Instagram Marketing: The Complete Guide (2021)

Social media is used by everyone in today’s technological and cultural world. With the influence of social media across all ages, as individual users, attention needs to be paid to what it is doing to us. 

The way we think and absorb information is changing because of the continuous stream of communication and connection that social media is providing.

Social media marketing is such a strong weapon for all types of businesses to reach their heights. 

Through social media, customers are already linking with brands and if you are someone not interacting with your audience through social media then you are missing out on a lot of things.

A great marketing strategy on social media will bring remarkable success to your business by creating a staunch brand advocate. All this will end up driving leads and sales.

Marketing on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc is a trend now. Instagram has taken the world by storm since its launch in 2010. 

It has become a global platform allowing brands to bring a personal touch to their content, recruit new talent, showcase brands, and inspire audiences.

What is Instagram marketing? 

There are active Instagram users who visit the site daily and there are a few who check only weekly. 

Studies say that 80% of Instagram users make a purchase based on what they have discovered on the platform.  

This is because of the way Instagram allows a business to promote its brand in a very friendly and authentic way.

Instagram marketing is the method by which brands use Instagram to connect with their target customers and market their products. It has gained popularity recently as an exhilarating way for brands to connect with customers, show their culture, recruit new employees and showcase their products in a new light.

In other words, Instagram marketing is simply a strategy to spread your marketing materials across a specific digital platform. 

What makes Instagram stand as a great platform is that marketers can implement influencer marketing to help reach a wider audience.

Appoint a virtual assistant Instagram who will support your business from a remote location. These virtual assistants are in high demand these days by online businesses and entrepreneurs as they do not have to appoint full-time staff in a specific location.

Types of Instagram Marketing

1) Instagram stores:

This is a way to get connected more directly with your audience. Thanks to updates like being able to add stickers, mention accounts, shoppable tags, etc Instagram has proved to be a great way to promote products. 

2) Hashtags:

The biggest part of Instagram is hashtags. It is indicated by the “#” symbol and helps connect the users to similar posts. When a user adds it to their post, they will end being viewable by those who make use of hashtags thus increasing chances of interaction with brands and each other.

3) IGTV:

Instagram launched Instagram TV(IGTV) in 2018 that offered long-form, vertical videos for users for the first time to watch and enjoy. IGTV does not have a 60 second limit like the typical Instagram videos. The most notable point is the video’s vertical orientation. Instagram felt that this feature will allow users to not only watch from their phones but also improve on the prospect of how they will watch.  

Instagram Marketing Tips

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms and since its launch, it is skyrocketed to a user base of one billion. 

The number of Instagram marketers also grew in somewhat the same time frame by nearly seven percent in comparison to Facebook’s 0.5% and Twitter’s 0.3%.

It is thus clear that Instagram has a huge impact on the way people and businesses function. 

Instagram has also become an important source of entertainment, communication, learning, and eCommerce.

Here are a few tips to guide you through Instagram marketing to help you sail better in that industry

1) Setup an account:

If you are still not in Instagram marketing then the first step is to set up an account on Instagram. 

If you want to start marketing on Instagram and make your presence felt like a business, then this is the best place to be in. 

Also, it comes with some additional features like adding links to Stories and creating Shoppable posts.

2) Your profile is your brand ambassador

Your Instagram profile is the one that makes the first impression on your viewers and converts them into prospective customers. 

When a person views your profile, you get a very short time to grab their attention and convert them into customers. 

This is the reason why you need to have an optimized Instagram profile. To create an optimized profile select a profile name that exactly represents your brand. Your story should be engaging and showcase your brand to prospective customers. 

You can add a shortened URL link to your website on your bio that looks neat and trackable. You can even promote your brand through hashtags in your bio. 

Your profile picture should be a high-quality picture appropriately representing your brand. The color palette or brand aesthetic of your posts should be selected consistently.

3) Use all types of Instagram content formats

Other than the basic posts, Instagram offers a wide range of other content formats where each one has its unique advantages and uses. Do not limit yourself only to the standard posts. 

Rather experiment yourself with all of these engaging and amusing content formats.

1) Instagram Stories:

This is an engaging and amusing way for brands to market themselves and get connected with their audiences. 

It is a short and temporary format where you need to create funny, attention-grabbing content. These can be posted anytime and there is no prioritized time like Instagram posts to post Stories. 

You can post a wide range of content on Instagram Stories. Giveaways are the best attention grabbers among audiences. 

Ask people to follow your social media page to know if they would be eligible to participate. This way you can increase the number of followers. 

2) Polls and quizzes:

These are another way to seek attention. The moment anybody sees a quiz they are naturally inspired to participate and find out if they have answered correctly. 

Your achievements or any recent milestones achieved can also be published in your Stories. While this may not build customers but it will surely help in building up your brand’s image.

3) Instagram Highlights

This is just like Instagram Stories but you can keep it permanently displayed at the top of your feed. 

