Welcome to the second part of our series on Instagram promotion! In the previous article, we discussed the various strategies for advertising your account. In this article, we will delve deeper into options for successful promotional campaigns. By understanding these aspects and implementing best practices, you can optimize your account and achieve your desired results.
18. Run official advertising
Targeted advertising is one of the most effective promotion tools on Instagram. The main characteristic is that targeting allows you to achieve instant impact compared to free promotion methods. You run an ad and thousands of users will see you instantly. But, of course, it is important to set up everything correctly, so that ads are shown to the target audience, not everyone. To understand more about targeting, you can take a course to help you set up any targeting ad, not just Instagram.
If targeting is still too complicated for you, you can try with a simpler advertising campaign - running promotions on Instagram. There the minimum settings are GEO, interests, and demographics. When running promotions, the best way to improve conversion rates is to give out some useful information, material or product for your audience. For example, courses, checklists, instructions, etc.
19. Order advertising from influencers
You can find influencers who have your target audience as subscribers. If the influencer has authority among your audience and is an opinion leader, advertising with him or her most likely will be effective.
The nuances of advertising with influencers:
- do not pay much attention to the number of subscribers, but at their quality (activity, ability to pay);
- micro and nano-bloggers have a higher effect at a lower price than a millionaire influencer;
- an influencer can design a post/story in his or her own style of content or give your ready-made version. If you have any preferences, discuss this beforehand;
- discuss the payment option in advance: post placement, barter, payment for results on the CPA model;
- you can search for influencer manually (by hashtags, geolocation, recommendations) or through specialized platforms, like Instajet.io;
- not all influencers play “fairly”, so we advise you to check them for fraud before you start a cooperation;
20. Run a competition
Contests help to boost reach, increase engagement, attract new subscribers and build brand awareness. There are few points worth considering before running a contest. TYou can choose between one-off competitions and marathons spread over several days. As a prize, select a product or service that will be interesting to your target audience. For example, if you are a psychologist, you could raffle off a free consultation or book. A common mistake would be to give away an iPhone and attract a non-target audience. In essence, you get a giveaway. As a consequence, you get a large influx of untargeted subscribers to the day of the contest, and after the contest ends, they begin to unsubscribe. You end up ruining your stats. Second step in organizing a successful contest is to specify clear rules, such as being subscribed and leaving at least 1 comment under the post. You can hold contests among customers, where one of the conditions is to buy a specific product or make a purchase for a certain amount. In this way you will get real sales, not just reach and subscribers. Think about using branded hashtags during the competition. It can allow you to increase brand awareness online.
21. Increase your reach
To attract more subscribers, you need as many people as possible to see your content. The same rule of thumb for retaining old ones applies - the more followers interact with your content, the more often you'll pop up in their feeds.
There are dozens of ways to increase your content reach on Instagram, such as
- cleaning your account of bots (more on this below);
- using interactives;
- publishing all types of content;
- running ads;
- communication with the audience in comments.
22. Protect yourself from getting blocked
It would be a shame to do promotion work and then get your account banned. There are 3 things you need to know to avoid this:
- What Instagram can block an account for, and what kinds of bans are there;
- How to protect yourself from having your account stolen and hacked. If you are hacked, attackers can delete all content or perform actions that will result in a ban;
- How to regain access to your Instagram account if you lost it.
23. Clear your account from bots
As mentioned above, clearing your account of bots helps you increase your reach and improve your stats. Bots, mass followers, commercial and abandoned accounts tend to not be active on your page. That said, they just hang around. For Instagram, this is a signal that your account and content are not engaging to users. This definitely has a negative impact on promotion. Besides, such accounts don't buy anything. That's why it's more important to have active followers than the high number of them.
24. Create masks
A mask on Instagram is a special filter that is used in Stories. The advantage of this promotional tool is that the mask itself or its name can contain an element of your brand. Accordingly, if the mask goes viral and a large number of users use it, other people will know about your brand. A mask is a good tool for increasing brand awareness.
