Over time, Instagram has seen significant growth and is now a powerful tool for increasing your visibility on the Internet. More than just a social network, Instagram has become an essential if you’re looking to build a complete digital marketing strategy.
We’ve compiled these tips to help you and your business make the most of this social media platform.
1. Have a clear message and target audience in mind.
For companies looking to create an online presence, social media has become a must. As with most social media platforms, to stay effective on Instagram, you must not spread yourself too thin. It is therefore important to define a clear message. Determine your precise target market and don’t let them out of your sight.
What do you want to talk about? This is what your Instagram visitors need to know. And when you want to communicate a message, you need to know who you are talking to. This means you should consider studying your target audience.
2. Switch to a professional account
In recent years, Instagram has launched the Professional Profile. Just like the personal profile, it’s free, but it gives companies access to 4 additional features:
- Add contacts to your profile – users can directly access your address, e-mail, or phone number via buttons on your company profile
- Access to stats – these tell you more about your audience
- The Promote button – lets you sponsor publications directly on the app
- Add links to your Instagram stories – also known as the famous “swipe up,” these are only available to professional accounts with more than 10,000 subscribers
Switching to a professional profile is very easy and can be done directly from your account settings.
3. Analyze your results
If you’ve followed our advice and switched to a professional profile, you’ll have access to a variety of statistics:
- Profile Visits
- Reach – the number of unique accounts that have seen your posts
- Impressions – the total number of times all your posts have been viewed
- Website Clicks – the number of clicks on the link in your profile description
- Your Most Popular Posts – by default, these are sorted by number of views
- Stories – impressions, reach, number of pushes, click on Next and Back buttons, replies, scrolls, early exits
- Who are your subscribers – age, gender, city, country
- When are your subscribers? Which days and hours?
Consider studying your subscribers so you can attract more customers. To do this, you will have to choose the most relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your goals, since Instagram provides a great deal of information. You have all the keys you need to boost your popularity!
4. Use hashtags
Contrary to popular belief, the most commonly used hashtags are not necessarily the most effective. When you use hashtags that are too common, your posts will be lost amidst thousands of others that appear in swarms every second.
The trick is to include hashtags that other people use in moderation. This will give you more visibility since your posts will stay at the top of the list for longer when users search for your hashtag.
5. Publish stories
After 3 years of existence on Instagram, stories have not lost their appeal. Quite the opposite! Users truly enjoy this ephemeral and more authentic format. It lets you highlight content that you won’t publish on your account without as much effort as regular posts. But be careful, to still consider your professional image. You can’t just publish anything just because it only lasts 24 hours.
For companies, stories offer numerous advantages. They let you humanize your brand. You can also use them to promote an Instagram post, get your subscribers’ opinions quickly with the “polls” tool or even show the behind-the-scenes of your company.