The format of Highlights is the same as Stories but they are displayed on your profile instead of being shown on your follower’s feed. 

You can use Highlights to showcase content to draw attention. As Highlights are displayed right at the top announcing new product launches through this will grab attention immediately. 

Different product collections and categories can be displayed using Highlights. Add respective website links to each so that people will be driven straight from your Instagram to your website. 

Highlights can be used to answer customer queries and FAQs as this will help them to get the informed purchase decisions.

4) Using Hashtags

This will give a significant boost to your marketing efforts. Hashtags will allow you to reach a more specific audience and increase the reach of your content. 

Using nine hashtags per post will increase the engagement rates per post. Do not use more than ten hashtags because it will have the opposite effect. 

The most common way to use hashtags for promoting Instagram content is to use relevant hashtags as this will help target the right audience who is interested in that topic. 

Do not use generic hashtags as they will get flooded with posts. Focus more on the calling ones that are popular as it will not have much competition then. 

Another effective way of using hashtags is to market your brand through a specific brand or campaign hashtag. The advantage of doing this is that you can promote all types of content across Instagram using one hashtag. 

It will also help you to check the performance of your content from one place. Make it a short hashtag and ask your audience to use it while reposting or sharing any of the content related to that particular campaign.

5) Connecting with Influencers

Influencers form an integral part of Instagram and have a very huge presence with tons of followers on Instagram. First, you need to find the relevant influencers in your niche. 

Many marketers falter here because they do not realize that this is necessary for running a successful influencer campaign. It is a big challenge for marketing teams to find the right influencers. 

You can find the relevant influencers by doing a manual search or by using search tools. While doing a manual search look for people who have a substantial following with good engagement rates with hashtags. 

These will be the influencers who can get relevant to your brand. If you are using influencer search tools there are numerous free and paid ones available in the market. 

All you need to do is type the name of your industry, topic, hashtag, or keyword and these are told will do the work of finding the relevant influencers. 

There are several ways to connect with influencers. Brand mention is one of the common ways because some influencers have a big hold on their audiences. 

If they merely mention a brand then their followers are likely to check out that brand sometimes even make a purchase. Another way is to get influencers to write a product review. By getting a positive review from them it will help in enhancing your brand image. 

Sometimes you can invite influencers to take over your Instagram account and post on your behalf. But this is comparatively a less popular method. 

You can also ask influencers to promote your contests and giveaways. When they promote your giveaway on their channel then it will reach out to an additional audience other than yours helping promote to a wider reach of the audience.

6) Creating good content

Instagram has no scarcity of brands, marketers, and influencers. They are all trying to catch the attention of the same people. In such a competitive environment, you must create content that will stand out and get consumed by your purposive audience. 

To create content that stands out try different formats like videos, images, gifs, memes, etc. While using stock images use high-quality ones to get a visually appealing post. 

Post content that is relevant and useful to your audience and posts them at the right times. Try and post during the daytime on weekdays as this will give you the utmost engagement and views. 

You can take the help of virtual assistant Instagram to create some good eye-catching content.

7) Support user-generated content 

To create fresh, relevant, and consistent content regularly is a tough task. With the new algorithm in Instagram, it is becoming vital that your posts must be kept high on relevancy and frequency of your posts. 

A lot of brands support user-generated content and are used exclusively on Instagram feeds. Ask your audience to use your hashtag or tag your brand so that it gets featured on your Instagram feed. 

Reward your users by featuring their pictures along with your products on your Instagram feed. Give credit to the original creators of the posts by reposting user-generated content that is relevant to your brand.

8) Improvise your performance

Once you have worked out your marketing initiatives and your campaigns, you should evaluate how well they have all performed. This will help you in analyzing what will work for you and what will not. This analysis will help in fuelling your marketing strategies and improving them in the future. 

The performance of your Instagram marketing campaigns can be measured by using Instagram’s built-in analytics features or any third-party tools. 

Instagram Insights is a feature that provides data on basic performance. It will help you in checking your post reach and also get information on the overall performance of your Instagram account.

Instagram Analytics Tools

 If you feel you need more advanced analytics then you can use Instagram Analytics tools. From spying on your competitors to finding hashtag analytics this tool will guide you through. Some of the best Instagram Analytics Tools are:

1) Iconosquare

This is an audit tool that gives detailed insights into your account as well as your content’s performance. It has some cool features like Instagram Stories analytics, Tags & Mentions analytics, etc that help in understanding how each content has performed.

2) Quintly

A useful audience analytics tool that gives you detailed insights into not only your own followers profiles but also those of your competitors. Other than audience demographics it also lets you know all your interactions with your followers.

3) Minter.io

This tool takes Instagram analytics to the next level by letting you know which posts connect best with your audience. 

It gives you insights at deep levels and will also tell you which photo or video filters work best for you.  

These are just some of the tools that are available in the market that you can use to get insights into your Instagram marketing performance. 

You can use other tools as well to measure your influencer marketing and hashtag campaigns.