Tag Archives for " Instagram marketing "

3 Steps to Creating a Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy

Instagram remains a mystery to most business owners I know.

How are we supposed to keep creating great content that can be noticed and appreciated on a platform that is full of creativity and artistic ingenuity?

And should we even bother?

Those two are common questions business owners are asking when considering Instagram marketing.

While the answer to the first question is complicated (and I’ll elaborate on it below), the answer to the second question is “Instagram marketing is almost always a good idea.”

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Instagram is the sixth-most visited website, having reached 140 million U.S. users back in 2020.

With such a huge audience, Instagram is not a marketing platform that can be easily ignored.

 

But How to Create An Effective Instagram Marketing Strategy?

As always, it all starts with content.

1. Instagram Content Ideas for Businesses

Create a calendar of all upcoming (smaller) holidays and other notable days that can somehow relate to your business. It is also a good idea to publicize that calendar on your site. This will:

• Improve internal linking of the website (every seasonality-based post would link to related products)
• Allow you to feature products on the home page based on the upcoming holidays/days (even during slower seasons) which may fit the user intent better
• Let you schedule newsletters and time them based on the calendar
• Finally, allow you to publish timely social media updates (with relevant hashtags) even when there are no big holidays coming. These updates can be scheduled far ahead (and can be recurring from year to year).

You can also integrate your Instagram feed with your site with these plugins.

Planning your social media strategy around yearly holidays and observance days has lots of benefits, from making it easier to organize to achieve higher visibility and engagement.

Here are a few examples of days that can go into the calendar:

1. National Rose Day
2. Mother’s Day
3. Employee Appreciation Day

Try DaysoftheYear.com to find all kinds of holidays and awareness days to target in Instagram content.

For each holiday, try running Text Optimizer to come up with interesting concepts to target in your content:

Another idea for regular Instagram updates is using weekly hashtags to get your updates discovered organically. Here’s a good list to target those.

 

2. Use Solid Instagram Tools

Instagram is one of those marketing channels that cannot be used without tools. The Instagram audience is spoiled: They see great content every day. It is tough to surprise them these days.

Great tools can make all the difference to your Instagram strategy.

Videoleap is an iPhone app that will help you create outstanding Instagram content.

The app gives you access to professional video editing tools that can be mastered without training.

The app comes with powerful video editing and enhancing features like layer-based editing, color corrections, video effects, and overlays, etc.

The app is free with a premium upgrade available. I would recommend using the free version first and then upgrade when you feel confident that you can handle the multitude of additional features and options.

If you are looking for a desktop tool, Fastreel is a valid and affordable option.

 

3. Focus on Consistency

Consistency is key in any digital marketing strategy, especially when it comes to social media. You need to gradually build trust and a community of people who look forward to your updates.

And that can only be achieved with consistency.

Still, you can get some decent traffic from Instagram if you create interesting updates and invite your followers to click the link in the bio for more info.

Don’t forget to monitor that traffic to be able to adjust your updates and CTAs to get more clicks and higher conversions.

Finteza can help you with that: The tool lets you narrow your data down to a particular traffic source and then evaluate your sales funnel based on the selected data point:

 

You can also change your bio’s link as often as you want. Try using different URL parameters to track your traffic from different campaigns.

Finteza allows users to easily set URL parameters using their free WordPress plugin.

Quick FAQs

Here’s a quick FAQ to help you create a consistent presence on Instagram:

Conclusion

Instagram has become even more popular during the months of worldwide lockdowns.

According to Megaphone Marketing, people spent 70% more time on both Facebook and Instagram apps during the lockdown.

As we don’t really know how long the pandemic is still going to last, investing in your business’s social media presence is a smart marketing decision.

Instagram can be an effective marketing platform that will help you build brand trust and authenticity. It is also more doable than many business owners think it is. Good luck!

The post 3 Steps to Creating a Winning Instagram Marketing Strategy appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Use Instagram Reels in Your Marketing Strategy

Instagram Reels is here, and you’re probably feeling the pressure to create something.

The question is, what do you create?

Reels is a new Instagram feature that’s a play-off TikTok.

Short videos, access to use music, and effects are what make Reels different from an IGTV or Instagram story, and very similar to its renegade arch-nemesis.

With Reels native to the Instagram platform, this means attention doesn’t have to move across apps anymore—it can all stay on the Instagram app.

And that has every marketer asking themselves… how do I use it to get traffic and sales?

We’ll show you how.

Buttttt before we dive into that, we want to give you a friendly reminder that your Reels content doesn’t have to be brand new.

