According to research, it was discovered that Instagram provides brands with 25% more engagement over other social platforms. This mean that Instagram is a prime channel to build your brand for your ecommerce business.

Speaking of social media madness, instagram (like any social network out there), has the right ways to use it, wrong ways to use it, and of course smart ways to use it. In this post, i will show you how to most effectively use Instagram marketing strategies to increase engagement and build extraordinarily following.

First thing first Hashtag (#). Use the right hashtags

Have a goal in mind when using instagram, and for most instagramers the goal is to (1)engage your current audience while also (2)growing your following. You can do this by posting new, interesting and engaging photos to satisfy the first requirement plus hashtagging your photos will be extremely important in growing your audience. Hashtagging makes easy for people to find your photos that are searching for those specific terms.

Alright, so which hashtags should you use?

Users on Instagram use certain hashtags over others. If you use the right hashtags within your photos, you’re much more likely to reach new users and be discovered.

Here are the current top 10 hashtags on Instagram

1.#love 546,312,756 posts

2.#instagood 252,226,047 posts

3.#me 238,166,943 posts

4.#follow 208,003,100 posts

5.#tbt 205,718,608 posts

6.#cute 203,174,797 posts

7.#like 193,577,034 posts

8.#photooftheday 189,818,506 posts

9.#followme 183,736,791 posts

10.#tagsforlikes 171,593,674 posts

Tip: Using hashtags is one thing, using the right tags is a completely other thing. Popular tags like the ones listed above will likely net you additional engagement and likes, however, they will not lead to increased long-term engagement, new interested followers and most importantly, sales.

This is how you tag your photo properly: You’ll need to find and use the most relevant hashtags. This means doing the appropriate keyword research to make sure you’re using the most relevant hashtags that not only describes your brand, but is also being searched for on Instagram. If you need help with keywords research service please email me now.

If you choose the DIY route, i suggest you try a free research tools to help you determine relevant, related and popular hashtags for your brand.

Here is an example of searching the hashtag #realestate, I was able to pull the following list of additional keyword hashtags along with their popularity via webgram

Tag Search Results for ” realestate ”

#realestate 1,971,671

#realestateagent 122,892

#realestateph 89,391

#realestatelife 46,701

#realestatephotography 31,370

#realestateinvestor 29,403

#realestateinvesting 25,774

#realestatebroker 24,194

#realestateagents 15,823

#realestatesales 14,752

#realestateexperts 10,697

Go through this exercise trying different keywords that describe your brand and products, building out your hashtag keyword list as you go. Note this down: -Instagram allows for a maximum of 30 hashtags per post. Additionally, the popular words will change over time, so make sure you revisit your hashtag keywords every few months to make sure you’re using the best possible terms. Again- i can do this tidy / boring work for you so you don’t have to.

Let’s put this exercise to practice. You are a store owner, you have fabulous products but no one knows you exist. Well-may be your pets knows but the point is you are not doing any business. Your inventory is just sitting around. If i were you, his is what i would do on my idle aka not so busy time.

1.For every product and product category for my stores, i’d do the keyword research to see which are the most popular Instagram hashtags around those product categories. I’d come up with 10 – 20 popular hashtags for each category of products I sell, as well as a base of 5-10 popular tags that describe my brand and product offering overall. Finally, I’d also create a list of popular local specific hashtags that relate to my brand.

For example:

Brand Keyword Hashtags

#mybrandname #womenlingerie #womenaccessories #womenfashion #fashion #womensstyle #instafashion #womenswear

Product Category Keyword Hashtags

#mikaelaunderwear#happyknickers #underwear #underwears #undewearofinstagram #happyknickersday

Location Specific Keyword Hashtags

#NewYorkNY #NYC #NewyorkFashionBloggers

All of these groups of keyword hashtags are stored in a page on docs, pocket or Evernote. This makes it easy and efficient when I’m on the go to post a new Instagram image, optimized for the most relevant keywords.

When you research, organize and save the most applicable and popular hashtags, you’ll save a ton of time down the road, increase your engagement and help garner new followers.

2. If you’ve been posting to Instagram for a while and feel like you’ve missed out on all these opportunities to build your audience by using keyword hashtags, don’t worry. You can still go back and post a comment with your new hashtag keyword lists and watch the likes and followers roll in.

Keyword hashtags aren’t the only thing you should pay attention to. The Instagram community respond to certain photo filters more favorably than others. Using these preferred filters can have an impact on your engagement.

TrackMaven recently did a study on Instagram accounts to see how filters affected engagement and found that Mayfair, no filter and Inkwell drove the most interaction. More important than the overall Instagram communities favorite filters are your particular audience’s favorite filters.

You can use IconoSquare to review the performance of your own account to understand what is and is not currently working for you.

What are the right day to post? I’d argue any day, any time but experts suggest timing of your posts is as important as hashtagging as well filtering.A targeted approach is to analyze what has and has not worked for you in the past. By visiting IconoSquare’s optimization section, you can get a detailed analysis of your posting history vs. engagement. This report will also highlight the best times of the day and days of the week to post.

You may want to consider using a scheduling program to schedule your post. For that, you can use a (paid) program like ScheduGram.

Next, try to borrow or steal your competitors followers. These people have already shown some level of interest in the products you carry or service you offer simply by following your competitors’ account. You can steal them by simply engaging with them, and this is how you do this:

The 3 kinds of engagement on Instagram are:

Follow a user

Like a photo

Comment on a photo

By doing this, you will not put the ring on but you’ll be able to capture their attention and hopeful they return you a favor by commenting, liking even following you back.

Try this scientific approach:

Follow one hundred of your competitor’s followers. Later, follow another one hundred of your competitor’s followers. Take the time to like one of their photos. Finally, follow another 100 of my competitor’s followers and commented on one of each of the 100 user’s photos as well as liked that same photo.

You should expect results similar to this one:

Follow: 14% followback

Follow + Like: 22% followback

Follow + Like + Comment: 34% followback

If everything else fails, there is still a hope but this approach cost both time and money. I hope you are familiar with a phrase ” spend money to make money”. That’s exactly what i’m talking about-spend some cash.

To get started, you’ll need to make a list of large accounts in your niche. For example, if you sell beauty products, you’ll want to find large accounts from beauty bloggers.

One of the best ways is to use Webstagram and search for some of the closest hashtag keywords you uncovered in the beginning of this post. When you do a search for your keywords, not only will it show you the related keywords, but it also shows you the top Instagram accounts that feature those keywords.

There are a few things to look for in the profiles results:

Large following – Usually 20k-200k

An email address in the profile

If there is an email address in the profile, it usually means they’re open to sponsored posts. You’ll want to email them and ask them their sponsored post pricing. In general, I have found the average rate to be around $20-$50 per post, depending on the size of their following. However, if you’re selling an unique and original product, you may also want to consider sending them your product to review and post.

To sum up

In this post we talked about the how to turn your instagram marketing strategies from blah into fantastic using tools revealed through out the post. As with any social network, the most successful strategy overall is to be authentic and social.

If used correctly, Instagram can be a highly-targeted, visual advertising channel for your brand that can lead to a healthy stream of revenue for your business.

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