Instagram has over 600 million active users daily and is seen to continue to grow as more and more people worldwide have experienced the benefits that connectivity via social media networks has provided.
Instagram has also become a major marketing platform as it has shown effectiveness in engaging actual and potential customers, some studies even showing better results than Facebook.
Whether Instagram’s the best online marketing platform or not, it still shows promise and that is why a lot of business is really getting serious with integrating Instagram to their marketing strategies if it’s still not part of it or leveling it up if they’ve been trying to do so already.
There are lots of ways on how you can boost the results of your Instagram marketing initiative to achieve higher ecommerce sales.
To help you out, here are 10 Instagram hacks from us:
1. Optimize your profile
The very first thing you should do to ensure that your Instagram efforts can deliver the results you want is to optimize your profile. To do this, ensure the following:
- That your brand or business name is best reflected in the name, the photo, and the bio.
- That your content is discoverable.
- Your location is accurate is used to your advantage.
- And that the reputation of your brand is kept as pristine as possible.
Optimizing your profile can help you earn more followers as this ensure them that you are the real deal and not an imitation. There are a number of people online that try to use the name of famous brands to help earn a huge following, but you can counter this by spending effort in optimizing your profile.
Related: How To Boost Click-Through Rates for your Instagram Marketing Campaigns
2. Follow individuals on your contact list
It is acceptable for your brand to start off by connecting to personal contacts because that’s really how it will start. It’s difficult to earn a lot of followings by the time you start so you should jump-start it by following your own friends, too. From there, it can grow and grow until a lot of people start following first.
Read Also: Best Instagram Marketing Apps to use in 2021
3. Join engagement groups
Instagram engagement groups, also referred to as Instagram pods, are groups on Instagram that mutually agree to like each other’s posts at an agreed period or rounds.
This will help you gain a lot of likes, making sure that your content is noticed by a lot more people. Doing this can help attract organic likes. A little push for the better, right?
4. Instagram Takeovers
One trend that is getting a lot of traction is Instagram Takeover. It’s when an Instagram account allows another user to share their own photos or videos to the audience of the other in an act of “takeover”. This helps the two brands to mutually expand their own networks by using the other’s audience.
You might not notice it, but GoPro has done this since time immemorial. Take a look at GoPro’s Instagram page. GoPro has been sharing amazing photos from its followers — a win-win situation for both sides. Followers get the limelight, GoPro gets photos to post on their page for marketing and branding photos.
5. Create Instagram Ads
To boost your ecommerce sales, you should also consider getting serious with Instagram ads. With more than half a billion active users daily, your Instagram ads can reach a larger audience base than you can expect.
With Instagram ads, you can do target your ads to specific users by setting filters. You can also engage a lot of users. This level of engagement is better than a lot of other marketing platforms. The type of ads you can do on Instagram is the following:
- Photo Ads
- Video Ads
- Carousel ads
- Stories Ads
6. Get featured on Instagram Search and Explore Page
Also, aim to be featured on the Instagram search and on the explore page. Doing so exposes you to users whose interests are aligned with what you offer.
Having your followers like at least one of your posts can help you appear on their explore page so make sure that you actively give them a reason to like your posts.
Not only will this help your current audience see you easier, but this also helps you become more visible to other users that you can possibly tap as your reach is expanded.
7. Post Breathtaking Product Photos
Photos are, of course, what Instagram is originally known for so if you want to shine on Instagram, you will have to level up your photography game.
As an ecommerce business, your goal is to post high-quality product photos that can wow your customers. A good idea is that it shouldn’t be just a photo of the product, but a photo of your products in action.
Leica has been sharing photos from users using their own cameras. Instead of taking photos of their cameras, they share photos taken by their cameras to show the quality of their cameras.
8. Level up your hashtags
Originally a Twitter-exclusive, hashtags found their way to spread across social media platforms. Hashtags not only help keep related content easier to find, but also help in engaging users so that they can tag their own related content.
Hashtags should be creative, witty, and representative of your brand. It should be easy to remember, and easy to type. Launch your posts with hashtags and encourage your audience to use the hashtags you have set.
9. Drive traffic to an external website
For now, on Instagram, there is only one way for you to have a clickable URL: the website on your bio. This frustrates a lot of marketers as this prevents posts from being directed to external links.
There’s a hack for this that we can share, though. In the caption of your photos, you can ask your audience to check your bio and click the link there.
You should then change the URL in the bio every now and then, so you can feature changing content like new blog posts. Airbnb does this, and this works for them, and it should for you too!
10. Go Live
Instagram has also enabled real-time streaming via Instagram Live which you should also learn to tap. There’s a lot you can do with it and you should totally consider experimenting with marketing campaigns through it. It is the era of creativity and opportunities like these should always be taken.
Now that you know how to optimize your Instagram marketing strategy, it’s time that you learn from your marketing efforts.
Track and analyze data from your strategy, and see what fits most for your brand. Don’t settle for just likes and shares; quantify your results appropriately with metrics and use tools to analyze how your efforts have affected your sales.
About the Author:
Working for an order fulfillment company, Outreach Community Specialist Juliette Anderson is dedicated to educating businesses in internet marketing, ecommerce management, and fulfillment. Equipped with knowledge from managing several ecommerce companies for four years, she knows how important it is for businesses to understand online marketing and more.