You can use existing content on your blog, podcast, and social channels and just tune that content to work well on Reels.

Marketing is all about efficiency and we want to make sure managing Reels doesn’t become a full-time job for you—it’s just another platform to showcase your products and services.

 

4 Ways to Use Instagram Reels to Get Traffic and Conversions

Here are 4 ways to use Instagram Reels to get traffic and conversions on your products and services.

#1: Educational Content

Educational content doesn’t require chalk and a chalkboard.

We’re not talking about lecturing your followers as your Biology 101 teacher did in college.

We’re talking about educating them on your products… without making it about your products.

For example, if you’re an agency owner looking to use Instagram Reels to bring in more clients you want to use your existing content to create Reels for your customer avatar of business owners.

These business owners need help with marketing (that’s why they’re going to hire you) which means they’d love to see Reels that…help them with marketing.

Let’s say your agency specializes in Facebook and Instagram ads.

Your Reels content will talk about:

• How to use Facebook ads for beginners
• The ad creative options to use in your ads
• Copywriting strategies
• Using user-generated content in your ads
• Etc.

Posting educational content is going to showcase your expertise in the Facebook ads space.

Pair that content with lead magnets or an awesome newsletter and you’ll be able to move Instagram Reel viewers to your website and get them to become subscribers.

#2: Product Reviews/Case Studies

Your educational content will showcase your expertise around your product or service—your product reviews/case studies will show your happy customers.

If you’re selling a physical or digital one-time product, then you’ll post product reviews if you’re selling a service, then you’ll post case studies

Instagram Reels is going to give you the opportunity to get really creative around how you show your reviews and case studies.

You can use the effects, music, and countdown timer features to create native-looking reviews and case studies that entertain your followers.

For product reviews, you can use user-generated content as your product review (you can upload videos and photos as a Reel and take your own).

For your case studies, you can grab a past case study published to your blog or used in your sales process, take the headers from each section, and use those as text on your own video where you explain how you got those results.

This text helps visual learners understand what you’re talking about while you discuss the details verbally.

*We’re halfway through this article and we wanted to remind you that you do not need to create brand new content to publish on Reels—you can use your existing content and turn it into Reels-friendly posts*

 

#3: Behind-The-Scenes Content

Behind-the-scenes content builds the relationship between you and your customer avatar.

Since you’re doing this to a larger audience, you’re building that relationship at scale.

For example, if you own an ecommerce fashion company you can use Instagram Reels to show the behind-the-scenes of you choosing your fabric and getting the samples delivered for approval.

These Reels can act as a bridge between brand and customer, making you more human and giving your customer avatar someone to relate to behind the scenes.

If you own a marketing agency, your Instagram Reels can be used to show the day-to-day life of a marketer.

This gives you the opportunity to showcase your expertise and working style so your customer avatar can feel like they know, like, and trust you.

We all know what comes after that… the sale.

 

#4: Your Company Story

Let’s be honest—when is the last time you found a new product or someone selling a service, went to their website, clicked on their About Page, and thought, “WOW! That was amazing.”

Yeah… it’s been a pretty long time for us too.

Instagram Reels has the potential to make that bland brand story into a super interesting one.

Instead of going to an About Page on a website and reading through a brand story, a prospect can watch a dynamic story on Reels.

This story can include music and old photos, case studies, and where you are today because of everything you experienced while getting here.

This wouldn’t be regular content that you post, but having an Instagram Reels that shows who you are and why selling these products or services goes back to the reason we post BTS content.

It’s personable, it’s relatable, and it builds relationships.

And there you have it—here’s what you can create on Instagram Reels to showcase your expertise in your field, show off your products and services, and get followers interested in who you are.

Like every other marketing strategy, the key is to test and check.

Test new content and check the metrics to see how well your audience liked it.

Improve and repeat.

And then do it all over again.

The post How to Use Instagram Reels in Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Source: digitalmarketer.com

3 Steps to Effectively Use Instagram Marketing to Generate Sales

You know that Instagram is a great social network for some people.

For example, it’s great for artists, models, and anyone who wants to make sure the entire world knows how cute their cat is.

But is it a worthwhile network for businesses looking to generate new sales and customers?

In a word, absolutely.

If, that is IF you do it right.

I’m Nathan Chan, publisher of Foundr Magazine—a bootstrapped company that quickly grew into a successful business thanks in large part to the Instagram strategy you’re about to learn in this post. And over the next few minutes, I’m going to show you the right way to grow your business with Instagram.

