If you are not leveraging its power to market your business, then you should definitely start using it.

Here are some stats that will make you take action:

• there are more than 800 million monthly active users;
• 200 million Instagrammers actively visit the profile of a business every day;
• Instagram influencers are charging up to $100,000 for a sponsored post;
• Instagram is expected to generate about $5 billion in mobile advertising sales in 2018.

This is why Instagram is one of the best social platforms to reach your target audience. But how to use it effectively?

Here are some tips that can help you integrate Instagram into your marketing strategy.

Introduction: How to Succeed on Instagram

Instagram is a particular social networking platform. In fact, unlike on other social media like Facebook or Twitter, it prevails a more informal behavior, characterized by the sharing moment, thanks also to the average lower age of users.

Instagram is therefore increasingly used to highlight a less serious aspect of the brand, linked to the story, to people, to life. In short, to a “behind the scenes”.

A brand like Oreo, for example, uses its own Instagram profile not only to advertise its business, but also to insert its product into a creative context that is well suited to this social media.

First, Create an Instagram Business Profile

If you are a freelancer or a company, the first thing is to create an Instagram profile or to switch to business from a personal account (to do so, simply access to the settings and tap on “Switch to Business Profile”).

At this point, you just need to associate a Facebook page and indicate your contact options, such as email and phone number.

By providing this data correctly, when users will land on your Business profile, they will be able to contact you directly without too many steps.

Once the switch to Business Profile is made , at the top right a graphic icon will appear, called Insights.

The data shown are as follows:

• Impression and reach of your posts
• Photos with more interactions
• Insights data on Instagram Stories
• Data on followers
• Insights related to promotions.

To deepen the data shown, simply click on “Other”. The interesting thing is that, as with Facebook, you can check the socio-demographic data of your followers, so to study a personalized strategy.

How to Write the Instagram Biography

To implement a correct marketing strategy on Instagram, you need to start from the details.

It is important to know that within the profile bio, it is mandatory to be as clear as possible, using the keywords that best identify your industry.

The Instagram biography can contain a maximum of 150 characters and must be written with extreme attention, because, together with the profile image, is what will appear next to the “Follow” and “Call to Action” button.

Adding a Call to Action

In an Instagram Marketing strategy, it is always necessary to include a clear call to action to users.

“Visit our website” or “Follow us on Facebook and Twitter” are simple examples of CTA. It is important that the message is clear to users and traceable to your business, using, for example, a tracking code of Google Analytics.

Instagram insights and external monitoring tools like Analytics are a great help to track users data and clicks.

Official Hashtag

Think about an official hashtag that is used by users who take pictures of your products. Or something that identifies your business.

The use of an official hashtag allows you to keep control on all the content that runs around your brand. It can be used not only for monitoring the sentiment on the social network, but also to leverage user-generated content (other than Intagram insights, you can use tools like Mention.com, to monitor who is talking about your business).

UGC is widely used for two main reasons:

• Users are talking about you and this is much more credible in the eyes of potential customers;
• It’s free content and does not require any effort from you, as a company.

The Importance of Photos and Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling has become a fundamental aspect of any digital strategy.

The reason is clear: recent research has shown that users have an average attention threshold of 8 seconds. This shows that companies need to create attractive images to catch users attention.

Making storytelling means telling stories for persuasive communication, especially in politics, economics, and business. With the advent of social networks, users want to read and see original stories, this is why companies are required to keep innovating in terms of storytelling and emotion creation.

To have a good following on Instagram, you have to start with a good visual content: if the content is interesting and engaging, users will stop to read the caption. Within this field, it is necessary to tell stories involving the microblogging technique.

Instagram (like Facebook) offers fairly frequent news, such as video of 60 seconds, Instagram Stories, photo albums: this is why it is always experimenting with new techniques for creating engagement within the community.

When to Post?

According to a Coschedule research, the best times to post is 02:00, between 08:00 and 09:00 and 17:00.

This may change, of course, according to each strategy and different topics, or niche.

In any case, it is useful to experiment and analyze the ideal times to develop your effective Instagram Marketing strategy.

Instagram Influencer Marketing

What are Instagram influencers? Influencers are people with a significant following, who may have the power to orientate users to follow a particular brand or company.

While creating a marketing strategy on Instagram, you can consider to connect or work with an influencer. You can structure a co-marketing strategy with popular Instagram hashtags or, in the case of companies in the fashion industry, for example, use them as brand ambassadors through their posts.

In case of events (such as festivals or other events), you can invite them to create awareness of that specific event.

To spot a good influencer in your market just consider the following. For your reference, the average engagement rate on Instagram in 2017 was 2.7 percent, so any value above this number is quite good. Check also interaction. Make sure there are real comments on posts, with a conversation between users and the influencer.

Create a Conversion Funnel

In your Instagram marketing strategy, you can’t miss a funnel to convert followers into leads and then into customers.

Create a catchy landing page and a CTA for your users.

The applicable strategies are different and vary depending on the type of your business. But keep in mind that:

• You have only one link available, in your biography
• You must be persuasive
• You have to provide a funnel to convert the received contacts into leads and customers.

Now, over to you.

Do you have an Instagram account?

Is it personal or for your business?

Are you active? What are your suggestions?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below, thanks!