Instagram.
Another little social media app we all know today. There is nothing as frustrating as looking at your followers and not seeing the big number you want to see. How about those likes? And even a nice comment here or there. It could become discouraging if you know what I mean. But what are we doing wrong? Is it my brand? Is it my work? Don’t be too hard on yourself. Instagram for business is so important to build your brand awareness. In conclusion, generating new clients to buy or support your products or services.
Instagram does not define you, it simply helps you get your brand across to the viewers.
Social Media plays a crucial role in connecting people and developing relationships, not only with key influencers and journalists covering your company’s sector, but also provides a great opportunity to establish customer service by gathering input, answering questions and listening to their feedback. As a creative business owner, we all know how important this app can be on the long term to promote your business.
Thus leaving all the questions. What should I post? What should my caption be? Are hashtags important? Will paid promotions help? Continue reading to ease your mind.
Let’s make friends.
Instagram can kind of be compared to making friends in school, or anywhere else for that matter. Do they like what I wear? Will they like what I say? Let me rather not say anything at all. We all hate rejection, and that always result in us pulling back. But how would you make friends without saying a word?
Instagram works the same way. The more you put yourself out there, the more connections you’ll gain. This growth is organic, which means that it takes time, but it leads to true, authentic engagement with your page and brand! Engage, engage, engage! That is how you grow and promote on Instagram. Instagram for business is all about exposing your business to potential clients.
How would you do this?
Don’t be scared to follow other users. How would someone see you if you don’t make yourself visible? By following other users, other people will most likely view your profile as well. If they like what they see, you will gain a follow back. Go to the pages of people you admire or aspire to work with and comment on and like lots of their content. Go to the pages of your creative peers and like and comment on their work. Let the world know you’re there. Don’t be impersonal. Be sure to leave comments that are real and relevant to the actual content. Nobody likes a person who is trying to force them to become a client.
Leave messages. Send messages to potential clients or people you would like to work with. Really interact with the other persons interests such as “I’m wondering if you might be open to an initial conversation to…” or “I saw your post regarding this and have to say I was really impressed.” Identify an issue and offer a solution. Research well on the brand and identify the opportunities or the issues. Make them feel as if you wanted to reach out personally about a specific topic rather than just throwing your company in their face. Be natural, confident and make it interesting to read.
One of our top tips for increasing engagement and visibility of a post is to engage 15 minutes before you post and the 15 minutes after. Don’t just post and hope for the best. By engaging both before and after you post, you’re increasing the visibility of your content being seen.
Consistency is key.
It is important to keep your page up to date. If your followers are interested in your work, they want to know what’s going on. Instagram for business is all about giving your followers insights on your company, like process photo’s, for instance. Post between between 3-6 days per week is the sweet spot for most business types. Posting more than that can actually lead to a drop in engagement or followers because they can “get over it” really quickly. Your followers want to feel engaged, and trust that they will see your posts on their feed. Try using Instagram stories to get fresh content out every day.
Make sure that your posts are interesting, that it is something people WANT to see. Think of topics like, behind the scenes, your projects in process, new releases and even ask your followers what they think and would like to see. That is where engagement comes in again.
We know managing all of this information could be quite time consuming. Our recommendation is to take a day to set up the week’s content. That way you will also be able to plan better. Some of the most popular apps for social scheduling include Later, Planoly, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.
Should I pay to promote my posts?
The question always is, is this where I will reach my target audience? A target audience is a particular group at which a product is aimed. For example, everyone wears clothers. Therefore, clothes are a good example of something that can be promoted on Instagram. Getting more engagements means more people see your product or service. At the end of the day, it involves several factors, Firstly, is it within my marketing budget? Secondly, will I gain anything from this? If yes, what do you want your potential client to see? A product? The services you provide? What you did the past week? It is all up to you.
In conclusion, from our experience paid apps do get a lot of engagements. But those engagements is simply useless if it doesn’t generate new clients.
Stick to a theme.
People like associating things with a certain look. You’ve probably noticed already, when you view a persons profile it looks like their posts follow a specific sequence. Whether it is a colour scheme, mock-up style or back drop. Keep your post to a specific style. Research trends to attract more followers. Express your brands look and feel through the colors and designs you share. It all just looks so much better when you view a profile and can see a person invested time onto his profile. Doesn’t it just want you to come back for more?
Here are some examples:
#Hashtags.
Yes, another app where hashtags are important. Most users just add a few hashtags to their post for fun, with or without the hopes of gaining traffic to their post. Use smart hashtags, the true intent of hashtags is to congregate posts of a certain topic in one place so that they are easy to scan and search based on a user’s interest.
As simple as that sounds, it’s not as simple as adding any hashtag at the end of your post. This involves a bit of research. What do people like? What do people search for on Instagram? Which content should I include? Believe it or not, there are Hashtag trends. Try researching what most people view and try to integrate them into your post. If you create website designs and you specify in a particular platform, rather than use the #websitedesign try opting for #wordpressdesigner to increase your chance of being discovered by businesses who might be looking for just that.
TOP TIP: If you don’t like how hashtags look in your caption, try separating them with a punctuation mark in the next line and add them below. Another option is to add them to your comment section, your post will still pop up if one of these hashtags are included in your comments.
Here are some of our favorites Instagram for business hashtags:
#instagood #brandidentity #savvybusinessowner #socialmediamarketing #graphicdesigner #designdaily #lovedesign #illustrator #designstudio
Patience, child!
We’ve all heard this before. All good things take time right? It is the same with social media. Persistence and patience ends in results. We all grow over time, Facebook didn’t hit 2.85 billion users over night. Therefor, we need to remember that our business still grows each day.
Our last comments.
Please don’t get hung up on numbers. Moreover, there is no point having thousands of followers if no-one engages with your content. It’s far better to have fewer followers whether that’s 10, 100 or 1000, who genuinely like and comment on your content. Moreover, It is all about quality, not quantity. Instagram for business is a promotion page, not what defines your business. For more about our services and how we can help grow your business, click here.