Marketers love words and thrive on them, crafting luscious descriptions and tempting offers to attract consumers. However, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a photo takes much less time to have an impact than it does for a potential customer to read a paragraph of copy. Enter Instagram, a young but powerful force to be reckoned with. In just a few years, it has become a daily staple of social media and an effective marketing platform.
Instagram has millions of daily users who scroll through their feeds several times a day – your brand could easily earn their attention with an eye-catching photo and a short, sweet message.
Advertisements on Facebook are useful, but Instagram has a more level playing field. You don’t need to pay scores of money just to hope that your message will reach some people. On Instagram, your followers will see your photo in their feed, regardless of whether you pay to boost it or not. You can reach a wider audience, especially with the use of hashtags. With relevant hashtags, consumers will find you, ensuring continued reach for days and weeks after you post your photo. Furthermore, it ensures that your target demographic will stumble upon your account because they themselves were searching for those hashtags.
Engagement
Encourage audience engagement through a variety of means like Instagram contests, promotional codes, and regramming. Offer a prize like your product or service in an Instagram contest, asking users to follow you and post a photo using a designated hashtag. With that specific hashtag, you’ll have a clean log of all the entries to choose from. Entrants’ followers will see their photos and check out what kind of contest they’re entering, drawing more new people to your account. Promo codes encourage followers to regularly check out your account, so post a discount code every so often to keep their attention and reward their loyalty. People love being featured and feeling famous, so stay on top of hashtags featuring your brand name and repost pictures of users who are enjoying your brand. This will encourage people to post about your brand in the hopes of being regrammed, and fill their followers’ feeds with exposure for you.
Finally, directly engage with your audience. Regularly search out the hashtags that involve your brand name and like and comment on photos of consumers interacting with your brand. Have conversations with them and cultivate a good voice and image for your brand. People appreciate the attention and enjoy the feeling of “talking to something famous.”