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Video 1: How can a successful Instagram strategy impact your business?

 

 Instagram is the current darling of the social world .

 

 Following fallout and drastic algorithm changes resulting from the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, people flocked to Instagram, many not even realizing they were owned by the same company .

 

 Brands in particular love Instagram because engagement is higher .

 

 Ten times higher than Facebook, in fact, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and a whopping 84 times higher than Twitter .

 

 But how do you know if Instagram is right for you?

 

 "Before businesses start using Instagram, they really need to think about the big picture, the big goal, the purpose of why they are on the platform, and craft everything around that end goal, and it does build post by post .

 

 I always like to say that Instagram is essentially a digital magazine, and each post is a page that you're turning that goes back to the promise that you make in your bio, which is essentially the cover of that digital magazine .

 

” Let’s dig a bit deeper to help you determine if Instagram makes sense for your business to use .

 

 First, check to see if your competitors are using Instagram .

 

 If they're rocking the channel, then that means you can, too .

 

 Next, if your product or service is visually compelling, then Instagram is definitely a channel where you can excel .

 

 But if you sell B2B services, that doesn’t mean the channel is off the table .

 

 Hub$pot is a great case in point .

 

 Hub$pot doesn’t have a tangible product you can touch and easily photograph, but there's a good reason that 132,000 people follow us on Instagram .

 

 We showcase our company culture, we share industry news and mind-blowing stats our followers love, and we teach quick tips about social media and other business topics .

 

 Are your customers on Instagram?

 

 First you need to know who your ideal buyer is .

 

 If you already have buyer personas and other marketing strategies in place, you can draw from those to help .

 

 Some factors to consider when narrowing down your target Instagram audience are age, location, gender, income, interests, motivations, and pain points .

 

 Don’t know where to start?

 

 Monitor popular event and interest hashtags that are related to your business .

 

 Find out who's using and engaging with the hashtags and check out their profiles .

 

 You can also take a look at your competitor’s followers .

 

 Think about your buyer persona and take a look at these stats to help you see if the demographic you're targeting is part of the mix .

 

 Then you need to ask yourself '3\m I mobile-friendly?

 

" Since Instagram is accessed primarily from mobile devices, your links to landing pages need to be optimized for mobile .

 

 And finally, consider how your business goals will align with your goals for Instagram .

 

 If your goals are increased sales but you're a B2B company, that might be harder for you than a B2C company that can take advantage of advertising that allows a user to purchase directly .

 

  To better understand if Instagram is a fit for you, let’s look at the best ways to use Instagram to market your business .

 

 » Brand awareness » Customer delight » Customer loyalty and retention o Attracting new prospects » Directing sales for B2C companies, and » Advertising You can also use Instagram for some clickthroughs to landing pages, but that’s limited primarily to one link in your bio, in Instagram stories for business accounts that have over 10,000 followers, and for advertisers .

 

 So keep that in mind if driving traffic and clickthrough rates are important to your business .

 

 After you determine your Instagram audience, do a competitive analysis to see what other marketers in your field are posting .

 

 lf you already know your top competitors, start with searching for their Instagram profiles .

 

 lf not, try searching for terms related to your business or industry to find similar accounts .

 

 Conduct a quick audit of related accounts to see what types of posts are getting the highest amount of engagement, what popular hashtags they're using, what kinds of captions they're writing, how often they're publishing, and how quickly they're growing .

 

 This information will $el`V as a benchmark as you start growing your own account .

 

 Once you have a sense of if the channel is right for you and if your business goals can align to your Instagram strategy, you'll want to decide what key performance indicators (or KPls) you want to track .

 

 ls it increased engagement?

 

 Followers?

 

 Map out these KPls ahead of time .

 

 They'll help you make key decisions regarding content, campaign, and advertising strategies .

 

 Instagram can be one of the highest-performing social platforms in your marketing arsenal, especially if you're using it authentically .

 

 What do l mean by that?

 

 lmean that when developing your plan, you: » Shouldn’t buy followers .

 

 Fake followers are less engaged and unlikely to buy your product .

 

 Quality over quantity should always be your motto in the social media world-and that’s true of Instagram, too .

 

 » Should provide more than just pretty pictures .

 

 Your followers want value, information, or entertainment .

 

 Try to provide a good mix of content that meets all three of those desires .

 

 o Should be consistent .

