You can use an Instagram story template to tell your followers about new offers or products. The template is customizable to reflect your brand’s style, colors, and offerings. You can even ask your followers a question. This way, you can gain engagement. However, you must know your audience well. Otherwise, your content may not reach your goals.
Being one of the most effective e-commerce platforms, Instagram gives a wide range of interesting tools you can grow your business with. A successful strategy is the only thing you need to grow the number of your followers and reach the material goals you have. First of all, define the segments of Instagram users that are your potential audience. Check their activity and, on its base, make up a consistent content plan, including the frequency and the time that will allow you to cover the majority of your potential clients. As for the content, make sure it has good quality and expresses the main ideas of your brand. Besides, it must be unique, and you should also predict whether it can be re-shared by the active followers to reach non-followers who are also interested in the products and services your company provides. Furthermore, you must pay attention to a couple of crucial moment to make your page more engaging:
1. Your bio should be optimized
If you’ve already written a bio part on your page, check whether it reflects a business you have and gives maximum information about your brand. Have you added any searchable hashtags to your bio? If not, start searching for the most relevant one. Don’t forget to add the link of your site and other links that are connected to your identity, like podcasts and channels on different messengers. Don’t be upset that Instagram allows you to add only one link in the bio. There are a lot of modern tools, like linkpeak, that will help you organize multiple links you have and attach them to your bio. To know more about how it works and how to apply it to your page successfully, click here.
2. Hashtags are good if you use the good ones
Generally, popular hashtags can be effective only in the short-term perspective, as they will engage only limited users. They won’t bring you more followers or make the post transactional. Of these needs, you have to check for the most relevant hashtags that can be associated with your blog. At first, you should check whether the chosen list of hashtags is relevant to your brand. Besides, make sure people really search for them. If you run a local e-commerce retail business, choose a couple of the most relevant and popular hashtags for each category of products you present. Then, choose some hashtags that mirror your brand identity directly. And of course, don’t forget about the locally oriented hashtags as you want to focus on a specific area. In general, think about 30-40 successful hashtags you will be using under your posts in different combinations. Don’t overload your posts with too many hashtags, as it makes your posts look like spam. 10 to 15 will be more than enough though technically you can use not more than 30 under each post.
3. Collaborate with other users
Influencer marketing can provide you with priceless opportunities to boost the number of your followers and generate additional traffic to your page. So, think about the constant paid reviews for your products and services and add these potential costs to your budget. In most cases, this option is not free, and you’ll have to pay for it. But don’t omit to collaborate with smaller influencers who have less than 5000 followers but cover a cooperatively filtered audience who are relevant for your business. They can post positive reviews on your products in return for product gifts you can provide. At the same time, look for the accounts of relevant bloggers with more followers and start following them. In this way, you can easily estimate the effectiveness of their posts before starting the negotiation on how you can collaborate. Again, to find relevant pages, search the hashtags you have chosen. They will lead you to the accounts potentially effective in the means of sponsored posts. Group the pages on the number of followers they have into nano influencers, micro-influencers, and macro-influencers. Check their bio for the contact information. If you find a phone number or email address there, it certainly means these pages are open for cooperation. And of course, you can check it looking for some sponsored posts in their feed and stories. Contact them and ask to provide their process. At this stage, you can easily filter the unaffordable ones, at the least for now.
If you are thinking about sponsored posts and pre-paid reviews, ask the influencer to show you a pilot version of the future post. The less advertising-like it looks, the better feedback you can wait for. If you work in a certain niche don’t start with the cooperation with bloggers who have a massive following. Choose the ones with a higher engagement rate and more even audience.
4. Post UGC
User-generated content has turned to be very effective, as by this term we mean videos, photos, audio files about your products or services created by your customers. This tool can generate now followings on Instagram of you. UGC shows that you care about the users and are ready to share the other followers’ attention with them. It can easily humanize your brand, as you show real people, not only models engaged in the advertising posts. What you need to do is just asking your followers to share their feedback after using your products. We influence other people in their choices. So, if you produce beauty products, know that due to present statistics, more than 60% of customers are likely to buy these products based on the positive renews of other REAL people.
5. Monitor your activity
Always check your posts using “insights” in the post menu. In this way, you’ll get the information on which posts are more successful, and which need to be filtered in the future. Also, check how many people click on the link in bio, it’s crucial to know. Besides, the rating of every post will provide you with a general clue whether you are moving in the right direction. At the same time, don’t forget about the main trends in your industry to keep your posts up-to-date.
