Instagram Archives - Chief Marketer https://www.chiefmarketer.com/topic/instagram/ The Global Information Portal for Modern Marketers Mon, 14 Jun 2021 17:04:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 Social Media Marketing: Five Types of Instagram Posts for SMBs https://www.chiefmarketer.com/social-media-marketing-five-types-of-instagram-posts-for-smb-businesses/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/social-media-marketing-five-types-of-instagram-posts-for-smb-businesses/#respond Fri, 11 Jun 2021 15:09:56 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?p=267706 Five types of Instagram posts businesses can use to boost engagement.

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Instagram reports that 90 percent of its users follow a business, and two-thirds of people surveyed said that the platform enables interaction with brands. The implication: Even SMBs need to be there. For marketers looking for ideas, a piece in Multichannel Merchant explores five types of Instagram posts businesses can use to boost engagement.

Ask Your Followers a Question

Posing open-ended questions to your followers, such as “What is your favorite ___” or asking them for a recommendation, is a simple tactic that sparks two-way conversation and provides followers a way to directly connect with your brand.

Feature Behind-the-Scenes Content

Showing BTS content on your social channels is a way to humanize your business. Posting videos on how a product is made or providing a day-in-the-life clip that showcases your company’s culture and values can boost brand engagement and trustworthiness. Nor does the content need to be polished: People appreciate a raw, uncut version if it’s providing backstage access.

Share Relatable Memes

Rather than merely pushing your product or service, consider sharing creative and relatable memes to drive comments and likes. Create your own or curate popular ones—but be careful with sharing memes that are not available in high resolution (important for a visual-first platform such as Instagram) or may be seen by your audience and already considered old.

For more ideas for Instagram posts, including user-generated content and contests, read more in Multichannel Merchant.

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How to Spot Fake Influencers with Instagram Audit InstaCheck https://www.chiefmarketer.com/partner-content/how-to-spot-fake-influencers-with-instagram-audit-instacheck/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/partner-content/how-to-spot-fake-influencers-with-instagram-audit-instacheck/#respond Tue, 16 Jun 2020 13:59:48 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?post_type=partner-content&p=264465 The piece covers actionable ways to spot fake influencers on Instagram with the special tool InstaCheck and reveals some hacks businesses can use to detect inauthentic opinion leaders.

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Linqia, a top influencer marketing agency, published its fourth yearly report, ‘The State of Influencer Marketing 2020,’ for which it surveyed 192 marketers and discovered that 57% of marketers would increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2020.

The variety of social media influencers is also increasing — now users with differing levels of reach and followership are chosen by brands and qualified for marketing campaigns. 77% percent of marketers surveyed are interested in partnering with micro-influencers, while 64% wish to work with macro-influencers. One striking difference was in the desire to use nano-influencers, which was higher than the intent to work with celebrities (25% to 22%).

As far as the social media platform of choice, Instagram remains a leading influencer marketing platform. 

As influencer marketing becomes more popular, the choice of a relevant influencer becomes even more crucial for a campaign’s success. Yet, the primary requirement for a campaign to be a profit is that it picks genuine influencers to spread the brand’s message. 

Influencer marketing can be a waste of money if an influencer is chosen incorrectly. Yet, it can also result in adequate ROI; everything depends on the influencers qualified for the marketing campaign. This is why it’s vital to spot fake influencers before spending money on their services. 

How to spot a fake influencer

There are multiple ways to detect fake influencers – manual analysis of their social media profile, third-party tools with AI, and professional help of a social media expert along with artificial intelligence. 

InstaCheck is the example of an Instagram account audit run by a human expert with profound usage of AI and machine learning. Here’s how this Instagram account audit can help you to spot a fake Instagram influencer:

  • It runs a total profile examination

  • It analyses Instagram content

  • It analyses an influencer’s captions

  • It examines an influencer’s account engagement

Apart from the points above, you can also apply for InstaCheck of your own Instagram profile to build a better business profile and get your aesthetics, branding, and tone of voice examined along with getting relevant content ideas for your page. 

