My Experiments with Instagram Marketing
If explored the wide vistas of Internet Marketing, you will find there is a lot of dough in just reclining and posting photos and stories on Social Media platforms.
Seems like jabber? Keep reading to discover the potential that your Instagram account has.
Do you know who’s an Instagram Influencer?
If you are active on Instagram you may be seeing many posts of people in which it is mentioned “Paid Promotion” with so and so brands.
These people get money to make such a post and now you might have guessed who they are, yes, Influencers!
Usually people having followers more than 10,000 are known as Influencers and they can drive the sales for a brand through their social media engagements. Such people organize their Instagram content in a particular niche i.e. Fashion, Lifestyle, Photography, Traveling, to name a few.
Brands collaborate with the relevant Influencers to create brand awareness because these people do have a fan following who trust them and hence the products that they are endorsing.
Being an Influencer is a lucrative job and you earn money doing what you love which is the new way of living that is becoming quite famous with the current wave of Social Media. But it is not at all an easy job. I am trying to gain engagement on my handle since Aug’17 and I stand at a meager number of 1000 only. Link to my account: FlakySpirits
Hope you like the efforts!
How to convert the time you spend scrolling Instagram into money?
So the first requirement is converting your Instagram profile to BUSINESS profile. There is an option for that in your profile. Follow the steps and your Business account is ready. Follow the steps given here to convert.
Having a business account ensures that you know the analytics like the time when your followers are active, their age-group, region etc and this helps to enhance the content that you would be putting up and you will know the right time and day of the week to give out your best content. (Usually Sunday 9:00 pm works for me, so I keep the best ones for that day)
The things that this 4-line symbol can do for you — Smart usage of # Hashtags:
Once your profile is converted into a business profile, it automatically becomes public. Then you will realize the power of using Hashtags for your posts and stories. Using hashtags relevant to your post will help others interested in your niche to discover your profile and if your content is good, you can convert those profile visitors to Followers!
Choosing the right kind of hashtags for your post is a bit tedious task but what you can do is use the ones relevant to the photo that you are posting. For example, If the photo is of a mountain range, use hashtags like
#mountain #mountainrange #greenery #nature
These are the basic ones. Then comes location specific. Say the mountain is Nandi Hills in Bangalore, the next set can be
#nandihills #bangalore #karnataka
Then you can add generic ones like #trekking #photooftheday #photography
Also use Day-specific hashtags i.e. #SundayFunday #Monday #ThrowbackThursday to name a few.
I put my own hashtag as well which is #flakyspirits(You can make one for yourself!)
There is an app to get the hashtags for your posts, Focalmark. Alternately, you can also get them by googling it through keywords of your photo(Hashtags for mountains)
Another thing which plays a role in discovering your profile is Location. Make sure you provide location for all your posts and stories. Doesn’t matter if you have written a poem sitting on your bed at your home, you must mention the city name.
One of my posts recently went viral and I got more than double the regular likes on the post and it was one of the photos in the TOP POST section too. The reason is Hashtags and Location!
Remember this: Keep continuous engagement with your followers through regular posts.
Instagram stories have their own share in brand promotion and it is one of the best ways to reach your audience by showcasing what you do daily. Believe it or not, everyone is interesting in knowing about everyone else and what can be a better way than letting them know about your daily activities and increase engagement using stories!
I get an average 475 views per story without using hashtags and I am running a campaign right now named #BookGyan in which I post a story related to the paragraphs that I like in the books I have read so far or am currently reading and I am getting quite a response.
Instagram Highlights is a new feature added by Instagram and if your target is making people fall in love with your Instagram profile, do consider making highlights of your stories. Instagram stories lasts for 24 hours only but with the help of Highlights, you can keep them till you want. I have create highlights related to my travels in different cities, my office abstract photos, BookGyan etc. This is necessary because when you get new followers, they can check out your past activities too(And you never know, when that person can be a potential client!)
Summing it up
- Convert Instagram Profile to Business Profile
- Post Regularly
- Use relevant #hashtags
- Put up location
- Engage with your audience through stories and interesting polls/questions
- Keep trying and if one thing doesn’t work try something else.
An important thing to note is taking care of organizing your profile well, i.e. you should be uniform with your content and not just posting anything that comes around. Once you are an Influencer, you do have that liberty!
These are my own experiments with Instagram Influencer Marketing. This is what I am doing right now to first form a base of my Instagram profile. You can try this to drive your content on Instagram and let me know if it’s working for you.
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