Everyone is familiar with Facebook, so for those of you that have new businesses I thought I'd jump to Instagram and give you a bit of an overview.
- Age of users. The majority of Instagram's demographic is under 35 years.
- Who is it best for? Instagram works particularly well for business that are able to visually portray their products of services such as fashion, hospitality, education, retail, sports, entertainment, architecture, design and beauty.
- How do they use it? Many Instagram users use Instagram as a shopping tool to find products and services to purchase. That's right, they actually SEARCH on Instagram, rather than Google, which is why tagging and great images are so important.
- Direct Message (DM) - you can direct message anyone, even people you don't follow. But also, they can DM you, so make sure you check your 'other' inbox so you don't miss out on opportunities to connect.
- Stories - Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours and are a great way to road-test some of your content and see what gets the most engagement, without cluttering up your main feed. Stories can be much more casual and 'low production', also play with the many features including funny filters, drawing tools, stickers, location stickers, rewind and superzoom modes, interactive questions and music.
- Story Highlights - these don't disappear after 24 hours, they appear as small circles above your photos feed. For your highlights categories you can use some of your content buckets (see previous enewsletter), eg behind the scenes, product feature, how-to, case studies etc.
- Instagram Live - as it implies, live, unedited footage which can be much more entertaining for viewers. They'll see a ring around your profile pic in their feed when you are live. Your "Live" footage will be shown for 24 hours, unless you save it to your Instagram TV, where it will stay forever or until you delete it.
- IGTV - upload videos which are upto 60 mins long.
- Image on main feed. Instagram is all about the image, so make use of the filters etc to make your photo look really appealing. Don't post blurry photos, and take advantage of the multiple images upload to show before/after or "the perfect shot" and then "the bloopers version".
- Geotagging your photos - which means adding the location - can increase your discoverability, especially if your audience is in a specific geographic area.
- Hashtags - are the best way for your posts and account to be found, for example someone might search #dreamholiday and if you have tagged your content with this then you are a match. Looks at other Instagram accounts and see what others in your industry are using to get a lot of traction. Think about your ideal audience, what are they most likely to search on and use that. Use your keywords as hashtag. Use a free hashtag generator such as https://all.hashtag.com . Around 10 hashtags works well for increasing engagement. You can follow hashtags on Instagram, they will show up in your feed. As a minimum, make sure to follow your own branded hashtag eg #webcoast so that you get a notification when someone uses it. You can also follow hashtag that bring up content for your ideal customers so you can connect with them, or from your competitors so you can see how they are using Instagram. To follow specific hastags, search for a hastage and click 'follow' at the top.
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
