10 Proven Ways to Use Instagram to Increase Your Brand Awareness
Are you looking for new ways to get noticed and build relationships with your potential customers? Branding your product or service on Instagram is a great idea.
In fact, a staggering 83% of consumers use Instagram to discover new products or services, making it an ideal place for your business to grow.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking for ways to increase brand awareness, we’ve got 10 proven strategies to help you succeed and boost your Instagram growth. So, let’s get to the business
Why Instagram Growth?
It’s okay to feel cautious about taking on another social media platform for your business.
Not everyone has a big team or expertise to handle a workload of 5 or 6 different platforms. Even then, you still have to figure out how to monetize your presence on Instagram.
However, this fear shouldn’t stop you from testing the waters yourself. Here are several reasons to consider growing an Instagram account for your brand:
Visibility - Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, making it a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness and helping you reach new audiences without spending thousands.
Visual Story-telling - When it comes to online shopping, more than half of consumers prefer visual content over text. Instagram is a super visual platform that lets you showcase your work and tell your story through eye-catching images. As a business, this gives you a great opportunity to grab people's attention and get them interested in what you're selling.
Engagement - Instagram lets you directly engage with your audience through comments, messages, and Instagram Stories. This can be an effective way to build relationships with your customers and increase brand loyalty. 78% of users perceive brands they see on Instagram as popular and committed to building community.
So if you want to transform your brand visibility, Instagram is one of the top platforms to consider.
Now let’s discuss the 10 proven strategies to increase your brand awareness with Instagram.
Define Your Target Audience
If you want to create an effective Instagram marketing strategy, you will need to learn more about your audience.
- Think of your brand and the products or services you offer: what types of people are most likely to show interest in them?
- Look at your current customer base: who are the people that purchase from you or engage with your content on Instagram?
- Consider the characteristics of your ideal customer: what are their demographics (age, gender, location, etc.), interests, and values?
- Analyze your competition: Who are your competitors engaging with on Instagram, and what strategies are they using to reach their audience?
If you're just starting your business and don't have much info on your target audience, just create a general outline and adjust it as you learn more from your business analytics.
Defining your target audience will help you create more effective marketing campaigns on Instagram, resulting in better engagement and ROI for your business.
Find Your Main Content Pillars
So, what are content pillars? They're the main themes or topics that form the foundation of your content strategy. When it comes to social media content pillars, people often think of four types of content that tend to perform well: educational, inspirational, relatable, and promotional. While these can be effective, it's important to remember that your posts should address your target audience's pain points, values, or goals to truly succeed.
I recommend picking 3-4 topics or problems to focus on in your posts and creating content that fits those themes.
What content does your audience want to see? What information are they looking for? Look at your industry trends or search for the most frequently asked questions. Having this information will help you plan out your strategy more effectively.
For example, when it comes to Instagram growth, you could be discussing:
Not having enough time or resources to manage Instagram campaigns.
Struggling to grow organically on the platform.
Having trouble standing out from the competition.
Create content around these struggles - mistakes your target audience is making and how they can solve them. Share your insights, and don’t be afraid to ask for feedback.
@_@Define Brand Identity@_@
Reinforce Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is an essential part of your Instagram growth strategy. It includes your name, logo, color scheme, tone of voice, values, messaging and other elements representing your brand. It helps you build trust with your audience and makes it easier to recognize you and remember your profile.
There are over 25 million brands on Instagram, and getting noticed on the platform can be very challenging, especially with such a large number of accounts competing for attention.
If you want to increase brand awareness and reach a larger crowd, it is important to reinforce your brand identity.
Name one of your favourite artists and think of their traits that immediately come to your mind. That’s how easily people should be able to recognize your brand on Social Media.
Here is what to do to show your brand personality in your Instagram content and reach more people:
Start with using your Logo as your profile image. Make sure the photo resolution is high, and your logo has a clear contrasting background.
Use your brand fonts throughout your Instagram graphics (usually, one or two unique typefaces are enough.)
Incorporate your brand colors. Give your Instagram grid a branded look by using the same colors (no more than four) on every post.
Show your brand’s personality through your posts. Decide what type of content shows your authenticity and what your audience finds relatable or helpful.
@_@Tips for Profile Optimization@_@
Optimize Your Bio
Your Instagram bio is a great way to introduce your business to potential customers and new followers. It helps you showcase your offer and tells your story in a simple fashion.
If you have a hard time coming up with the high converting bio, follow this rule:
Start with who you help
Tell your audience what you do or sell
Explain how you help them
Mention why your product is unique
Use Call-to-action and a website link
Let’s try this in practice:
We help businesses grow Instagram followers the right way
Most importantly – organically
100% hand-grown service
Get started today!
It’s short and concise and includes industry-related keywords to make it easier for people to find us when searching for organic Instagram growth services.
It also has a call to action to encourage people to take action and get started using the link in the bio. It's not spicy enough, though...so let's add some emojis:
We help businesses grow Instagram followers the right way
✨Most importantly – organically
🚀100% hand-grown service
👇Get started today!
Adding emojis to your bio can give your account more personality and flair, making it more visually appealing.
Remember to keep your bio up-to-date and ensure it accurately reflects your brand. Let your personality shine through to help people connect with you easily.
Share Engaging Stories
Instagram Story has already transformed into an “it” marketing feature. It helps you increase your lead generation and online conversions like no other.
In fact, 68% of surveyed people say they become more interested in a product or a brand after seeing it in a story.
If you haven’t been posting Stories before, now you have a reason to start.
If you have been posting and are not seeing any results, there is a solution for you.
Compared to feed posts, your Instagram stories don't need much production or design. Just be yourself and share engaging content - that's the most important thing.
