If you haven’t given it much thought before, ask yourself whether or not your business could benefit from a little bit of content marketing via Instagram. A visual social media platform changes the rules of the game a little, but once you see how many top brands are adapting you might decide to try your hand at it!
The Buzz About Instagram
Because Instagram is built around the concept of letting images take the spotlight, it pays to have something of a visual nature to share. Graphics can be created, and photos can be taken, and both can be uploaded to your account and tagged before being published. People can even see your photos from a web browser!
Who Should Use Instagram for Content Marketing?
Big brands like Nike, Starbucks, and Time Magazine are enjoying great success with Instagram because they know what sorts of content to present to their audiences. They also have a distinct advantage: They have a lot of content to share. Smaller brands can learn a lot from watching how the big brands handle things and then use the same methods in their own postings. Of course activity will vary based on the industry and audience, but good rules of thumb can be applied to any brand’s strategy.
Video: Instagram For Business Marketing Part 1: Instagram Marketing For Business
Video: Instagram For Business Marketing Part 2: How to Get More Instagram Followers
Instagram Content Marketing Tips
What can your brand do to get things going on Instagram?
- Use Instagram to create exclusive offers for your followers – The easiest way to do this is to create a graphic with information on it that users can apply towards a reward of some kind, whether it is free shipping or a discount off of their next order. Share this graphic only on Instagram and let your followers know that this deal is just for them!
- Cross-promote your blog posts – Adapt the featured images from your blog posts into Instagram images and add a link to your post in the comments for people to follow back to the original content. You can also get in on Instagram-only action like #throwbackthursday or #flashbackfriday and show off some of your archived blog posts this way too.
- Create and participate in Instagram campaigns and events – Use hashtags to tag your images and ask your followers to do the same to create a fun collection of images. An example of this is the Starbucks’ #itsfallwhen campaign which encouraged users to post their own Starbucks-branded images and tag them appropriately.
- Show people what they actually want to see – While Instagram is a great way to give people an inside look at how your brand operates “behind the scenes” you need to make sure that the images you post are of things people who follow you might actually be interested in, not just what you hope they’re interested in!
Your brand can be large, small, or somewhere in between and still find enormous benefit in the tips in this post. Don’t limit yourself to these few things though! Always keep an eye out for something interesting that you think your followers would like to see or know about your brand, and find new ways to present the information to them. Photos can be taken from many different angles and perspectives, so have a little bit of fun with it if you can.
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Comments:
Is your brand on Instagram? If not, do you think it might be a good fit for you?
