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Boosting Your Brand With Instagram

This article was written in collaboration with Theo J. Bressett. Theo is a digital marketing specialist with a BA degree from the University of Connecticut. He is a recognized SEO specialist and a frequent contributing author on the subject of social media marketing and promotional engagement. Why would anyone want to boost their brand reputation…

Boosting Your Brand With Instagram

This article was written in collaboration with Theo J. Bressett. Theo is a digital marketing specialist with a BA degree from the University of Connecticut. He is a recognized SEO specialist and a frequent contributing author on the subject of social media marketing and promotional engagement.

Why would anyone want to boost their brand reputation using Instagram? Isn’t it just a social platform for socializing, gossiping and sharing personal stories? Well, it might surprise you to know that this powerful form of social media enables marketers to give their target customers a reason to care, listen, engage and buy their products and services.

In just the past few years, Instagram has attained a breakthrough. It is now the second most popular social media platform, with more than a billion active monthly users. According to site statistics, over 200 million business pages are visited by Instagram users every day.

“There’s no better platform to showcase your brand to a large audience than Instagram.” – Theo J. Bressett

The goal of every business is to create brand preference, grow profits, and gain dominance in the markets where they compete. Using Instagram is a highly effective way to build your brand’s reputation and promote your products and services.

But how do you do it?

In this article, we will share ideas for how to harness Instagram to boost your brand’s reputation and gain higher engagement rates on your Instagram profile.

Instagram is the Perfect Platform for Your Brand

With features like location tags, hashtags, reels, and the real-time feed to help users find new products and brands they might be interested in, Instagram quickly helps your brand reach new audiences. The platform allows you to engage people with branded visual content. Generating brand awareness and boosting a brand’s reputation is is the first critical step in navigating the Customer BuyWay.

In addition, through Instagram you have the ability to interact with a high number of engaged users, therefore boosting your brand’s visibility, reach, and reputation. Advertising is also available on this platform that has the potential to drive great conversion results. The bottom line?  Using Instagram to boost your brand’s visibility and reach is highly cost-effective.  However, there are several best practices that should be followed to assure that you realize value for your brand on Instagram.

Tips to Build Your Brand on Instagram

Upload Unique Content

One sure way to boost your brand’s reputation is by posting unique and high value content. Your brand’s visual identity should be priority one. There are more than a billion people who use Instagram monthly, so you want your brand to make a great first impression and stand out from the thousands of other brands customer will encounter. Be sure your brand stands out and your brand story is told with ruthless consistency.

Things to consider when trying to create an impression with your content are your theme color, graphic designs, fonts, and your brand logo. Make sure they are all in sync and that your brand identity is consistent. That way, you’ll create a lasting impression of your brand on the users that visit your page.

Using high-quality videos and images with location features and topic tags all at once will promote your content on the explore page, location pages, and topic pages. This is a great way to tell your brand story, grow your audience and engage customers productively.

Create a Content Strategy to Interest Your Target Audience

When creating content, make sure it is authentic, relevant, valuable and timely for your target customers. Understand your customer’s needs, challenges, and goals to help you map out a plan to give them valuable and significant content while sharing your brand story.

“When posting branded content, you should ask yourself: does it meet my brand objective? If it doesn’t, then you have no business putting it up.” – Theo J. Bressett

One way to hold your target audience’s attention is by employing content pillars. Content pillars will help you categorize your posts under topics useful to your brand and audience.  As we say at TopRight, the best brand stories always have killer content pillars!

In addition, ensure your content gives your audience value and gives them something to remember your brand with. Also, making your content shareable is essential – this is another trick to increase your audience. Do not forget to include a call-to-action for your audience to share your content and tag other people in your caption.

Optimize Your Instagram Business Profile for Social SEO

“Instagram provides business and brand owners with search engine optimization options to help them improve their brand’s visibility.” – Theo J. Bressett

The first thing a user will come in contact with on your Instagram page is your profile. For this and other reasons, you have to be strategic with what you have on your business profile. Ensure you insert focus keywords that would direct more users and potential followers to your profile.  Here’s a quick tutorial on how to go about inserting SEO keywords into your Instagram business profile:

  • Your username should sync with your business name and be easy and simple to spell and remember. Your username is what is also called your ‘@handle.’
  • Your account name should contain significant keywords related to your brand’s service. Your account name is different from your username, and it appears on your Instagram bio.
  • Your Instagram bio must tell users what your business is about and the category of business your brand falls under in not more than 150 characters, including a relevant keyword. You can also indicate your brand’s services or products using keywords or hashtags.

Image provided by Freepik

Use Hashtags Strategically

Using hashtags for your content on social media will help you get to your target audience faster and more effectively. Instagram users search for hashtags that mirror or match their interests.

Hashtags help people interested in your kind of service or products find you quickly and easily. This also increases your chances of having more followers and increase engagement level with your posts.

It is important that you conduct hashtag research to help you boost your brand’s visibility and reputation. With an endless string of hashtags to use, you can use up to 30 hashtags on one post to increase your chances of being seen.

Work with Instagram Influencers

According to statistics, 51% out of the 81% of brands who use influencers to promote their brands said influencer-created contents yield more remarkable results than brand-created content. Influencer marketing is like “digitizing” word-of-mouth marketing as online influencers and brand advocates help tell your brand story and support your marketing strategies.

“Using Instagram influencers is a highly effective way to boost your brand’s reach and reputation.” – Theo J. Bressett

Instagram influencers have a large number of followers who see them as authentic experts in their fields and hold their recommendations in high regard.  In fact, 61% of users state that they are persuaded and motivated by Instagram influencers to make certain decisions.

Always Interact with Your Audience

When trying to promote your brand on Instagram, you must interact frequently and intentionally with your audience. It is not sufficient to just post interesting and valuable content. You should actively engage in conversations around your brand and reply to comments and DMs in a timely fashion.

This might seem like a lot of work, especially when you have a business to run!  Therefore, it makes sense to consider hiring a social media manager who will be dedicated to managing your brand on Instagram. This person will effectively serve as your brand ambassador and should communicate in the “voice” of your brand on Instagram. Tasks include: responding to comments, building new connections with prospective customers, engaging with user-generated content, posting content, and replying to DMs and tags.

“Another way to engage your audience is by looking out for Instagram users who follow your rivals and even engage with their posts.” – Theo J. Bressett

This is accomplished by visiting your competitor’s profiles and interacting with their posts by liking and commenting, reacting to their posts, and possibly sending DMs. You can also utilize your Instagram story features to engage your audience. Features such as Instagram polls, “ask me a question,” and other stickers will help you stir conversations with your followers and build a relationship with them.

Secure the Ability to Link Pictures and Videos

Getting over 10,000 followers on Instagram for your brand page should be your goal. Once your brand attains that number of followers, you’d have the privilege of linking your content with images and videos. Putting links in your videos will prompt users to take immediate action by swiping up or clicking on the link. In addition, you will make is easier for customers to engage with your content while giving them greater value for their time and money.

Conclusion

Follow these tips to boost your brand’s reputation on Instagram with ruthless consistency and you should begin to see a lift in your revenues and your profits in short order!

If you’re looking for more tips on using Instagram to tell your brand story and transform your customer experience, subscribe to the TopRight blog! Or connect with me on Twitter and on LinkedIn.  You can learn more about how to bring simplicity, clarity, and alignment to your brand’s story, strategy, and systems in our best-selling book: Marketing, Interrupted.

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