Instagram marketing tactics are the topic of interest for every Instagram business when Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform. According to the latest statistics, 500 million+ Instagram accounts are active everyday and around 80% of accounts follow a business on Instagram. Big number, yeah? Instagram marketing tactics involves reaching these accounts, digging out the target audience and selling your business to these people.
Being a visual platform, Instagram has revolutionized the social media platforms’ trends. Now, high quality visuals enjoy more audience engagement and popularity. Businesses tend to use a variety of recommended Instagram marketing tactics to achieve their business objectives. Being a part of this community, I see many unethical moves being taken by the businesses which are destroying the goal of Instagram marketing.
The next big thing in Instagram marketing tactics
Instagram table manners include a number of Dos and Don’ts which can mark your Instagram marketing tactics successful. Let’s have a look at those useful business tactics which are not as popular as the simple hashtag strategy but more useful than all others for a business:
- Use of hashtags
- Instagram pods
- Ethical follows
- Use best captions
- Use poll stickers
- The carousal ad format
1) Use of hashtags
So, hashtags are the mode of identity transportation in Instagram but do you know they can lock your movement too? As per the Instagram policy, you can add maximum 30 hashtags to each post. But a good post can never incorporate 30 relevant hashtags. Here, relevancy is important.
Business accounts exist for various reasons: selling a product or service, redirecting the audience to website or blogging to inspire and influence people. Instagrammers follow the hashtags based on their interests. When they click that particular hashtag, they can see all the stuff posted in that hashtag. Also, their timeline shows the new posts including that hashtag. Hence, businesses try to insert as many hashtags as possible to reach more and more people.
The optimal number of hashtags are 10-12, which if relevant, can enhance your post reach to its maximum. As a matter of fact, inserting 20-30 hashtags always includes some irrelevant ones too. For the businesses intending to mark an organic presence, more hashtags lead to negative SEO and thus, reverses the organic presence of business.
Another important consideration is choosing the right hashtags. The hashtags showing more number of posts apparently show greater audience reach but this also means that more people post in that specific hashtag hence, causing your post to go down quickly. So, within the next half an hour, your post disappears from the top. This means that incorporating only very few hashtags is also not a good idea. Therefore, go for a perfect combination and number of hashtags. 10-12 is the best number.
2) Instagram pods
These are the new engagement groups in Instagram where businesses can add one another in group conversation and thus, form an engagement group. Whenever any business shares a new post on its timeline, it adds that post to the group as well. Therefore, other businesses certainly see the post, like and comment on it. The purpose of these groups is to build good business relations to increase posts’ engagements and reaching new businesses. Other members have to click the post which takes them to the original post and they can engage with it. So, this increases the likes and comments on the original post directly. Here is an Instagram pod which I have joined. The best thing is that here businesses help each other and share useful tips. Joining at least one is truly helpful.
One thing that I find rather too disturbing is the motive of businesses supporting other businesses on Instagram. They want to be supported in return. I am in many Facebook groups too where bloggers and webmasters help and support each other beyond the expectations, without asking for any return. But Instagram businesses just want to be in the community to get themselves supported. Not true for all businesses but for majority ones, it is. Instagram still lacks thriving business communities where the purpose is to support the other members on the table. So, we can say that Insta approach is still individualistic, which is one negative thing.
3) Ethical follows
Having an ethical following is more important than anything on Instagram. This ensures you have a healthy work place and supportive audience. For Instagram business accounts, audience comprises businesses too where one business can support another business or become its customer. This interaction promotes healthy business relationships. But this is what is expected. In reality, usually business accounts follow other business accounts only to get a follow back and increase their followers. Whether they get a follow back or not, they unfollow later. Most of the Instagram business accounts have developed sky rocket following using this filthy tactic.
Why I call it a filthy tactic always? Because in doing so, you are only focused on your growth and you believe in doing anything to increase your following. I come across a lot of such business accounts everyday who claim to coach and mentor people and businesses yet, they are unaware of business community’ ethics. A healthy circle of few business followers is much better than gaining a huge following this way. Reason is same; individualistic approach of businesses on Instagram.
Every 5th person on Instagram is running a business or blogger account, with no knowledge of business ethics. Just to get fame and popularity, they are using filthy tactics. I urge that we boycott these accounts to get a clean working environment for all of us.
4) Use best captions
Using short but impressive captions is one of the most recommended Instagram marketing tactics. Be too the point and yes, you must use crisp and interesting captions to elevate audience interest and engagement. Instagram’s captions are like headlines of a story so focusing on these is a prime requirement.
5) Use poll stickers
Using poll stickers in stories is very useful for businesses to conduct customer surveys. Instagram marketing tactics are all shaped around building a personal connection with the audience. For businesses selling products or services, knowing the needs and preferences of customer is the only way to serve them well and hence, maintain a loyal customer base. Instagram stories have a feature of adding poll stickers which is beneficial for these purposes. Few businesses take advantage of this amazing way to conduct quick, online customer surveys.
6) Carousel ads format
Almost all businesses use Instagram ads for advertising. Carousal ad formats are a very good source to display a bunch of pictures/ videos along with a CTA- call to action. Instagram ad designing type varies from your campaign to campaign but indeed, carousal ad format is one of the leading Instagram marketing tactics to advertise. It allows businesses to insert a link to their Instagram profile or website, where ever it intends to send the traffic. As Instagram is a visual platform so carousal format allows businesses to display multiple visuals at the same time for advertising. Stats show that such ads are more appealing to customers and bring in more sales.
So, finally?
I believe if we use these Instagram marketing tactics for promoting our business accounts and getting followers, the organic reach we get is truly valuable. Being an ethical business is foremost. That involves our growth together with other businesses. Instagram ads and hashtags are considered to be the most popular ways to market one’s business account but the above mentioned tips will result in your organic and ever lasting growth. Enjoy it well…
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