HOW TO MARKET ON INSTAGRAM

Are you currently using Instagram for your eCommerce store? If you’re not, then it is

definitely time to start!

Inherently, Instagram is the perfect social platform for any business that sells physical

products.

Before you start seeing engagement, you have to start from the beginning. You have to understand

how to market on Instagram. That means understanding the terms, knowing the strategies,

and utilizing the tools available.

SET UP AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT FOR YOUR BUSINESS

First things first, if you want to market on Instagram then you’re going to need an account. (If you already

use Instagram for your business, then you can skip forward to Instagram marketing tip #4.)

1.CREATE AN ACCOUNT

Creating an account is super simple, all you have to do is download the Instagram mobile app, and sign

up! (Yes you do have to do it from your phone. Once you have an account though you can sign in from

your computer).

2. SET UP YOUR PROFILE

Once you’ve downloaded the app you’re going to have to choose a user name for your business account. If

possible, try to make it your business name! After you have a name, it’s time for you to finish designing your

profile. Remember, this is what people will see first when landing on your Instagram page, so you’re going

to want to make it look great!

Here’s what you’ve got left in order to finish your profile:

Profile Picture: You’re best bet is to use your company logo for this, because you want your profile

to be easily identifiable and branded.

Bio Line: Your bio line can have up to 150 characters, which is not very long so you have to make sure you

make it count! There are a few options of what to write here.

The best practice is to write a short description of your business, while trying to show your company

culture with a bit of humor, or a clever line. This is a good method because you want your bio line to have some personality in order to try to get people to stay

on your Instagram page for longer.

Another option is to use this line as your business pitch to your visitors by using your unique value proposition (read this post if you need help coming up with a value proposition). For

example, Zappos prides itself on its next day delivery:

Include a URL: Remember that when writing our bio line, you should leave space for your website address!

3. CONNECT WITH FACEBOOK

Now that you have an Instagram account, you should take advantage of its integration with Facebook by

connecting your accounts. This will let you post your Instagram pictures to Facebook, which is a great way of expanding your audience, especially if you already

have an established community on Facebook.

BUILD A COMMUNITY AROUND YOUR INSTAGRAM PAGE The next stage is to create a “niche” for your business’

Instagram page

4. DETERMINE YOUR INSTAGRAM “NICHE”

In order to build a community and start marketing on Instagram, you’re going to need to determine what

the focus of your page will be.

This shouldn’t be too difficult a task, as you probably already focus your general marketing efforts on a

specific industry or interest group. (If you don’t yet do this, then you should take a minute to create a buyer

persona for your business.)

For example, if you sell sporting goods, then your niche can be related to sports. If you sell organic tea, then your niche can be healthy living. You get the idea – think of the culture that

surrounds your business and make that your Instagram niche! Nike does a good job of this. Everything on its page, as would be expected, is related to the culture of sports and athletes.

5. START POSTING ABOUT YOUR NICHE

Post pictures related to your niche. Again, sporting goods = sports pictures. Anything that you can think of that seems related to your target interest is good. You

should strive to post a combination of professional pictures and pictures that you took yourself.

Sometimes it is these non-professional pictures that perform the best! When posting a picture, don’t forget to use filters to

make it look super cool, like in this picture from Wilson (a company that makes baseball gear).

Post videos as well! Sure, the majority of content on Instagram is pictures, but why not use your videos to stand out a bit? A

good, niche related clip can be a great way of getting your business’ Instagram page noticed. (Fun fact, according to Social Bakers, Instagram video outperforms Vines!) Take a look at this

video that The North Face posted on their Instagram page:

Make a great caption that will really attract attention. Obviously you want your picture or video to be amazing, but

sometimes a good caption can be the thing that really completes the content! There’s no character limit for captions, but the best practice is still to (usually) keep it short and sweet.

6. ACTIVELY TRY TO GAIN ENGAGEMENT

At a certain point it is not enough to just post about your niche though, you’re going to want to build

engagement within your Instagram community. If people are engaging with your brand then you have a

greater chance of both being discovered and of establishing your page as a community hub.

Use fill in the blanks to get people to show you their

personality. Just think of a brand related sentence, leave

something blank, and let your fans do the rest! When

doing this, be sure to include the sentence in the image

itself. Here’s an example from Brendan Vacation:

Photo caption posts let your fans show their humor. All you have to

do is find a funny, brand related image, and ask your followers to

share their cleverest comment!

Ask questions about your niche both to crowd source information,

and to boost your page’s status as an industry hub of information and

culture. You can also use questions to create a game, like Wilson did

with this picture:

7. USE NICHE HASHTAGS

If you’re wondering how to make your content more discoverable then you need not look any further than hashtags!

By using hashtags that are related to your niche you can reach a much larger audience than just the people that are following your brand. So before posting something, think about a good

hashtag that would relate to your industry and to your post. Try not too general though, because then your post might get lost.

Instagram suggests using at least three hashtags per post.

8. INTERACT WITH YOUR NICHE

Don’t get so caught up in your own page that you forget to interact with other people on Instagram. After all, it is a social network. Follow back people who follow you

and comment on and like your followers’ posts. This will help you in two ways – first it will show that you actually care about

your followers and what they have to say, and second, it will increase your exposure by putting your brand name in front of

the friends of your followers.

You should also follow influencers in your industry so that you can form a relationship with them. If you want to be an influencer yourself, then you

should probably be connected with the existing influencers.

