Instagram has 1 billion active users! If you’re not using it for business, you should be.
1. Instagram Advertising is a powerful tool for brands and individuals
If you’re looking for a tool to grow your Instagram account, look no further than Instagram Advertising. I’ve seen it work for personal accounts and for brands, and it’s a great way to reach new audiences and grow your account.
Depending on the budget you’re able to allocate, you can promote posts, run contests, and more. In this post, we’ll take a look at exactly how to do it.
Just like any other social media platform, Instagram has a simple set of rules. If you don’t adhere to these rules, you risk losing your account. This does coincide with Instagram’s Terms of Service, so it’s something you need to be familiar with if you ever want your account to be safe.
Sponsored posts run counter to Instagram’s Rules of Engagement, which state:
“Sponsored, editorial, and branded posts cannot contain clickbait or other misleading titles. Your posts must make it clear to the viewers that they are sponsored. Your Instagram post should be an integral part of the story presented by your brand, and must not stray beyond the brand’s editorial content or reach your content following another brand’s posts.”
Your post must also comply with the rules regarding excessive Photoshop use and gratuitous use of copyrighted images.
When running sponsored posts, follow these guidelines to ensure that your page becomes exclusive for a narrow audience exclusively.
Whenever possible, I recommend going with someone who already has a large following. If you have an established brand or category, engaging with other brands or your niche can work.
There are two main types of sponsored posts.
These are posts that are paid (for example $500, $1,000, or $5,000). Promoted posts can have up to five sponsored posts.
These are posts that are part of your follower’s feed, so their posts are pushed to your followers instead. To figure out which type of posts work for you, compare your business or Instagram hashtag feed to others in your niche.
2. Let’s talk about the anatomy of an ad on Instagram
If you’re posting and advertising on Instagram, you need to know the anatomy of an Instagram ad. An Instagram ad is a picture or video that you post to your Instagram feed.
It’s also an ad that a business pays to have on your feed. In both of these cases, the ad is made up of several parts.
Previously, each part was designed and choreographed by a marketer for the ad, but now it has been segmented and streamlined so that virtually anyone can run an Instagram click farm or run an Instagram ad.
The most important part of the ad is the CTA button, which encourages users to click a button if they want to finish that ad.
You’ll need a smartphone. If you don’t have one, that’s OK. The smartphone’s camera and imaging capabilities can do the trick. This tutorial will teach you how to take a picture in the camera app, how to import it into your photo editing program, how to use filters on your photo, and how to edit your photo. Most people, when they step up to an iPhone or Android phone, simply want to get selfies or upload selfies. Don’t get hung up on getting one just right.
When you take a selfie, the phone will make a small digital thumbnail of itself in the middle of the photo. In Instagram’s ad editor, you can use these thumbnails as part of a thumbnail for your ad.
When you use this technique, it forms the basis for an ad. You are the business. Instagram is a photo-focused platform, but you’ll have to be careful not to run ads on photos of your cat or a naked woman.
Now that you understand how to take a picture in Instagram and how to use filters on your video, click the pencil icon in the bottom left corner. From there, click the back button, and your photos will be deleted from your camera roll.
Now that you have a built-in button to take and edit a selfie, you are ready to run an Instagram ads campaign.
3. What should you know before launching your first campaign?
If you’re hiring for any of the marketing positions that I mentioned in the article, Instagram is where you need to be to stand out amongst the crowd.
With a click-through rate around 4.89%, it’s clear why Instagram is a massive source of leads. And, this is just one reason why I believe a large percentage of mobile marketers should use it.
It can be a great way to stand out amongst the competition.
There is so much content these days — it’s difficult to know where to start. I plan to be the one person who helps you figure out where to direct your energy.
Instagram lets you follow other marketers that are helping grow their businesses.
It allows you to read what they are posting about.
It makes it easy to send them your marketing ideas.
If you’re following enough people, you might start to see common themes. Follow and interact with people with similar interests. People will also send you useful information.
The social media space in 2021 is incredibly competitive. If you want to stand out amongst the other competitors, then don’t be afraid to reach out to influential people in your industry and ask them for feedback.
For example, when I was starting out as a seo specialist, I was being told what a great writer I was by people all over Medium.
But, by asking one person in the publication if they thought my material was quality, I was able to learn to value other pieces of content more. Now, I know that if I were to continue asking people if I was a good writer, my results couldn’t have gotten much better.
4. Learn how to target your ideal audience through their interests and/or behavior on Instagram
With social media, it’s easier than ever to target your ideal audience through their interests and behavior. You can use social media to find people you want to target, then create content that appeals to them based on their interests and behavior. These are called “micro-audiences.” By “targeting your micro-audience,” I don’t mean just manually following people or people you think they should follow. I mean using your industry or niche to create a relationship with the people that matter.
Families are powerful. When people talk about the power of relationships, family is top of mind. It’s understood that family and other types of relationships work. Yet, most people fail to realize family connections are their marketing goldmine because they think they are isolated individuals. But according to a study by Differential Success Institute, 58% of millennials have family or friends who use social media.
This should not be a surprise. After all, most people are socialized as children in a world where it’s either cool or boring-just get a job and get to the next stage. Once we reach adulthood, our social circles expand to include friends and family we’ve never met face to face.
It isn’t just the people you surround yourself with that matter. Using your work environment or industry to create a social connection with people allows you to establish connections that can be used in the future for all kinds of marketing. With an affiliated membership chain, it changes the game once you realize you have a community of followers.
The power of the micro-community extends beyond just the people you follow. The Affiliate Network, an association of data brokers that provides marketers with data on consumers through membership fees, is an industry testament to this. In an interview with David Wyld (based on his blog post Create a Real-Life Real-Advantage), he says:
I want my audience to connect with me because they see me as a friend. And if they know my friends, they understand why I make the choices I do.
5. How to use targeting tools to reach the most relevant audiences for your business with Instagram advertising
Targeting tools on Instagram let you connect with the audiences that will be most relevant to your business.
For example, if your business sells cosmetics, you can target people who are interested in makeup and beauty products with your ads. If you run a fitness business, you might want to target people who like to work out and wear fitness-related clothing and gear.
If you’re more into fashion, you could target people interested in high-fashion items. Instagram has a reputation for being very company-centric — many users have even created brand pages entirely on the platform with the sole intention of growing their brand as a whole.
By doing so, Instagram users can connect with brands in the best way possible — it’s a direct connection, without the added middlemen (like Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) that get in the way of that connection.
Starting a targeted business on Instagram can seem intimidating, but it’s actually fairly easy once you get the hang of it. Remember that it’s all about differentiating yourself, and not cutting corners.
There are a lot of similarities between Instagram and other social media platforms, but there are also distinct differences.
Most importantly, it’s all about explaining what you’re doing, so the non-technical audience can get a visual of what you’re doing.
Entrepreneurs have to market themselves in a certain way in order to stand out.
A lot of them — myself included — simply don’t understand what the unique selling point is for certain products. It’s enough for a product to be technically good, but there’s no planning behind it — no strategy! This is where Instagram shines!
Investing in an Instagram account can cost anywhere from £20–£500/month. This can sometimes be an overkill if you don’t see quick results from it, but it’s entirely possible.
Once you get the hang of starting your business on Instagram, investing just a few pounds here and there will make the whole process easier. Investing £60 a month is definitely a very lowball price, but it’s only going to get considerably more expensive as time goes on.