 

 Don’t be a once-in-a-while poster of pictures, and don’t just randomly share images and videos without a plan behind them .

 

 Your followers will appreciate consistent and cohesive content .

 

 l asked marketing strategist, David Meerman Scott, about a company he thought was doing it right in Instagram .

 

 ”l 'm a massive fan of a company called Grain Surfboards .

 

 They're a tiny, little company, just a very small handful of people .

 

 They make wooden surfboards .

 

 Interesting boat-building technique that they use to create these wooden surfboards .

 

 But what's awesome is that surfboards and surfing is incredibly visual .

 

 So they've focused, although they're on many different social networks, they've focused on Instagram, the visual aspects of Instagram .

 

 So they have pictures of surfboards being made in their factory .

 

 They have pictures of some of the people who come to buy or make surfboards 'cause you can actually make surfboards with them, which l've done, which is great .

 

 They have pictures of people surfing .

 

 They have pictures of them surfing .

 

 The people who make the boards actually then ride the boards .

 

 And it's just a really awesome way that they've used to generate attention about what they're doing in a way that makes people feel like, "Yeah, I want to be a part of that .

 

 And it helps them to grow .

 

” Grain Surfboards is clearly doing something right with 52,000 followers on their Instagram page .

 

 The images they share are interesting, beautiful, and inspiring .

 

 Here’s the moral of this story: When you're using Instagram authentically, you blend more seamlessly into the broader Instagram content without coming across like you're merely pushing marketing messages and advertising at your audience .

 

 Participate in the feed as an individual, the way your friends might use it, rather than being a brand intruding in the space .

 

 Video 1.2: Optimizing your business profile

 

There are two key pieces to your Instagram strategy:

your content, which requires the most work, and your profile, which will be viewed by those who are interested in your brand .

 

 lt’s important to optimize your business profile to make sure that you're maximizing some of the opportunities it can bring to your strategy .

 

 You’ll want to keep your profile updated based on changing business goals, campaigns that you're highlighting, and more .

 

 lt's likely that you may already have an Instagram account at this point .

 

 If not, these tips will help you as you set it up .

 

 And if you do, check yourself against the following tips to make sure you're optimizing your profile for success .

 

 "When creating your business profile on Instagram, there 's five things to keep in mind: having the right username, having an awesome avatar photo, and if it's a brand logo make sure it fits in the little circle and is not cropped .

 

 You want to make sure that your subtitle has SEO, you want to make sure that your bio says who you are, what you do, and why do it in some snappy creative Instagram language, which is not what you put over on Facebook or Linkedln .

 

 And then you want to have a call-to-action and a link that you can track as your URL .

 

 ” Let’s go into more detail on those five things and a few more things you can do to make your profile the best it can be .

 

 First, make sure that your account is connected to a business email to ensure your profile isn't linked with your personal Facebook account .

 

 Next, if you aren’t using an Instagram business profile, now is the time to switch .

 

 Business profiles provide more in-depth insights and make it easier for you to promote content .

 

 Note that your business must have a Facebook business page to switch to an Instagram business profile .

 

 To switch to a business profile, navigate to the upper right-hand corner of your Instagram profile and click the gear icon to view your settings .

 

 Scroll down and click on "Switch to Business Profile .

 

” Business profiles give you access to Instagram Insights, their analytics program .

 

 It also gives you a few more important contact fields in your bio, the ability to boost posts with advertising, and-if you meet the criteria-the ability to include links in Instagram stories .

 

 Then, take a look at your username .

 

 Is your username recognizable and easy to find?

 

 If your business name is taken, try to keep the first part of your business name in your username .

 

 Avoid using numbers if you can, as you might be seen as a spam account .

 

 Note that you can easily change your username when you need to in the settings .

 

 Also, pay special attention to your subtitle .

 

 ”When it comes to SEO on Instagram, businesses need to know that in the bio, in the subtitle, you can have keywords, and you get 33 characters there .

 

 And even emojis are searchable on Instagram .

 

 So whatever your industry, business, or keywords are, if you can put that in the subtitle that makes sense for your business, you have more opportunity of getting found when people search in the explore tab .

 

 " Your profile picture will be one of the first things people see when searching for and visiting your profile, so keep your image consistent with your branding and visual markers .

 

 Consider using your logo or another familiar image .

 

 Notice that your profile image is circular .