9. MAKE AN INSTAGRAM TAB ON FACEBOOK

If you already have a strong following on Facebook and you’re looking to expand your Instagram community, then why not

take advantage of the Facebook/Instagram integration by adding an Instagram Tab to your Facebook page? By adding an Instagram you will boost the exposure of your Instagram page.

Another option available (if you are using a StoreYa Facebook shop) is to download InstaGallery for your store. InstaGallery

adds a tab to your Facebook store where you can stream a feed dedicated to user generated content based around a specific

hashtag. For example, LEGO told its followers to post images of their LEGO products under #LegoWatches.

10. INTERSPERSE PROMOTIONAL POSTS

Now it’s finally time to start marketing your brand on Instagram! Before you get too excited though, there are a few things you should think about before you start posting about

your business with reckless abandon.

First, you should not post exclusively about your business, and second you should post about your business in the context of your industry. This way your business related images will flow naturally with the overarching theme of your page, and will be

more appealing to your loyal fans.

A great way of achieving this is by placing your products in a setting, rather than simply uploading a picture of your product itself. Here’s a great example

of that from L.L. Bean’s Instagram account.

If you do upload images of your products alone, which is perfectly fine to do as long as it is not the only type of image you upload, then be sure to make it look great! Instagram is all about

the imagery, so don’t post a drab image. Post something with color, a cool design, or an awesome filter – like this photo

Samsung posted:

Your product pictures definitely do not need to be professional photographs (in fact, people really like raw, non-professional

photos from brands, because it makes them more personal, and less corporate).

Your promotional posts don’t have to be only about your products, you can also promote your brand itself by showing your company culture and story. This will give your fans a personal look

into your business, which is a great way of creating a stronger bond with your fans! Take a look at this post from BestBuy:

11. RUN COMPETITIONS

Ready to kick your Instagram marketing up a notch? Then you should give competitions a shot. There are many different types of competitions that you could run, but obviously the best kind of competition for

Instagram is a photo competition.

A photo competition is very simple. You ask your followers to post their best, funniest, or most creative picture about a

certain topic. The winner can then be chosen by you, randomly (sweepstakes style), or even by peer voting – your fans will vote

for the image they think is the best.

In order to plan out your competition you should follow these steps:

1) Think of what the goal of your competition is – brand exposure, product awareness, lead generation, etc. It is

important that you know what you’re trying to accomplish so that you can give your competition direction, and also so that

you can gauge its success.

2) Determine who the competition is meant for. Is it for a target market within your followers, or are you targeting your industry niche as a whole? You should decide this in order to ensure that

the theme of your competition is relevant to the people who you want to participate.

3) As a second level of insurance to ensure that the people participating in your competition are relevant to your business,

you should offer a prize that only people within your target group would find appealing.

4) Choose a relevant hashtag to identify your competition. For example, if you ask your fans to post their best pictures of them

skiing, you could make your hashtag #BestSkiiShots. Before officially choosing your hashtag though you should check to

make sure it is not already being used.

5) You can run a competition manually, or you can use one

of any number of tools like IconoSquare or Strutta. Both of

these can be very useful for designing, managing,

promoting, and analyzing your competitions.

12. USER GENERATED CONTENT

When you’re running photo competitions that are based around your products you are gaining something more than just

interaction with your Instagram page, you are gaining the images themselves!

Why is that so good?

Just three words for you, User Generated Content! Basically, you can take these images that your fans submitted and post them on your Instagram account (with a shout out of course for the

person who submitted the image). This shows your fans that you care about what they have to say, and also makes your brand

more personal.

Fans and followers love seeing their peers featured on a business page! Another cool thing you can do is to feature your customers in your posts. Warby Parker, an eyewear company, does this by

taking pictures of its customers while they try on glasses:

13. OPTIMIZE YOUR POST TYPES AND SCHEDULE

There are two steps you should follow for optimizing your posting schedule. First, determine the best time to post, second, set up your posting schedule accordingly.

Now this can be a daunting task, which is why I will share a few tools with you that can be of assistance.

IconoSquare, in addition to providing competition tools, can also give you a pretty in depth look at your Instagram account. Its analytics shows you things like follower growth, your most popular posts, and your most engaged followers. In terms of your individual posts themselves, you can also see what time

is best for posting and which filters receive the most engagement. This can be very helpful for determining how

and when to post.

Totems is another analytics tool that you can use to view the performance of your posts. One of the coolest features that

Totems has is “followers gained.” This metric shows you how many followers you gained from individual posts. This can be very useful for determining what type of post will be best for

gaining new followers. Once you know what types of posts are best and when the optimal time to post is you should build a

posting schedule for your Instagram account.

14. FIND THE BEST HASHTAGS

Hashtags are key to your success on Instagram, so why not get a bit more scientific about them too? There are many different

tools available that can help you find the perfect hashtag for your posts.

With TagBoard you can search for any hashtag to see its current trend, the general sentiment around the hashtag (positive,

negative, or neutral), similar hashtags, and all of the most recent posts with that hashtag. For example, if you search #Jeans:

Hashtagify is a great tool for coming up with new hashtag ideas. You can search any hashtag and it will give you a web of related hashtags. (Granted the information is pulled from Twitter, but it

should work for Instagram as well):

Thanks! Any questions?

You can find me at: @nitinkarkara Linkedin.com/in/nitinkarkara