As of 2021, there are a recorded 1.074 billion Instagram users worldwide with users spending an average of up to 53 minutes on the platform per day.
With this amount of usage happening on the fifth most popular platform (behind Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) in the world, everyone wants to make sure they are getting the return on investment when it comes to time, content and strategy. Follow our ‘Top Instagram tactics for beginners’ to ensure you make the most of your Instagram marketing.
Instagram tactics for beginners
1. Set goals
Planning is always a good idea before launching a new social media campaign on any platform, but especially on Instagram. In your strategy plan you will want to think about what goals to set and the date you want to meet them by. Is there a certain amount of followers you want to have gained within 3 months, or a certain percentage of engagement rate that you want to achieve within a year? You can also include goals like how many posts a week you want to post, how many Instagram stories you want to upload and how much time you want to spend engaging with your followers. Writing all of these things down will help you not only keep on track of your progress but also give you an easy way to measure it.
2. Track competitors
Checking out your competitors on Instagram will give you an idea of what is already being put out content wise. This is also an interesting way to analyse what is working and what is not which can be determined by the amount of engagements each post is getting. Taking a look at who they follow and who follows them will be helpful for your Instagram strategy as well. Their followers will be people who are already interested in similar services to you, and ready to be engaged with.
3. Growth
Putting effort and time into growing your follower count daily will definitely help increase your ROI. The reason why you put out high quality content is for your audience to see it, engage with it and want to see more of it. Engage with users that are in your target audience and the algorithm will do its job by putting your profile in front of them as a suggested profile to follow.
4. Content consistency
Don’t let your Instagram profile fall victim to being overloaded one month and tumbleweed floating through the month after. Set yourself a content plan which outlines when to post and what to post. This routine will not only let you plan ahead but will also give your target audience something to expect on their feed. Keeping a clean and well managed profile will give potential customers the knowledge that the company behind it is organised, trustworthy and creative. Utilise all of the tools Instagram offers: video post, image post, Stories, IGTV, reels.
5. Hashtags
Instagram posts that use hashtags gain a 12.6% increase in engagement compared to those without.’ A sure fire way to boost your impressions and engagements is to add relevant hashtags to your Instagram posts. You can add up to 30 hashtags to your posts and you will want to include the right ones that have gained a lot of impressions. Take a look on the Explore tab and type in a word that is relevant to your industry. For example, Cariad would type in the word social media and then click on the ‘tags’ section. Here we would be able to see the highest ranking hashtags that are to do with the word social media and how many impressions each hashtag has gained. From here we would make sure to include the high ranking hashtags in our content. Using effective hashtags will make sure people who are searching for the same hashtags will see your posts in their feed. This in turn will increase engagements and your following.
Follow these tactics above and you will be able to create and maintain a healthy social media marketing strategy and execution plan which will aid the growth of your business’ presence on Instagram. If these hacks sound too confusing or time consuming, could it be time to outsource your social media marketing?
Talk to us about any of your Marketing needs and we’ll be sure to help you carve out your strategy for success.
