Use these 5 Tips to Expand Your Brand on Instagram

Are you not attracting enough followers on Instagram?
Want to bring more visibility to your brand with a mobile audience?
Instagram remains an expanding and popular social network where your brand or business can gain more exposure through interactions, visual content, and targeted ads. TechCrunch reports it’s user count has grown from 1 million in 2010 to 700 million today:

With such a large audience your brand could be missing a great opportunity for both visibility and cross promotion for content if you’re actively engaged on Instagram. Here a are a few ways to develop a profile that attracts the right followers and leads:

1. Use a recognizable username

Whether you are creating a new account or revisiting an old one you will want to make sure your brand name matches your other online properties as closely as possible. For example, if you’ve chosen to brand yourself with your name you will want to stick with that. This will increase your chances of being seen and eliminates any confusion for your audience. Choose a professional head shot or use your branded logo if it’s company that you are representing. Here’s a good example from marketing expert and blogger, Louise Myers:

2. Make it clear what your brand is about

With millions of accounts it’s hard to stand out if your audience doesn’t know what your mission statement is. By sticking with what you have created on your website and other social networks you can create a catchy and descriptive bio that will drawn them in like this one from speaker and consultant, Pam Moore:

Always include how to find your website and other important hashtags that relate to your target market. This will help you attract more followers from your niche and reduce the amount of spam followers.
Additionally, if you would like to attract subscribers you can consistently update your bio to reflect your latest blog post or a special event that will be taking place.

3. Post eye-catching visual content

I have found that just a couple posts a day can draw in an audience if you know exactly what to show them. Typically people want to see what’s going on in your world, what products or services you’re working on, how to do something or look a certain way, the best places to travel, ect. Depending on your audience they might be more drawn to video or in my case motivational quotes mixed with occasional nature images that I’ve taken in my travels or at home.

You can tag a specific location where you’re at such as a restaurant or conference, and ask others to tag their followers and share your content with them.

4. Know the rules

There are specific hashtags, actions, and posts that Instagram keeps close tabs on. They have particularly cracked down on fake accounts, lude or offensive keywords, and spam comments. Hoosuite posted a good article on this topic, and points out that businesses and marketers should avoid several things:

• Purchasing followers — this will provide zero engagement and activity and places your account at risk
• Posting too many promotional posts — save this for your ads and avoid constantly selling to your audience
• Using the wrong hashtags — be sure your keywords are relevant to the topic and post
• Spelling or grammar errors — fix anything before you hit that post button

Because Instagram is always changing it’s good practice to check out the latest blogs and news covering what is working on the platform. What was effective just one year ago may not apply to today.

5. Create a sponsored post

With the introduction of Facebook and Instagram ad integration it’s easy to create a quick promotional post on one or both platforms. In fact, more brands are integrating ads into their regular posts, which are marked as sponsored, and seeing great results:

By following these simple strategies and posting at a couple of times a day with an occasional targeted ad your brand will start to see more growth on Instagram. This will enable you to build a stronger, more interested community who can be led directly to your website. Use this growing platform to show the personal side of your business as well as what you have to offer.