Tag Archives: Instagram marketing

How to Boost Your Sales Through Instagram Marketing

Selling products online is an exciting venture that some people want to do. However, being successful in this pursuit may not always be easy. You would have to overcome various obstacles, such as getting one step ahead of your competitors to reach your target audience.

To achieve this, you can use digital marketing techniques, such as SEO and PPC. These methods are proven and tested by various companies around the world.

You can also utilize social media platforms, which are being used by more than 3.96 billion people worldwide. One of the most popular social media applications among online businesses is Instagram. This platform has about one billion active users per month, which is a great number for entrepreneurs.

Use Instagram to Your Business’s Advantage

If you are ready to start your online business and take it to Instagram, you should learn about marketing ideas that will help you boost your sales. Here are some easy-to-follow marketing ideas you can use to gain more profit.

Treat Your Instagram Profile as Your Storefront

Similar to having a physical location, you should make sure that your Instagram profile is pleasing to your customers’ eyes. You should make them feel accommodated whenever they visit your profile.

One thing you can do is add a welcome message on your Instagram bio. You should also include your contact details on your bio so users can reach out to you if they need something.

Adding story highlights to your profile is also a great step to making your profile more welcoming. The highlights you save on your profile can help newer customers learn more about your brand and the products that you offer. You can also use the highlights on your profile to let your new or existing customers know about any of your latest features, offers, and products.

To make your story highlights more enticing to tap on, use engaging covers that can catch your customers’ attention. You should also ensure that the cover photos you use match your branding.

Also Read: How To Embed Instagram Widget on Website

Use Consistent Branding

Speaking of branding, this factor is an essential part of your presence on Instagram. Having consistent branding can help your customers recognize your business easier. It will also help you establish your identity within the platform and even outside of it.

You can start building your brand identity by choosing a color scheme for your business. You can then incorporate the colors you have picked out on your story highlights and your product photos.

You should also establish a unique style for your product photos. Do your images feature bold colors, or are you focused on featuring pastel hues on your posts? Determining this and other factors will allow users to recognize your photos even before seeing your username when they encounter the images on their newsfeed.

Another thing you can do to establish your branding is to use hashtags on your captions. Make sure to utilize ones that represent your brand or contain your brand name.

You can start by looking at the most popular hashtags being used on Instagram. Using these will help you reach more users who might not be following your account. Then, you can start customizing hashtags that your customers can also use.

Ultimately, you should set a brand personality for your business. This refers to a set of human traits that can be attributed to your brand. Are you motherly or authoritative? Do you have a friendly or professional tone?

Establishing these when setting up your account will help you be more consistent in how you talk to your customers in your captions and stories. This will also dictate if and how you use emojis and hashtags on your posts.

Learn About : Instagram Widget

Take Stunning Photos of Your Products

Now that you have set your branding elements, you should start thinking about how you will sell your products to your customers. The best way of utilizing Instagram to promote your items is by taking and posting their photos.

To make your products enticing, you should take high-quality photos of the items. You can achieve this by following these rules when shooting product pictures:

Use natural light when possible
Avoid overexposure
Take photos at sunrise or sunset or during cloudy days
Take product photos from various angles
Be creative with framing

After taking your products’ photos, you should enhance them using the right tools. Some of the applications and programs that you can utilize are:

VSCO
Canva
Snapseed
PicsArt
Adobe Lightroom

Once you achieve your desired look for your product photos, post them on your Instagram account and wait for the likes, comments, and DMs to flood in!

Upload Videos

Aside from photos, you can use Instagram to post videos of your products. This is a great marketing strategy because Instagram videos receive more engagements compared to other formats.

When creating videos for your brand, make sure to keep them short. Doing this will help you retain your audience’s attention better.

You should also grab your customers’ attention within the first few seconds of your video. If you fail to accomplish this, users can easily scroll past your content and move on to others.

Lastly, make sure to add captions to your videos, especially if you are talking or have a voiceover. This is important because Instagram videos are muted by default. Having captions on your content will allow individuals to learn about what you are saying even without unmuting your video.

Leverage Stories

Another great feature that Instagram has is its stories. Using this is a great addition to your marketing strategy and can help you reach more customers.

