Tech companies aren’t usually the first businesses to come to mind when discussing Instagram marketing strategy. Instagram offers a visual online community that’s hard to compete with, offering a lot of opportunities for small businesses including those in the technology niche.
If you think Instagram is only for pictures and not a serious business tool for tech, think again. Integrating this social media platform into your marketing strategy is crucial for gaining attention online and attracting potential customers.
Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram has created a whole new world for marketers. The integrated applications offers users the ability to check Instagram messages, likes, and stats from the Facebook Business page admin screen. Additionally, the ability to advertise has changed the way people use the app completely, but we’ll touch more on that subject later.
Keep reading to find out all the things you need to know about spreading your message, driving customers to your IT business, and why your tech company should not be slacking when it comes to an Instagram marketing strategy.
Switch to a Business Profile
The most important step in creating an Instagram marketing strategy is utilizing the business profile. As a business, making the mistake of working on a personal profile will leave you in the dust of your competitors. Instagram business profiles offer extra tools like Instagram Analytics, post promotions, link in Instagram stories, contact button on your profile, and the ability to use third-party publishing sites like Sprout Social.
The most important of these features is the ability to access Instagram insights, and advertise directly through the Instagram app.
Instagram insights provide businesses all of the essential data to know about how their account, their followers, and how each post is performing. This information allows you to analyze what’s working in your strategy and what needs to change.
Create a Strategy
An Instagram marketing strategy is no different than any other marketing strategy for your tech business. Having a plan in place is important so you can have both a goal and a measurable way to reach it.
If your end goal is to get new leads and business, you need a plan! Start with your goal then list out ideas, posts, and methods to achieve this goal. If you have all of these written down you are more likely to complete each objective.
Creating aesthetically pleasing content, growing a following, utilizing your Instagram bio, using hashtags and implementing Instagram Ads are all important aspects of an Instagram marketing strategy. We’ll go into more detail about each item, but just know you must focus on each aspect, such as a fonts generator to implement a successful Instagram marketing strategy.
Know and Grow your Audience
One of the most important parts of your Instagram marketing strategies is growing a following. With a larger more engaged audience, you will be able to spread your message and sell products to more people.
When first starting out it can be difficult to grow your audience, so that’s why Instagram growth services, like Kicksta are here to help.
Unlike many services that buy followers or likes for your account, Kicksta uses specific targeting techniques to gain your account real followers in your niche. Rather than automating comments or messages that are extremely robotic and could get your account blocked, Kicksta uses a steady liking method, to guarantee organic Instagram growth.
Focus on Content
Instagram at its core is a photo-sharing app. Content is arguably the most important factor of any marketer’s social media strategy. With so many different ways to approach content, it can be very intimidating at first to decide what to post. As mentioned, because Instagram is a visual app, posting eye-catching imagery is a crucial part of attracting likes.
Instagram has roughly 1 billion monthly users, so creating unique and authentic content is the key to standing out amongst competitors. If you post the same type of content as everyone else, your account will get lost in the shuffle.
Pro Tip: Stop using stock photography and staged promo pictures.
To appeal to prospects and leads, you want to post authentic and relatable content that gives the viewer a glimpse into your company culture and the products you’re promoting. Most importantly, keep your brand’s personality, colors, and mantra in mind while posting content. It should be cohesive and make sense for your company!
Finally, prioritize quality over quantity. Many marketers make the mistake of spamming users’ feeds to attract attention to their profiles. It’s more important to post five high-quality photos a week than three low-quality posts a day. Your content represents your business and product, so showing that you put time and effort into your posts will reflect how you run your business.
Hashtag Strategy
As mentioned, attracting the right audience is crucial for growth on this app. Your audience is out there, you just need to know where to find them and how to help them find you. To ensure this happens, learning how to implement a hashtag will be incredibly beneficial to your overall Instagram marketing strategy.
You may think that #tech will attract anyone interested in tech to your business. The problem with this theory is this hashtag is very generic and linked to millions of other posts. To attract a niche audience you’ll need to get more specific with your hashtag strategy.
Creating a branded hashtag that is unique to your business is a great way to let your followers join in on the conversation surrounding your company, brand, or product. For example, the popular service Squarespace, gives users the platform to build websites, online stores, and domains. They highlight their customers using the #SQSPCustomer.
In addition to creating your hashtags, mimicking the hashtags popular accounts in your niche are using is a great way to attract like-minded users. This technique has proven to help your profile gain attention and followers. With any hashtag strategy, it will take trial and error but is completely worth it in the end.
Utilize Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are one of the most important aspects of your Instagram marketing strategy. Because Instagram stories sit at the top of your home page as opposed to in your feed, they’re more visible to your followers. Posting every view hours will add to your visibility on the app.
Using the Instagram stories features will help your stories perform better. Adding the poll feature, question stickers, and locations to post will allow your story to reach more users. Remember our tips on creating content and ensure your stories are also an extension of your brand. These posts are just as crucial as feed posts and will boost your brand’s image.
Once you have 10k followers and have the swipe up feature, you’ll be able to quickly direct followers to your website to purchase your service or product. Until then, add a linktree link in your bio to quickly give users access to different links associated with your business.
Use Instagram Ads
If we haven’t beat this point into the ground yet, posting visually engaging and unique content is vital for a successful Instagram marketing strategy. Before jumping into Instagram Ads, start by posting great content daily. From there you can utilize Instagram and Facebook Ads to target specific audiences and boost your original posts to reach new people.
Instagram marketing gives you multiple ways to promote posts including stories, photos, videos, a combination of photos and videos (called the carousel feature) or collection Ads. Instagram offers multiple targeting options to target specific people by location, interests, demographics, behaviors, custom audiences, lookalike audiences (people similar to your existing customers) and automated targeting (used if you need help quickly to create an audience). This way you can ensure your content is seen by the right people who would potentially purchase your product or service, and continue to engage with your content in the future.
