Instagram Marketing Strategy: Enhance Your Social Media Game

Social media users worldwide of various demographics embrace Instagram as a platform they would choose over other platforms. Taking advantage of this fact, marketers and brands are prioritizing Instagram marketing.

Instagram is now a major social media platform, with more than 2 billion active users monthly. In reality, Instagram is an absolute gem for all kinds of businesses. It is not just about posting pictures with borders and filters.

You will need a perfectly designed and visually appealing feed to make your account different from others. However, some brands find it difficult to incorporate an Instagram marketing strategy into their social marketing, which is understandable.

What Is Instagram Marketing?

Instagram marketing uses Instagram and its features to build a community and help promote the business. Brands use this platform for marketing; however, they must create captivating content to make the marketing strategy successful. For that, they would need a solid plan to create creative content and engage their target audience.

Why Should You Use Instagram Marketing?

These days, where there are more than five billion social media users, not having a social media marketing strategy will be unlikely. Moreover, Instagram is one of the most used platforms for users, the second most used social media platform in the US and third worldwide.

Moreover, according to statistics, more than 70% of buyers use this platform to look for inspiration before purchasing. Instagram is the most used platform for researching and following a brand. This is one of the main reasons people look to discover new products and make decisions before purchasing anything.

How Is The Platform Used For Marketing?

Instagram is a visual platform that focuses primarily on photos and videos. Businesses and brands use the feature to promote their services and products creatively. It allows creators to set up dedicated accounts with a specific set of tools for content marketing.

Some of those features are:

• Instagram posts
• Instagram reels
• Carousel posts
• Story highlights
• Instagram shopping
• Instagram threads
• Collaboration posts with other accounts
• Paid partnership for influencer marketing campaigns
• Sponsored posts with influencers and creators

Instagram Marketing Strategy: Tips And Tricks

Now that we have established the fact that Instagram marketing is important, it is also important to know how to create a solid Instagram marketing strategy. Without any delay, let’s get on with it.

Set Your Marketing Goals

It is important to figure out what you exactly want from Instagram marketing. When someone asks you why you want to use Instagram as your marketing tool, you should have a clear answer for it.

It could be anything, like simply wanting to boost your business, generate leads, increase brand awareness, or build community. Setting your goals straight is an important part of the strategy.

There is no “right” goal or a single particular one that you must set. It completely depends on your business and whatever you wish to achieve with the help of Instagram’s marketing strategy. The ROI points down everything to these goals.

Optimize The Instagram Profile

Setting up an Instagram profile is not very difficult. It is pretty straightforward. However, there are a few details that you have to take care of while setting the profile. Make sure you choose the business profile option while creating it, as it unlocks various options.

Using Instagram for businesses has become very common for marketing. Business profiles have features like paid partnership, analytics, and CTA buttons. Make a strong and compelling bio and create a hashtag for your brand.

Instagram story dimensions are something people are aware of. However, do you know the dimensions for the profile picture? It is 110×110 pixels. So, keep a minimalist, sleek, and high-resolution photo for your brand profile.

Know Your Target Audience

Before creating and publishing content, you should be aware of your target audience. You have to understand the overall demographics of the platform and have a persona or customer profile to align both.

This is how you can ensure that the content strategy is prepared for those who are actually interested in your content. This is a better way of marketing, as you are not just marketing in the void with the hope of people liking the content.

Create A Content Calendar

This is the base of your Instagram marketing strategy. Content is king. So, you have to create amazing content to crush it on the platform. There are various kinds of content that you can post to make it to the top.

Posting sudden random content is fun. However, it creates a lot of pressure to find that perfect moment every time and needs to align with the business goals. Because of this, creating a content pillar is necessary. You will have everything plotted out beforehand.

Make sure that your content has eye-popping images and people-centric photos. Moreover, it should have all forms of content. So, your profile should include not just pictures but reels and videos. You can also share stories and memes to keep things light and cheerful.

Related: What Is A Social Media Calendar? How To Use It?

Be Consistent With Publishing

Just posting random content is not going to help you. As a part of the Instagram marketing strategy, you must come up with creative captions every time you post. Even the smallest details can impact the engagement rate, even if it seems insignificant.

Pay good attention to timing and frequency. How and when you post matters a lot when considering engagement. For various brands, they cross-post their Instagram content on different other platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook.

There are numerous tools that have inbuilt marketing strategy examples and help in making a strategy. These tools also allow you to give a detailed timeline of when you can post and how you should post for maximum engagement.

Schedule Instagram Posts

It is important to maintain a consistent posting schedule. However, it is very easy to miss. A missed post can end up with an erratic posting strategy, which people might find unreliable. This is why scheduling the posts is of immense help to maintain consistency.

