Found yourself wondering how to grow your business on Instagram? Social media platforms are full of brands with large followings and high-quality content. What isn’t shown, however, is the work, persistence, and consistency that goes into growing your profiles to this stage. Whilst they may make it look easy, social media marketing requires lots of time, dedication, and creativity.
As a business owner, it’s only natural that you want to save as much money as you can by tackling everything yourself. This being said, there comes a point where spinning too many plates at once will eventually mean that something has to give. Working with a specialist marketing agency, like VerriBerri, will allow you to dedicate more of your time to what you do best – being a business owner!
How to grow your business on Instagram
Organic posting
Organic posting is your first port of call when it comes to building your brand on Instagram. Populating your page should be your first priority. It’s important, however, that you’re sharing high-quality content that provides your followers with value. Failure to do so will only result in you loosing followers and your posts lacking engagement.
Alongside organic posting, you should also be networking within your community. Find likeminded individuals, other businesses within your industry, and potential customers and engage with their posts. Not only will this result in a boosted, loyal following, but it will also ensure your audience feels heard and appreciated.
Taking photos, filming Reels, and uploading stories takes time. It also requires creativity and a good eye. What’s more, engaging with other users is a task that many CEO’s find they’re too busy for. If these sound like the issues you’re facing, it’s time to reach out to an agency like VerriBerri.
Social media ads
Alongside your organic posting, for those of you wondering how to grow your business on Instagram even quicker, you might want to consider also investing in running a social media ad or two. We have seen tremendous success with this in the past and for the right brands, social ads can generate an impressive ROI. Of course, that is providing this has been set-up correctly.
There’s more to running social media ads than you may at first think. This process can be quite tricky to learn, especially when you have a million and one other things you’re working on. When you collaborate with our agency, VerriBerri, we’ll help you design, create, and effectively target your ads to ensure you’re reaching the right people.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is all around us and for good reason. Thousands of brands have come to realise the true value of content creators and their loyal audiences. The psychology behind it is simple. You see something your favourite influencer is enjoying, and you instantly want it. And just like that, you’ve been ‘influenced.’
In order for effective collaborations, you need to do your research. Firstly, you need to look for individuals who align well with your brand and who’s audience will be interested in your product or service. If a creator promotes a brand that doesn’t relate to their niche, this will look nothing but disingenuous. What’s more, you also need to ensure the creators you choose haven’t caused any controversy as of late. Remember, their promotional content is a direct representation of your brand. As such, collaborations shouldn’t be handed out left, right, and centre.
There are lots of different types of collaborations and arranging these partnerships can be a lengthy process. If this isn’t something you feel confident doing alone, this is where a local social media agency can come in handy!
How to optimise your profiles and content
In addition to sharing regular content, there are also a number of other things you can be doing. Still researching how to grow your business on Instagram? Here are a few top tips for taking things one step further…
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Link your website in your bio
Although this one may seem a little trivial to mention, you’d be surprised at how many businesses forget to link to their website in their bio. Your URL on Instagram is a must-have. The last thing people want to do is be inconvenienced by having to find your site themselves.
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Develop a description about your business
For some people who land on your Instagram profile, this may be the first interaction they’ve ever had with your brand. As such, it’s crucial that you make it a positive one. Your bio should be short, memorable, and clearly explain what you do.
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Hashtags
Hashtags allow Instagram to categorise your content in one, easy-to-access place. From here, users are able to follow their favourite tags and keep up to date with new content shared around a particular interest. This ultimately allows businesses to reach a wider audience, and individuals they may have otherwise missed. Instagram allows brands to add 30 hashtags per post for a reason. Use them!
Why you should never buy followers
Where lots of businesses go wrong with Instagram is in focussing too much on their following rather than their engagement rate. When you’re hungry to grow your online presence, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of buying followers on Instagram. In actual fact, however, this will do far more harm than good.
The Instagram algorithm favours content that performs well. This means posts and Reels that get lots of views, likes, comments, saves, and shares will go further than those that don’t. The platform then uses this content to keep its users on the site for longer. It does this by pushing it out to more people within certain demographics. As such, the importance of a strong engagement rate is highlighted.
When you buy followers, these accounts are usually inactive. This means that whilst you may have a following of 5k, for example, the followers you purchased won’t be interacting with your content. This lowers your engagement rate. Not only will this affect the performance of all future posts but for anyone who looks closely enough, the follower to like ratio is a tell-tale sign that a portion of your audience aren’t real people. Naturally, this will damage your credibility.
Contact us
If you’re still not quite sure how to grow your business on Instagram, it’s time to get in touch. To speak to one of our specialists, contact us today on 01376 386 850. Alternatively, you can also email us on [email protected] or click here to be redirected to our contact form.