Posts in category: Blog

Instagram is, without a doubt, the biggest social media platform to roll around since Facebook. Instagram is geared to be an image and video sharing social platform that is technically a part of Facebook, but over the years it has quickly risen to be a favourite of marketing agencies due to the many features it offers businesses to promote their products and services. It is also immensely popular among younger generations, with over 60% of the user base belonging to the age group of 18 – 44 years. And with the pandemic pushing more people than ever to kill time online, the opportunity is perfect for a business to implement an Instagram strategy for growth.

One of the best ways to possibly use Instagram for your business is to simply imagine your experience on the app, while simultaneously trying to relate to the social media experiences of your immediate social circle. Everyone has a unique, curated dashboard that updates frequently with posts of their friends, content creators, personal interests, or brands that might interest them. Similarly, think about the accounts that you follow on the app. Every account that you voluntarily chose to engage with had something that kept you coming back for more.

What was it that kept you hooked to these accounts?

This is the question that you will have to get to the bottom of if you want to successfully use Instagram for marketing. You will need to appeal to your audience and keep them hooked. Advertising on Instagram can be a goldmine if you know how to tap into what the audience likes. Instagram growth strategies for business can only succeed if your target audience decides to voluntarily engage with what you post. While this can seem like a daunting task, we are here to help you out with how to successfully implement an Instagram strategy for business growth.

Figure out why Instagram is a part of your social media strategy

Before creating a strategy, jot down which goals you hope to achieve using Instagram and the methodology that would be the most effective for the business. Is Instagram necessary to target a certain demographic of your future clientele? Or does the app’s visual nature help in displaying your products and services to its full glory? For instance, if you are a tattoo artist trying to promote your work, you will need images of your work on display to boost your credibility and network with the community. On the flip side, if your business is centred around selling a product like cement, your marketing strategy will have to go beyond the confines of social media as well.

Create a Visually Appealing Page

As a platform that is exclusive for sharing images and videos, it goes without being said that visual aesthetics play a huge role in your Instagram growth strategies. Regardless of whether your business goals are to increase brand awareness, sell products or services, or simply build a community, finding the right aesthetic is mandatory for a business Instagram.

Before you begin posting on your new business account, come up with a set of visual guidelines that your brand can consistently follow. Things like a colour palette and font size matter when your brand is making an impression on new audiences on a daily basis. The first impression is the most important, but consistency is a close second. To avoid any visual clutter in your Instagram growth strategies, your account has to strictly follow the visual guidelines.

Your brand’s aesthetics don’t just apply to what you post, but also to your account logo and your Instagram bio. The logo should be memorable while aligning with your account’s theme, while your bio should be short, sweet, and catchy enough to convince the audience to keep scrolling through your feed.

Create a Posting Schedule & Plan out Your Posts

Fortune favours the brave, and Instagram’s algorithm favours the regular. Instagram advertising is only effective if your business account’s posts are frequent and relevant. The algorithm constantly collects data on what Instagram users like and what is relevant to them. By posting frequently, the chances of your brand’s content showing up on a potential customer’s feed is simply much higher. Instagram marketing services generally create a tight posting schedule and abide by it to see the best results.

However, posting frequently is not a free pass to compromise on quality. A customer is just a tap away from unfollowing your brand’s account permanently if they do not like what you post. To succeed with Instagram advertising, plan out your posts, take inspiration from trending pop culture, and actively engage with your audience. Many Instagram growth strategies include influencer marketing to tap into a pre-existing customer base that already relates to an influencer. For business growth, this is a great strategy for your brand’s credibility and reliability to be cemented on Instagram.

To keep up with a posting schedule while maintaining high-quality content, plan out your posts well in advance to see the best results.

Use Hashtags to Increase Brand Visibility

Luckily for businesses, their content is not solely at the mercy of the algorithm. Hashtags are a fantastic tool in social media marketing and should be essential in your Instagram strategy for business growth. Hashtags are data tools that categorize content based on a particular topic, making it easier for users to find relevant content that they relate to. This can be an incredible asset for businesses, with most Instagram advertising using a variety of hashtags to create brand awareness. If you want to know more about how to use hashtags in social media marketing (with tons of examples from Instagram), click here.

Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags in a single post, but it is recommended to use no more than 18 – 20 to avoid visual clutter and maintain a neat aesthetic as we mentioned above. For effective Instagram advertising, place hashtags in captions rather than comments to boost your reach.

Engage and Have Fun!

Finally, the last tip would be to interact with your followers regularly. Instagram is an interactive platform which businesses could use to their advantage by fostering relationships with their customers. This not only makes their brand more likeable but also more authentic. Over 90% of Instagram’s users follow at least one business account, if not more. By being creative and having fun with the content that you post, your chances of retaining customers are that much higher. After all, the young demographics of Instagram are never actively looking for advertisements, which Instagram marketing services could improvise on.

