Every small business marketer knows how important high-quality content is for driving your marketing strategy on Instagram. However, it can be very disappointing to find out that despite following the book for producing great visual content, editing it, and even dedicating a not inconsiderable sum to promoting it with Instagram ads; you are simply not getting the engagement you desire. However, given the potential of Instagram that has already been exploited by innumerable businesses, there is no reason for you to be disheartened. By employing a few proven tactics, you can put some life into your Instagram marketing strategy and start getting the like, shares, and comments that point to an engaged audience.
Make Strategic Use of Your Hashtags
While all Instagram marketers know how useful hashtags are for discovering content, there is still plenty of confusion regarding the ideal number of hashtags one should employ and which kind of hashtag will be the most productive. You need to appreciate that while hashtags allow people to discover the content you are posting, by using the right kind of hashtags, you can discover an audience interested in your business and brand. Choosing the right hashtags is an art. While you need to use popular hashtags, you also need to ensure that you do not use the ones that are very popular because it is likely that your posts will get snowed under in the search results. The trick is to put you in the shoes of the customer and use the terms he is most likely to use. Invariably, using a balanced mix of some popular hashtags and ones that are specific to your business and brand proves to be the best. A good way of finding out the hashtags that can potentially work for you is to study the hashtag strategy of your main competitors. This is very easily done by using one of the several online hashtag research tools available. Regarding the number of hashtags, there are plenty of studies that point out the ideal to be between nine and eleven, even though Instagram permits the use of up to 30. Though the reasons are not immediately clear, longer hashtags tend to perform better.
Collaborate with an Established Partner to Run a Contest
Conducting a contest on Instagram or promising a freebie to every user completing the desired action remains one of the more popular tactics by marketers to boost the engagement level of users. According to Forbes.com, the giveaways are also called loop giveaways.
The reason for the popularity of these contests is that everyone loves free stuff and winning one gives them a sense of satisfaction of having done something awesome. Depending on what the desired action is for getting a giveaway, users are more than happy to like, comment, share, or repost your content for a chance to win a prize. However, as all marketers will agree, running such contests to boost the engagement level becomes worthwhile only when you have a sizeable number of followers. If you find yourself without an adequate number of followers, you can think of collaborating with a popular partner that has a large following to offer a handsome prize. You will get straight access to a large population that is likely to be interested in you and your business and be ready to offer its likes in return for the opportunity of winning something attractive. To get more audience interest in the Instagram contest, you can buy Instagram likes from real Instagram followers quite cheaply.
Schedule Your Ads to Run When Your Target Audience Is Most Active
Running ads on Instagram is a surefire way of increasing your brand awareness and engagement. You can make your advertising budget pack more of a punch by using the scheduling feature of Instagram. Available to advertisers with the lifetime budgeting option, this feature enables you to run your advertisements at specific predetermined times when you know that your audiences are likely to be active and have a better chance of viewing the ads. However, to make use of this feature, you should know when your audience is the most active. Even though there are multiple studies regarding the best times and the days of the week to post and advertise, you should undertake a series of trials to find out for yourself the most optimum times for your business. The timings can also vary if your audience is spread across different time zones across the globe. There are other Instagram ad scheduling tools that you can use even if you are not using a lifetime budget for growing your followers and elevating the engagement.
Ensure You Regularly Post Instagram Stories
Even though you may look askance at the concept of posting Instagram Stories to increase the engagement of your ads, you should appreciate that Instagram Stories has proved immensely successful with about 500 million viewers per month. You can well imagine the added exposure of your brand’s ads when they are displayed on the platform when you are running a Story. Even if no ad campaign is running, by increasing the number of Stories that you post on Instagram, you can create more engagement opportunities for users. Another important benefit of running Instagram Stories is that your brand can be featured on the Explore page of Instagram that is popularly used by viewers to discover new content. While this is not an automatic inclusion, Instagram selects the accounts that will be featured based on the posts you engage with and the accounts you follow. Of course, you need to be posting more Stories with engaging content to qualify for the privilege.
Conclusion
Getting more engagement on Instagram is a never-ending process. The environment keeps on changing in terms of technology, the preferences of the audience, and trends. It makes it necessary for marketers to remain on the ball. In addition to the tactics outlined earlier, marketers also need to ensure a fine balance between targeting posts that are too specific and too broad. On one hand, you may end up not benefiting from the peripheral audiences, while on the other; you may waste your advertising budget.