If you’re not aware already, Facebook is a huge social network! With over 2 billion active users every month, they present a very serious chance of getting your business noticed either through organic or paid marketing efforts. It truly has become a tremendous way for small or medium sized businesses to branch out to more customers. Realistically, the whole concept of social networks has turned the whole planet into a giant opportunity for any business to grow. This isn’t to say that by registering your business on a social media site you’re suddenly going to have 7.5 billion customers. Unfortunately it’s a bit more nuanced than that (unless you know how to trend a picture of an egg). Especially when you’re first starting out on doing paid or organic marketing via the social media route, you’re definitely going to have a tough time and that’s assuming you already know what you’re doing. Imagine being in a highly competitive industry such as Denver web design or Denver SEO, where the competition is practiced at the art of marketing/selling themselves but you’re completely new. How is it that you take a piece of the pie for yourself when they’ve got it all but carved out for themselves. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just happen right away but takes years of crafting the right brand message to get where you need to be.
Instagram Marketing
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You seek the advice of experts on the internet to help you figure out the tactics you need to utilize to power-up your brand and it’s marketing efforts. You’ve got to keep in mind that although social marketing is “fairly” new to the world still, there are people who have been experimenting over the years to find out through A/B testing to see what is the most successful way of marketing on any given platform.
Today I want to talk about Facebook’s other platform…that of the ever-growing Instagram.
I’m guessing at this point you’re probably a bit disappointed thinking I was going to do some big reveal of some unknown, up-and-coming platform that offers an untouched market…well…I’m sorry, this ain’t that. I’m betting you already have an Instagram and are pretty familiar with the platform enough to maybe even have your own story or two, but did you know what it can do for your business?
Here’s some facts you may not have known about Instagram:
- 44% of Instagram’s users use the platform for finding new brands
- 53% of Instagram users follow their favorite brands
Crazy right? That’s a lot of opportunity for something you’ve been casually using for years now. Or maybe you’re already familiar with Instagram business accounts, then what can you do to find more people to fall in love with your brand? Let’s go over how you can best utilize Instagram to the advantage of your business.
Get the Most Out of Your Profile
It may not seem like much but your profile is the first place where you’re going to start your Instagram marketing efforts. Think of your profile being something like your company mission statement. It’s an opportunity to catch a potential new customer’s eye with who you are and what your purpose is. No need to go over the top but give them a good enough idea about what it is you do and what you hope to accomplish with a little flair. You’re going to want to make sure that you also have a great picture, as well as, your website link placed in your bio. All these components added up together are going to be your first introduction to any new clientele so your best bet is to go with the age-old business adage of “first impressions are everything”. There is a lot of truth behind this being everything is said about you in your first impression as a business and in this moment people will decide whether they identify with your companies’ values/beliefs as their own (i.e. the more the align with your ideals the more willing they are to make a purchase from you).
Make Great Content
This one probably goes without saying and you’re probably wondering why I would bring up such an obvious answer. Well you need to always remember what your aim is as business when creating your content because the nasty truth is that you can’t just throw a sales pitch into a story, post, or Instagram TV video, you have to be tactful and give people something they want to hear (that’s beneficial to them) while letting them know you have something to offer. Think of it as you would when selling anything, your main objective is to solve a problem for a customer. When creating content your always have to ask yourself two questions.
1.How is this post going to be engaging?
This is going to depend heavily on your particular audience and what they tend to react to but one of the most common engagement tactics is simply posing a question so people can react by giving their opinions to it in the comments. This allows for your business to engage with their audience and connect to them on a more personal level if it is something they care about, I mean most people won’t give their opinions if they don’t care.
All and all, it comes down to what you think your audience will engage with the most. Is it a 10 minute IGTV video explaining how something works that they’ll have a particular interest in? Is it a post with a captivating picture that tugs at certain emotional heartstrings? It’s really up to your best judgement of your target audience. Really the best thing you can do is try to multiple things and see what works the best. Just make sure to keep track of how much engagement you get with each thing.
2.What is a problem that your customer has?
Don’t go overanalyzing this question thinking that there is a literal problem that they might have. This could even be read as what kind of message do they want to send? Believe or not a problem someone can have is that they don’t have a piece of merchandise that espouses their specific belief that all dogs go to heaven and here you are with your merchandise. Of course, this is just an example but it is a basic principle of business. You could maybe even read it as what do they not have that they need. Does your business provide this? To make this more apparent that you have what they need, you will need to work this into your posts/stories to show your audience that you have exactly what they’re looking for.
Videos
I know that I’ve mentioned this already but if you’ve been on social media within the past year then you know how important it is to emphasize videos. Videos have become the medium of communication for the future. This doesn’t mean that classic posts are out but that videos have been found to be more engaging, especially with live videos being a thing now where people can interact with you in real time. Psychologically this allows for them to identify a face with a business putting more of a human side to the business. This can help your audience with identifying with your goals and values being that there is actually a person behind the beliefs instead of a faceless corporation.
Influencers
Chances are you’ve heard the term “influencers”. It has definitely risen in popularity over the years, becoming a staple of all social media platforms. It should be no surprise that influencer marketing has become one of the biggest opportunities on any social media platform, especially one the most widely used ones like Instagram. That’s not to say it’s going to be the easiest thing to get someone to advertise your product for you but there are opportunities out there and plenty of tools to help you out with that. The nice part is that if you can link up with an Instagram influencer who is already trusted by their community of followers it will allow for you posts to gain that much more attention because they will deemed as trustworthy coming from someone the audience already trusts.