Marketing on Instagram is a MUST for any B2C (Business-to-Consumer) business. Whether you’re ecommerce, brick-and-mortar, or home-based, Instagram offers you unique opportunities to promote your business organically – without paying –- to a large audience.
Instagram is a great social media network, especially for B2C businesses. Though I’ve seen some B2B companies on there, it’s mostly in paid ads. Just like all social networks, they work with an algorithm. Understanding how it works and working with it — instead of against it — is the trick. And I’ll show you various tips and strategies to boost your Instagram efforts.
The Instagram Marketing Basics…
Key Points for Instagram Marketing
- Make sure that you create a Business account and connect it to your Facebook Business Page. You can then send your posts and stories to both accounts at the same time!
- You have only 160 characters for the bio! Don’t fill it with fluff. Make it keyword-centric so people know what it is you have to offer!
- Don’t forget your website URL in the bio! Additionally, if you’re local, put your street address.
- Instagram continuously crawls posts to determine how popular, valuable, and relevant they are.
- Then it presents content to users based on their interests..
- liked posts
- shared posts
- saved posts
- searches
- who they follow or unfollow
- Use hashtags regularly and consistently.
- Get happy customers to post videos or pictures of themselves using your product or service – that’s User Generated Content. Make sure they tag your business account and location if you’re a brick-and-mortar.
- You have 2200 characters in a caption — use it! However, links don’t work in captions. Only in the bio and as a sticker in stories!
- 30 hashtags max
- keywords
- branding
- popular ones
- relevant trending hashtags
- Grow your following by following and tagging people, but don’t be too aggressive.
- Balance educational posts with entertaining ones.
- Create posts, Guides, Stores, and Reels
- If you’re a local, brick-and-mortar business, tag your location on all your posts.
- Nonprofits can even do fundraisers!
- Use lots of videos! – Check out these tips on video strategies.
When to Post
- At first, 3x a day, morning, noon, and evening.
- After 30 days and you have 100 followers check insights to see when your followers are on.
- Sendible (affiliate link) gives you the best time to post for the most engagement.
- Each audience is different – do your research.
How to Master the Instagram Algorithm
Here is what works…
- Speed— quantity of actions immediately after publishing
- Add a comment right after posting like, BTW…
- Shares — how many people feature your content on they feeds.
- Ask people to share a story by adding a sticker
- On Reels, put the call-to-action in the caption. Add a “Read Caption” sticker to the bottom of the Reel.
- Sends — how many people send your post to friends.
- If you send it to people, hopefully, they’ll send it to friends
- Saves — how many people save your post to their boards
- Engagement — comments, replies, and likes
- Ask, “What do you think?”, “What would you do?” or “Yes or No”
- Reply to comments
- Start conversations
Other, Not So Obvious Factors that Influence the Algorithm
- Zooming in to see an image better
- Screenshots
- Pausing on your post
- How long someone stays on your post
- That’s where the carousels come in
- Extending comments to read the thread
- Clicking anywhere from the post stream
- Bio
- Guides
- Tapping to see who else liked your post
Finally, check your insights every month. Sendible provides great analytics, like what’s the best time to post and which were your most popular posts.
Don’t be overwhelmed!
The best thing is to plan everything strategically. I’m here to help! Schedule a free 15-minute consult and I’ll review your current marketing efforts and give you some tips to improve your results.
