A picture can thousands words and, through photos, Instagram has revolutionized the way now brands interact with the consumers. With a simple interface and 1 billion of monthly users, Instagram should be your mail tool to use for keeping your audience engaged and promote your brand in one of the most effective manners.
If you are planning to start using Instagram as a marketing tool for your brand, there are certain things that you must not do to keep your marketing successful. Following are some of the highly common mistakes that business do very often-
Lack A Proper Plan:
Your first step should be to decide why you are using Instagram. Whether you are looking forward to creating brand awareness and interacting with the customers or to showcase your product and service, one thing you must know that it should add values to the customer feed instead of spamming it.
At the end of the day, Instagram users don’t want to see a random image and, a clumsy image can put your brand in a negative light.
Poor Content:
Most people have the common tendency to keep scrolling their feed until they find something interesting and pause it. With the skyrocketing popularity of Instagram marketing, it seems almost every company posting content to market and your content should have the ability to stand out from others. Create the content your content in a way so that people will engage with your content instead of scrolling down.
3. Not Being Consistent:
Consistency is the key in this game. There are times when you get overloaded with a lot of other works but that doesn’t mean that you should not be posting anything new on Instagram. You must stay in the eyes of your customers but that doesn’t mean that you are going to spam them. A well-planned feed that posts regular content will definitely give you better ROI.
4. Not Using The Full Potential Of Your Hashtags:
Using hashtags could be a little annoying but, that doesn’t mean that you are not going to use the hashtags. You must focus on using relevant hashtags which will increase the engagement of your posts. Always try to come up with the hashtags that are relevant to your brand and, help you get discovered, also. You can use up to 30 hashtags, so you must be careful when it comes to choosing the right hashtags.
5. Buying Likes and Followers:
A lot of businesses buy followers, but it is not the right marketing approach. Most of these followers are fake accounts and, recently Instagram has flagged down these accounts with fake followers. The best way to gain followers is organically- post quality content and engage with your followers.
6. Failure To Use The Followers In A Right Way:
You cannot forget the fact that your followers are the brand ambassador of your product or service. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses miss out the opportunity to gain new followers through their existing ones. You should encourage your followers to use your branded hashtags or share your content.
7. Posting Too Many Promotional Stuff
Just think as an Instagram user, would you like to receive only promotional posts like sales, discounts, etc? Promote your product in an interesting manner like the work culture of your office, how much effort is going into designing the product and many other such things.
8. Not Engaging With The Customers:
Customers need a platform to engage with your brand, so when they take the time to reach out to you, don’t run away. Many companies make the mistake of not following back their followers or replying to their comments or taking a look at their mentions. Actively interacting with your customers will help you to gain their faith in your brand, which in turn can give you indirect publicity through their word of mouth.