On the stage of the application, you will need to fill in your Instagram account information or insert an account link of an influencer you want to check. You will need to answer some questions from the questionnaire offered by a social media analyst who will run the audit. 

After some time, you will get a PDF report with a thorough explanation of yours or an influencer’s Instagram profile. If you have your own account analysed, you will also get exclusive recommendations on how you can enhance your Instagram account marketing. For an additional fee, you can also schedule a 30 minute Skype consultation with a social media expert and ask any questions directly. 

Manual influencer’s profile check

There are several signs that will help you spot a fake opinion leader manually without any services. You can run a manual influencers’ examination to get an initial picture of their authenticity. 

Sometimes, it’s sufficient to just quickly look at comments left under an influencer’s post to detect which of them are real and which ones are fake. For example, comments consisting of one word or emojis are typically left by bots. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA9e-I6hBeT/

Another way is to analyse the authenticity of an influencer is to check their engagement. Without any complex formulae, just look at the number of likes and comments in relation to the followership. If along with thousands of followers you see that an Instagrammer gets just dozens of likes and comments, it means that the followership consists of bots, fake or ghost accounts. If the number of likes is invisible due to the Instagram update implemented in 2019, you can use third-party tools to see how many likes an influencer gets per post. 

Besides, if you notice that new posts garner much more likes than those published a month ago, it might mean the account has been promoted non-organically. 

To check the authenticity of an influencer, manually analyse their audience who liked or commented on their posts. If there are many accounts with strange usernames and empty accounts without any content, these followers are bots. 

Communication between influencers and their audience plays a crucial role in influencers’ authenticity. Before working with an influencer, you need to make sure that they talk to their followers: reply to comments, publish stories with answers to their questions, and alike. If they do, replies to the audience’s comments should not be just ‘Thank you’, but have some sense and meaning.  

Yet another actionable way to check an influencer’s authenticity is to google their name and find their accounts on other social media. If you see that an influencer has Twitter, TikTok or YouTube with live followership, it will mean that their Instagram account is also genuine. By searching for them on search engines, you will also be able to find other relevant information about an influencer. 

Check what an influencer promotes and which brands sponsor their content on Instagram. To do so, find posts with hashtags like #spon, #sponsored or #ad and detect who an influencer partnered with before. Products that they promote should be relevant to their target audience. An influencer who respects followership and values the reputation would never push scam and questionable products to their followers. 

The bottom line

Finding the right influencer is a crucial point in any influencer marketing campaign. Before partnering with a social media influencer, you need to be 100% sure you’ve chosen the person whose target audience is relevant to your brand, who spreads messages that align with your business and your clients. Given that there are so many influencers on Instagram alone, sometimes, it’s challenging to choose a proper one to work with you. 

Luckily, there are tools that prove to be really useful when it comes to finding the best influencers for your campaign. To make sure you will get adequate ROI and increase your brand awareness with influencer marketing, apply for InstaCheck now to find which influencers are actually influential. 

The post How to Spot Fake Influencers with Instagram Audit InstaCheck appeared first on Chief Marketer.

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How to Spot Fake Influencers with Instagram Audit InstaCheck https://www.chiefmarketer.com/gated/how-to-spot-fake-influencers-with-instagram-audit-instacheck/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/gated/how-to-spot-fake-influencers-with-instagram-audit-instacheck/#respond Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:25:33 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?post_type=gated&p=264459 The piece covers actionable ways to spot fake influencers on Instagram with the special tool InstaCheck and reveals some hacks businesses can use to detect inauthentic opinion leaders.

The post How to Spot Fake Influencers with Instagram Audit InstaCheck appeared first on Chief Marketer.

]]>

 

Linqia, a top influencer marketing agency, published its fourth yearly report, ‘The State of Influencer Marketing 2020,’ for which it surveyed 192 marketers and discovered that 57% of marketers would increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2020.

