Instagram is an increasingly used social network. There are 11.8 million active users in just one country. Do you think this network can be good for your business, but you’re not sure how to get started? Here is our guide.
Put in place an effective strategy
At first glance, getting started on Instagram can seem simple enough. Just post some pictures on a profile to get likes and followers. But if you want your presence to bear fruit and be profitable for your business, you must ask yourself these questions (and find the answers of course):
What content will you offer to your followers in addition to your products or services?
Which Instagram community will you use to develop your brand? What are its codes, what “language” does it speak?
What performance indicators will you use to ensure your success? What are your quantified objectives (number of fans, commitment measure, and number of orders …) and are they realistic?
With what content will you start to feed your account? Does it allow you to quickly understand what you are proposing or who you are talking to?
Until when do you have available or planned content?
Define guidelines and a brand identity
The most successful brands on Instagram are the ones who know their target, their benefits, their brand universe best, and who re-transcribes them in their posts and even beyond on their entire profile in a consistent way.
Once you have established a strong brand identity, make sure all your messages are consistent with your identity and values. Your messages will only be more understandable to Instagram users and they will follow you more easily if they are in your target.
Treat your profile and your posts
With Instagram you can potentially reach 800 million users around the world, so make sure you have a perfect and engaging profile for your target audience.
Instagram is a social network primarily based on the visual. You must therefore ensure that a user who arrives on your profile for the first time and who take a global look at your publications has a good image of your company, a qualitative and rewarding image so that it decides to follow you.
If you have not skipped the second step of our guide, you are not likely to go astray but over time, it is important sometimes to take a step back and analyze your different posts to make sure they match all your guidelines and they all take the identity of your brand. This is the guarantee of the consistency of your profile and the clear idea that will emerge from your brand.
Before posting content, make sure that it highlights you, even if it is purely informative.
Accompany your content with a caption and consider using hashtags to ensure a minimum of visibility to your content.
Set up an appropriate engagement strategy
Your work does not stop once you have developed the right publishing strategy. You must always make sure that the content you are proposing meets your audience and likes it. To do this, you have to override the likes and spend time getting in touch with your subscribers, listening to them, encouraging them to comment on your posts and share their experiences. You must also visit their profiles and comment on their content.
You should not just look for subscribers from the hashtags you or your community use. You need to go out and check out competitor profiles, see their subscribers and try to get in touch with them.
If you show attention to your target, you can be sure that one part will follow you back.
Learn to get the most out of Instagram
Since its inception, Instagram has continuously improved the features that are offered to you to promote your business. Videos, albums (post with several photos), stories, live are all opportunities to exploit to meet your target.
When setting up your strategy, try to include as much as possible all its features. For example, you might want to share behind-the-scenes stories with your company, create live events to promote your products, and use posts to share information that’s useful for your community, for example.
Video will play a vital role in your success on Instagram, especially for stories. This is currently the medium that garners the most engagement with Instagram users, provided of course that it is well thought out.
You now know all the elements to consider before you start on Instagram. You will only have to be regular in your publications and maintain a consistency in your different posts. Of course, your guidelines can evolve according to the feedback you will see and changes in the social network.
Aisha Gujral 
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