25. Conduct live broadcasts
You need live broadcasts to retain your audience and attract new ones. During a live broadcast, you can communicate with your followers, answer their questions, and show the work process (e.g. beatmakers making music live). This increases audience loyalty to the influencer or a brand. Posting announcements of live events and joint broadcasts with other influencers can attract new followers to your account.
In addition, you can earn money during live events by getting donations or doing advertisements. A simple example is that authors of educational courses often broadcast live on Instagram and YouTube, where they present information on the subject of the course in a stripped-down form. On the broadcast, they offer in-depth, paid training.
26. Make ads offline
If you're doing TV and radio ads, you can mention your Instagram username in it and make a call to subscribe. If you're ordering outdoor or print ads, add your username and QR code to them. It's also a good idea to put a QR code on business cards and product packaging. People will be able to scan it on their smartphones and find your account.
27. Hashtags for promotion
Hashtags help authors systematize content and users find relevant posts in Instagram searches. And if your content hits the hashtags at the top, you additionally gain more coverage and the opportunity to attract followers.
A few hashtag tips:
- Don't use too many hashtags below the post, 3-5 is enough.
- Tags should be consistent with the theme of the post and the account. If you just post trending tags, people will find your content by them and close because it doesn't match their interests. Instagram algorithms will think that your content is of poor quality and thus it will have a negative impact on promotion.
- Create your own branded hashtag. This will not only increase brand awareness, but also influence the promotion of the product as a whole.
- Separate elements in the tags with an underscore.
28. Make a lead magnet
A lead-magnet is a piece of information you can exchange for your target audience’s contacts or other action you would like to get from them.
A lead-magnet can be a check-list, instructions, manuals, books, a mini-course, a free consultation, a catalog or a case study. For example, you offer your subscribers a checklist on weight loss. In order to get it, they should write to you in Direct messages or leave an application on your site. You can then send out mailings to these contacts or make a profitable offer immediately at the lead-magnet stage. For example, you were contacted with a request to send a checklist for weight loss, you sent it, and immediately offered a 20% discount on a consultation with a nutritionist.
The value of a lead magnet can be more than just a quick contact. The material itself may contain an offer. For example, the checklist could list dietary supplements and links leading to the pages of these supplements in your online shop.
29. Write testimonials
Testimonials increase potential customers' confidence in you and your product. Often a person makes a final decision about a purchase after reading the reviews.
30. Aim for recommendations
Recommendations is a section on Instagram that shows content and users that match your interests. It includes posts, Stories, accounts and, more recently, Reels. However, Reels also have its own recommendation feed. That said, you can be displayed in the recommendations of users who are potentially interested in your content.
31. Services for promotion on Instagram
Instagram refers negatively to the majority of services with which you can trigger automatic actions, such as masliking, mass following, mass following, mailing and others. However, if you do not abuse them and use them wisely (connect proxy, observe limits), they are very good helpers in promotion.
32. Recruitment of subscribers
One of the easiest ways to get your first 100-1000 followers is to simply add them using specialized services.
33. Analysis of the effectiveness of Instagram account promotion
An analysis of the effectiveness of the promotion of an Instagram account involves analyzing following indicators:
- reach (number of followers who have read the content of the post); views (number of views of the post);
- profile views (number of users who visited the profile page);
- user engagement (the "measurement" of the interest of the audience in the content, which includes likes, comments, reposts)
- number of clicks (people who clicked on the link in the header of your account);
- user activity (time of stay on the page);
This analysis helps to find weaknesses in the promotion of Instagram, to draw appropriate conclusions and to plan the necessary actions to eliminate them. For instance, a low reach of posts suggests that you are creating boring content that gets little likes and comments, causing Instagram to show your posts to fewer and fewer users.
Summing up
Promotion on Instagram entails a whole range of activities and, in fact, you need to do it all the time. Use our recommendations to promote your account from scratch and with minimal (or no) expenses. Later on, you can hire an employee and delegate some of these tasks to them.
Any questions left?
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Follow our Telegram channel. Here you will find many useful materials for your ad campaigns and promo codes for your integrations. Otherwise, you can also contact us via the form on the website or via our email info@instajet.io. Our support team will be happy to help you!
