This year is set to be a big one for Instagram marketing.
According to Social Media Examiner’s annual report, in 2018 some 69% of marketers plan to increase their investment on the platform and 74% plan to learn more about how to best use the social network.
What’s driving this spike in interest? Largely, a quickly growing audience and considerable popularity with younger consumers: Instagram now has more than 800 million active users, with 71% of US adults ages 18–24 and 72% of US teens ages 13–17 utilizing it.
However, while most marketers understand the power of the platform, actually establishing a successful presence remains a challenge. Many marketers are still unsure about which types of content to post, when to engage, how best to reach audiences, and what the social network’s full range of features is.
To help, here are seven steps that every brand should take in order to make the most of its Instagram marketing efforts:
1. Invest Time in Optimizing Your Business Profile
Where should you begin your Instagram efforts?
With your profile. This is because it’s both a key to unlocking important back-end platform features, as well as an essential tool for encouraging consumers to take action.
Before doing anything else on the social network, ensure that you’ve got a business account, not just a regular one (to find out how to do that, watch this video). Business profiles differ in that they give firms a set of tools—advertising options, analytics insights, additional contact information fields (call now, shop now, email, and directions)—that aren’t available to standard users.
Once you have a business profile, invest time in optimizing it. Because Instagram is so visual and light on text, its profiles do much more heavy lifting compared with other social networks. This is a valuable chance to tell your brand story in your bio, engage with a good avatar, and include a link to an external webpage.
2. Focus on High-Quality, Beautiful Visuals
What do younger consumers want to see from brands on Instagram?
To find out, parent company Facebook polled 11,000 people ages 13–24 from around the world.