You’ll…

• Learn how to optimize your account and post compelling Instagram content that will keep your followers coming back again and again
• Along the way, you’ll increase your exposure and generate more conversions.
• And finally, you’ll discover a few tools you can use to measure your success and iterate your results to keep your followers (and your business) growing more and more each and every month.

I’ll dig into the details in just a moment, but first, I should give you a big-picture view of what you’re about to learn. In a nutshell, this system for growing your business through Instagram marketing consists of 3 main steps:

• Awareness: Grow your Instagram followers with influencer marketing and user-generated content
• Engagement: Send traffic to your website with Lead Magnets and Instagram stories
• Conversions: Increase sales with great content and a call to action (CTA) that kindle emotion

Makes sense, right? First, you have to reach people (generate awareness), then you need to get their attention (generate engagement), and finally, you have to make them a relevant offer they will love (generate conversions).

So, now that you know the big-picture strategy, let’s dig into the details of how you can achieve each of those steps and grow your own business with a smart Instagram marketing strategy.

 

Step 1: Get More Instagram Followers

You can’t really accomplish anything on Instagram without any followers, and that’s why Step 1 of this process is to grow your Instagram following.

These are the same strategies we used to increase Foundr Magazine’s Instagram followers from 0 to 10,000 in just 2 weeks and surpassed 1,000,000 within 2 years.

So, how did we do it?

One of the fastest (not to mention most effective) ways to grow your followers is to leverage the reach of others who already have a large following.

This is a great way to get your name and message in front of like-minded people all at once. And because you’re being recommended by an authority figure, it also comes with built-in credibility.

There are 2 ways to achieve this: with influencer marketing and user-generated content.

Getting the Most Out of Influencer Marketing

In case you haven’t heard of it, “influencer marketing” is basically the practice of asking an influencer to introduce your company to their audience.

Here are a few ways you can leverage influencers to grow your own following:

• You can simply pay them to share your content. This is known as a “paid shout-out”
• Instead of paying money for a shout-out, you can also pay with products. Try shipping a product to an influencer in return for a post or comment
• You can ask them to share your content for free. In this case, your best bet is probably to offer to share some of their content in return (this is called S4S, or shout-out for shout-out)

Keep in mind, an influencer doesn’t have to be someone with worldwide appeal and millions of followers.

In fact, it often pays to reach out to “micro-influencers.” A micro-influencer is someone who has somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 followers.

And these are a great group of people to approach for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, they often have a higher engagement rate with their audience than people with enormous followings.

(Generally speaking, bigger audiences tend to have lower engagement.) Another benefit to working with micro-influencers is that they are usually cheaper to work with.

If you’re a new business looking to grow your audience, I would highly recommend you get started by finding and approaching micro-influencers in your niche.

 

Have Customers Do the Work for You

Another awesome way to boost followers and gain sales is to let your customers do the work for you—by posting user-generated content.

Sharing user-generated content is a great way to grow your following. For one thing, it helps to build social proof.

People are more likely to trust the content that is generated from actual customers (rather than a company).

User-generated content also helps to build a vibrant community of followers—people who are more actively engaged with your content and more likely to like, comment, or share it.

So, encourage your customers to post a picture of them using your product. If the content is great, as this example for “thefrankeffect,” it can attract thousands of likes and comments.

Also, keep in mind that some of your customers may even be micro-influencers themselves. You definitely want to make an effort to reach out to these people!

 

Step 2: Engage Your Instagram Followers

OK, now we’ve talked about some of the most effective strategies for growing your Instagram followers.

The next step is to start engaging those visitors—in other words, grab their attention and eventually get them to visit your website.

Stand Out With Your Bio

First impressions count, as they say. And on Instagram, you make your first impression with your bio.

I’ve noticed that many times, people will check out your bio and decide whether or not they like your company before they even view any of your posts.

This means that having a great bio could spell the difference in earning another follower and potential sale…or not.

So, here are a few tips to help you craft a killer Instagram bio:

• Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. No rambling on and on
• Create a direct CTA using a memorable URL
• Highlight exactly what you do or offer
• It never hurts to insert a playful emoji if it fits with your content. Notice the hand pointing down in the screenshot below…

As you can see, our bio at Foundr gets right to the point and has a clear CTA. All in 3 short sentences.

 

Draw People in with Lead Offers (A.K.A. Lead Magnets)

If you’re a regular reader of DigitalMarketer’s content, you know all about Lead Magnets.

Well, I’m happy to say that lead offers, a.ka. Lead Magnets, are just as effective on Instagram as they are on other platforms.