One way of leveraging Instagram stories is showing behind-the-scenes footage to your target audience. You can post a video of how you make your products, where you source them, and/or how you pack them for shipping.

Doing this will show your target audience what your brand does. It also gives your content a more human touch, which users typically appreciate, especially now that they aim to show support to local businesses. It will also mean a lot to your customers to know that the products they receive from your shop are handmade or specially prepared for them.

To boost your sales while also building a relationship with your customers, you can add links to your stories that lead to your products. You can then ask your audience to swipe up if they are interested in purchasing the product featured in your stories.

Utilize Instagram Shopping

Instagram now allows businesses to tag products on their posts and stories through the application’s shopping feature. With this addition, your customers can easily shop for the products that you highlight in your posts and stories. All they have to do is open the content that has the product they are interested in, tap on the photo or story, and tap on the prompt that appears.

You can start using this function by setting up your shop on the platform. To do this, follow these steps:

Confirm eligibility
Convert to a business or creator account
Connect to a Facebook page
Upload a product catalog
Submit your account for review
Turn on the Shopping feature
Make posts and stories interactive

Start Thriving on Instagram

Instagram is a large platform where online businesses thrive and become successful. This is possible because the application allows business owners to post stunning pictures and videos of their products while also interacting with their customers.

With Instagram, you can create a community consisting of people who are interested in the products that you offer and are willing to support your business. These individuals will always be ready to engage with your content whenever you post something new.
Although some businesses have started and become successful on Instagram, following their footsteps may be challenging. To ensure that your venture into online business becomes successful, you should consider working with a company that offers exceptional social media services. They have the tools and experience to provide you with the assistance you need in running your business and helping you thrive.

Instagram Algorithm: How To Increase Organic Reach

What is the algorithm, and how does it work?

Why does the chronological order no longer exist? According to the company, users never saw around 70% of all posts. The reason is obvious: every user has a large number of accounts that he follows. If new pictures and videos can be found every minute, the overview is quickly lost.

The Instagram algorithm assesses what your followers want to see at first sight.

For this reason, Instagram has developed an algorithm whose sophisticated system uses key signals and machine learning to assess what your followers want to see at first glance.

By the way: The algorithm intervenes in the order of the posts to different degrees. This depends on the number of accounts you follow. We present the most important ranking factors and explain what you need to know about them.

Interest

Instagram shows its users what they like. Just think about what you often like on Instagram? Alpacas, puppies, cooking recipes, or travel photos – whatever it is, you will see these posts more often thanks to the algorithm.

In addition, Instagram even recognizes whether you prefer to interact with images or videos. And even if a post is not marked with a heart, the platform measures the length of stay in order to be able to present tailor-made suggestions.

Topicality

Although the chronological order is a thing of the past, the release date has played a more important role since March 2018. The newer, the higher up a post is placed. This is also an important criterion for the algorithm.

Interactions

It’s not just the number of followers that decides where a user’s post appears in the feed. Otherwise, Taylor Swift would always be first, and your mom, who has posted two pictures of flowers so far, would be at the bottom of your feed.

The algorithm ensures that users see up to 90% of all pictures and videos of friends and family. So the relationship plays an important role; after all, we like pictures of our best friends more often than distant acquaintances and prefer to see stories from our favorite brand than to look at an advertisement that does not interest us.

Frequency of use & usage

Whether and how strongly the algorithm intervenes depends heavily on user behavior. If you scroll through the feed several times a day, you will, of course, usually find the latest at the top.

If, on the other hand, the app is only opened once a day, images may be displayed that are a few days old. The algorithm also measures how long the app has been open and, consequently, which images are likely not to be seen.

Also Read: How to Get on the Instagram Explore Page

Instagram Myths: What’s True and What’s Not?

At the same time, some rumors are surrounding the Instagram algorithm in 2020. Instagram itself has since disproved some of them. What’s wrong with the myths surrounding Instagram marketing?

Videos in front of pictures

In contrast to Facebook, whose algorithm clearly prefers images, Instagram prioritizes purely based on interest. The length of stay is also relevant, which means that videos are still a bit ahead.

“I don’t see everything anymore.”

The algorithm is not designed for posts to be lost. If you scroll long enough, you will still see all the posts. There are a few exceptions, which are entirely up to the user: If you no longer follow an account, you will logically no longer find any images in the feed. Even those who have muted a user can only see the images when they click directly on the profile.

