When you’re considering launching your brand on social media, Instagram has a lot to offer. In our previous post about the power of Instagram, we discussed some of the advantages the platform can offer to companies in the B2C space. In this article, we’re going to go through some of the basics of making your business’ Instagram account work for you right from the start!
1. Define your branding and target audience
You’ll need a consistent “voice” so your followers know what to expect from your page. Knowing your audience is crucial too! Social media success is all about providing valuable content to followers, and what works for one group of people could be off-putting to another. Make sure you know who you want to reach!
2. Do a “launch” post
Your first post on Instagram will help set the tone for your marketing campaigns to come. Use a beautiful image, a welcoming caption, and let people know what they’re getting when they follow you!
3. Start posting regularly and frequently
Pages with regular posts are treated better by the Meta algorithms, giving you more exposure. But why post frequently, especially early on when you don’t have a lot of followers? Simple: it’s all about appearances. When people visit your social media, they need to see lots of content. They need to know that you’ve got a lot to say and offer, even if you’ve only been live for a couple weeks. Give them some material to look at!
4. Keep your posts consistent with your branding
It’s all too easy to go off-brand because you saw something you thought was interesting and wanted to share it with your followers (we’ve done it before but it’s worth it make sure the content you put up is aligned with audience expectations. Nobody likes a movie where the styles shift constantly and each new scene brings tonal whiplash (unless crazy, random material IS your branding - but even that has to be approached with discipline) and the same is true for Instagram marketing.
5. Mix up the type of content you share: post stories and reels along with regular posts
In addition to the ordinary posts your brand puts up, take advantage of the stories and reels options. Stories allow for more audience interaction and last just 24 hours, inspiring clicks and views over a short time horizon. Reels are brief videos that stick around and tend to drive a lot of engagement compared with other kinds of posts on Instagram. Using some of each is a great way to keep people interested!
6. Focus on value, not advertising
Gary Vaynerchuk says it best: providing value is always the best content strategy. Every post you put up should give something useful to the viewer. Is it a beautiful image, an insightful quote, a link to an impactful article, an actionable tip that your audience could really use? Or is it just a basic image with a link to your product? There’s nothing wrong with ensuring your followers see your company’s value and what you have to offer, but people are so much more interested in seeing content that’s valuable to them, rather than just another ad. In the long term, by focusing on what your readers need over every other concern, you’ll develop more engaged and loyal followers with a greater likelihood of conversion.
7. Don’t set yourself up for failure
This is another trap that new Instagram brands can fall into. If you don’t have a large following, doing things like asking questions, requesting specific comments, or generally expecting specific actions from followers will end up just making your company look bad. It’s not a great look when a startup company is repeatedly sharing posts begging the audience to participate and no one’s doing so (or maybe just your aunt is responding, but that’s arguably worse).
8. Use boosts judiciously
Believe it or not, we got our start at Trajex with a meme page. To grow the page, we ran boosts on posts that got a little more engagement than others. If a post showed some interest, we’d put between $10 and $30 dollars into it, resulting in hundreds or thousands of views and reactions. You can use the boost function similarly as you launched your Instagram marketing. When you get a little more engagement (which shows there’s some viral potential), it’s time to put some cash into boosting it. Do this a few times and your follower count will start to grow, as people who are interested in what you bring to the table will want to see more!
Hopefully, this guide will help you establish some best practices for your Instagram strategy. The platform has huge advantages for startups and if you follow these tips, you’ll be able to get started making the most of them. However, there’s a lot more we could cover about Instagram marketing, and we didn’t even get into running pay-per-click campaigns! If you ever have questions or just want to bounce ideas off our expert team, fill out our contact form and we’ll get a conversation started - no charge!
Source:- https://www.trajexms.com/post/posting-on-instagram-a-basic-step-by-step-guide