Grow Your Captive Audience With Instagram
From: Byron Horde of Knowledge is Powah
Date: February 12th, 2020
Subject:Â Instagram
Grow Your Captive Audience With Instagram:
Did you know that Instagram has more than 300 million daily users and amazing user engagement levels? In fact, according to Buffer App, https://blog.bufferapp.com/Instagram-marketing, there are more than 95 million photos and videos shared every day. While that may seem like a lot of competition, thereâs also a lot of opportunity. Your audience doesnât just share one photo a day or engage with one instagrammer.
They engage with the ones that capture their attention. And
the instagrammers that capture their attention day after day build their
audience. So, the question is, how can you grab attention on Instagram and hold
attention so that your end result is a large and captive audience? Thatâs what
weâre going to take a look at in this report.
The Five Fundamentals
On Instagram, there are five fundamentals of any successful
audience building strategy. Weâre not going to go too much into a discussion
about why Instagram works to build an audience. Itâs highly effective and when
you embrace these five fundamentals, itâs a powerful channel to add to your
marketing strategy.
Fundamental #1 Goals
and a Mission
What do you want to achieve via Instagram? This may sound
silly, you want to grow a captive audience, right? But it has to go beyond
that. What do you want to do with that captive audience?
For example, are you growing an audience on Instagram to
drive traffic to your sales page? If so, your content strategy might entail a
large number of product photos.
Ben & Jerryâs Ice cream, for example, includes a link
on their Instagram page that takes visitors to their website - often to their
âwhatâs newâ page where they promote new flavors. The goal is ultimately to
motivate purchases.
If your goal is to build your list, then your content
strategy on Instagram might entail sharing quotes, inspirational messages, and
tips with a link to your email sign up page.
The website ThinkGrowProsper.com leverages Instagram to
grow their email list. They post inspirational quotes and invite viewers to
visit their website. At the website, in the header, visitors see a sign up
offer for a free mindset course. The goal and mission for ThinkGrowProsper is
to attract people who are interested in learning more and ultimately growing
their email list.
The blog, CoolMomPicks.com earns income for affiliate sales and income from advertising. Their Instagram goal is to drive you to their blog so you click on links and make purchases. If you look at their Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/coolmompicks, youâll see an abundance of photos that are related to holidays, back to school, and other trending parenting topics. Posts often invite viewers to visit their website.
Common goals include but arenât limited to:
Showcasing your products or servicesBuilding your community Increase awareness of your brand or strengthening
your brandBuilding your email listDriving traffic to your site - to earn affiliate
commissions or to build your blog following and earn income from advertising
So, while your goal is to grow a large audience on Instagram,
you also want to know what youâre going to do with that audience. It helps you
achieve the remaining fundamentals.
Fundamental #2 Content
strategy
Once you have a solid mission and goal for your Instagram activities, youâll then have an idea about how to achieve it. This is your strategy. What type of content do you need to share to achieve your goal? Take a look at CoolMomPicks on Instagram and contrast that with those of ThinkGrowProsper, https://www.instagram.com/thinkgrowprosper.
Youâll notice a definite difference in content.
CoolMomPicks is highly visual and relates to the season, holiday, or often the
subjects theyâre talking about on their blog. The content posted at
ThinkGrowProsper singularly focuses on offering followers a motivational or
inspirational quote of the day. ThinkGrowProsper has 2.3 million followers.
YesâŚmillion. And their content is quite simple.
CoolMomPicks has 16 thousand, they also have coolmomtech
and coolmomeats as they grow their audience and following. Their content
strategy is a bit more diverse.
What message do you want to communicate with your audience
and what type of content supports you to achieve that? Consider:
QuotesProduct photosTipsFactsPhotos of happy customers (with or without testimonials in the description)Pictures of yourself (if you are your brand and are using Instagram to strengthen your brand this could be a terrific idea. Check out Joel Comm on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/joelcomm.)Videos. If you head to Ben & Jerryâs on Instagram, youâll see that many of their posts are videosâŚof ice cream. Fun!
Think about it from your audienceâs perspectiveâŚwhat do
they want to see? What would they appreciate? What would they share?
For example, if your goal is to build your community, you
might share a number of images of your customers, your associates, and others
who are involved in your business. Create a sense of community by visually connecting
your company to others.
Okay, now we need to look at one of the most challenging
aspects of content, and that is consistency.
Fundamental #3
Consistency
No social channel is going to work well for you unless you
have some degree of consistency. With 95 million posts shared every day, there
are a lot of images competing for your audienceâs attention. If you donât have
a consistent presence, theyâll forget about you.
SO what does consistency mean?
In most cases, consistent content means that you post
something on Instagram daily. Many marketers post several times a day and some
post every other day. Youâll need to find your balance. However, it is critical
that you post often.
You can approach this however it fits into your goals and
your available time and finances. For example, if you need professional photos
of your products and you have a tight budget, you either hire a photography
student who can take 30 photos for you each month or you post one professional
photo a week and fill in the other days with different content.