The element of humour and fun would instantly make your brand much more relatable. Your Instagram growth strategies should ideally include funny memes, reels, and regular responses to the comments that you receive on your posts. While this may seem less important than the technical parts of the algorithm, it will be an invaluable asset to your Instagram strategy for business growth.

Mix and match with different types of content

The huge range of visual content types have been a blessing for creative people out there and have broadened the playing field exponentially! Stories, reels, posts, videos, and IGTV are all different from each other; each content type subsequently has different functions, strengths, and weaknesses. The 24-hour limit of a story is a fantastic way to draw attention to your profile or to update your followers about something new. On the other hand, reels, posts, and videos are all ideal for taking advantage of Instagram’s algorithm while creating evergreen content.

To truly figure out what kind of medium works best for your content, experiment with everything Instagram has to offer! This way you not only increase your reach on the platform, but you also learn more about it and how it syncs with your brand! Judiciously take note of what works and always be open to the latest online trends.

There are hundreds of ways of succeeding with Instagram advertising, but a few foundational strategies for Instagram growth will take your business a long way. Constant innovation, creativity, and patience are also the essentials of Instagram marketing services. With the best of the technical and abstract knowledge put together, you could land up with the perfect Instagram strategy for business.

To learn more about digital marketing, check out our other blogs here.

Have you felt like hashtags are suddenly everywhere? Whether it’s on your mother’s Facebook post or a stray TikTok, they have a solid presence that sometimes even compliments a caption of a post. In fact, their rising importance has made them inseparable from the essence of what social media really is. Regardless of whether individuals choose to use them or not, they are everywhere. And as a business, hashtags are your essential tool to continue relating with your audience. 

With that being said, it can be difficult to understand what exactly they are and what they do in digital marketing. If you have ever been scared of asking about hashtags to your teenager, we have your back. This is where we can step in and tell you everything you need to know about hashtags and how to effectively use them for your small business. Some of the glaring questions that you could have might be about whether you need to know how to use the best hashtags for certain social media platforms and your small business, while managing to avoid becoming the next social media horror story. 

So, what are hashtags?

To put it simply, hashtags are metadata tags which function as labels for different kinds of content. It is a way of categorizing different topics in an accessible format that makes it easy for users to find content on any topic they want information on. When it comes to social media, the hashtag is used to draw attention, organize, promote, and connect. They initially began on Twitter as a way of making it easier for people to find, follow, and contribute to a conversation. The popularity of hashtags, however, quickly spread to other social media platforms. Whether it came from angry tweets on Twitter or inspirational posts on Instagram, the sign was well on its way to being a pop culture symbol. Beyond its growing popularity, however, is a handy sign that is quickly becoming essential to any social media marketing team. 

The best part about hashtags is that anyone can make them. You don’t need any special software, coding experience, or a college degree to create a hashtag. Using hashtags for social media is also a fairly simple task to do if we look at it technically. All you need to do is think of a word or two to summarize a topic and write it after the “ # ” sign. However, keep in mind that you cannot use spaces between words or between the topic and the hashtag. Hashtags should also be composed of at least one letter, although using numbers in tandem with words is okay.

Smart use of hashtags in social media marketing can give any marketing team an edge over its competitors. In this blog, we are going to be taking you through a detailed guide on how to use social media hashtags for business in 2023 and how to crack the code for social media optimization.

Hashtags serve as valuable assets in social media marketing campaigns, enabling brands to enhance visibility, increase engagement, and foster a sense of community. Through the innovative use of branded hashtags, trendjacking, campaign-specific hashtags, user-generated content, product launches, event promotion, and niche hashtags, marketers can effectively leverage these tools to drive their marketing objectives. By adopting these strategies, brands can connect with their target audience, inspire conversations, and establish a strong online presence in the competitive social

Creating a Unique Hashtag

If your business wants to build a unique hashtag for its brand, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. The first is that the best hashtags are easy to remember and catchy. Although longer hashtags do exist, shorter ones allow a more efficient method of categorizing your brand among broader topics. This can lead to more exposure and a wider reach over time. The number of hashtags you use should also be optimized based on the social media platform you use; while Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags in a single post, only 1 – 2 is advised for Facebook.

Your hashtags will also land better with the audience if the tags align with the primary content. Remember that the sole purpose behind hashtags is to declutter and organize data on social media, which can be taken advantage of while marketing. By making sure that your hashtags are relevant to your content, they will be far more relatable to the audience while remaining easy to find.

One innovative strategy is the creation of branded hashtags. By devising a unique and memorable hashtag that encapsulates the essence of a brand or campaign, marketers can encourage their audience to employ the hashtag when sharing content related to the brand, its products, or events. This practice not only fosters brand recognition but also enables efficient tracking of user-generated content, thus nurturing a sense of community and engagement.

Use Tools!