The variety of social media influencers is also increasing — now users with differing levels of reach and followership are chosen by brands and qualified for marketing campaigns. 77% percent of marketers surveyed are interested in partnering with micro-influencers, while 64% wish to work with macro-influencers. One striking difference was in the desire to use nano-influencers, which was higher than the intent to work with celebrities (25% to 22%).

As far as the social media platform of choice, Instagram remains a leading influencer marketing platform. 

As influencer marketing becomes more popular, the choice of a relevant influencer becomes even more crucial for a campaign’s success. Yet, the primary requirement for a campaign to be a profit is that it picks genuine influencers to spread the brand’s message. 

Influencer marketing can be a waste of money if an influencer is chosen incorrectly. Yet, it can also result in adequate ROI; everything depends on the influencers qualified for the marketing campaign. This is why it’s vital to spot fake influencers before spending money on their services. 

How to spot a fake influencer

There are multiple ways to detect fake influencers – manual analysis of their social media profile, third-party tools with AI, and professional help of a social media expert along with artificial intelligence. 

InstaCheck is the example of an Instagram account audit run by a human expert with profound usage of AI and machine learning. Here’s how this Instagram account audit can help you to spot a fake Instagram influencer:

  • It runs a total profile examination

  • It analyses Instagram content

  • It analyses an influencer’s captions

  • It examines an influencer’s account engagement

Apart from the points above, you can also apply for InstaCheck of your own Instagram profile to build a better business profile and get your aesthetics, branding, and tone of voice examined along with getting relevant content ideas for your page. 

On the stage of the application, you will need to fill in your Instagram account information or insert an account link of an influencer you want to check. You will need to answer some questions from the questionnaire offered by a social media analyst who will run the audit. 

After some time, you will get a PDF report with a thorough explanation of yours or an influencer’s Instagram profile. If you have your own account analysed, you will also get exclusive recommendations on how you can enhance your Instagram account marketing. For an additional fee, you can also schedule a 30 minute Skype consultation with a social media expert and ask any questions directly. 

Manual influencer’s profile check

There are several signs that will help you spot a fake opinion leader manually without any services. You can run a manual influencers’ examination to get an initial picture of their authenticity. 

Sometimes, it’s sufficient to just quickly look at comments left under an influencer’s post to detect which of them are real and which ones are fake. For example, comments consisting of one word or emojis are typically left by bots. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA9e-I6hBeT/

Another way is to analyse the authenticity of an influencer is to check their engagement. Without any complex formulae, just look at the number of likes and comments in relation to the followership. If along with thousands of followers you see that an Instagrammer gets just dozens of likes and comments, it means that the followership consists of bots, fake or ghost accounts. If the number of likes is invisible due to the Instagram update implemented in 2019, you can use third-party tools to see how many likes an influencer gets per post. 

Besides, if you notice that new posts garner much more likes than those published a month ago, it might mean the account has been promoted non-organically. 

To check the authenticity of an influencer, manually analyse their audience who liked or commented on their posts. If there are many accounts with strange usernames and empty accounts without any content, these followers are bots. 

Communication between influencers and their audience plays a crucial role in influencers’ authenticity. Before working with an influencer, you need to make sure that they talk to their followers: reply to comments, publish stories with answers to their questions, and alike. If they do, replies to the audience’s comments should not be just ‘Thank you’, but have some sense and meaning.  

Yet another actionable way to check an influencer’s authenticity is to google their name and find their accounts on other social media. If you see that an influencer has Twitter, TikTok or YouTube with live followership, it will mean that their Instagram account is also genuine. By searching for them on search engines, you will also be able to find other relevant information about an influencer. 

Check what an influencer promotes and which brands sponsor their content on Instagram. To do so, find posts with hashtags like #spon, #sponsored or #ad and detect who an influencer partnered with before. Products that they promote should be relevant to their target audience. An influencer who respects followership and values the reputation would never push scam and questionable products to their followers. 

