Cendrine Marrouat
Social Media Slant Founder Cendrine Marrouat is a social media journalist, blogger, coach, curator, and author living in Canada. In 2012, she released The Little Big eBook on Blogging: 40 Traffic Generation Tips, a comprehensive resource that provides bloggers of all levels with essential information and precise guidance to attract quality traffic to their blogs. She is currently working on an eBook on social media strategies.
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Latest posts by Cendrine Marrouat (see all)
- The 80-20 rule in social media (Infographic) – February 26, 2014
- Interview with entrepreneur John Thomas – February 26, 2014
- Selling or not selling on social media… – February 25, 2014
With 150 million active users around the world, Instagram is not just a great place to upload selfies and pictures of your latest meal. The platform also offers a lot of potential for businesses.
Ready to leverage this potential to increase awareness of your brand? Here are five tips to help you get started on the right track.
Optimize your bio
Twitter and Instagram have the same rule: Your bio cannot contain more than 160 characters (spaces included). So, every word counts!
A great bio does not have to be complicated. Show your face, and tell people who you are, what you do, and how you do it as concisely as possible. You can also add a personal touch with a short quote or your slogan.
Of course, do not forget to include the link to your website or blog.
Interact with others
In my few weeks spent experimenting with Instagram, I have noticed one thing. The more you comment on people’s pictures, the more others will reciprocate. They will visit your profile, react to your posts, and follow you, especially if you continue interacting with them.
This tip does not just work for Instagram, of course. An active presence on social media is very rewarding.
Share behind-the-scenes photos of your business
Instagram is not just about pictures. You can capture and share short videos (up to 15 seconds) as well. What a great opportunity to make others part of your journey!
The picture above appears on my friend Ally Greer‘s profile. She is a community manager at Scoop.it, one of the best content curation platforms around.
The photo may be simple, but it says a lot about the kind of company Scoop.it is. It makes you want to get to know the team better.
https://instagram.com/p/jyDgyRp9mx/embed
Bloggers do not just write articles, they also do a lot of research and test tools all the time. That is exactly the reason behind my sharing this video with my Instagram followers. I also included the following in the description: “Testing a new plugin for my website called StarBox. It allows you to add an author bio box with your social media profile icons at the top or bottom of your pages and posts. It’s the most flexible plugin I’ve used in that category so far. I opted for the “business” theme. And it works for multiple authors. What do you think? The link to my site is in my profile. #wordpress #plugins #website #business”
As you can see, no need to go overboard. It is all about letting people take a peek at what you do and put a face to your business.
Promote your articles
Jenn Herman does a great job sharing her content on Instagram. As you can see here, the visual is nicely designed, with an attractive title and her website. It is smart because links in descriptions and comments are not clickable. Finally, take a look at the way she introduces her article. She gives viewers a good reason to check out her profile and click the link to her blog.
Of course, if you have products, you can also showcase them on Instagram. For example, check out Gap, Starbucks, or Nike for inspiration.
Note that Instagram makes it a breathe to share your content on other social media channels. While this is a fantastic option, I would recommend to err on the side of caution. All the members of your audience do not have the same expectations. Further, each social network serves a specific purpose. So, cross-promotion with the same message may not work to your advantage in some situations.
Use hashtags
Those familiar with Twitter know how important hashtags are. Well, they matter even more on Instagram, because it is really how people will find you!
With that said, do not include tags just because you can. Make sure that they are relevant. At the end of the day, your goal is to have targeted and relevant followers.
For example, avoid doing this:
If you are not too sure how to get started, my best advice would be to have a look at the way other users tag pictures that are similar to yours.
Did I miss anything? Feel free to share in the comment section below.
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√ Related Posts :
- Social media in numbers (February 2014)
- Guest post: What do you want from social Media?
- Guest post: What’s in a word?
- 2013 in review: Social media stats
- Relive your year on Facebook and Instagram with PastBook
I love comments! 🙂
Jeevan Jacob John
Hey Cendrine,I don’t use Instagram, haven’t tried it at all, but this just gives me the motivation (although, at this point, I think I am better off not trying to invest on any other sites. I am focusing on G+ and Pinterest right now, and adding more sites to the list will make it more complicated).But, I do like your idea about sharing ‘behind the scenes’ photos of our blog/business…I could probably try that (not on Instagram though…perhaps on my blog posts…and to Pinterest via my blog posts).Anyways, thank you for sharing this, Cendrine 🙂