Like other types of content, donât get bogged down with
consistency at the expense or relevancy or quality. Yes, it is important to
make sure that you post something on Instagram often, however if the daily
posts are blurry, dark, or completely irrelevant to your audience, then youâre
doing more harm to your campaign than good. Find a consistent schedule that you
can stick to. Later, as you grow, you can incorporate more posts into your
schedule.
Letâs talk about schedules quickly before we talk about
quality and relevancyâŚ
There are a few tools that you can use to schedule your Instagram
posts in advance. They include, but arenât limited to:
Schedugram - http://schedugr.am/Hootsuite - https://hootsuite.com/InstagramOnlyPult - https://onlypult.com/Later - https://later.com
Leverage a tool like this so that you can stay ahead of your
content, plan and strategize, and adapt as your audience grows and changes.
Many of those tools also contain analytics to help you better understand the
type of content your audience is connecting with.
Fundamental #4
Quality & Relevancy
We just mentioned quality. Your images need to represent
your brand and your company. That means that if youâre taking photos at an
event and sharing them on Instagram, share the ones that are clear, not the
dark or blurry ones. It also means that while you donât have to be a
professional photographer, you want your products and images to look good. They
have to be appealing to your viewer.
They also have to be relevant to your audience. Make sure
that your audience is engaging with your content. Leverage those analytics. Pay
attention to the images that get the most engagement and the images that increase
followers, drive people to your website, or sell products.
Take a look at Mistoboxcoffee https://www.instagram.com/mistoboxcoffee. They are a monthly coffee delivery membership. Join and you receive a bag of fresh coffee beans from a number of roasters around the country. The monthly choice is hand-picked for you by their barista based on your preferences. Itâs a bit like Stitchfix for coffee lovers. Their Instagram is beautiful. Simple pictures of coffee and they share an image every day. They have consistency, quality, and relevancy locked up.
Fundamental #5 Your Instagram
Profile matters
Your account with Instagram comes with a profile, right?
Itâs where you put your logo or picture, your website address or a link to your
blog, email sign up form, or sales page. You can add a bit about your company,
and a call to action.
You can also include hashtags and invite followers to use
that hashtag to be added to your Instagram feed. For example,
Notice that Mistobox coffee includes a link to their blog,
a logo, and a quick tagline, âfresh-roasted coffee shipped to you.â
Here are a few more examples of what a profile can be.
CooMomPicks uses a picture of the two owners. Their names
and faces are at the forefront of their brand and business, so this is a good
move. Additionally, they have a blog post link for viewers to visit. Remember
that they make money through affiliate sales and advertising sales, so blog
traffic is a key goal.
As you can see, there are a variety of different image
choices with the examples. Some use a logo. Others use their face. It depends
largely on your business and how you brand yourself.
Every example includes a link in their bio. Unlike other
social channels, you cannot add a link to a post. What you can do is invite
viewers to visit your profile page and click on the link there. Itâs the only
place where you can include a clickable link â take advantage of it.
Finally, spend some time crafting a quick and dirty
description of who you are and what you do. It needs to be relevant to your
audience, attention grabbing, and a good representation of who you are and what
youâre about.
Your profile is a key opportunity to gain followers. It
motivates people to become a part of your Instagram community and perhaps to
take the next step with your business. However, your posts have to engage them
enough that they take a look at your profile. SO letâs wrap it up by talking about
your image descriptions and how to leverage them to achieve your goals.
Itâs all in the descriptionâŚ
Instagram is a visual content channel, right? People share
images and videos and thatâs it. However, each image also comes with an
opportunity to share a description. If you look at the right-hand side of a
post, youâll see that some instagrammers also share a bit of written content.
In the above image, Joel Comm is promoting his upcoming
seminar. It includes a link (not a clickable one) that viewers can type into
their browser, to register. Joel doesnât promote his business often, but when
he does, he is transparent and leverages the image description area to tell
viewers what he is offering.
Contrast the Joel Comm post with the CoolMomPicks post.
They invite viewers to visit their profile page to click on the link and buy.
They leverage their description area to drive traffic to their sales page.
Notice all the hashtags, too? That helps Instagrammers find their posts. Donât
forget to include a few relevant tags in your descriptions.
Finally, hereâs a post from MistoBoxCoffee. It is a simple
conversational message that strives to connect with coffee lovers who may
appreciate their service. And again, look at all of those hashtags!
Conclusion
Following the five fundamentals will get you where you want to be with Instagram marketing. You can build a large, active, and loyal audience with this popular and growing tool. Start with your goals and mission. What do you want to achieve? From there, study your audience, decide on a posting schedule, and start planning your content. Leverage the tools that Instagram provides including hashtags, your description space, and your profile, and donât forget to use that clickable link on your profile. It helps your followers make the connection to your blog or website and take those next steps.
Cheers to Your Success,
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