How to Use Instagram for DIY Organic Marketing

Instagram has become an important online marketing channel so if your local business isn’t using it yet – start before your competition does. Social media is important for any organic marketing activities, and you have the opportunity now to capture the first mover advantage by creating a profile and actively engaging other users. Statistically, Instagram has a fifteen percent greater engagement rate than Facebook or Google+, making it easier to build your brand and engage people.

Improve Your Instagram Marketing

• Use hashtags. In order to find out which hashtags are the most popular for your business type, use Iconosquare and type in some of your keywords. Create a list of the ones you want to use so that you can add a popular hashtag every time that you upload a photo or video. This is a good tip for all of your social media marketing efforts.

• Work as a group. If your business is located at a shopping center or doing promotional activities with a downtown business association or chamber, work with other businesses to create a comprehensive social media campaign where everyone uses the same hashtag. This way you can benefit from exposure to their clients and vice versa. By combining efforts, you can share each other’s posts across various social media platform and attract more followers.

• Engage users. One of the easiest ways to build your fan base is to use JustUnfollow to see who is a fan of your competition. Once you have that information, you can engage them directly as part of your Instagram marketing strategy. This is a pretty awesome way to boost your social media efforts – all thanks to big brands that have put the time and energy into building their fan base. You have to love this one!

• Select your times. When planning your social media strategy, select posting times based on when you will get the highest response rate. This is typically determined by when your fans are online. Iconosquare has a feature you can use to track this based on previous posting history. This simple adjustment will help your organic marketing efforts to be more successful.

• Pick your filter wisely. One of the cool features about Instagram is that when you upload a photo you can select a filter to apply to it. This gives images a more creative vibe and is one of the main reasons the app became so popular in the first place. Now that it has moved from social media fun to a marketing powerhouse, a study was conducted to see if the filter you select has any impact on engagement. It turns out that having no filter, Mayfair, or Inkwell will get you more likes and comments than the other ones. Your customer base may have a different response so you can always run your own study and see what works for your Instagram marketing campaign.

Instagram marketing is popular because people genuinely enjoy using the social media platform. It is simple and easy, image-based, and you can even upload videos. There is nothing fancy or complicated. Simply amazing images and a great user experience. Get started now and use it as a way to increase your customer base.