10 INSTAGRAM GROWTH STRATEGIES

Instagram is a great place for your brand to be. Why? Because you can easily develop your brand and spread your reach. It can be scary not knowing how to make your page great and attract more followers. But the truth is, using Instagram in an effective way is pretty easy. Check out these ten Instagram growth strategies to up your Instagram game.

1. OPTIMIZE YOUR PROFILE.

Optimizing your profile involves more than just having a fun profile picture. Your profile is the place people go to to get a feel for your brand, so it needs to strongly represent you! First things first, your profile picture should have your logo in it and your account name should be your brand. Next, make sure that your description includes a link to your website. If people are interested, they will want to see your website so make it easy for them. Lastly, put your slogan in your bio or write some fun sentences about your company that will draw people in. Remember, Instagram isn’t Linkedin, it’s more of a laid back, social app.

2. POST CONSISTENTLY

Let’s say people go to your profile and like what they see so they follow you, and you don’t post for the next two weeks. By the time you post again they will have lost interest. Let’s say instead you post four times in the two weeks prior to when they follow you and then don’t post for a month. Once again you will lose their interest and lose them as a follower. So, post consistently. Try to post two or three times a week. There is such a thing as overdoing it. If you post too often, people will get annoyed because they only see you in their feed and will stop liking your posts and eventually unfollow you.Find a balance and stick to it.

3. MAKE WEEKLY POST CATEGORIES

Every Wednesday at Colibri we post a Wednesday #WomanPower post on Instagram about a woman who inspires us. Posts like these keep followers looking forward to next week’s post and therefore they stick around. Here are some ideas to inspire a weekly post for you: If you are an influencer who focuses on clothing, you could do #ThriftyThursday where you post your favorite thrift store and thrift finds or upcycling tips on Thursday. Are you an interior design brand? On Fridays post your favorite #CoffeeTableRead.

4. ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

Engagement from your followers is super important. It helps build a following and means you have loyal customers. But how do you get engagement? Start engaging! Ask your followers to comment about something in the comments of a post, or to tag someone who inspires them on a Wednesday #WomanPower post. Shout out your followers in posts, respond to their DMs and comments or repost or comment on their posts about your brand. That way, your followers will want to engage with you because they know you will respond.

5. POST PERSONAL AND CLEAR IMAGES

If you always post stock photos, you won’t get likes. Your followers won’t trust you and will eventually unfollow you. People want to see into your brand so you need to post personal and real photos. Try to post clear and aesthetically pleasing images as well. Keeping to a certain color scheme and style that matches your brand is a good way to make your feed appealing while staying on brand.

6. MAKE FUN STORIES AND USE THEM CONSISTENTLY

Stories help keep your followers engaged and are a fun way to connect. Try making stories where you do polls or show the behind the scenes at work. Stories are not only fun to look at, but they are also fun to make. Get creative with it! Don’t be afraid to use filters and stickers. Use your stories to promote new posts or new blogs on your website.

7. DON’T BE AFRAID OF INSTAGRAM TV

Instagram TV can seem scary because it is live. Here are a few tips to make it easier:

• The first few times you use Instagram TV, record your video first. The videos don’t actually have to be live!
• Do an interview and ask your followers for questions. This way you can engage with your followers and won’t run out of questions.
• If you own a warehouse or studio, show a behind the scenes of your space. You can also engage with you followers by asking them to guess what certain machines are, see if anyone has used them, etc.

8. MAKE YOUR CAPTIONS INTERESTING

Writing captions is the hardest part of Instagram for me. After writing and deleting tons of captions, I usually go with what I first wrote, so my advice is to trust your gut and don’t be afraid to make some jokes! If people are intrigued by your photo they will read your caption. You want your caption to satisfy their interest and encourage them to comment so make sure your captions are compelling.

9. TAKEOVERS

Takeovers are when brands partner with influencers or other brands and post in each other stories for a day. This is a great way to give your followers fresh new content while also being introduced to new potential followers. In your takeovers you can show behind the scenes from your office, what a day in your life looks like, etc. Have fun and get creative with takeovers.