 

 Instagram will automatically crop your photo to fit inside the circle, so leave room around the corners of your image .

 

 For reference, keep in mind the minimum profile picture dimensions for Instagram, shown here .

 

 Don 't deviate too far from this minimum so users don 't see a blurry or stretched photo when visiting your profile page .

 

 Next, you’ll need to optimize your Instagram bio .

 

 Bios have a 150-character maximum, so you’ll need to be direct and concise .

 

 Tell your audience who you are and what you do using a hint of personality .

 

 You can also use hashtags and bio links (for example, @hubspot) in your profile if you want to tag someone .

 

 Adding a hashtag is helpful because users can follow hashtags, which increases your chance of being seen in search .

 

 Instagram users are also looking at keywords, so it's a great idea to add a keyword into your bio .

 

 According to SocialMediaExaminer, putting a keyword in your name triples your searchability scores .

 

 But, even if your username doesn’t contain the keyword, people can still find you through the keyword in your subtitle .

 

 You can also get creative and use emojis and line breaks for visual effect .

 

 Your bio is the only place in your profile and posts where you can feature a clickable URL and drive traffic to an external site .

 

 lt's common for businesses to update their featured URL to align with their most recent post .

 

 Ideally, you should use a call-to-action before this clickable link .

 

 If you can make it trackable with a link shortener, even better .

 

 You can also use an emoji to help bring attention to the link .

 

 There are also ways you can do more with just that link .

 

 Sue Zimmerman explains: "Yes .

 

 How do you use that one link strategically on Instagram?

 

 There 's a couple of suggestions that I have .

 

 So, if you 're in a campaign and your goal is to grow your email list for example, I would create a UTM for that free offer that you have to grow your list .

 

 Often, we're not in a campaign, and we're looking to grow our community, grow our engagement, grow our online presence .

 

 So, what we use is a tool called Linktree, where you're able to have more than one link, and I suggest no more than four or five max, but you can put multiple links to drive traffic to multiple places that make sense .

 

 So, if you have a YouTube channel, you could have your channel there, if you have a Facebook group, you could have that, if you have your recent article aboutx y and z, you can have that article .

 

 And so if you're gonna share multiple links in a link tree, you don 't want to have too many links, or people aren 't gonna take any action at all .

 

 And the links should cohesively make sense when they're making a choice of which one to click into .

 

” Check out the resources section for the link to LinkTree .

 

 Make sure that your link leads to a mobile-optimized site .

 

 Since the vast majority of users are viewing Instagram on mobile, you want to make sure any site you redirect them to provides an optimal user experience, especially if you're looking for an immediate purchase on a clickthrough .

 

 You might also want to consider A/B testing your profile .

 

 Create a few different versions of your profile and test them one after another for similar periods of time to determine if one type of CTA works better than another .

 

 Next, let’s talk about your Instagram business category .

 

 This should be the same as the category you picked for your Facebook business page, which you need to use Instagram for business .

 

 However, if you like, you can add more granularity by clicking on ”Edit Profile” and scrolling down to the ”Business lnformation” category .

 

 If you're a brick-and-mortar company, you should make sure to add your address into settings to enable map directions for users .

 

 lf you're a service that uses a reservation system like Yelp or OpenTable, or sells tickets through services such as Eventbrite, you’ll also want to add the right action button .

 

 There are a variety of services to connect to, so check them out to see if they're right for you .

 

 Last but not least, be sure to update your account settings .

 

 Click on the upper-right menu bar, then at the bottom, click on ”Settings .

 

” There you’ll be able to do things like change your password, check out posts you’ve liked, enable notifications, and more .

 

 Here are a few things you should check out right away: » Story controls: You can manage who can see and reply to your Instagram stories in your Story Controls .

 

 We recommend allowing all your followers to see and reply to your stories to increase brand engagement .

 

 » Comments: Receiving comments on your content can be exciting and encouraging, but certain comments may go against brand values or offend your audience .

 

 Instagram can automatically hide comments that contain certain keywords or phrases .

 

 For example, you may want to hide comments that contain offensive expletives .

 

 To do this, you must enter the specific words and phrases into your Instagram settings and turn on the feature .

 

 » Adding additional Instagram accounts: Do you manage multiple accounts?

 

 No problem! Instagram allows users to add up to five accounts so that you're able to quickly switch between them without logging in and out .