2 November 2020

2021’s Top 5 Instagram Marketing Tips, With A Top Digital Agency

Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney

Instagram’s place in many people’s lives is becoming more and more important with every day that goes by. And this top digital agency knows that as well as people’s personal lives, it’s becoming more and more important to be making good use of Instagram for business too. How do we do that though, as Instagram is really quite a different platform compared to something like Facebook or LinkedIn?

Well, fear not folks as the staff at Bury’s top digital agency – Seek Social – are here to help you prepare your Instagram page to do business successfully, and lay the foundations for an awesome 2021. Without further ado then, lets get into it!

Step 1 – The Prep Work

As different as we’ve just said that Instagram can be, Bury’s top digital agency also know that much of the prep work for a successful Instagram page is the same work that you’d do for any other social media platform or ad campaign – and we’ll take you through those tasks now!

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Step 1.1 – Set Your Goals

We know that this is something our team have talked about before, but Bury’s top digital agency believe that this is so important it bears repeating. Define what you want to achieve (and how you’re going to determine if you’re achieving it) before you begin posting anything. You have more chance of defining a relevant goal if you do things this way, and that makes it easier to tell if your current Instagram approach is actually helping your business or not.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re succeeding because one metric that doesn’t really mean much to your business you is improving – be honest with yourself, set a meaningful goal that you can measure on Instagram, and stick to it.

Step 1.2 – Identify your Target Audience

Just like having a clear and measurable goal, Bury’s top digital agency know that you need to identify who it is that you want to market to. After all, who you’re speaking to has a massive impact on how you express yourself, or how you present something. In addition to this, your ad campaign will see more success if you talk to your audience in the way that they want to be talked to. However, in order to do so, you need to know who that audience is before you start talking…

Step 2 – Starting Your Campaign Off Right

Once you’ve taken the time to lay the groundwork for your campaign as outlined above, Seek Social – Bury’s top digital agency – know that you’re in a better position to succeed when the campaign goes live. The team at this top digital agency know that now is the time to start enacting that campaign, and we’ll show you how to do that in the steps below…

Step 2.1 – Profile Setup

The team at our top digital agency know that as soon as you sign up for Instagram, you have an opportunity to make a positive impact on your own success. Your profile is a great way to make a first impression. Space is tight, but the more information – like a basic description of your company, your website link, email address and so on – that you can get into here, the better.

Likewise, you’re going to want a good quality image for use in your profile – Instagram is a very image-focused platform after all, so the right profile pic can make a world of difference (as can the wrong one).

Step 2.2 – Set A Posting Schedule

Humans are creatures of habit. We regularly do the same things at the same points in our day. We have routines. Your Instagram posts will find a greater audience – and more success – if you can fit into your audience’s routine, so the advice from this top digital agency is to find out when your audience is online and when they’re not (analytics suites and platforms can help you do this), and establish a posting schedule around that info – one that puts your content out there at your audience’s times of peak activity.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, if your audience is already online when your content goes out, it arrives at the top of their feed where they’re more likely to see it. And secondly, if they’re already on the platform and engaging with posts, they’re more likely to engage with yours too.

Step 2.3 – Post Regularly

Quite simply, what’s the point of creating a posting schedule if you don’t stick to it? More than that though, the staff at our top digital agency know that the more your audience sees content from you popping up in their feed on a regular basis, the more they start to trust that you’re a reputable brand and business that’s going to be around for the foreseeable future. This then makes them more likely to engage with your posts, and possibly even become customers!

Step 3 – Content Creation

With the groundwork laid, it’s now time to start creating Instagram content. However, as with most things in digital marketing Seek Social – Bury’s top digital agency – know that there’s a right way to go about this, and a wrong way. As ever though, we will share our Instagram content knowledge with you now…

Step 3.1 – Quality Images

Especially compared with other platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Instagram has a definite focus on visual presentation and images. The advice from Bury’s top digital agency is therefore to make every effort to make quality, high resolution images a part of any Instagram content that you post.