The main idea here is to offer a piece of free content that will entice people to join your mailing list and drive them through your sales funnel.

A few prime examples of effective Lead Magnets include…

• Handouts
• Sheets
• Checklists
• And templates

…that can be quickly consumed.

Remember that when you’re offering Lead Magnets, the important thing to keep in mind is that you are offering value first. So, make sure your Lead Magnet is something your audience will find useful.

Here’s an example of a Lead Magnet we offered to our Instagram audience:

Notice how we added the link to the Lead Magnet in our bio around the same time we posted about it. This way, we can tell people to visit the link in our bio to download the offer.

Here are a few tips to help you create more effective lead offers on Instagram:

• Create several different Lead Magnets and rotate them so your visitors don’t get bored seeing the same offer again and again
• When promoting your lead offers, be sure to include eye-catching images or videos in your posts
• Give your Lead Magnet posts the same look as your other posts. They should have the same format, tone, and feel
• Always use simple and memorable URLs in your posts
• Always make a CTA link to your bio to direct people. This is very important. Instagram does not allow link clicking inside posts (you can add them, but they won’t be clickable).

But, you can still add the link URL to your post and people can type it in their browser (the shorter, the better).

But, in addition to that, add the link to your bio for about 24 hours from the time you post about the Lead Magnet, and then, in your post, tell people to click the link in your bio to take advantage of the offer

Super-Secret Tip

When it makes sense, you can also ask your followers to tag a friend.

This will help improve your post’s reach and get it seen by even more people. Here’s an example of one way you might word that request:

I also recommend using emojis on a regular basis—smiley faces and thumbs up and so on.

They’re more colorful than plain old text and help your comments to stand out and get a little more attention.

 

The Power of Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are a useful tool in adding a human touch to your brand name. They help to humanize you, so people won’t just think of you as a faceless company.

And when you’re trying to win customers online, getting people to trust and connect with you is half the battle.

So, how should you use Instagram stories?

There are a couple of things you can do. And 2 that I recommend are using the swipe up feature and the new feature polls.

Take Advantage of the Swipe Up Feature

The swipe up feature allows users to swipe up on your Instagram stories and go to a link you set up. Here is an example:

You can be as creative as you like here. Lush Cosmetics does a great job of drawing the user’s eye to the right spot by drawing an arrow.

Follow their lead or create your own story image that will deliver your message and entice the viewer to swipe up and visit your link.

Swipe up is an awesome feature, but there’s a catch: in order to use it, you must have a business account with at least 10,000 followers.

So, that’s just one more reason to use the follower-generation strategies outlined in Step 1 above to reach that threshold.

Creating Feature Polls  

Feature polls are an awesome way to encourage people to interact with you through Instagram. They also help you gain some important insights about your audience.

Here’s an example of a feature poll at work:

As you can see, it’s a simple poll with just 2 possible answers (in this case, do you like your donuts plain or with sprinkles?). But unlike most polls, this is delivered in a fun, visual way that encourages high engagement.

Just as with the swipe-up feature, featured polls are available only to business accounts with at least 10,000 followers.

But once you meet those minimum qualifications, here’s how to get started creating feature polls:

• Create your story post, including a photo or video, and make sure it’s relevant to the poll you’re going to create
• Add any text, filters, doodles, or emojis you want. Just remember to leave space for the actual poll
• Click the sticker icon at the top of the story screen and choose the “poll” sticker to create your poll. Here’s what that looks like:

• Next, you’ll have the option to add a question. A poll box will appear along with the answers “Yes/No”
• Type in the question you want to ask your audience within the field text. (Remember to be creative!)
• If you want, you can customize the responses (for example, changing “Yes/No” to “Plain/Sprinkles”)
• When your poll is complete, tap the checkmark. The poll will appear in the middle of your story, but you can move it around and resize it
• Complete your story and add it just as you would with any other post. Visitors will see it and be able to vote on your poll question

If you have push notifications enabled, you’ll get notified when someone votes. To check out your results at any time, just open up the post analytics:

Interesting…I would have gone for sprinkles, myself.

 

Step 3: Convert More Instagram Followers into Customers

In Step 1, you learned how to grow your account’s followers. Then you got a few new strategies you can use to engage those followers and send them to your website.

Now you finally get to learn what you really want to know:

How can you convert more of these followers into customers?

And to get started, the first question you need to answer is…

 

What Is the Best Type of Instagram Content to Generate Sales?

There’s a difference between content that gets comments and content that converts.

