Instagram has become a social media sweet spot for marketers, and it is not hard to see why. Instagram currently boasts a 4.1% higher engagement rate than other social media platforms, and more than 13% of people on earth are avid Instagram users. However, competition is rampant, with each brand struggling to stay ahead of Instagram algorithm changes and increase engagement. Here are a few iron-clad strategies and techniques for proactive marketers seeking ways to increase their Insta reach to improve their reach in no time.
Did you know that posting too infrequently or even posting at the wrong time could be inhibiting your Instagram reach? One of the best ways to increase engagement on Instagram is to post when most of your audience is online and ready to engage with your content. Of course, you need to understand your follower’s activity to win with this strategy, but Instagram Insights can help you find out when your followers are most active. You need to proactively monitor and track your Instagram analytics to find out the best posting times that work for your audience.
Instagram is a visual inspiration platform. This means that instead of bombarding people with marketing missives that bore them out, captivate them with amazing images, videos, and texts. The show, don’t tell. Instead, use compelling captions, eye-grabbing videos, enriching Instagram stories, and your profile to narrate your ‘micro-stories’ that leave your followers riveted. Add Longer captions with elements of storytelling to your stories and build deeper connections with your target audience. Since Instagram Stories bask in the limelight right above the user’s feed, stories are an ingenious way to stay on top of your followers’ feed and grab all eyeballs.
Also, make sure that your stories are shareable. Go to your story settings and allow people to share your stories, either on their own Stories feed or in a direct message. You may want to protect your content from being misused or copied, but sharing is the backbone of social media marketing. Unless your Instagram stories are sharable, you will be hard-pressed to find new followers and customers.
Its engagement can gauge the quality of a post. If you have a great post that has amassed thousands of likes and comments, it can serve as a standard for what works for your audience. Now that you have posts that have already proven their mettle as lead magnets, why not repurpose those posts as paid ads so that more and more people find them on their feed? Rest assured, Instagram’s algorithm will only show your ads to users who already follow accounts like yours. Targeted ads give you instant access to more followers. You can even leverage paid tools that let you embed your Instagram ads into the emails of similar brands so that you can tap into their already established audience base.
Today’s consumers are becoming desensitized to traditional advertising, making it vital for brands to incorporate authenticity in their marketing efforts. Instagram influencers are one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal. They will help you find new audiences, generate fresh content, promote your services/products to their existing audience, generate quality leads for your brand, enhance brand awareness, provide social proof, and add genuine authenticity to your messaging. Especially, try to collaborate with micro-influencers, since they have a more loyal audience base, albeit smaller, than celebrities and household names. These thought leaders will help you push brand messaging out to a wider audience and boast a 10% higher engagement rate than macro-influencers.
The right hashtags can give you the eyeballs your brand needs in a matter of seconds. Incorporating the relevant hashtags in your content strategy makes your posts more searchable and boosts engagement. To use hashtags correctly, don’t just slap the most popular hashtags such as #lolcats, #loveandlight, and #instagood on everything you post. The game is to dig deep into your niche, do your homework, and use hashtags relevant to your post. Use powerful blends of trending, time-sensitive, niche, community, and industry-specific hashtags to find the best hashtag that works for your audience. For each hashtag that you see relevant to your post, look up at the type of content that shows up for its top-performing posts and if it has garnered enough traction. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags for each post, but a mishmash of hashtags may look messy. Narrow down your hashtag list to the most effective top-performing tags instead of needlessly bloating your captions just because you can! Not to mention, posting the same group of hashtags every day can lead to your account being shadow because the algorithm could treat it as spam, so be sure to rotate your hashtags frequently.
One of the best ways to boost your Instagram reach organically is to interact with your customers. This makes you come across as a socially responsible, humane, and engaging brand. You can personally thank people for commenting on your post, address queries that followers ask on your posts, eavesdrop on conversations about your brand and engage directly with followers. If you see followers associating positive associations with your brand or even attempting to build brand awareness through their posts, be sure to appreciate and thank them for the positive mention. Along with positive mentions, be sure to encounter negativity from time to time. However, you can turn the negative mentions in your favour and use them to find areas for improvement and tweak your Instagram presence accordingly to better resonate with followers and satisfy their needs. Secondly, responding to negative comments promptly helps you prevent the escalation of a social media crisis and shows your followers that you care about their issues.
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