How To Grow Your Business Using Instagram and Build Brand

Compared to other platforms audience interaction with brands on Instagram is unmatched. As a brand, it’s critical that you have an active Instagram presence.

There are many approaches when it comes to leveraging Instagram to increase brand awareness, here’s what works.

Engage with both your current and target audience while consistently providing content you yourself would be interested in engaging with.

Don’t post any and everything. First think about three to five important aspects of your brand. Next try to weave at least one of those into each post.

Create killer content and encourage engagement by asking questions, making thought-provoking statements or encouraging persons to share their opinion.

Use both influencer and pay per click ads.

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to implement the above, here are some impressive approaches that when followed will help you grow your business using Instagram and build brand

Optimize Your Content For Your Target Audience

Use successful profiles in your industry as a source of inspiration. If it’s working for them it’ll most likely work for you.

While content is important, your bio, profile image, and captions are almost as, if not equally important. Your profile image should be easily identifiable, brandable and capture your audience’s attention.

As for your bio, it should briefly describe what your brand is about and include your website’s link. Your captions should encourage engagement with your content either by providing your audience with a question, something to respond to or share their opinion on.

It may seem obvious but many persons, aren’t doing this. Simply posting content with a generic caption isn’t going to cut it.

Don’t use generic captions. Make thought-provoking statements, ask questions, ask for opinions, give them options to chose from with carousel photos. Ask for engagement and you’d most likely receive it.

When you share content just displaying your product/ service with a generic caption, the responses are limited to the viewer complimenting the product or the creativity of the photo itself.

When you make thought-provoking statements and ask for engagement you’re encouraging interaction between you and your audience instead of just making an announcement.

Find out what interests your audience. Ask yourself, what are they following me to see and optimize for the content they’re expressing the most interest in.

(It’ll most likely be the content that’s just more creative/ appealing than usual)

If either isn’t the case figure out what it is. When you have, implement it into future posts. Doing this will improve your content, and once consistently executed upon, grow your brand’s Instagram.

Depending on your business, how your audience perceives your Instagram can be extremely important. People follow brands they relate to. Consistently create original, relatable content. Your audience will in most cases be more inclined to engage with content that applies to them, that they can relate to, that evokes some sort of emotion or that simply provides some sort of value to their life.

Followers usually want to learn more about your brand besides your products and services. Show them that there are real people behind your brand. Using Instagram Stories would be a great way to do this.

For example, share a behind the scenes look at events at your store, launch parties, campaign shoots, general work life, etc. Stories are likewise useful for gaining real-time feedback from your audience. You can do this by turning on the direct messaging feature. Or by using Polls asking questions and collecting information from the results.

Fiber artist Meghan Shimek originally used Instagram to promote her art. Her biggest success was a huge commission by a large retailer who found her through Instagram. But it’s what she did that set her apart as a clever marketer.