You can find tons of articles about how to use social media to grow your business. The problem is that you can get very bogged down with the amount of advice out there and you end up without a clear cut answer. I want to use Medium to discuss a channel Dyer and Jenkins has had success with and how you can have success with it as well. Instagram.
Our numbers aren’t huge; we have 8,387 followers, we’ve posted 440 photos, and we’ve been a business for just over 3 months.
We’ve been able to gain exposure, press, and revenue from our Instagram. Before we get into the steps we took, its very important that we take a look at WHY people use Instagram in the first place. Many companies don’t seem understand this at all.
The main reason people use Instagram is because they want to be entertained by great photography.
There are other reasons, but as a company this is important to remember. People want to see great photography and they want to be entertained. They want to see things that they enjoy without having you shove your product down their throats. Don’t be selfish, your business only exists to serve your customers and for no other reason.
Know Your Audience
You should have a clear idea of who you are talking to. I know, its sometimes difficult to tell exactly who that is in the early days. Pay close attention to who follows and interacts with you.
What are their interests?
Who else do they follow?
What are they posting about?
Stick To The 80/20 Rule.
The natural inclination for many companies is to use their social media channels to blast their product in front of whatever audience they can. Don’t do that. Ever.
As a society, we are constantly bombarded with marketing/advertising propaganda from a million brands every day. If you are a small brand and you want to compete — you must inform and entertain first. Then, once you have accomplished that feat, you can begin to say “hey, I also have a product you might like.”
80% of the content that you share on Instagram (or any other social channel) should be shared with the intention of informing or entertaining your followers. You should be competing for mind-share not wallet-share.
20% of your content should be about your product, but you should still dress it up in a way that is entertaining. Don’t be bland and boring.
Post Consistently
If you aren’t posting consistently, you may as well not have an account at all. On average, we post three times a day. We also post at the same times pretty much every day and in the beginning we used hashtags often.
- Top Instagram Hashtags
- Posting times vary depending on what time zone you are in. To find the best posting times for your account you can check out statigr.am
Tip: Don’t over do it with hashtags. It clutters up your feed and makes it look bad. Stick to the ones that are relevant.
Collaborate and Share The Love
One of the most successful tactics we’ve used is collaboration.
- We used photographers with sizable followings to do our photo shoots from the beginning.
- Our customer really loves nature and the outdoors. So, we collaborated with photographers on Instagram who specialize in shooting those two things.
- As our following began to grow, we would share other accounts with them we thought were really cool. More often than not, those accounts would reciprocate. The important thing was that we were informing and entertaining our followers along the way.
Interact
You have to interact with your followers and create a two way conversation. Traditional marketing/advertising is a one way conversation where the brand shoves the product in your face and you just take it.
Social media allows us to foster conversations. This is where you can add the human element to marketing that big companies often lose out on.
- Respond to every comment and question you possibly can.
- Respond quickly or people will lose interest.
- Ask people questions.
- Show the people behind your business
- Give behind the scenes shots
- Make your brand seem down to earth and human. Not corporate and robotic.
In Conclusion
These are just some of the things that we have used to to grow our company Instagram account. If you have any questions, advice, or thoughts let me know in the comments or send me an email to..
Josey@dyerandjenkins.com
Of course, if you need any sartorial information, we’d be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
