As an online business owner you should already know that you need to have a social media strategy in place. If you don't, your competitors are going to win over clients and customers that should've been yours. However, in today’s blog my mission is to prevent that from happening, by offering up three awesome Instagram marketing tips that will help you get your approach to the platform right, and bring you success in 2021 – are you ready? Then let’s get started!
Instagram Marketing Tip 1: Define your message & target audience before you start posting
My first Instagram marketing tip for today comes into play before you even begin to create any content. Before we can create effectively we need to figure out two things: What our message is going to be, and who we want to see it.
Are we talking to people who have businesses, who are part time business owners who have a hobby turned business? Do we want to talk to men? Do we want to talk to women? Do we want to talk to people with careers or stay-at-home mums? Do we want to talk to people who love cats?
As a bonus Instagram marketing tip here I’ll tell you that it pays to get very niche and specific with this. if you cast a wide net, you may well be able to reach more people - but the fact is that the vast majority of those people won’t be interested in what you have to say. This is why you want to identify who will be interested before you begin content creation – so you can talk specifically to those people
Instagram Marketing Tip 2: Create an emotional connection
Once you know who you want to talk to, then my next Instagram marketing tip is to figure out how to really get through to them, and make an emotional connection. Eliciting an emotional response really make an impression on your audience which then can potentially convert them into becoming a customer of yours.
So, no matter if we're talking to people who love cats, people who are struggling in their business or anything in between - we want to know: What products and services do they like already? What products or services do they want, but are unable to find? What the problems are that keep them up at night?
Create content that answers these questions, and you have more of a chance of creating that emotional bridge between your company and your products, and the people you want to buy them.
Instagram Marketing Tip 3: Choosing your arena(s)
Most advice in this area centres on finding the right social media platform for your business – however, since this is an 'Instagram marketing tips' blog, then obviously we’re going to focus on Instagram here. We will touch on other platforms a little right now though… Put simply, even though you may well be focusing on Instagram, don’t neglect your other platforms. If nothing else – they can be used as a vehicle to bring more people into your Instagram page.
Our next purely Instagram marketing tip though, is a reminder that there are still different ‘areas’ of Instagram within the platform as a whole, and each of those areas has it’s own hashtag. So If you notice that you’re getting a lot of success from a certain hashtag, make sure to include that hashtag in more of your posts. Likewise – since Instagram gives you so much space to include hashtags, try out new hashtags and new places, to see if your content gains traction there. If it does, great! If it doesn’t, you haven’t lost anything in a business sense and you have gained the knowledge that ‘hashtag X doesn’t work for me right now’.
If you're just starting out, try to spot places where your content is getting better traction and focus your efforts there. You might also want to look at your competition to see what hashtags they use, then use them too.
So, there you have it – three top Instagram marketing tips that are sure to help you find more traction on the platform. Be sure to check back again soon though, as I may well have even more Instagram marketing tips for you in the future, or even advice for other platforms!