Here are tips you can use to ramp up your Story views:
Start with a question
Use the Instagram Story question feature to get your audience involved with your content. Ask a simple question that's easy to answer. This gives your audience a chance to participate and boosts the engagement rate of your Story, exposing it to a larger group of your followers.
Asking questions in your stories is also a great way to take the conversation to DMs. You can even learn more about your audience’s interests and get more ideas for your next post.
Let your stories expire
If you ever experience low reach on your stories, wait at least 24-48 hours before you post anything new. This helps to “reset” the algorithm and results in better reach.
Post at the right time
Experiment with different timing to see when your audience is the most active.
Make the stickers easy to click
When you use stickers in your Instagram stories, make sure they're prominent and easy for people to tap with their thumb.
Show your face
I know, it’s scary. Especially if you’re camera-shy, but putting your face behind your brand will help others connect with you easily.
Story highlights
Instead of only showing your best content for 24 hours, story highlights stay on your profile forever. You can create a professional-looking profile by categorizing Stories into different themes.
@_@Importance of Instagram SEO@_@
Improve Your Instagram SEO
If you want to rank higher on Instagram search results & suggested content feeds, you will need to improve your Instagram profile with relevant keywords.
Instagram SEO, or search engine optimization, involves optimizing your Instagram profile and content for greater visibility.
This can include:
- Using relevant hashtags
- Including keywords in your bio and captions
- Posting high-quality images and videos
- Adding alt-text to your Instagram posts
Be sure to include relevant hashtags in your posts, and consider creating a branded hashtag for your business.
Include relevant keywords in your bio and captions to help your account appear in search results.
Post high-quality images and videos that are visually appealing and relevant to your audience.
Don’t forget to update the alt-text for your posts.
Alt-text is a feature that helps people with visual impairments understand what's in an image.
Alt-text can also help improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your Instagram posts. When you use alt-text, Instagram algorithms can better understand what your images are about, showing them to the relevant audience.
To add alt-text to your Instagram posts, just tap the "Advanced Settings" button when you're posting an image and type in a short description of the image in a specific field.
Use Hashtags Strategically
Are Instagram hashtags dead? The answer is no.
They may not be the centerpiece of Instagram marketing anymore, but they still play a massive role in helping you gain more visibility.
If you want to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness, you should consider creating an effective hashtag strategy.
Think of Hashtags as labels. If you ‘label’ your posts with the right keywords, an algorithm will put you in the correct category related to your niche.
You can use the 2-2-5 rule. Include two trending, five Medium Size (50-70k posts) and five niche hashtags (2-50k posts) and track your Instagram Insights to see if your reach improves.
Hashtags in your captions should be about
Your Content - Topic of your post
Audience - Interests of your audience
Niche - Industry you are part of
Brand - Your own branded hashtags
Locations - areas you are based in (optional)
Don’t use hashtags in your captions if they are older than a month. That means the hashtag is inactive and will not give you the necessary exposure.
Look at the frequency of posts under a specific hashtag. If people are posting every 5 seconds, there is a high chance your posts won’t stay at the top of the page for a long time. So, it’s best if you don’t use them. This is one of the reasons why we ask people to avoid using hashtags that have over 50k posts.
Create Your Daily Engagement Schedule
A simple 15-30 minutes of dedicated effort each day can go a long way when it comes to increasing engagement and reaching more people. No, you don’t need to spend hours engaging with people on Instagram to increase your brand awareness.
Start by responding to your DMs and then reply to all comments on your posts
Choose at least 5 of your followers and engage with their stories
Select 10-15 big creators in your niche and be one of the first to leave meaningful comments on their posts
Take 3 to 5 of your industry-related hashtags and like & comment on posts that were recently published
Engaging with your followers and other users on Instagram can help increase the visibility of your content. When you like and comment on other people's posts, you are more likely to get noticed by their followers and potentially gain new followers yourself.
Encourage & Share User-Generated Content
Think of a time you bought your favorite cup of coffee from Starbucks and posted a quick snap on your stories. At that moment, you created content for Starbucks without realizing it.
User-generated content refers to any brand-specific content that is created and published by users rather than companies or organizations.
How do you encourage customers to create content for you? The first and easy step would be to just ask. But if you want to be more subtle, think of packaging your product or service in a way that would evoke emotions. And what do people do with their emotions? Well, most of them express themselves either in person or online.
Let’s go back to the Starbucks example. When a barista accidentally misspells your name on your coffee cup, you either find it funny or get really annoyed. In any case, you want to share your experience with someone, so you either tell your friend about it or post it online. By doing so, you help Starbucks raise its brand awareness.
@_@Privilege of Instagram ads@_@
Run Instagram paid Ads
Instagram ads can effectively raise awareness for a brand and help you reach a larger audience.
A few steps to consider:
Before you start running ads, it's important to know who you want to reach and how to choose target audience. Consider the demographics, interests, and behaviors of the people you want to target, and use this information to create a specific audience for your ads.
Set your budget and ad objectives: how much do you want to spend on your ads. If you want the campaigns to be successful, we suggest a minimum budget of $400.
Choose your ad placement: Decide where you want your ad to appear on Instagram. Options include the main feed, the explore page, or Instagram Stories.
Summary
There you have it - 10 tested strategies to increase brand awareness with Instagram. By following the tips in this blog post, you can start to see real results. If you need help getting started or want to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, our team can help.
When it comes to promoting your business on Instagram, working with an experienced Instagram growth agency like Social Boost can be extremely beneficial.
All you need to do is sign up and provide us with some basic information about your account. We use a simple Follow/unfollow method to help you increase brand awareness.
Plus, if you're on a budget, Social Boost is an excellent option because it's very affordable. For a small fee, you can get access to our team of experts and start growing your social media following quickly and easily.