How To Make Use Of Instagram
Intro
Instagram can be an incredible tool to market your business or act as advertising for your product. But in order to truly use Instagram to the best of its capabilities you have to be able to play the social networks algorithms against it.Be Colourful
Instagram is a platform of images and videos that people are scrolling through rapidly. Not looking for anything in particular, instead filling up the gap between getting on the train and walking to work or in some cases, going to the toilet. Instagram is a portable platform unlike YouTube, Facebook or TikTok where audience retention is brief and fickle.To grab someone's attention as they scroll past you, the easiest way to use a colour scheme that isn’t that popular or trending at the time. The way to decide on this is some simple research into your competitors or the hashtags you use. If people in these hashtags or your competitors are using a similar colour scheme, to another way, break the mold.
The reason this works is because if people are looking at you, your competitors are likely appearing as well and you want to grab their audience's attention by standing out. Say someone is looking at #salsadip, you need to stand out from potentially thousands upon thousands of pictures and videos of salsa dip. If your image is bright and vibrant, or black and white for instance, it breaks the mold and forces potential clients to stop scrolling out of curiosity.
We’ve found this works really well with some quotes we’ve posted on our account, you can check one out here: https://bit.ly/2Xslvkm.The Importance Of Hashtags
As mentioned above hashtags play a very key role in the day to day usage of Instagram. They allow the algorithm to show you to people who may be interested in your work or what you're posting. It also makes it easier for people to find your work should they be searching for it.
Hashtags work similarly on all platforms but using the right hashtags, especially on Instagram is sometimes key to success. Earlier I used the example of #salsadip, now would this hashtag be ok to use for, say, a new brand of eye-liner? No, of course not. You need to make sure your hashtags match the image/video, the brand and most importantly the product or service you are providing.
On our posts we use a general set which can be used repeatedly, i.e #visualcommunication #visuals #digitalart etc. This can save time but it's always good to remember the right hashtags and more specific ones as well.Embrace Short Animation
Earlier I told you how being colourful can separate you from the crowd, well, if you want to go one step further, animate it. Keep the same seperatist style when it comes to how you portray your work colour wise, but add movement to really catch the eye.
Try and set up your animations and videos to be played without sound, subtitles are incredibly important here. With subtitles you can have videos played anywhere and not need headphones to be understood. It also helps those who are hearing impaired as they will be able to access and understand your content.
If you're embracing short animation, you can also repurpose work you’ve done for a client (as long as you're allowed and not breaking any NDA’s that is) which could potentially give you an almost bottomless stream of content.
For an example feel free to check out this post: https://bit.ly/3mbGOkx.Make Use Of Reels
Nearly everyone is on TikTok nowadays, even Ryan Reynolds! But Instagram has its own helpful feature that not everyone is making use of just yet. This makes it the perfect place to either repurpose your TikToks or create short content specifically for Instagram reels.
The tool functions almost exactly the same as TikTok but more akin to an Instagram story and it comes with the added bonus of the fact it can drag people to your Instagram. From here you can use the above tricks to get a one time viewer to become a follower and from here to become a client or customer.Encourage Engagement
If you want your posts to climb up the algorithm and onto the screens of various Instagram Users you will need to encourage your followers and even random people to engage with your posts. The base form and easiest to obtain is the double tap like. If you want really engagement, you want people to comment, posts with high likes and high comments will rocket up the algorithm and be shown to even more people, who with any luck, will share your posts on their stories.
The best way to encourage engagement is simply to ask questions, it's really that simple. Get people to rate your posts or give you ideas for future posts or simply just grabbing feedback. Of Course you don’t want to rely on too much as it may sidetrack from the actual content your posting.Re-Use Well Performing Posts
Don’t immediately repost them but a few weeks after won’t hurt. If the post did well in the past it may do well again and therefore will drive more traffic to your instagram page and therefore more traffic to you. You can avoid people getting annoyed at this simply by posting it on a Thursday with the caption #throwbackthursday.
We recently start making some throwback thursday posts if you wanted to see an example: https://bit.ly/3ATGCdI.Conclusion
Individually these tips will boost your presence in Instagram, used together and used correctly will ensure you can use a simple social network to generate new clients and customers.