orLiran Mizrahi is one of Israel’s top social media marketing masters, helping brands find success in the social media sphere. Liran is an Instagram mogul with over 12 years of experience with active involvement in account management and Instagram marketing. He didn’t actually start using the platform with intentions of becoming an expert but the more he used it, the more his curiosity was piqued. In the beginning, it was all just fun – contacting people and making collaborations. So we asked Mr. Mizrahi to tell us 4 tips to use instagram for your business.
How to create an active community on Instagram
After having created an Instagram Business profile and having planned the content to be published maybe for the first month of activity, you just have to get to work to create a community interested in your brand. To do this, the secret (if we can speak of a secret) is to interact and be present on the platform.
Interacting doesn’t mean spamming invasively under the photos of potential customers with phrases like: “Nice photo, follow me!”. No, it doesn’t really work that way. And those who are shouting a miracle for having discovered a method that can create an active community in a short time, are lying. In order to get people to engage with your content and your brand, you need to build authentic and spontaneous relationships that are carried on over time, with consistency, respect and respect.
Being present, on the other hand, means posting new content with some frequency. “But how often?” you may be wondering. Again, there is no magic recipe and it all depends on the editorial plan you will have built. From 1 to 4 pieces of content per day, distributed throughout the day, is a good frequency for a brand. You should neither exaggerate, risking to share irrelevant things, nor disappear for weeks. You have to find the right compromise to be present without boring.
Which hashtags to use on Instagram
One of the most important, but often largely underestimated elements by brands using Instagram, is the hashtag. As you may already know, on Instagram, photos are categorized by means of digital containers that categorize photos based on a keyword preceded by a #, the hashtag.
These can be inserted at the discretion of the user (with a maximum limit of 30) in the caption of the photo or video, or in the first comment immediately after sharing the post. The content that is published, therefore, is potentially visible to their followers and to all those who search for content using a certain keyword. Especially at the beginning, when you don’t have a large enough audience yet, the visibility offered by hashtags is of paramount importance. And their choice is undoubtedly the most important detail that makes the difference in a content marketing strategy. Even in this case, however, there is no list of the best hashtags ever, but only a basic logic that, if followed, allows you to choose the most relevant for your brand.
When choosing which keywords to include, there are 2 fundamental elements that you need to pay attention to and think about: competition and visibility. But to better understand this concept, let’s immediately make an example.
But this is the most serious mistake you can make, especially in an initial phase. In this case, the potential visibility is very high, but the competition to reach the people who are using that hashtag is also very high. And using it would mean disappearing in the daily flow of content a few moments after publication.
The secret is therefore to evaluate the right compromise between visibility and competition, preferring specificity. If, for example, you are a fashion brand operating in Italy and you want to publish a photo of a new woman’s dress, always start reasoning from the subject of the photo, and then broaden the context and generalize the scope.
Collaborate and mention others
Instagram is one of the strongest social media channels for highlighting collaborators and sharing customer success stories. Even if you don’t officially collaborate with a nonprofit, it can make donations or raise money a few times a year. It’s all good as long as the cause aligns with your brand values and mission. Another technique is to use ‘shout-outs’. A free shoutout is when you partner with another brand that has roughly the same number of followers as you, to promote the other for your audience and benefit from increased exposure.
Paid shout-out is suitable for brands with larger budgets. This involves paying a brand (or influencer) with a much larger following to promote your product or service. This is a great way to get a large number of followers quickly, as long as you create a strong call to action.
Analyze your success
Without stepping back and analyzing what worked and what didn’t, marketing becomes a guessing game. The truth is, you can also read all the articles in the world about best practices and posting times, but it will all be in vain if you don’t bother to find out what works for your business through testing and measuring results. Social media management tools can help you, though. You can use them not only to plan campaigns in advance, but also to measure their success.
Be sure to regularly measure the value of your followers, engagement, and clicks, all to refine and improve your Instagram strategy.
Follow Liran on Instagram