Instagram is not just for the cool kids. Ever since its inception in 2010, this once photo-sharing platform has evolved to an application where you can catch your favourite celebrities live on Instagram or track the number of your profile visits!
If you haven’t already realised, Instagram has grown to hit 1 billion users and has more than 500 million active users on the daily. This proves to show that not only will the application not slow down anytime soon, but your business will also have the potential to grow simultaneously. With constant business-like feature updates within the span of months, the credibility of the platform only increases.
In order to utilise this platform effectively, here are a few ways you should audit your Instagram accounts:
Adopt an Instagram Business Account
With the growing usage of the platform, businesses are making their presence known on the digital sphere to communicate effectively with their consumers. Your favourite (or competitor) brands would be on Instagram by now, like it or not.
Taken from Constant Contact
When Instagram launched the feature of Business Accounts, they implemented basic Analytics and Promotional tools for you to kickstart your journey in reaching out to your audience. Social media marketers now have the ability to track growth in followers, consumer characteristics and even boost posts with a few simple clicks. Earn yourself a “blue tick” to even increase credibility.
We do, however, feel adopting a third party analytics tool would be way more efficient in helping you productively identify trends, study behaviours of your followers and generate statistics to track the performance of your posts on Instagram.
Enhancement of Instagram Stories
Taken from Instagram Press
Initially being deemed as “borrowing” the business idea from Snapchat, Instagram Stories (or shortly known as Insta Stories) has now evolved to become one of their highly performed feature where users are either actively updating their individual stories or spending a great amount of time watching stories!
There are a wide variety of functions within the Stories feature – photo editing, photo filters, polls, highlights, adding of links, gifs, ask a question or feature items that you are selling. The array of features are available for you to play around with and optimise its usage.
For companies and organisations, here’s where you can take it up a notch with engagement. Say you own a blog and would like to see an increase in traffic to your website, link up your articles in your Insta posts and stories, pump in a few dollars to boost your post and target the right audience. You are bound to see the increase in traction gradually.
Depending on your business type and tone, the mentioned features can be used accordingly to cater to your content. If unsure on how to deem which functions are most suitable, seek the advice of an expert like digital marketers to organise and post strategic content for you.
Fine tune Your Bio
Let’s face it, not everyone reads your account’s description. But within the span of mere seconds, if you could make a lasting impression, why not.
Incorporate the use of emojis, keywords that are relevant to your content, and more importantly, link up your website or any sort of link for users to explore more of what you have to offer.
If you’re a merchandiser selling graphic tees, users would appreciate a link that would lead them to your merchandise page rather than having to exit the application and do a Google search to get to your website. It’s too tedious in today’s context. Shoppable tags were also recently added to help consumers find specific featured products (including the price) with a simple tap on posts or stories. These tags eventually lead users to your website.
Hence, do ensure your website is mobile friendly and easy to navigate. You would want to prevent the event of high bounce rate and fully maximise their experience while at it. Engage web experts to ensure a smooth user journey for consumers and in return, it can generate leads in sales and simply, help your website keep up with the aesthetics of today.
Build a Relationship
There is a myriad of content available on the internet. On average, there are 46,740 photos posted each day on Instagram. You can just be a fish in the sea. But how do we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the fishes in the sea?
There is no other better way to captivate your audience better than to connect with them emotionally. Religiously post (relevant) content, note your consumers’ behaviours, make the necessary amendments and get back to posting again.
It could be a trial and error, yet a continuous effort till you gain your own desired, solid following. Create your own theme of Instagram “feed”, write your copies suitable for your audience and essentially focus on the quality of content which triumphs your progress rate.
Concluding Note
Instagram is a fun social media sharing platform, but not just another social media platform. It has also evolved to be the most advertising-friendly platform that businesses adopt to develop sales and engagement with their intended audience. It is an extension of your business and the content you choose to put out will attract the relevant audience base.
To better enhance your profiles, engage social media specialists to propose the appropriate content and strategy required for your brand.