You will create all your posts ahead of time and set them so that it goes out on time. This ensures that you never miss a post. It increases efficiency and takes a lot of time. Moreover, it saves you from manually posting every time.

You can set it for when you know the users will be most active to maximize engagement. This is very helpful when you are targeting audiences from different time zones. You can send posts out at different times of the day.

Social Listening

Instagram marketing needs you to understand the topics that people are talking about. You have to be aware of the trending topics going on in the industry. What kind of content people post and the hashtags they use will help you.

These are important for making a strategy. This is why you need Instagram listening to get detailed information on these topics, as they are very important for your business. This way, you will have good knowledge about the industry and look for trends that draw inspiration for your content.

Listening will help you determine what your audience is looking for and what content matters to them. You will be able to identify customer service opportunities. This also exposes you to negative comments, so you can manage it timely.

Grow Your Followers

You can create many strategies; however, good engagement depends on how you promote your account to grow many followers. Customers and followers do not randomly appear on your site. So, just put the profile front and center through other marketing channels.

For instance, feature your Instagram account prominently. It could be on the feed of your followers’ videos or social buttons; you must let people know you are always active on Instagram.

Engage with other accounts and your followers. You have to actively participate in the platform and commit to it. You can even try to automate a few responses to some comments and queries. This way, people will know that you are there and active.

Know The Algorithm

Obviously, it is about creating good content, but knowing how the algorithm works will help you. Depending on various factors this algorithm decides which content they will show to which people.

It checks how popular the post is, who posted it, and when they posted it. And based on that, they show the content to people who will most likely enjoy the post depending on past interactions.

This is why it is important to publish content strategically so that the algorithm will prioritize the content in different people’s feeds and explore pages. Know when your audience is most active and post accordingly to get the maximum engagement.

Measure The Performance

When you begin with Instagram marketing, you tend to follow the best practices and tips of the industry. However, when you become regular with the posting process, you need enough data to put into the strategy.

You must check how people are engaging with your content, and you will have to figure out if people like the kind of content you post. Moreover, you might be wasting time on those resources that do not meet the ultimate goal.

Measuring Instagram performance consistently is needed to check what works in your favor and what is not. Tracking the vital metrics is important. Checking what kind of content is aligning with the audience and which campaigns are working is necessary. These will help you sharpen the strategy and get better results.

Instagram Marketing Strategies Brands Need To Avoid

Most marketers talk about getting their business to Instagram for promotion. And Instagram is one of the major platforms which users prefer these days. However, not everything will work in your favor. So, here are a few things that you need to avoid while making an Instagram marketing strategy.

Using Incomplete Bio

Making a perfect bio for your business gets half of the work done. But make sure that the information is not brought. Do not post a lot on your bio, but do not leave it incomplete. Keep a place for posting links.

Not Responding To Followers

Communicating back with your Instagram followers is one of the biggest parts that helps in expanding your business. If you are not doing it regularly, you are putting your brand image at risk.

Posting Random Images

Images are the backbone of your Instagram page. The image quality says a lot about your brand. Wrong-sized image or poor-quality images makes the profile unprofessional, and no one would be interested in seeing these kinds of images.

Not Using Proper Hashtags

Hashtags play a very important role on Instagram. It exposes your post to people using Instagram. However, if you are not using proper hashtags, then be prepared that your brand page will not get the desired results.

Boring And Repetitive Content

Instagram is among the most creative social media platforms out there. Moreover, it also provides a lot of features to create unique and inspiring content. So, being boring is really not an option here.

Under-posting Or Over-posting

You must post at regular intervals. If you are posting too much, your followers will get annoyed, and Instagram might also suspend it for posting too much. Also, not posting often will make your followers believe that you are not an active user.

Buying Followers

It is a challenging task to increase your follower count on Instagram. This is one of the major reasons why new brands end up buying fake followers to increase their count overnight. They can do a lot of harm if you are not being careful as those followers are not organic.

Setting Your Account Private

When you get your account private, you are just limiting the opportunities. It is like putting up a wall between the brand and the audience. This will make you lose followers from your page.

Ignoring Analytics

This is the biggest mistake you can ever make. You should never ignore the analytics. Tracking these data can keep you from making mistakes. So, you have to make sure that you are not making this mistake and keep checking the performance of your posts.

Create A Marketing Strategy Now

Now that you know how to create an Instagram marketing strategy, it is time to create one. We have discussed all the tips and tricks for creating a strategy to make this task easy.

Everything contributes to making a successful strategy from optimizing the profile to getting involved with the follower comments, knowing what the customer resonates with, and consistency. Moreover, various tools are used to create a marketing strategy these days.

Read Also:

• Optimizing Your Social Media Presence To Boost Your Business
• 7 Best Practices For Social Media To Grow Sevenfold In 2024!
• How Much Does Social Media Marketing Cost in 2024?