How to Successfully Market Your Business on Instagram

A photo on Instagram is now worth a thousand likes. Instagram is dominating the social media arena when it comes to engagement.

It boasts more than 200 million users and according to a study by Forrester, Instagram delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.

How can you take advantage of this market and highlight your brand? Here are a few tips to start engaging individuals.

1)      Use Real Photos

With Instagram it is important to showcase the lifestyle of your brand and avoid pushy sales photos. Authenticity goes a long way and when taking photos, steer clear of artificial pictures, such as an images directly from the website, and even screen shot photos. These can all lead to users unfollowing your account.

DO: Highlight practice times, not just the games! It shows another side of the brand and can give your fans something to get excited about!

DON’T: Take screen shots of photos online. It’s obvious to the user and the photo will be compressed when screen shot, resulting in a pixelated photo.

2)      How to Sell Your Products

Pushing your products every now and then can be good. Show your products in context for users to imagine the possibilities.  Let your hair down and show some character! Show your customers the potential they could have with your business’ products.

Other Ideas:

• Do Giveaways
• ‘Re-graming’ your customer’s photos through photo apps, such as ‘Repost.’
• Give sneak peaks of new products

DO: Have fun with your brand.

DO: Take tight photos from different angles and utilize close ups.

DON’T: Be so blatant about what you’re trying to sell.

3)      Maintain Consistency

Posting your photos 1-3 times a week is a good amount to stay on top of followers’ mind, but simultaneously not coming off as too spammy. Additionally, having your Instagram photos go out on Facebook and Twitter as well can help your brand.

DO: Keep your photos relevant and in the same spirit of  the brand.

4)      Don’t Use A Million Hashtags

Less is more on Instagram. And when it come to hashtags, use them sparingly. They often comes off as soliciting and spammy and decreases the quality of the content. Social Bakers found a strong correlation between a decrease in engagement with more hashtags.

JUST DON’T:

5)      Use Analytics

Programs like Latergramme or Iconosquare offer the ability to schedule post and use analytics to monitor your account’s performance and followers.

What tactics have you used for Instagram that has helped your business grow on the platform?