Instagram is a social media platform that continuously grows its user base as the years pass by, which is why this is a great platform to build your brand.
With more than a billion active users per month, Instagram has plenty of audience in its platform for businesses to find an opportunity from. On that note, businesses might want to start investing in their Instagram branding.
However, for people who don’t know Instagram and how it works, it can be intimidating to get started. It takes the knowledge and you have a lot to do when it comes to building a brand, let alone building a brand on Instagram.
If you’re looking for a guide on how business owners can easily build their brand on Instagram, then read on below:
Plan your Instagram strategy
A good principle when it comes to managing your business is to always have a plan no matter what you’re doing. Thus, this is the same for when you’re trying to build your brand on Instagram.
Having a strategy can get you a long way in this business of branding. Any marketing campaign for business will benefit from a good strategy. This is what will make you different from the rest of the businesses on Instagram.
To begin with, you need to start by setting up your goals and objectives for your Instagram brand.
Must Read Also 17 useful actions for your Instagram strategy: a business checklist
1. Set goals and objectives first
First, you start by setting goals and objectives for your Instagram brand. Any sort of gimmick that you plan on starting on Instagram will be used as if it doesn’t have a goal in mind.
Once you’ve got a goal or an objective for your branding strategy, then you can use it to align your actions on Instagram. With a goal in mind, you can now start finding the target audience that suits your brand.
2. Find out who your target audience is
Your target audience should be the people who need your products or services the most.
When you have a target audience in mind, it’ll be easier to create a branding strategy, initialize campaigns, etc.
Once you’ve found your target audience is time for you to look at your competition on Instagram.
3. Do your research and analysis of competition
Businesses who target the same audience as you or have an operation under the same niche, and you will be considered as a competitor. When you know your competitors, you can figure out what types of services they’re missing or that they don’t provide that your target audience needs. From there, you can build your unique value proposition.
Figuring out the lapses of your competitors is a part of planning your content strategy.
4. Plan out what your Instagram content strategy
Posting pictures with a random caption just to attract attention is ineffective in the long run and it’s a waste of effort. This is the reason you need to plan your content strategy.
Once you’ve planned your content strategy and launched it, it’s time to track your progress.
5. Track your progress and analyze it
Know how far along you are when it comes to reaching your set goals. Once you’ve done your campaign, it’s time to analyze how well you did and if you’ve reached the goals you’ve set. By doing this extra step after every campaign, it will help you optimize future campaigns for the better.
This is how you plan your Instagram strategy in-depth. You can tweak a few steps or add some here and there, but this will be the backbone of any good Instagram strategy that top Instagram advertising agencies employ.
Establish your brand’s tone and voice
Other notes that you should keep in mind when building your business’s brand on Instagram is your brand’s tone and voice.
When talking about your brand’s tone and voice, we don’t mean a literal auditory identity. What we mean is how you come across with your posts on Instagram.
When it comes to establishing your brand’s tone and voice, you should take into account what industry you’re in, what services you provide, who your target audience is, and more.
Remember to keep a consistent tone and voice on all social media platforms. Therefore, when you’re on Instagram, you should have the same tone and voice that you have on other social media platforms aside from Instagram.
Consistency is key.
Define the look and feel of your brand’s account
In the same vein as the tone and voice of your brand, you should also define the look and feel of your brand’s account, so that it can help guide you on what kind of Instagram posts you’re supposed to be making on the platform.
Your brand’s tone and voice are how you come across to your user base based on how you post and how you talk text-wise. When it comes to the look and feel of your brand’s account, it will be based on your visual approach to your Instagram posts, which is very important because this is a platform that relies a lot on photos and visual effects.
You shouldn’t just hop on every trend there is on Instagram because you can alienate your main audience. You should make sure that your aesthetic on Instagram is consistent with, again much like the tone and voice, your branding, your industry, and your target audience.
Create a community by using hashtags
Hashtags are now a big part of social media platforms, not just Instagram. Thus, you should make sure that you leverage hashtags in the best way possible for your brand.
A lot of people tend to make the mistake of using as many hashtags as possible on their post so that it can reach the most number of people possible. However, this is a waste of using hashtags and you can’t create a strong community behind your Instagram brand with this technique.
By making sure that you use hashtags that are appropriate to the post that you made as well as your niche, you’re sure to create a community that is strong and loyal to your brand.
Invest in sponsored posts
A big part of the Instagram culture is the influencers that you are sure to encounter every now and then.
Influencers have a huge number of loyal followers if they do things right instead of buying followers and engagement.
If you want to be able to build your brand on Instagram, as well as create a community on it, then you have to look into which influencers are best to collaborate with. Make sure that the influencers you want to collaborate with have access to your target audience as well as an audience that you want to target and that have authority in it.
You can then collaborate with said influencers and have a sponsored post so that you can have access to their audience.
Actively engage with your followers
Before, what people would look at to gauge success on Instagram are the number of followers that they have. However, this is an inaccurate measurement of Instagram success.
Instead, what you should be measuring is the number of engagement that you get from your followers or with them.
The simple act of replying to comments on your Instagram posts is already a good way of engaging with your followers. You can also engage with them by commenting on their posts that have tagged your business on it. Instagram stories is another great way of engaging with your followers because it has a lot of features that make it fun, like polls.
Take advantage of these features and you are sure to have active engagement on your Instagram account.
Utilize the great features of Instagram
As mentioned before, Instagram has a lot of great features that make it easy for brands to engage with their audience. For a business, it is important that you have a high engagement because high engagement can lead to more conversions for your business.
Again, Instagram stories have a lot of features like GIFs, cool stickers, and even quizzes that can help you interact better with your audience. You can also use Instagram Live for timely events that you want to feature on your platform.
Shopping tags are also a feature that you want to use because it can make it easier for your followers to buy a product from your Instagram post. By utilizing the great features that Instagram has, you are optimizing your Instagram posts in the best way possible.
Run giveaways to attract more followers
Everybody likes receiving free items, so you should make sure that you conduct regular giveaways as much as possible. If you feel like you want to attract more followers, then a quick solution is to run giveaways.
Giveaways that require users to tag another user is a great way to increase engagement in a post. At the same time, it helps you reach a different audience that is prompted by your current user base.
It’s like receiving a recommendation from a trusted source, which is a priceless commodity that not anyone can have. Do make sure that you follow legal requirements and Instagram’s promotion guidelines so that you don’t encounter any issues while running your giveaway.
Wrap up
Building your brand on Instagram is a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be extra difficult with this guide for beginners. By having a plan on hand to help you, you can set up a strong brand presence much quicker than you would otherwise think.
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