Who would have thought that a mobile photo and video sharing application like Instagram was to take Social Media by storm in just a few years, since its launch in 2010?
With an astounding increase of 100 million users since September 2015, Instagram currently (2016) has an active monthly user access of 500 million!
Brands like; Adidas, Levis, Audi, Coca-Cola, Mercedes and many more, have already started taking advantage of this platform to market their brand and products to find and establish
a loyal customer base.
Being the preferred social sharing channel for teens and young Millennials, Instagram receives over 95 million daily posts, with 4.2 billion likes – A good enough reason I should say, for any B2B or B2C companies to jump on this bandwagon and bolster their Inbound Marketing game.
Here are a few tips to assist your business grow with Instagram:
1. RECIPROCITY - The ‘Shout-Out’ Trade Offs
For any business to find success with Instagram, organic traffic generated through a large ‘following’ is necessary.
Unlike popular household brands, accumulating substantial followers to achieve your marketing goals could take some time when you’re starting new. However, with the ‘shout-outs’ you can generate considerable followers in less time.
Shout-Outs basically refer to partnering with other Instagram accounts and cross promoting each other’s profile – A ‘Share-for-Share’, where you share one another’s profile and content, and you both encourage your followers to follow the other account.
The idea here is to strike that ‘win-win’ balance where you’ll easily double your ‘following’ by accessing others’ audiences, and they in turn get access to your followers.
You start off by making a list of Instagram accounts that have a similar following as yours. This is crucial because the other account is more willing, when both of you have equal audiences to gain.
However, you need to make sure the other Instagram account is somewhat close to what your profile or brand represents – i.e. you wouldn’t want to partner with a brand like Strava, (who’s into running & cycling) with a jewellery brand. You may get the ‘shout-outs’ but not enough to garner any leads. As a second thought, a brand like Strava could be more receptive if you’re into sports clothing and accessories.
The example shown below from HubSpot illustrates how Foundr Mag successfully partnered with Rich20Something for a ‘shout out’ trade off;
If you prefer the invest option, you can always opt for ‘Paid Shouts-Outs’. With this, you can target accounts that have large followings and engagement. Foundr Magazine’s founder Nathan Chan says that from paid ‘shout-outs’ he managed to get his followers to the 10,000 mark, in the first two weeks of starting his Instagram account.
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2. Drive Traffic through Captivating Photos, Texts & Videos
Instagram is primarily about pictures, the more beautiful, creative and inspiring your images are, the more you'll find people engaging with them. When your followers see strong images that entice and stimulate their emotions, they find the urge to share it with their friends and followers.
The image above is of an Instagram pic of the restaurant in Berlin, Muse Berlin. The restaurant uses such images, (sometimes accompanied by text captions) in their feeds to attract customers, who would share or comment on the posts and more than likely walk in to order the meal they found to be appetising.
As with images, you can also insert videos to tell your compelling stories. Instagram allows you to record videos that are between 3 and 15 seconds long.
As you can see in the image above of a video feed from HubSpot in their Instagram profile, they were promoting the event INBOUND 2016, which gathered 2112 views.
Inserting short videos is a sure way to capture your visitors’ undivided attention, and it also adds an element of variety to your imagery.
3. Hacking ‘Bios’ to convert followers into leads.
Putting up creative, compelling Instagram images will assist in promoting your brand, and incite consumers to soak up your marketing message. But to build up a sizeable subscribers list or to convert your followers into leads, a little trick with your Instagram ‘bio’ is necessary.
As you may or may not be aware, Instagram doesn’t allow links in photo descriptions.
It only allows you to put just one link in your 'bio'. This is an opportunity for you to direct your followers to your website, or to whichever ‘landing page’ you’ve created to capture your leads. You can also use the link to directly make a sale via linking it to an ecommerce portal.
The example below is from Foundr, where their 'bio' is used to craft a clever 'Call-To-Action' (CTA), which invites the users to receive a free EBook, nudging them to click on the link to their website.
While hashtags are necessary for any Instagram feed, for its exposure, longer shelf life and ‘searchability’ function, businesses need to be mindful they don't overload their feeds with multiple hashtags, to the point it obliterates their messages.
Another creative use of the ‘bio link’ that has completely changed the way people interact with Instagram, is the feature from Photoslurp. Photoslurp has come up with the ‘Shoppable Instagram’, where the single link allowed on your 'bio' can be redirected to a new 'landing page', which is a duplicate page of your feed, allowing consumers to buy the product they viewed in your original Instagram feed.
The example below illustrates how Fashionpills is using the feature to sell its product;
Finally…
In a short period of time, Instagram has grown massively in popularity and proven to be an effective social medium for marketers. Their recent feature, Instagram Stories which collected over 100 million active users within 2 months of its launching – is a testament to their creativity and ingenuity.
My only question now is - Do you Instagram?
If you'd like more assistance with your content or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
