The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Instagram 101

Social Media Marketing is the practice of promoting one’s business by using social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram just to name a few.  Social Media Marketing is a critical part of any marketing and sales plan, nowadays.  What do you need to know as a business owner about Social Media Marketing as we enter the new year?

With the introduction of social media, businesses found new ways to drive consumers to their online store fronts, as well as using SEO (search engine optimization) to become more familiar to consumers by strengthening their brand and pulling in mobile users. But there’s more than meets the eye for just tweeting out a thought, tagging hot button topics and updating a Facebook page regularly.  2016 is more than just being ready on demand, it’s about getting exactly the right image in front of the right sets of eyes to drive sales.

Enter Instagram.

Instagram is a photography site where profile owners can post picture and images, even 15 second videos of exactly what they want their audience to see.  Instagram has changed the face of social network marketing.  “A picture is worth 1,000 words” is an adage that applies here.  Consumers these days are fickle, and in a tremendous hurry.  If you don’t put an appealing image at the end of their nose, one that is bright, and makes them ask the question, “can you tell me more” you may lose a buyer in between a text message and their chai latte order at the local bistro.

Instagram allows a business owner to capture an image with their smart phone camera, crop it, customize it with a number of “filters”, and then add a bunch of hash tagged words.  Tagging is critical. The # (hashtag) placed directly before the desired keyword without spaces means that any search for that topic on Instagram will result in that photo coming up.  Similar to Twitter feeds, images and phrases that are hashtagged will create an online body of information that viewers will scroll through and allow potential customers to stumble upon your work.

Needle in a Haystack.

This is where the filters come in.  Folks can also become fans of certain color filters, and you can hashtag the filter you use on your posting.  The goal is for your post to come up under as many searches as possible. Think of it like SEO for social networking–but we just call it tagging.  With our businesses out there looking so similar to the next guy or gal, we need to take advantage of the visually driven consumer and “WOW” them effectively.

The business owner’s goal on Instagram is to get as many followers as possible.  Likes will lead to followers, and as your posts turn up on your followers feeds, they’ll like you even more.  Likes lead to visibility.  The followers goal on Instagram is to be acknowledged by you, which you’ll do in your comments to them. This leads to greater engagement, boosted sales and more.

All in all, the goal of marketing is to authentically showcase your  product or give the consumer a feel for what you have to offer.  Doing so in a relevant way allows us to endear ourselves to our desired audience, which will lead to greater clicks, shares, retweets, reposts, comments and general interaction on social media.