(RELATED: Perpetual Traffic Episode 66: Creating Content that Converts with Laura Hanly)

So, what kind of posts should you publish to generate more sales?

In general, you want to trigger an emotional reaction in the viewer.

Remember, you might have the best product in the world…but if you don’t show it in a way that brings about interest and stirs up emotions, it’s not going to sell.

So, use creative design and visually stunning imagery to elicit a response in the viewer.

When showing a physical product, lifestyle images are a great way to show your product in action—and help the visitor see themselves using your product in their own life.

Here’s a good example of an Instagram ad for a water bottle:

You can post a wide variety of content.

It can be branded or non-branded, image or text…it can even be a question you want to pose to your followers.

It really doesn’t matter what type of content you use as long as it is…

• Exciting
• Triggers a response
• And gets people to delve further into your product or service

Here’s an example of a Foundr post that got almost 10,000 likes in just 4 days. This post didn’t even have an image—it just asked a simple but interesting question:

This post was helped by people tagging friends to see if they could answer the question correctly.

This is also a good example of mixing up the content on your Instagram page. Use a combination of text, questions, images, and video to keep people interested.

You can also use content that you’ve curated from others (as long as you give them a shout-out).

Make sure to tag them in the image so that they’ll be notified, which should increase the odds of them responding in kind.

Bear in mind, however, that at least 60% of what you post on Instagram should be your own original content.

 

Direct Product Links

One great way to drive traffic and conversions from Instagram marketing is to post direct links. However, you should use direct links sparingly—only do it once every 20-30 posts.

Otherwise, people can get annoyed if they feel like all you’re doing is pushing your product or service.

For that same reason, you don’t want to be too blatant. Never come out and say, “Buy my product.” This will turn people away.

Instead, you want to inspire people to click through and learn more about what you offer. Here’s an example:

Notice that we don’t simply tell people to buy the product. Instead, we highlight one of the articles from the current issue to inspire people to click through and learn more.

If people can see your product in use, that is usually much more compelling than showing a static product image.

Remember: inspiration is the key tool for selling products this way. So think about the coolest, most emotional, most visually compelling way to show your product—then craft a great-looking post around that.

 

How to Track Your Success on Instagram

After doing all this hard work, you’re going to want to be able to track your success. This is an essential part of the process because it’s the only way you’re going to be able to figure out what’s working for you and what isn’t.

Then you can start spending more time on the stuff that’s working (and do away with the stuff that isn’t).

Here are a few tips to help you track the success of your Instagram marketing strategy:

• Look for big spikes in your traffic and sales. Then take a look at the Instagram posts you published around that time
• Use tracking links to help keep track of which posts and content are working the best. You can do this with Affiliatly for instance
• Coupon codes can also help you track down sales to a particular Instagram post
• Tools such as Social Blade and Affiliatly have special features that can be really helpful on Instagram

 

Social Blade and Affiliatly: 2 Powerful Tools for Instagram  

If you’re ready to take your results to the next level, the 2 tools I recommend are Social Blade and Affiliatly.

Social Blade is a great tool to help you discover the best influencers to work with. It shows you if the account of a user has been growing or not. This allows you to find out how many followers they are gaining each day.

So, how should you use this information?

If Social Blade tells you that a would-be influencer is losing followers on a daily basis, you should probably steer clear of them.

But if their followers are growing rapidly, then you’d do well to hitch your wagon to that rising star.

The other tool I recommend is called Affiliatly. This is a Shopify/ecommerce tool with lots of helpful analytics. What I like to do with Affiliatly is to treat my Instagram site as an affiliate.

Then you can then use a clickable tracking link to track your visitors, earnings, and sales from Instagram.

The beauty of this system is that all of your statistics are in one place, and you can use unique links to track the success of your individual lead offers.

 

Now Get Out There & Start Instagramming!

I hope this post has helped to give you a much clearer idea of how you can use an Instagram marketing strategy to grow your business.

You now have a handful of specific strategies you can use to grow your followers, increase traffic, and publish posts with strong calls to action.

And trust me—this stuff works!

I believe that if you work hard at implementing this advice for a solid month, you can realistically gain 10,000 followers to your Instagram account.

Here at Foundr, we’re at 1.3 million followers and counting, and we’re still using these exact same strategies to continue to scale our account and drive sales.

Now the rest is up to you! Get out there and start putting these strategies into action. Before you know it, you’ll be enjoying the results of all your hard work.

 

(NOTE: Before you can start selling to your audience, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

The post 3 Steps to Effectively Use Instagram Marketing to Generate Sales appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Source: digitalmarketer.com