Instagram is a platform that has demonstrated great development. Actually, the Instagram community grew to over 400 million users this previous year.
Regardless of its impressive reach, many business owners are nonetheless overlooking its marketing potential. Consequently, they’re leaving excessive levels of engagement, brand awareness, and even revenue on the table.
But why?
In just 12 months, we used Instagram to achieve 400,000 followers for Foundr — which translated to over 70,000 email subscribers. At the end of that period, we have been averaging 30,000 call-to-action clicks per month from Instagram and converting 30% of the customers who landed on our site from our Instagram page into email subscribers.
We have seen it work … now it’s time so that you can get in on the action. Here are 4 methods to use Instagram marketing to build your business and brand. (And in case you’re searching for more marketing instruments and sources for your new business, check out our comprehensive guide on how to start a business.)
4 Surprising Ways You Can Use Instagram to Build Your Business & Brand
1) Grow your Instagram following with strategic partnerships.
One of the greatest frustrations for most marketers delving into Instagram is that they don’t know how one can construct a following. In any case, without numerous followers, how can it probably be an efficient marketing channel?
However based on our expertise since launching the Foundr Instagram account, rising your following isn’t as sophisticated because it may appear. There’s one tactic specifically that we used to rapidly develop our Instagram following to 10,000 in just a few weeks: partnering with other Instagram accounts.
To begin, create a list of popular Instagram accounts that attain your target audience. Once you’ve discovered them, you’ll be able to then partner with them for what they call “shout-outs,” which might be either paid or unpaid. Here is how the two differ …
Unpaid Shout-outs
Unpaid shout-outs are often called “share for share.” You share one another’s content, and you both encourage your followers to comply with the other account. You get entry to their viewers, and they get access to yours.
To begin with, free shout-outs, focus on accounts which have similar attain as yours. The owners of these accounts might be more receptive to a share for share partnership since both sides will benefit from the identical.
However, in case you want to broaden your reach to accounts with larger pools of followers, you might want to strive to pay for shout-outs. Here is an instance of an unpaid shout-out partnership we did with Rich20Something, an Instagram account with the same reach to Foundr’s:
We each shared a picture from the other account and inspired our followers to follow them, too.
Paid Shout-outs
If you don’t have a budget for social media, you could want to skip over this portion, however, paid shout-outs might be an effective way to achieve hundreds of followers — and acquire them quickly.
With paid shout-outs, you are aiming for accounts that have a lot higher numbers and a strong level of engagement (accounts where 2-3% of their followers “like” their content).
Foundr spent about $100 on shout-outs in the first two weeks of our Instagram account, and it was $100 well spent. This became instrumental in getting us to our first 10,000 followers.
Be sure to ask for a call-to-action in the shout-out, wherein the account proprietor is definitely asking their followers to take action on one thing. We’ve discovered one of the best techniques is to ask for their followers to comply with your Instagram account.
As you start to achieve your first few thousand followers, you possibly can start to drive these followers to your website, interact with your brand, and subscribe to your email list.
2) Build your email list by converting your followers into subscribers.
Email marketing is essential to build your brand with Instagram. Your email list is made up of your clients. These are your followers — the individuals who will buy your products and services.
Instagram has been a vital driver of email subscribers for Foundr, converting around 15,000–30,000 followers into subscribers each month, relying on our promotions.
In case you’re acquainted with Instagram’s limitations, you could be wondering how that is potential. In any case, Instagram doesn’t permit links in photo descriptions.
That’s where a well-crafted bio comes into play.
Many businesses discover it difficult to get followers to click on the links of their bios as a result of the tendency is to overload bios with … well, junk. Break that sample by writing your bio such as you’d write a Tweet: quick, useful, and full of intention.
Here’s what we’ve chosen as our bio:
There’s a simple secret: Inside your bio, use a really particular call-to-action with a memorable URL that takes customers to a unique page on your site.
Then convert these guests by ensuring the page they land on is full of value. We go out our way to ensure we deliver a ton of value to every customer who clicks our bio link. The URL in our bio brings users to a page that each enrolls them in a free course and offers them two PDFs full of actionable content.
When you’ve put the techniques into place to not solely entice your followers to click on the link in your bio. However, additionally to make them insanely useful content, begin driving followers to your bio by together with calls-to-action in your image descriptions. Your photo caption results in your bio, your bio leads to your link, your link results in an enormous offer of value.