It is year 2018, and Instagram as a social media network is more powerful than ever. Statistic has shown that the most important social network for the younger demographic is Instagram, leading a lot to the second and third placed Twitter and Facebook. There are a lot of factors why Instagram emerged a lot into the last few years, but that alone is enough reason to start using it.
If you want your business to stay in touch with the trends and find this younger demographic, you should definitely include Instagram into your overall online marketing strategy, and start investing in it. There are 5 key ways how you can grow your ecommerce business with Instagram in 2018. What are those?
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Engage with customers
One photography is worth more than thousand words, and Instagram is a proof of that. Different social media have different usage and purposes, but Instagram with the photography aspect is where this network succeeds the most at. Therefore, your Instagram activity and strategy should be focused into engaging your fans and potential or current customers with captivating photos which will provoke them into wanting to know more from your brand. As with every social media, you should find your ideal audience persona and see if it is adequate for Instagram. For example, do you have a fashion brand? There is certainly no bigger and better platform for fashion, than Instagram. However, if your brand is hard to represent through pictures, Instagram is maybe the not right place for you, and you should try to search more in order to find your ideal social media platform.
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Use hashtags strategically
Hashtags are one of the best Internet inventions ever. Do you agree with us? Of course! Hashtags unites the users on different social media into engaging them with focused topics which are to their interest. You know that, for example, if you are closely following the fashion world, you are frequently using hashtags that are relevant to fashion searches which will bring you, as a user, to relevant content about brands, clothes, shoes, etc. That is why you should use hashtags carefully, and of course, strategically. You should not be intrusive with hashtags and definitely you should not use hundreds of them into one photo, but rather try to find the right amount of them, usually between 5 to10. And of course, they should be grouped and focused in order to attract the desired audience. Luckily, there is a lot of space for creativity and innovations in the hashtag world. You can create a hashtag unique for your brand, and with careful planning and strategy, make it relevant and try to spread it to become viral. Of course, this is not an easy task and it implies to have a lot of patience and devoted time.
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Email subscription and newsletter
Did you think that the whole email thing was dead? You will be surprised to find out that the email marketing is one of the most powerful online marketing channels these days. Having a big number of dedicated subscribers that opted in to read your email newsletters is one of the key marketing strategies of many businesses and companies. You can strategically use Instagram as a social media marketing channel to make your fans subscribe to see your newsletters. For example, if you have a fashion brand, engage your Instagram users with promising them 10% discount on your latest collection, with telling them that if they subscribe on your email, they will get a coupon in their Inbox. After that, you can frequently send them your latest offers and promotions. You will be surprised how a lot of people are reading to their emails. Track the open and click ratios (how many people opened your newsletters, and how of them clicked on the link you were leading them from your newsletter) of your email newsletters, and always try to increase them to bigger amounts.
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The images and their quality
As we said, your primary goal in using Instagram is to communicate to your ideal target audience visually, through photography. When people go to Instagram, they want to see beautiful and photos with a lot of bright colors which tells a story to them. That is exactly what you should strive with your Instagram growth plan, i.e. bringing photos that will tell a story to your customers and fans. Use bright colors, bring ‘life’ to your photos, and always be careful of the quality of the photos you are using on this social media platform. Of course, if you want to stay relevant and have the whole attention from your users while they are seeing your visual story. Users do not forgive low quality, or boring content, especially in a modern social media network as Instagram is. There a lot of software programs and filters that can help improve your photos. Whenever you can, use professional help from photographers to make your visual identity on Instagram better.
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Why social media marketing
Instagram is just one of the big amounts of social media platforms that exist today. In this modern Internet age, social media of course should be one of the most important marketing tools in your overall marketing mix. 90% of the younger demographic use social networks and media to communicate, to inform themselves, have fun, and most important for you – they are looking to their favorite brands, and want to be engaged from you, as well as be informed and to help them whenever they need it. Instagram is becoming key factor into the social media marketing for a lot of business and companies and is currently managed through Facebook Ads Manager. If you want to stay in touch with the all trends that are emerging from one day to another, you should be constantly updated with every news that is coming from the social media world, whether you are beginner or professional in this field.
Sajid Akhter