Jenn Herman recently held a webinar to share her insights on Instagram marketing and brand building. Here are our top 15 takeaways, including tips you can use today to improve your Instagram account, increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads.
Optimize Your Business Account Settings
- Set your Instagram business account to public to allow anyone to discover your brand, view your posts, and interact with your content.
- Use a trackable URL in your profile, so you can measure Instagram traffic in Google Analytics.
- Establish a recognizable name and username for your account. These are the only searchable parts of your bio and will help customers find your brand.
Create and Share Engaging Content
- Showcase your products, services, and work environment with high-quality photos. Show behind the scenes photos of products, employees, and events.
- Share offers, discounts, contests, giveaways, and promotions to create an incentive for individuals to follow your brand.
- Post personal greetings or news updates to communicate directly with your followers.
- Create Instagram-exclusive content that your viewers would not find on your other social media accounts.
- Include a clear call-to-action on some of your posts instructing viewers to visit your website, download an asset, call your business, or place an order.
- Write descriptive captions to expand on the story of your photos.
- Include videos on your account. Instagram videos can be up to 15 seconds long and typically receive twice the engagement of pictures. Businesses can repurpose their existing videos to share on this channel.
Use Hashtags Effectively
- Include hashtags to significantly increase the reach of your content and help interested browsers find your page. Use a mix of popular tags and custom tags.
- Use an appropriate amount of hashtags. The average number of hashtags is 5-10 per post, but the highest engagement occurs with 11 hashtags.
Drive Traffic with Instagram Ads
- Keep your eye on Instagram Ads. While still in the development phase, ads will be made more widely available soon.
- Instagram ads offer the option of a photo, a video, or a carousel with up to 4 images. Make sure your sponsored posts fit in with your other Instagram content.
- Include a call-to-action button to give viewers an easy path to shop, learn more, or provide feedback through Instagram.
Maersk Line
The world’s largest shipping company features employees in their daily work environment and includes an informative fact about the company.
General Electric
GE provides 6 hashtags in this post, which are all industry-related and relevant to the photo.
Levi’s
This Levi’s ad uses a visaully appealing photo and a custom tag (#LifeInLevis).
Creating an Instagram business account with the correct settings, unique content, targeted hashtags, and relevant ads can help your company gain social media recognition and drive traffic. Do you have any other Instagram business tips or best practices?
