How Instagram Acts as a Platform for Growth

If used correctly, Instagram can be an incredibly powerful platform for growth for any business. With an engaged audience just a finger’s tap away, you can expand your business’ reach more than with traditional marketing methods.

That’s why businesses like Ben and Jerry’s, Macy’s, Red Bull, and more are starting to include Instagram marketing as a big part of their digital marketing strategy – and with good reason. A study recently showed that Instagram provides 25 percent more engagement than any other social platforms.

But, it’s much more than just throwing together an account on Instagram and posting pictures whenever you feel like it. No, it takes a solid foundation and respect for the platform for your business to stand out from the rest.

With Instagram, and any other social platform – it’s important to grab low hanging fruit as early as possible in your marketing strategy. Those are the little quick and easy wins you get at the early stages of your account’s growth. That’s things like getting friends and family to follow your account as seed followers to add social proof, and things like having an attractive username and profile biography.

You’ll also want to get set up with a service like Iconosquare as soon as possible, and be diligent with tracking the analytics it provides. You’ll start to find that some content that you publish performs better than others, and some days are better than others to share content. Every business is different, just like everyone consumes their entertainment differently on Instagram – so it’s important to always be testing to uncover what works best for your business growth.

Once you have some of the basics of your account set up, it’s time to start growing your account. One favoured tactic that a lot of brands are using is promoted posts. For instance, if I am running a makeup business, I’d find influencers in the space that have a large following and pay them to promote my product. I’d start by using a tool like Webstagram to search from specific keywords related to my product, and start reaching out to larger accounts (50,000+ followers) to see if they’d be willing to work with me. The audience you’ll reach is generally much larger for much less than what you’d pay with traditional paid advertising methods.

You can also use tools to help with the growth process of your account. They’ll help with publishing content at specific times, as well as engagement with your followers. Take a look at tools like Kicksta and Schedugram – but be warned – if you do use these tools, know that they may or may not be against Instagram’s terms of service. Be sure to do your own research into the tools to determine whether or not they’re right for you and your business.

There’s also lot of new and exciting things happening with Instagram as a marketing tool. For instance, just recently Instagram started rolling out paid posts to select businesses. Also, there are plenty of different businesses that will connect you with influencers in your space and act as a middleman to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Overall, Instagram marketing is still in its infancy compared to the other social networks out there. It’s important to get started and take advantage of its power while you can. So get started today!

Tucker is a lead educator for BrainStation’s Digital Marketing Course, sign-up today to learn more about Digital Marketing!