Step 3.2 – Hashtags

Just because Instagram gives you lots of hashtags to play with, doesn’t mean you can use any tag that you think sounds good. As the team at this top digital agency know well, each hashtag is a chance to put yourself in front of a new segment of your audience – a chance that’s wasted if you don’t put thought into the hashtags you’re using, and make sure that each one is a popular, vibrant place to be on the platform.

Matt Winkelmeyer / Ian Gavan / Getty Images

Step 3.3 – Engagement

Engagement is the key thing that you’re looking for from an Instagram post. Not everyone that visits your page is going to be in a position to buy something from you, to be honest they may not even know who you are at first – but the one thing they can all do is like and comment.

Because of this, the staff at this top digital agency know that engagement is the metric you should be using to gauge the success of your posts. The more engagement a post gets, the better for your social media presence. What’s more, there are even some tactics that you can use to draw attention and engagement to your posts, as we’ll discuss now…

Step 3.4 – Some Post Ideas

Questions are real magnets for engagement, so when you get the opportunity, put a question to your audience – ask them what they think, and they’re more likely to respond with their answer in the comments – which all counts as engagement for you! Posts where questions come naturally – such as AMA’s, polls or quizzes can be a great way to boost your engagement and connect with your audience.

However, the advice of this top digital agency is not to focus on these types of posts alone – it’s also possible to ask a question or provoke a response with other types of post – such as asking your audience how they are going to use your new product, or what they thought of your latest blog – while also promoting the product or blog in question.

Step 3.5 – Use Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are a great marketing tool for your business – not least because they expire. They have a 24-hour shelf life, and that’s great for building your audience. As the team at Bury’s top digital agency know, by their very nature Instagram stories create FOMO (‘Fear of Missing Out’) – and that threat of ‘catch this now or it’s gone forever’ is a big motivating factor in getting your audience to view your content.

In addition to this though, we can’t forget that stories are positioned in a key position on the screen – they’re right at the top of it, so they’re the first thing you see when you check in, and of course, they also take up the full screen when opened, giving them another advantage over ‘regular’ Instagram posts.

Step 4 – Instagram Stories

So, purely by virtue of where they show up and how they display in the app or website, you should be talking advantage of Instagram stories to boost your presence on the platform. However, as we often see in the world of social media, once again it is possible to do Instagram stories well, and do them poorly. Don’t worry though, as the team at our top digital agency will help you get them right with the tips below!

Step 4.1 – Create Great Stories Content

Stories are a great place to advertise whatever you have that’s new – be it a product, a new blog – almost anything. All you have to do is apply the tips we’ve given above for writing great Instagram content and apply it to your story.

Step 4.2 – Physical Appearance of Stories

The trouble is, a lot of people already know about the power of using Instagram stories for marketing, and they’re doing so already, so you need to make your content stand out from the crowd. Seek Social – Bury’s top digital agency – know that one way you can do this is by changing the physical appearance of your content using things like photo filters, funky fonts, emojis and stickers to bring a more unique look to your content.

Step 4.3 – The other Rules of Social Media Posting Still Apply

Don’t forget though, an Instagram story is still a social media post – so the basic rules of social media posting as laid down by the expert team at our top digital agency still apply. Post stories regularly (though maybe not quite as often as ‘regular’ content so they still feel special), and post when your audience is online to make sure that your content reaches more of the people that will be most interested in it.

Step 5 – The Final Word on Instagram With Our Top Digital Agency

So, there you have it folks – Seek Social’s complete guide to marketing on Instagram in 2021. If you follow the tips that the staff at Bury’s top digital agency have given today, we’re confident that you’ll see a definite improvement in your fortunes on the platform. However, if you’d like any further tips that are more personalised to your situation, or if you want to talk to us about any of the other digital marketing services that we provide, get in touch today via email to hello@seeksocial.co.uk or call us on 0161 761 1800!