One of the most appealing features of Instagram is that it allows its users to make the most out of the old saying about a picture being the equivalent of a thousand words. The platform allows for a great deal of expressiveness, and even if you don’t have a particularly artistic nature, you can certainly make great use of Instagram to create a greater awareness for your business.
There are also a number of options you can use for content on Instagram so that you can better engage with your followers, and to increase the number of your followers. Obviously, the larger your following is, the better it is for your business overall, and that’s why content is so important. If you can provide a number of different types of content to your followers, you’ll probably stand a better chance of increasing your following, and increasing your business presence on Instagram.
The key to all this is to engage the correct target audience, and then discover which types of content they are most interested in, and you can do this in several different ways. First of all, you can research hashtags and use the ones which are most popular among your target audience. Secondly, you should make sure to consistently post content so that your followers are aware that you’re an active entity. Next, you should also try to change up your content a little bit all the time, so that your followers can see some freshness and variety in your posts. Here are some different types of content you can make use of on Instagram to increase your following.
Posts featuring influencers
One of the best ways of increasing your following is to enlist the aid of people who already have a built-in following of their own. Social media influencers can be a terrific resource because they can persuade their following to become part of your following. Most businesses are obliged to focus on managing cost-effectively and getting the most out of their investments, and influencer posts fall into this category. By sending a large number of followers your way, at least a few of them will probably stick with you and do business with you.
Influencers can also be advantageous to your business by promoting your products and services in their regular interactions with followers. This makes it important for you to find just the right influencers for your company, which should be those individuals who have a following which equates to your own target audience, and who will be likely customers for your products. Even if you have to pay a significant fee to a given influencer, it will be far less than you would have to pay for a marketing campaign, which might end up achieving far less beneficial results.
Instagram videos
The reason you would want to invest in Instagram videos, is that they routinely generate much greater engagement than photos or any other type of content. Keep in mind that anyone who logs onto Instagram in the first place is probably looking for video content rather than anything else. This is understandable, given the fact that videos can accomplish a number of things which photos and text content cannot. For one thing, videos will provide a legitimate voice and face to whatever it is that you happen to be featuring from your company.
It helps viewers to form connections with the service or product in ways that photos and text are not capable of, and they allow for a certain personality and even some aspects of charm to be expressed through a video. Another great thing about videos is they are very shareable by nature, and because they’re so great at making connections, they can easily be spread among a number of people and generate some powerful influence.
Those kinds of connections are critical because they are the reason that people will take an interest in your company and what it provides. This makes it important that you post videos on Instagram regularly, perhaps several times a week, so that people will be interested enough to share your videos, and so that new followers can be attracted all the time.
Contests and promotions
Contests and promotions can be one of the very best ways of engaging with followers, and keeping them interested in an activity which is closely associated with your company. This type of content can be very effective because just about everyone loves to receive something for free, and virtually all businesses understand that giving something away like this can be extremely cost-effective. Whatever you lose in the cost of giving something away for nothing, you will certainly recoup that cost by attracting new followers who spend much more than the cost of any products you gave away.
It’s also pretty easy to run promotions and contests, especially by sharing posts. Once you post content where people are obliged to share that post in order to be eligible for a drawing, you will get the ball rolling and it will then proceed downhill. It’s extremely easy to share posts like this, and that will help proliferate your posts everywhere online. There is virtually no cost involved with getting people to share your promotion or contest, and the upside can be tremendous.
This also brings into play the potential viral nature of Instagram, with sharing going on exponentially to your benefit. You can also run your contests and promotion by soliciting select followers. As an example, you can make a post in which the first 100 new followers will be entitled to receive some free product, and that will increase the interest and participation for your contest. Actually, your promotion doesn’t even have to involve giving away any free products, but can just be discounts on certain products that you specify.
When you attach promotion codes to these events, it helps you to see exactly where your business is coming from, and that can help you customize your approach for your next marketing initiative. All told, using the various types of content available on Instagram can be crucial in helping you to establish a following, or to grow it in a short period of time.
