach. When you leverage an Instagram account to market your brand, you can use it to increase traffic and overall revenue as well.
Grow Your Brand On Instagram
So how can you make your account work for you? How will you be able to stand out from the sea of visual content? Here are 4 clever tools to help you grow your brand on Instagram.
1. Branded Hashtags
Although general hashtags are great to use, when using branded hashtags you increase the potential for audience engagement. A great way to get your customers more involved with the brand is to create a hashtag specific to the company – #CompanyName – or something related to a product or service.
A great example of this is Lululemon, who suggested that customers use #thesweatlife in their workout posts, which has generated over 162,000 Instagram photos from their community. This branded hashtag strategy allows your company to get more exposure to potential customers and creates much higher engagement.
This is also a great strategy to use for campaigns, to encourage your followers to share photos of their own experiences with your products. The user-generated content created from these campaigns add significantly to your brand identity and strengthens customer relations. A great example of this is Starbucks, who suggests that customers tag their drinks on Instagram.
Images: @starbucks
2. Tell Your Brand’s Story
Another way to market your brand through Instagram is to provide lifestyle content that describes your brands’ “personality”. Lifestyle photos help followers to relate to your brand, and if often found in photos of oceans, palm trees, or adventures.
Telling your story is a powerful way to connect with your audience. Instagram is the perfect platform to provide customers with a “behind-the-scenes” look at what really goes into the company, who works on providing them with content, and latest events.
Storytelling is also another great way to encourage followers to post their own pictures, to get creative, and join the season, campaign, or cause by posting photos of your product to help promote your brand even further.
Images: @theskinnyconfidential | @kerriehessillustration | @samssimpledecor
3. Influential Relationships
Another great way to build your exposure is to build relationships with strong, influential brands on Instagram. Exchanging free products or samples for increases promotion by an Instagram influencer can boost your traffic and ultimately grow your brand even further.
A great example of this is LIKEtoKNOW.it, a company who links shopper with their ideal outfits, linked in by other fashion bloggers. These fashion bloggers use #liketoknowit to promote their content and sell their outfits to customers directly.
Tagging other accounts is another way to use these Instagram influencers to promote your business. It is a great way to engage other brands in your content, and further build the relationships you’ve already established. This also allows followers of those brands to see your products and visual content as well.
Images: @liketoknow.it
4. Giveaways
I love giveaways! This is a great way to engage your audience, and to give them an amazing sample of your product or service without them having to spend a dime. In this way, you visually attract new customers to join in the competitions or giveaway events.
One of the most popular giveaways include big “loop giveaways”. This is where several brands, bloggers, or accounts join up to loop customers through each of their profiles. In this way you are able to leverage follower from other influencers to increase your brand exposure, all while providing potential customers with a fun and engaging event.
Images: @dressyourguests | @skylinesoapworks | @theheavenly_
Now over to YOU!
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As always, desire to inspire!
Xx
Carli
Featured Image: Shutterstock
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