5 Great Instagram Marketing Tips You Should Know In 2020
Are you ready to up your Instagram marketing strategy in 2020?
Instagram has currently over a billion monthly active users which makes it one of the most important social media platforms of the moment and a great opportunity for businesses to reach a larger audience.
This platform evolved constantly since it was launched almost a decade ago, it’s not the simple photo-sharing app from its early days. Right now, Instagram is a social media marketing arena where the power is held by influencers, brands, and marketers trying to reach their target audience.
This year we’ll most likely see Instagram changing the social media marketing game with its long-form video IGTV platform gaining momentum and nano-influencers stealing the scene from macro-influencers.
Because we know that social media is not easy work, we have gathered the latest Instagram trends for this year and we turned them into actionable tips.
Keep reading to find out more.
How to create a successful Instagram marketing strategy
Having a large number of Instagram followers is inconsequential if the engagement on your posts and stories is low or inexistent. So the main question here is the following:
What secret weapon do those brands that everyone talks about on social media have?
It’s quite simple: instead of just posting content and waiting for people to engage, they dedicate their social media time to building a strong community first of all.
In a pay-to-play environment, this strategy is one of the smartest ways to increase brand awareness and genuinely connect with your customers. Moreover, it will humanize your brand and boost customer trust in the long-term.
Polished photos and cleverly-worded captions are not enough anymore. We’ve seen enough of it everywhere on social media platforms.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind in order to upgrade your Instagram game plan:
Don’t underestimate the power of community
As we mentioned above, businesses that invest more in being a helpful friend within a community rather than just being a product/service provider have a lot to gain. Take time to listen to your audience and share content that is valuable and relevant to them.
Also, don’t overpromote your products/services – no one wants to engage with someone that is only talking about themselves. If you want to help your sales, we recommend you first spend time connecting with your audience, gaining their trust and getting to know their needs and problems they have to solve.
The online community that is thus created is not only about learning from and being entertained by your brand but also about the meaningful interactions among the followers that are facilitated by your business.
Finally, this year you have to get rid of the post and wait or pay and wait mentality and really work on building a strong relationship with your audience.
Choose the right influencers as your partners
Social media communities also allow you to engage with nano-influencers who are already advocates of your brand. The power of word-of-mouth marketing is not something to be looked down upon, in fact, it is expected to grow in importance in 2020.
You must have a clear influencer strategy so that the people you choose as your partners are representative of your brand message and values. Also, make sure that you provide your nano-influencers collaborators with a document that highlights your main goals and essential content guidelines they need to follow.
However, don’t forget to allow them to use their unique voice to promote you in a way that feels authentic to their followers.
The most popular ways in which your brand can collaborate with influencers are mentions, product/services reviews (a positive review can do wonders especially when it comes from someone a lot of people think of as a trusted friend), takeovers (this allows influencers to post in your behalf and drive more people to your Instagram profile) and giveaways (you can either organize a joint giveaway or ask them to promote your giveaways to their audience).
Capture your audience’s attention with engaging stories
Another place where you can let your creativity roam free on Instagram and engage with your audience is in your stories. These allow you to capture your follower’s attention for a few valuable seconds using a mix of photos, emojis, stickers, and even videos.
IG stories usually feel more authentic than highly edited traditional posts and they create the FOMO feeling as they’re live-updates available only for 24 hours. Moreover, businesses can also add ads in their stories and promote their products/services and also time-limited deals they have at that moment.
You can also use stories to ask questions and start a conversation with your followers. What’s more, Instagram Stories have a specific sticker that you can use exactly for that; to ask a question. The great part is that you can then post the best answers you’ve got from your audience in your stories and thus reward your followers.
Another way to increase engagement is by creating quizzes and polls for your stories. You can use Instagram Stories stickers for polls and for quizzes you can promote your own quizzes and encourage users to visit your website.
Win your audience’s trust with UGC
It so happens that you can’t always come up with the most creative content ideas and we have to tell you that there’s no need to do this either. You can easily make the most out of the content your audience creates.
Did you know that the majority of your customers will think of the content posted by their friends as being more trustworthy and compelling than the content your brand creates?
Thus, by encouraging your audience to tag your brand or use your hashtag in their posts and by reposting that UGC will have more chances of increasing your engagement, web traffic and ultimately sales.
To earn more social proof, you can also organize contests that drive UGC – all your audience has to do is to take a photo of themselves using your products and they have the chance of winning a certain prize.
There’s no easier way to increase brand awareness and engagement at the same time. Also, this is a great community-building exercise.
Get creative with IGTV
Last year has shown us that video is becoming the king of content, being preferred by the majority of users on social media. This trend was present among Instagram influencers in 2019 in the form of IGTV videos.
This rise in popularity was also influenced by the launch of the IGTV Series which allows creators to organize their videos by topic on a separate page. Similar to how YouTube works, users can binge-watch their favorite series and subscribe to notifications for new episodes from their favourite influencers.
IGTV videos have a greater length than normal video posts that appear on your feed (maximum 60 seconds). They can reach up to 5 minutes when uploading from a mobile device and 60 minutes when uploading from the web which allows people to better express their creative ideas.
Here are some examples of videos you can create on IGTV for your audience:
- Tutorial videos focused on showing users how to use your products
- Q&A sessions spent answering questions from your followers
- An IGTV fun show posted regularly to build engagement and customer trust
