Top Instagram marketing mistakes to avoid

Instagram appeared in 2010 and very soon this small application developed into a huge social network. In 2012 Facebook owned Instagram and in 2014 this app gained popularity among more than 300 million people.

As for the marketing purposes, Instagram proved to be the tool that helps brands, celebrities, social media figures, and small companies engage their audience better. People absorb visual information better than any other. And this is one of the main secrets of Instagram’s popularity. Some people take photos of their food or share selfies with their friends, while the others plan strategies to reach more audience, build a brand, and get more leads.

We could continue telling you about this network and its advantages for a rather long time, but if you are reading this, you probably already familiar with them. If not, find out more about Instagram from this work on Student Share.

Our today’s focus is the most common mistakes people are making when including Instagram into their marketing strategy. We will explore them to make sure that you will avoid the same traps.

You don’t have a clear goal

We know that you have already seen millions of all those “goal setting strategies” and they make you sick. However, when it comes to Instagram, you need to know your goals or you risk to waste your time and effort. Goal setting is really important here, because when you know for what purposes you use Instagram, you can build your strategy around this goal.

For example, your aim is to get more traffic from your landing page. In this case, your pics must include a small text with a persuasive call-to-action. If your goal is to build brand awareness, then you should pay attention to the quality and uniqueness of photos. Your strategy comes from the text, filters you use, and type of images you post. Having no strategy means missing out on a huge part of your audience.

You forget to include a link to your website in your bio

Instagram allows you to include one click-able link in your bio. So make sure to make use of this! If you don’t have one in your bio – it is a failure. Remember, if you are new to Instagram, the first thing you should do is updating your bio and including a link to a landing page, home page, or any other page of your website.

Instagram’s audience matters to brands. If you are using Instagram for business purposes, then you subscribers care for your brand or product. Oftentimes people who visit your Instagram page would like to visit your site.

Your account is private

You can make your profile invisible for non-subscribers. But don’t do that for your business profile. You want users to see, recognize, like, share, and follow, don’t you? However, your potential subscriber will leave your account at the moment they see a private icon. They understand this icon as a message “go away, we don’t need you”. They don’t want to wait until you find time for them, log in, check and approve their request. Also, they are not sure that they want to subscribe because they don’t see your photos and other content. So they don’t know how interesting and cool your product or service is. And therefore, there is no reason to subscribe.

You post the same things, again and again,

You don’t want your users to unfollow your account, right? Then do not post duplicate or pretty much the same photos. Sure, when you have a good reason to repost your previous content – you are welcome to do so. Just don’t do it regularly.

Unique content always gets more attention and makes your brand more reliable and trustworthy. Poor and duplicate content will never encourage users to purchase your service or product.

Instagram users want to be entertained. If they follow you, they want to benefit from content you offer. Sharing the same photo you have already posted before or something everybody has already seen doesn’t deliver any new results to users. So forget about it.

You don’t respond to users’ comments

When users leave comments about your Instagram photos, you should respond them as soon as possible. When you use this network to improve brand awareness, build trustworthy relationships with your clients, and reach more target audience, answering to their comments is crucial. Answer the questions, remind about new arrivals, or elaborate on your content to achieve your primary goal.

When you leave your users and their comments without any attention, they take this as a sign that you don’t really care about them. Therefore, even if you are busy like every social media marketer, you still have to spare a couple of minutes to reply. You don’t want to wreck relationships with your followers, especially active ones.

You use hashtags wrongly

Every social media marketer feels a little confused when it comes to including the most optimal number of hashtags in a post. Of course, ten hashtags will bring your more interaction than just two, but it doesn’t mean that the more hashtags you include – the better. Instagram allows thirty hashtags per post, but you shouldn’t use all of them for every photo or video.

Hashtags must be relevant to your brand and attract the right visitors. If you overflow your posts with hashtags, especially with irrelevant ones, you will lose credibility very fast. Use them for what they are created – help users to find what they are really looking for. Too many hashtags will play the opposite role.

Well, as you can see, Instagram is a great platform for business. It can help you generate more traffic, engage target audience, and grow the number of your followers, and therefore – clients. The mistakes we have mentioned above are common for most entrepreneurs. But don’t be too overwhelmed by them – they are easy to fix. Just check and double-check your strategy for mistakes and move on!