Instagram – do you take or do you engage?

 

 

One of the interesting points to note, how these “Instagram Coaches or Experts” are always going on about how they can make you money by teaching you how to use Instagram……but they are the ones making from you when all they are doing is taking the basics and missing the main key points that you should be taking action with yourself….

Firstly – don’t think of yourself as a company but as you and how you want to be treated……this is key as if you can’t behave like you would in real life, want is the point of using Instagram?

Secondly – look at how you behave when using Instagram. Do you take care how you make/create your photo or video posts? If you do, make sure you are doing this with your company posts too.

Thirdly – when you post a photo/video, if someone comments, you reply – so, if someone comments on your company posts, make sure you post and engage too!

And finally – if are following people/companies, make sure you like or comment on their posts too. After all, if you are following someone, you are following them for a reason. If you take a few minutes each morning and night, like or comment on the people/company’s you are following and thus create that Engagement process.

This is all pretty simple things but if you actually look at the Instagram accounts of these Coaches/Experts, they will reply to a few people (and note these tend to be the same ones all the time!) and only speak to new followers to get them to sign up to their emails or courses!

Whichever way you look at things on the various platforms, these coaches/experts may have five or six figure followers but sit back and look at:-

  • How many followers do they have and how many actually like their photos or videos?
  • Following the same ethos as above, how many of these followers actually comment on their photos/videos?
  • How many of their posts are actually engaging posts? Most are getting you sign up to what they offer or watch them at an event etc – this isn’t actually creating a truly engaging community, is it?
  • How many of the people or companies they are following, do they like or comment on those posts?

When looking at our own account, yes we could be following too many but when we set up our Instagram, due to it being owned by Facebook, it matches you with your Facebook friends and you can follow them all.

This can be the major downside as who do you follow or not follow? That’s the hard one but it’s something that we are slowly working through to remove a lot of the people we’re following to make sure they are more relevant. After all, when this was created, the person who set it up, followed people they thought would be relevant to us, times change as well as how we operate. Also, now we don’t need to be following people/company’s to message as we needed to when Instagram started. As now, we don’t see the need to message directly as you can direct people to your email or other messaging App’s to strike up conversation.

For you as an individual or company, in my honest opinion, you just need to:-

  • Make sure you have the right tools ie your camera on your phone is working properly and produces a good quality photo or video
  • If you want to create a good video, sometimes using the camera on your smartphone is better than the camera within the Instagram App
  • When creating video, what type is it you are wanting to create? Maybe, downloading the Boomerang or Hyperlapse App’s could give you a different video format to post
  • If you are wanting to create a photo but have multiple phones yet you want a single photo, then look at using Layout as this can create some great ways to share multiple images within a single post photo
  • If you are wanting to create image to share with words or phrases on, then look to use Pablo as this is a great tool for using stock photos of by uploading your own
  • If you are following people/company’s, endeavour to make sure you have liked all their photos and where you feel relevant, comment on their posts that appeal to you
  • Hashtags – now there is two views here! Either do you post including message and include the hashtags at the end OR the second train of thought, is to do your post and message then publish. After publishing, do the first comment yourself which is all the Hashtags as the comment
  • (There is no right or wrong way here but it depends on what you are trying to get across as you only have three lines of text visible meaning the tags are missed off as people scroll their timeline – but adding the hashtags into the first comment, means they get seen too)
  • Try to create your own hashtag, so that when people look at that hashtag on any other Social Platform it will relate back to you and company by association
  • Identify the all the relevant hashtags to make sure you use the right ones for wider circulation. For example, when doing food images/videos, besides #food, the most common one is #foodporn – thus is people search for foodporn, your photos/videos will appear.
  • If your post is made up of components, break them down and include what the event is. So for example, if you are having say Sunday Lunch, make sure your post has the hashtags like:-
    • #SundayLunch #SundayDinner #SundayTea #Sunday #Weekend
    • #Food #FoodPorn
    • #Beef #RoastBeef #Potatoes #RoastPotatoes #RoastSpuds #Veg #Vegetables #Peas #Carrots #Cabbage #Beans #GreenBeans #Gravy
  • Try to make your summary/comment/statement/overview is one that can lead to making your audience comment back. For example, using the above, you could say
    • Here’s my Sunday Lunch which is looking and smelly amazing – are you having Sunday Lunch or are you having a Sunday Dinner tonight instead? Are you having Beef or something else? If you are a vegetarian, what are you having instead meat?
  • If you are going to want people to go elsewhere, putting a web link into your post will not work as it’s not clickable and thus, delays/prevents the engagement you are wanting to create, so direct them to click the link in your Bio
  • Clicking the link in the Bio may mean you will have to keep changing the link every time you post something that directs them to a different place, so using a different landing facility: –
    • Have a specific page on your website for Instagram where when clicking the link, people will land on the page to the relevant article. Thus, if you post different links, this page will list them and people can go to not just the article they are clicking on but ones from the past too!
    • Whilst the above is a great thing to do, you can use further promotion of your other Social platforms to boost your exposure. If you post the same image on your Instagram board on your Pinterest account, you are driving people to see your Pinterest account too! When they get to the same picture, that can be a clickable link through what you are promoting also – a bigger win-win for you!

So, I hope these helpful hints will help you with how you use and boost your Instagram engagement…..

 

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you with your Instagram or other aspects fo your Digital and Social platforms and strategy, please complete the form below as we’d love to help you…

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