One Handling Media And Brand Exposure

When it comes to increasing brand awareness, Instagram is one of the best social media platforms to reach new audiences quickly.

The platform's visual nature makes it the perfect avenue to captivate your target audience's attention.

With over 1 billion active monthly users, Instagram is the second most popular social media platform. A huge percentage of your audience is active on Instagram. If you want to reach them, you must be active on the platform too.

In this article, we will look at 6 Instagram marketing tips to help boost your brand's awareness.

Let's get started!

1. Post content that is consistent with your brand personality

The key to increasing your brand awareness via Instagram is consistency.

The content you post must be consistent with your overall brand personality. Post images and videos that are in line with the goals of your brand.

The mistake that most businesses make is handling their brand Instagram account like it was a personal account. You can post any kind of image, gifs, or videos you like on your personal Instagram account. This won't fly with a branded account.

Why?

When users land on your brand's Instagram page, they should be able to tell what your brand is about. Any image you post on your Instagram account should serve towards getting people to know your business offerings and values.

Instagram is great because you can advertise your brand's products and offerings without being salesy.

Brands like Nike have mastered how to use Instagram effectively. If you go to Nike's Instagram page, you will notice that all their updates are geared towards bringing awareness to their brand.

It's no wonder that they are the most followed brand on Instagram with 119.7 million followers.

Every image or video posted on their page is related to their brand in one way or the other. But instead of just posting images of the products they sell, they upload pictures and videos of people using their products in exciting ways. The more interesting your updates, the more engagement you would receive.

Even when they post food images, it's still brand influenced. Even though they are not a food brand, the boot-shaped waffle image is still consistent with their brand personality.

With almost one million likes, you can tell that users loved the image. Whether it is food, lifestyle, fashion, or culture, their updates are always consistent with their brand.

2. Grow your Instagram followers

To get full value out of Instagram, you need to grow your Instagram follower base. This is not easy. It takes time, strategy, and energy. Most brands might want to take the easy way out and buy followers, but this would only hurt your brand.

These fake followers would not give you any engagement or increase your brand's visibility. Instagram's algorithm is also very smart and can differentiate between fake and real followers. Instagram API is built to delete fake followers automatically.

Here are some of the simple steps you can take to increase your followers.

Optimize your profile for Instagram search

Your profile is the last thing a user would see when deciding whether they would follow you.

Make sure your profile clearly states what your brand is about and what services or products you offer. It doesn't hurt to add some personality in your Instagram bio. Also, use a username that people can easily recognize and spell.

Start posting

Immediate you create your account, start posting high-quality content. Users won't visit or follow your profile if there are no updates. Even your current followers will unfollow you if your account is dormant.

Follow and engage accounts that are related to your brand

Instagram is a community. If you want engagement, you would have to engage with other brands.

Start by following brands and popular influencers in your industry. Instagram would also suggest related accounts you can follow.

After you have followed them, start interacting with their content. Interacting with other users would help bring attention to your own account.

Promote your Instagram account on other channels

One of the quickest ways to bring attention to your Instagram account is by sharing your content on other channels.

For example, you can share your Instagram content to other popular social media platforms. Linking your Instagram account to your Facebook page would increase the number of people that see your posts.

3. Create branded hashtags

Creating a branded hashtag is a great strategy to get Instagram users to engage with your brand.

Branded hashtags can help other users learn about your brand and also create a community around your brand.

A viral hashtag campaign can bring a lot of user engagement to your brand.

In fact, according to a study from Simply Measured, Instagram posts with an Instagram hashtag gets an average of 12.6% more engagement than posts without hashtags.

A good example of a branded hashtag is Herschel's #WellTravelled hashtag.

The brand created the hashtag to encourage their fans to upload images of their travel adventures around the world. So far, the hashtag has been used on over 5 million posts.

When creating branded hashtags, it's important that you keep it simple and easy to remember. You should keep it specific, and around a topic your target audience would be interested in.

4. Schedule your content, stick with it, and don't overpost

Along with posting content consistent with your brand's personality, it's important that you post regularly.

It's up to you to choose how many times you upload content. The important thing is that you have a schedule.

Scheduling your Instagram updates would allow your followers to know when to expect content from you. This would help you get more engagement on your posts.

While it's up to you to choose how much content you upload, it's best not to overpost. It's not best practice to upload a ton of content daily.

Reports from CoSchedule show that, for optimal engagement, it's best to post not more than 1-2 times a day on Instagram.

The report also stated that the best time to post on Instagram is between 8:00 am – 9:00 am and at 2:00 am. It would make sense to schedule your updates around these times.

5. Work with influencers on Instagram

Partnering with influencers is one of the most efficient ways to increase your brand's awareness via Instagram.

Influencers have thousands to millions of followers that they can recommend your brand to.

The key is to work with influencers that best fit your brand. For example, if you are a fitness brand, it would make more sense to work with an influencer in the fitness niche than a tech influencer.

It's important that you take your time to research the influencers you work with.

Here are some questions you should ask when researching influencers to work with:

Does the influencer work with brands that are similar to mine?
Does the influencer's brand align with your brand's value?
How quality is the influencer's content?
Do their followers engage with their content? (Some influencers have thousands of followers but get little or no engagement. If this happens often, it's very likely that the influencer has fake followers)
How often do they post, and is their photography style suitable for your brand?

These are some of the questions you should consider when researching influencers. If you don't want to do the hard work, you can use influencer marketing platforms.

These platforms would give you a list of the best influencers that best suit your brands.

6. Encourage user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content created by people, rather than brands. Brands will often share user-generated content on their own social media accounts and other marketing channels.

There are two main reasons why you should encourage user-generated content:

when users share posts that feature your brand, they expose your brand to their own audience;
when you share this user-generated content on your account, you give credibility to your brand. 75% of participants in this study say that UGC makes a brand more authentic.

Getting user-generated contact isn't difficult to do either. The easiest way to curate user-generated content is by starting a branded hashtag trend.

You can feature the best posts on your Instagram profile. Remember that you must ask permission from the post creator before posting it on your own page.

With over 1 billion active monthly users, no one can deny the significant effect that Instagram can have in boosting your brand's visibility.

The key is to create high-quality content that your target audience would find interesting. Also, remember to write captivating captions that would attract the attention of the users.

Which of these Instagram marketing tips would you add to your Instagram social strategy?

About the autor

Marvellous Aham-adi is a freelance writer and Head of Content at TheZeroed. Where he writes on growing a blog and SEO tools you can use in growing a brand. He has been featured in top blogs like Social Media Examiner, GetResponse, Mention, and Wordstream.