10. USE HASHTAGS

Although hashtags may seem old school, they do so much for your brand on Instagram, so use them! They help people find you and introduce you to new followers. Make sure you use a consistent set of hashtags to describe your brand as well as more detailed ones to match the theme of your post. This way people will find you through a variety of searches. You are allowed to use up to 30 hashtags but using between 5–11 is best. A lot of people put their hashtags a few lines below their caption so that it’s easier to understand. To do this they put a period in every line to create space and then put their hashtags.

TAKEAWAY

Instagram is an app that you can really get creative and have fun with, so don’t be afraid of it. If you follow these Instagram growth strategies and adapt them to your brand, your Instagram presence and following will improve. The most important part is that you keep up all these new practices. Make a plan that is sustainable for your brand and stick with it. Now go and have some fun growing your Instagram

Most effective 5 PR strategies in 2021

Public relations is a demanding business, mostly because of the conditions of digital media. Consumers access multiple online channels on an almost constant basis, so keeping your brand both visible and positively received by the masses can be troublesome for the busy entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs, especially those helming startups or small businesses, simply neglect their public relations development strategy, believing it to be a secondary priority. But no matter how busy you are, you can make time for these simple, yet effective, PR strategies:

1. Cultivate Testimonials. Testimonials are your best friend as an entrepreneur. Depending on the medium you use for your inbound testimonials, you could enjoy the benefits of increased brand visibility, increased user trust, increased SEO authority from external links, and an increased propensity to go viral with a product or campaign. Encourage your users to post written and video testimonials on their social media profiles and external sites. You can offer them a small reward in exchange for their honest opinions, or sponsor a competition that recognizes a random participant. Initiating a steady flow of user testimonials is a way to let your customers do your PR work for you. Consumers trust other consumers more than brands anyway, so you’ll be able to build your reputation naturally without doing all the work yourself.

2. Make the Most of Your Press Releases. Have a plan in place to submit regular press releases whenever your company does something newsworthy. Press releases can be a great source of external links for SEO, since they’re usually published on high-authority news sites, plus you’ll get a boost in brand visibility from the shared readership of each publication. But press releases don’t have to be one-use-only. If you’re already creating and distributing your press releases on a regular basis, you can tap them for additional PR value without spending much additional time. For example, you can post a variation of the press release on your own site as a blog entry, possibly adding an extra feature like an interview with your CEO. You could also repurpose it into a whitepaper, or include it as part of an informational packet. It’s a form of recycling, which will let you take advantage of the press release’s full value.

3. Set Aside Ten Minutes a Day. If you’re having trouble keeping up with the nonstop social media posts and constantly evolving news landscape, you’re not alone. It’s almost impossible to keep up with everything. But instead of giving up and no longer trying to get involved, try setting aside ten minutes a day — an amount of time that almost anyone can afford to allot. Ten minutes a day will give you an opportunity to scan your news feed, figure out the gist of what’s been happening, and reach out to at least a handful of followers. You may not get time to answer every query or post lots of messages, but it will establish your brand as one that cares enough to make a daily effort.

4. Focus Your Strategy. It can be tempting to pursue every possible channel and target every possible demographic, but for the busy entrepreneur, that’s an inefficient strategy. Instead of trying to do twenty things with an average success rate, narrow your strategy to do one or two things with the best success rate. For example, if you’re trying to build a following on five different social media profiles, instead focus on building an audience for one (with the other four on the back burner). You’ll have a smaller potential audience, but the audience you end up with will be more passionate, more loyal, and more enthusiastic about your brand.

5. Leverage the Power of Influencers. This is another way of letting others do your PR work for you. Instead of spending hours a day trying to force your way into new markets, make friends with a handful of influencers and ask them to do the work for you. For example, if there’s an industry leader with a huge following, you could ask him/her to tweet a link to your latest press release — or if you’re on good terms already, you could ask him/her to create a testimonial for you. If they honor your request, you’ll gain almost-instant access to their audience, adding their range of visibility to your own without significant extra effort.