New is always better.

The myth is: if you use a lot of new features (i.e., live videos, stories, etc.), you will appear further up in the feed. That is not right. In fact, the type of content for Instagram only plays a subordinate role. Nevertheless, the new features have a lot of potentials. Those who use them skillfully for storytelling can increase their reach.

The thing with the ads

It would be very nice if the organic range increase was unbeatable. But the more accounts there are, the more competition there is, of course, and the more effort is necessary as a result. If you place ads there, you are definitely not stupid. There is no “blackmail attempt” by Instagram to make users spend even more money.

And yet: just placing advertisements is not enough. An organic and commercial increase in reach is needed, also to get new followers!

Too much is too much.

In the Instagram world, there is often talk of a so-called shadowban. Its purpose is to prevent spammers from leaving tons of posts and comments. In this case, the visibility of the people concerned is severely restricted. Using the pikdo Instagram is an amazing web browser about Instagram marketing. But being punished for having too many likes, posts, or hashtags is a myth.

Which does not mean that it is still not necessary to use the available resources consciously? This can mean, for example, only choosing hashtags that are relevant to the content, not publishing too many posts in a row, and of course, not breaking the community rules.

Also Read – How to repost a story on Instagram

Facebook vs. Instagram: is it the same algorithm?

Instagram has officially been part of Facebook for some time. But can one, therefore, say: Facebook = Instagram? This calculation doesn’t work out. While some factors are similar to the Facebook algorithm, there are also differences.

For example, only the posts of friends are displayed on Instagram, but not posts with which they have interacted. They don’t see the cat video in which your cousin was tagged by his work colleague.

Updates: Algorithm as of 2020

Instagram keeps making important changes to meet the goal of better networking friends with one another. Let’s take a look at the key changes in the algorithm.

March 2018: New, newer, Instagram

March 2018 brought the introduction of a New Posts button, with which it has since been possible to view new posts. A welcome for everyone who missed the chronology.

May 2018: switched to mute

Too many posts? Posts you just don’t care? Since May 2018, you have been able to mute individual profiles. This means that you are still following the profile, but you will no longer see the feed images. This decision, of which the other person has no idea, can be reversed at any time.

Otherwise, Instagram is not idle either. Whether recommended posts or new features designed to increase interaction – updates always mean that you have to readjust yourself on Instagram.

Tips & Tricks: This is how your posts appear at the top of the feed

So what can you do to make the algorithm work for you if it can’t be tricked? The mother of all wisdom is: know your target group.

# 1 Great content

Pictures that have flown across the screen a hundred times, boring captions with hashtags that don’t match – your profile shouldn’t look like this. Instead, the motto is storytelling: capture the reader’s interest in the captions. If these are unfolded and read, you have already won.

# 2 Great pictures

Publish what has never been seen before. Create highlights, and take a new perspective. The twentieth burger photo in the feed will probably elicit no more than a tired smile; the company outing with Bubble Ball Boomerang, on the other hand, can underline your company’s image.

# 3 Great long

Content that is too long or videos that are too detailed can, of course, be boring, but several pictures in a slideshow or videos that are really well done can increase the length of stay and are, therefore, good advice for everyone who wants their posts to be at the top of the feedback.

# 4 Timed great

Use the Instagram Insights of your business account to find out when your followers are most often online and post at these times. It pays off!

# 5 great hashtags

The hashtags we have already addressed. It is a fine art to incorporate hashtags into body texts so that your posts are found and convey relevance, but are not too much. Find out about popular hashtags like #tbt or #photooftheday, but you can also find hashtags that perfectly fit your company. And not least because there has been the option of following individual hashtags for some time.

# 6 Great interaction

And last but not least: the call-to-action. Get your users to interact, but not with the crowbar method, but as subtly as possible. Riddles like, “Well, where are we today?” Have proven particularly useful. Other options are competitions, which should work primarily through comments (“Who would you like to spend a weekend with in Hamburg?”), Surveys or an invitation to an exchange of views.

One more important tip at the end: You can also encourage your users to turn on notifications so they can see each of your posts immediately. This is very easy to do with the three dots next to one of your posts. And now? All that remains is to try it out!