If you are selling any physical product, have stores, or want people to recognize your brand, it is time to address your business account on this social network.

This social network is too popular to ignore. You could say that your Instagram business is literally in the hands of your potential customers on a daily basis.

Instagram is now a part of your customers' lives and should be used to the fullest. Millions of businesses are losing huge amounts of revenue every day because they do not use this social network.

Yours might be one of them, which means you need an Instagram marketing strategy and it has to be good.

For starters, we have 8 tips for you that can help. Whether you are brand new or have been using this social network for years, you will find a wealth of useful information.

And now, tip number 1!

Understand Your Audience

This is key, regardless of the job you do. You can create the most beautiful Instagram content in the world, but if your target customer does not like it, you are just wasting your time. It doesn't matter if you like it, you have nothing out of it. It is important for your audience to be enthusiastic.

Take the time to find out who your existing audience is and what is the best way to get them interested in your brand.

So how can you find out more about your audience?

Try Instagram Tools

If you haven't heard before, one of the tools used for this purpose on the Facebook platform is Facebook Insight. Facebook? Yes, he owns Instagram and has introduced a similar tool to help users of his other social network - Instagram. It’s about Instagram Insight.

This tool offers some interesting information and information about the people who follow and interact with your account. They include information about:

• How many times your content has been viewed
• Reach - Total number of unique accounts that have seen a portion of the content
• Clicks to the site (referring to the link in your profile description): How many clicks you have received based on content
• Follower activity - How often and when your followers are on Instagram daily
• Video views - How many times your video has been viewed
• How many people have saved your posts

Statistics include demographics so you can see where your followers come from, their age and gender.

This will give you plenty of information about your existing Instagram audience. But what if you want to attract new followers?

Talk to them, don't offer products

Marketing on social networks is not just about offering products and services. It is vital to try to connect with your companions as much as possible.

This makes your business experience more human and less corporate. Also, if the content is useful and interesting, entertaining, many will share it with their followers. The more users share and comment on your content, the easier it will be for new users to find it. The Instagram algorithm favors higher engagement content and gives you the chance to appear in as many "feeds" as possible.

Here are some great ways to encourage interaction.

Encourage Photo Sharing of Your Product

You can tell your fans to share their photos where they use your product with your brand's #hashtag, to show off the product in action, and in return reward one of them with a bundle of your products. The result is a huge collection of marketing images from the biggest fans.

You can also post these images to your Instagram account, to inspire potential buyers.

This kind of user-generated content is a powerful contributor to future customers. When they see other people using your products, they are more likely to buy them.

Organize competitions

The best way to get interaction from your audience is to ask for it. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to compete. People like to compete.

Be creative and ask a question they can hardly wait to answer, then be sure to share the best answers.

To easily track the answers, be sure to use a unique hashtag for each competition. And when it comes to hashtags …

Use relevant hashtags

Hashtags help you organize and categorize images and video content to help you find content. They are an easy way to tag your content to make it easier for followers to find it.

They can be general - #love is the most used hashtag of 2017. And it’s so popular on Instagram that it has essentially become compulsory. If you want people to find your content, you have to use hashtags a little more specific.

Here are some best practices:

• Don't overdo it - five targeted hashtags are better than 25 random
• Avoid overuse of general hashtags - adding #love or #instagood is useless. If a million people are using that hashtag, your post will hardly stand out and anyone will be able to see it.
• Use those hashtags that are relevant to the photo, ie the post

What are General # hashtags and why not should be used?

These are hashtags that anyone could use, depending on the content of the image, such as "#Sun", "#food" and "#vine". But honestly, these examples are so broad that it's hard to notice a post using them.

Instead, try to find niche hashtags in your industry. This increases your chances of attracting the right audience for your content.

A quick Instagram search will bring you lists of niche hashtags by industry.

See what hashtags your existing companions use. This is a smarter way of finding the right people to talk to.

When to publish?

A recent poll found that the best time to post on Instagram is between 7 pm and 9 pm. However, these results need not be strictly guided.

Each niche and industry has its own audience that is active at different times. When is your audience most active on Instagram? Take a look at your stats.

Instagram is a visual network

Posting great content is always vital for social media marketing. This is why followers connect with your brand and keep coming back to it.