Luckily for small businesses, there are tons of online tools that can help find trending hashtags and analytics of previous trends. By mapping the general trajectories of hashtags in specific topics, your business will be in a better position to predict future trends and keep pace with the constant changes.

Analytics about how other businesses use hashtags for social media marketing can give you good ideas and can be easily accessed from websites like hashtag.org and ritetag. They give you real-time inputs and segregate search results based on region, demographics, age, and time period.

Tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Brandwatch provide features to track and analyze hashtag performance. These tools enable brands to monitor the reach, engagement, and sentiment associated with specific hashtags. By gaining insights into the effectiveness of hashtags, brands can make data-driven decisions to optimize their hashtag strategy. They also provide information on the popularity, trends, and usage of specific hashtags. By utilizing these insights, brands can select the most effective hashtags to reach their target audience and enhance the discoverability of their content.

Keyhole is also a great tool with a search function that provides in-depth data about how current hashtags are received. Social listening tools are yet another great way of keeping track of what users are talking about in 2023 and adapting your hashtags for social media marketing accordingly.

Understand the Many Faces of Social Media

Each social media platform has different rules and regulations that a business must abide by if they want their marketing to be successful. By going against certain trends and guidelines, your business could risk accidentally shadowbanning its own content. This would limit the reach and would continue to impact conversion rates by the time you notice the shadowban.

Whether you use Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or even LinkedIn, you will not only be expected to stay familiar with the policies of all of them, but you will also have to be able to target the primary audiences of each platform. For example, over 80% of the users of Snapchat and Instagram are below the age of 30, while a majority of the active users on Facebook are above the age of 30. The regions that you would be targeting will also be an added parameter that could complicate things. To hit the nail efficiently, remember to thoroughly research and plan out your content based on who the customer is and what they want.

For an impactful product launch, using dedicated hashtags can spark something to generate excitement and anticipation among the target audience. Teasing the audience with sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes content, and timely updates using the hashtag fuels curiosity and encourages followers to actively engage with the brand’s content. This approach effectively builds momentum and creates a buzz surrounding the launch. These campaign-specific hashtags, catchy and concise, encourage audience participation by using them while engaging with the campaign, participating in contests, or sharing related content. Such an approach fuels excitement, strengthens brand-consumer relationships, and increases campaign visibility.

Know Your Hashtags

Beyond using tools to help you out with hashtags for social media marketing, collaborating with popular influencers would also tremendously impact your reach. Not only will they offer valuable insights about what people want in their niche, but their promotions of a business’ hashtags will instantly boost its popularity. Many businesses now consider it crucial to collaborate with influencers to stay relevant in an ever-changing space because they have loyal audiences that keep coming back for more.

Knowing how many hashtags are appropriate for each platform is also important. As mentioned earlier, platforms like Instagram can allow as many as 30. Just in case, however, avoid using over 15 – 20 hashtags to maintain a neat visual appearance. Where you place them also matters. While posting hashtags in the comment section is something many brands do, Instagram has confirmed that they are far more effective if placed in the caption.

Identifying niche hashtags that resonate with the target audience and industry is also a powerful way to reach a more engaged and targeted group of individuals. Integrating these relevant hashtags into content allows brands to tap into a specific community or interest group, maximizing the impact of their marketing efforts. Staying informed about emerging trends and popular industry-specific hashtags ensures that the brand’s content remains relevant and current, paving the way for better social media marketing for a business.

Be Social!

The last point would probably be to keep in touch with local businesses in your area through social media! Using the same hashtags for a virtual conference would open up new channels while collaborating with other businesses online will increase your pool of customers. This is a great way of tapping into industry knowledge while making steady steps towards growth. Remember to interact with your followers on social media platforms as well. This alone can make a lasting impression and can build a reliable and friendly image of your brand.

Attending or hosting industry events also presents an excellent opportunity for social media marketing. By using event-specific hashtags, brands can effectively promote their participation. Sharing updates, highlighting speakers, or offering exclusive offers using the event hashtag enhances visibility, connects with attendees, and facilitates networking opportunities. This approach amplifies the brand’s presence and reinforces its position within the industry.

In the realm of social media marketing, using hashtags have emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing content visibility and engagement. By categorizing content and enabling easy discovery, hashtags play a crucial role in amplifying brand messaging. Through the innovative use of branded hashtags, trendjacking, campaign-specific hashtags, user-generated content, product launches, event promotion, and niche hashtags, marketers can effectively leverage these tools to drive their marketing objectives while achieving peak social media optimization. By adopting these strategies, brands can connect with their target audience, inspire conversations, and establish a strong online presence in the competitive social

While there are far more nuances to using hashtags, these are some of the top tips for social media optimization. Implement these social media marketing strategies today and watch your business flourish with the latest hashtags from 2023.

To learn some of the best tips for boosting your business, check out our other blogs here.