Since our inception, Tiege Hanley’s goal has been to connect with our audience not only to promote our men’s skin care products, but to learn more about them and share knowledge and information with them. With so many active users and features, Instagram was an option we knew we couldn’t overlook. We’ve learned many lessons during our time on Instagram, and we want to share those with you:
Keep It Simple
Instagram is a very dynamic network. With new features available every day, it’s easy to lose yourself in regards to content creation and keeping up with all the latest trends. It seems like every time we log in, there’s a new feature popping up. The fact of the matter is that we have resisted riding the wave of changes. Up to until this point, we’ve kept our overall Instagram strategy relatively simple. We know what works and we stick with it, although we continue to do tests and experiment with other types of content to determine what works best for our brand.
We mainly stick to the traditional single-photo and video posts. While Instagram offers a wide variety of new types of content, this doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of their users joined the platform for their traditional offering of photos and videos within a user’s home feed.
If You Build It, They May Not Necessarily Come
The famous quote from the movie “Field of Dreams” does not necessarily hold up in real life. Instagram’s platform may offer new features that seem interesting, but this doesn’t guarantee that their users will utilize the new features, and if they do, there is no guarantee that they will use them for an extended period of time. Facebook is a real-world example of this, as they have quietly removed certain features like the Ticker and Trending News.
Given that we currently have a limited team, we are more conservative in regard to generating content utilizing new features. We like to stick with our bread and butter, and that’s single photos and video. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are opposed to experimenting with new features and different types of content, but we prefer that our content comes across and evolves naturally, as opposed to blindly hopping on the next trend.
Increasing Consumer Engagement Via The Stories Feature
Encouraging consumer engagement is one of the most effective marketing strategies today. One of our preferred tactics is to use the Stories feature to share some of our clients’ testimonials. This gives us a chance to reward our loyal customers for spreading the word about Tiege Hanley and recommending their favorite skin care products. The feature is a great way to give something back to our customer base and generate some buzz around our products.
The Power Of The Hashtag
We make sure to include hashtags in every one of our posts. We do our best to employ hashtags that mirror our brand and our message closely. To gauge the effectiveness of each hashtag, we monitor its performance closely to determine our priorities. We also switch our tags frequently to ensure that we are reaching the largest possible audience organically.
A Consistent, Planned Approach
Like with many other endeavors, consistency is key. Instagram’s algorithms favor more frequent posts, but it is important to find a balance. If you post too much content in a short amount of time, you will strain your employees and your audience is most likely to tune you out. If your posting is sparse, then chances are you don’t show up in your audience’s feed frequently enough to stay on their mind.
This is where content scheduling platforms come in handy, specifically those with engagement analytics. Tracking and analyzing the data will help your team determine the perfect balance in the amount of content and how frequently you post.
Be Genuine, Avoid Shady Growth Tactics
Wasting time on follow/unfollow schemes does not develop a loyal audience. While certain tactics may give you favorable results in the short-term, they will flop in the long run when your audience unfollows you. As opposed to taking shortcuts, focus on creating great content so your audience will benefit. While working on developing our audience to promote our men’s skin care systems, we actually spent the first six months or so just sharing information with our viewers before even asking for a sale.
Work on creating great content on Instagram that can generate interest among your viewers, use a scheduling platform for consistency and analytics, and learn to engage with your audience more. Make sure to scan your own posts for any comments or questions and ensure that you respond to them quickly. With a little effort and consistency, you will develop a community.
There are no shortcuts to a genuine success on Instagram, although certain shortcuts may create the illusion of success. Create your content with purpose, schedule it carefully, and then track each post’s performance closely. A content management platform works very well in this case because it can give you many of the features you need to tie an effective Instagram campaign together all in one spot.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post about how a company leveraged Instagram to build branding and grow social selling.
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