On other social networks, this can mean posting interesting posts, asking questions, and starting a conversation. On Instagram, that’s not enough. Instagram is, above all, a visual social network and the importance of photography is enormous! The entire network was created for people to share their photos.

According to one study, 93% of decisions in the buying process are based on visual appearance, so good images are vital.

Aside from being able to use professional photos, how can you further enhance your Instagram content to be more engaging?

Innovation

As we said, you can't just share photos of your products and hope that people will buy them. Your followers will quickly leave your profile and you are unlikely to attract new ones.

Instead, you need to innovate occasionally in the content you share to retain existing followers and attract new ones.

Here are some types of content that go well:

• Behind the Curtain - This is especially interesting when recording video content. Misspelled words, forgotten text and laughing in the background is always fun
• Make creative solutions to problems (using your products)
• Motivational content
• Contests
• Quotes are always popular and do not even require an original photo. Put an interesting quote on a beautiful background and users will be happy to share.
• Add Call to Action
• Call to Action (CTA) shows the user what to do.

Whether you want users to download content, visit your site, or shop, it must be clear to them. A good CTA tells them what to do next.

On Instagram, this can be a bit problematic. This network only allows one link - the one in your bio. This way, you cannot insert links in the captions, comments, or image itself. And without the link, how can you create a CTA?

Smart marketers have developed several strategies.

"Link in a bio"

If you have only one link in the entire profile, you have to make users click on it. The easiest way is to tell them where they can find more information - a link in your bio.

Promo Codes

As you cannot add a link within a post, give users all the other necessary information. What can I buy, where can I buy them, and why should I?

Promo codes are perfect because you can easily follow them. Whenever someone buys with your Instagram code, you know the source of the sale. Although you cannot easily follow the link, you will still know where the customer came from.

Like and comment

This strategy also works well on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Conduct a quick poll with your companions and let them vote using "Like" or "Comment". It's an easy way to increase engagement with your profile, and it doesn't take much effort.

Alternatively, you can ask users to select "A" or "B" in the comments section. If you are selling shoes, let the escorts choose their favorite color. If you are a university, let them choose their favorite uniform for the basketball team.

Make it fun and arouse some interest. But most of all, help your companions do what you need and what you expect them to do. If you need them to share your content, show them how. If you want them to buy, explain to them how they can do it.

Tell stories

If you are an Instagram user, you already know about Stories. It sits at the top of your companion feeds and allows them to see several stories in a row from the same user.

For merchants, this is a wonderful gift. You do not have to try to convey the whole message in one picture, you can link it in several pictures with text to tell the story.

What is a "story" on Instagram?

Stories or stories are different from the usual Instagram posts in several key ways:

• These images or videos are rotated from one to another and are similar to presentations.
• Each image/video is deleted after 24 hours
• Since the images/video are full-screen, there is no caption
• Other users can't see comments

All stories are at the top of the app, and users can scroll through them to find the ones they like.

Some Best Practices

Stories can help brands show some value. Followers see your pictures in the order you want them to be. This is what makes them stories!

Here are some tips for first-class stories:

• Offer something different: Don't just link your usual Instagram content. Show what a day in your business looks like to make this content special.
• Focus on the narrative: Try giving the story a beginning, middle, and end. Get to know the person, place, or product, get the customer's attention, then shoot them down with a CTA killer.
• Be Informal: Stories are also more intimate and less formal than other Instagram content. You can show the human side of your brand here.
• Try Downloading: Have a talented staff member take a profile for a specific day and create their own story. Or, if you have a good idea, a well-known influencer can be even more helpful.

If you have enough followers (at least 10,000), you can even add links to Stories. This can be an advantage of creating a call to action where the user can simply swipe up to visit your website.

Collaborating with Influencers

Influencers are influential people in your industry, which means that their word has a big impact on customers.

Whether you want to increase your Instagram presence or make a sale, their approval is exactly what you need.

To do this, you must first identify the right people.

Good influencers should:

• Have the right audience (who could actually buy your product or service)
• Have at least a few thousand followers
• Have good interaction with their followers

In other words, they actually have to be influential in their industry.

It would be really great if this was all it took to succeed on this social network. However, the situation is far more complicated and requires much more attention and dedication as well as knowledge.