Did you know that Instagram now has over 800 million monthly registered users with the highest engagement levels? With the current advancements in the technological space, you may have noticed that the most powerful marketing tools that you can have in your arsenal is social media. Various social media platforms, with Instagram in the lead, have taken over the marketing space and given businesses more leverage against their competitors in the industry.
However, the process is not as easy as just setting up an account and commandeering the throng of followers by using random posts. You need to know how to optimize Instagram growth as a marketing tool so that your reach can expand to a wider market.
By increasing the number of people who are seeing your posts, you will be able to help your target audience to find your page with ease. This basically means that your visibility will go up, followed by your followers and finally this will translate to more customers. Whether you are looking to grow your personal account or your brand, here are some tips that can help you grow and appeal to a wider market on Instagram:
1. Make Engagement Your Main Goal
The rule of thumb when trying to increase reach on almost every social media marketing tool is to capitalize on engagement. This will provide the necessary guidance for the execution of your marketing strategy. There are numerous third party companies that can help you to come up with the best approach to making your engagement level on Instagram optimal. You should be able to come up with content that is appealing to your audience to ensure that your posts are always on top of the feed. Other than using giveaways, contests, and polls, you can also converse with your followers any time that they comment or even like your posts.
2. Give Your Followers Value
While marketing on Instagram, ensure that your posts are directed to the solution that you are giving to your followers. Many brands make the rookie mistake of focusing on the products or services offered rather than the value of either of these components. Remember, the most valuable asset that you have is the visual content. You will, therefore, need to put in some extra work to show your followers what your brand representation is all about and get them hooked to what you have to offer.
3. Make Use of Hashtags
Hashtags are literally the trading currency in Instagram because they help to connect you to your target audience. You can reach a wider market if you take advantage of popular hashtags that are similar or closely related to your brand. This way, anytime someone shows interest in your product, service or brand in general, they can easily search for one of your hashtags and your account will be displayed. It has been proven that engagement is much higher on posts that have up to 11 hashtags. Think out of the box and use existing popular hashtags alongside hashtags that are unique to your brand.
4. Post at The Right Time
Now that you have gotten a handle on sharing content that is relevant to your target audience, you need to post it at the right time so that all that work isn’t futile. Knowing the best time to post will not only increase your engagement, but it will also work at widening your reach.
With this in mind, how do you figure out the best time to post? Well, this will require a bit more work as you need to observe your follower’s trends. You will need to post first then look at your follower’s activity and when most of them are online to comment or like your post. Focus on your follower’s demographic as well as their active usage of Instagram in general.
5. Use sponsored Ads
Instagram recently added sponsored ads that include photo ads, carousel ads, and the option of posting multiple photos. They are targeted for specific audiences according to your specifications and should, therefore, be optimized for that group of people you want to reach out to. Sponsored ads are able to penetrate a wider market and get more people interested. With this sorted out, you get more followers and effortlessly increase your reach even further.