Since Instagram came into social media existence, top brands, social media influencers, celebrities and smart entrepreneurs have taken advantage of Instagram to engage their target audiences. Image sharing has gone far beyond sharing selfies with friends.
A recent study shows that Instagram has more engagement than any other social media networks. Specifically, Instagram is now seeing 15 times more engagement than Facebook and 20 times more than Twitter. Thus, an Instagram post is a valuable social network for your marketing strategy.
Instagram has proven an incredibly powerful sales driver for brands that have mastered the platform. The potential for getting thousands or even millions of eyes on your content is there given that one billion people are now using Instagram on a regular basis. To help you make your Insta-game strong, we have compiled a list of Instagram mistakes to avoid, along with tips on how to fix these mistakes:
Presenting only one photo of a product
While eCommerce is getting more and more popular, there are still some cons of buying online. The inability to physically touch and try on products makes shoppers doubt, and therefore it can turn potential customers off.
To stay ahead of your competitors who sell on Instagram, show off your products from different angles to simulate that shopping experience: Sell the lifestyle, capture the details, show how it cuts and fits.
Spirit Icons is a great example of this strategy in action. The company makes the most out of the multiple photos feature including and a short video presentation:
Moreover, if you want to entice your Instagram followers to make the purchase decision faster, provide them with more information – just create and upload various videos of your product in action.
Trying to sell without humanising your brand
Humans connect to, relate to, and trust other humans. Therefore, use real photos from your existing customers to showcase your products. This in turn helps promote your product or service to the new customers or their followers. However, some customers may not readily share images of your product without your encouragement. To encourage them, you will need to offer a reward or incentive, such as a chance to win something if they post photos featuring your product or hashtag.
For example, you could offer a chance to be featured on your official Instagram account, or a chance to win freebies or gift cards. Make sure you encourage them to use that branded hashtag to help you track the effectiveness of your efforts. Finally, featuring user-generated content is an excellent way to show your customers how much you appreciate them.
Ignoring Instagram stories
Stories allow users to create a feed of sequential content that disappears within 24 hours of being posted. Story content can either be static photos or video, including video created via Boomerang. In fact, 62% of people say they have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Stories. Building on Stories, many businesses seem to skip over using Instagram stories, despite it being a great channel to really engage your customers and get new followers. You don’t necessarily have to shoot live video. You can use stills and create text pages to create a story and use tags to make it relevant to the right channels. But again, don’t make it all about the sale – entertain, engage and make followers smile. Use this feature as a way to demonstrate brand personality, show love to followers and ambassadors and create content that people actually want to watch to keep them coming back for more.
Forgetting about influencers
Influencers are one of the best ways for driving traffic and sales, as well as generating content that you can upload on your own account to build social proof. In fact, 82% of consumers said they were very likely to follow the recommendation of an influencer they follow. Having a solid following of loyal fans, mega influencers and celebrities make it easy to attract your target audience fast. But if you’re not a large company with a great budget, you may have trouble securing collaboration with popular influencers. Luckily, small and medium businesses can drive business results with micro-influencers who have up to 10k followers.
With a great variety of business-specific features, Instagram has strong sales potential for businesses of all sizes and niches. As a powerful and affordable social media network, Instagram is a perfect choice for small and medium brands that sell their products on the platform. Moreover, with this set of handy tips, you can fix all the big Instagram mistakes right now. All you have to do is follow these tips and go for the kill.