The bottom line

Finding the right influencer is a crucial point in any influencer marketing campaign. Before partnering with a social media influencer, you need to be 100% sure you’ve chosen the person whose target audience is relevant to your brand, who spreads messages that align with your business and your clients. Given that there are so many influencers on Instagram alone, sometimes, it’s challenging to choose a proper one to work with you. 

Luckily, there are tools that prove to be really useful when it comes to finding the best influencers for your campaign. To make sure you will get adequate ROI and increase your brand awareness with influencer marketing, apply for InstaCheck now to find which influencers are actually influential. 

The post How to Spot Fake Influencers with Instagram Audit InstaCheck appeared first on Chief Marketer.

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Three New Instagram Tools for Social Media Marketers https://www.chiefmarketer.com/three-new-instagram-tools-for-social-media-marketers/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/three-new-instagram-tools-for-social-media-marketers/#respond Fri, 24 Jan 2020 14:15:23 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?p=263146 Business accounts on Instagram have access to these new tools.

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Marketers still mourning the disappearance of the “like” count from Instagram will welcome the new tools the platform recently rolled out for users of its native offering. They allow marketers to track which posts result in the most growth for their accounts, organize their direct messages inbox and establish age gating controls that will come in handy for brands advertising alcohol, tobacco and other regulated products.

The first new tool is a welcomed one. Instagram’s growth insights feature allows marketers to track follower growth over time by navigating to the Audience tab and clicking on specific posts. Business accounts will now be able to attribute spikes in follower growth to particular posts and time frames.

The ability to organize an account’s DMs is another new feature. Marketers can now separate inboxes into two categories: primary (which are prioritized as most important for your business) and general. Lastly, an age gating feature lets marketers set up a minimum age limit for an account, which will be useful for brands that are highly regulated.

Read more about the new features and how social media marketers are reacting to them in The Social Shake-Up.


Other articles you might enjoy:

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The Changing Face of B2B Social Media https://www.chiefmarketer.com/the-changing-face-of-b2b-social-media/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/the-changing-face-of-b2b-social-media/#respond Wed, 18 Sep 2019 21:43:24 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?p=261216 Toast, Thoughtbot and Constant Contact share how they're increasing their
B2B social circle of engagement, and what metrics really matter.

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Thoughtbot podcast B2B social
Podcasts help Thoughtbot build B2B social buzz.

For B2B marketers, social media no longer necessarily just means having an up-to-date LinkedIn page. Today, savvy B2B marketers are expanding their social circles to connect with audiences where they want to engage.

Budgets are backing up that need for increased engagement: 50 percent of respondents to Chief Marketer’s recent 2019 Martech Outlook survey said they would be investing in social media management software within the next 12 months.

For Constant Contact, having a mix of social channels is important, says Hannah Budreski, vice president of marketing. “People jump from social channels—our social director calls it ‘fleeing audiences’—so we can’t be too invested in any one channel to keep them engaged.”

How people interact with the brand on social has evolved, she notes. Where in the past, conversations might have occurred directly on the social channels, now, people are instead direct messaging with questions or comments.

“We’re seeing a lot more lurkers and people searching for content,” Budreski notes. “They might not be inclined to engage publicly via social, but they might send a message via Facebook Messenger, so we’re having a conversation there. It’s just getting taken out of the public eye.”

Thoughtbot has built a social audience by sharing ideas and thought leadership both through LinkedIn and Quora, where it can target interests by topic, notes CMO Lindsey Christensen. Social content helps with lead nurturing, and can help increase engagement at live events, where someone from the company might be speaking.


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The design consultancy—which helps technology innovators and start-ups design and deploy applications—also builds social momentum with podcasts, such as “Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Robots,” which talks about the design and development of software, or “Build Phase,” a weekly discussion on iOS development.

“We interview founders and technology leaders, and talk to them about their stories, themselves, and the challenges they face,” she says. “It’s a great mechanism for nurturing our audience, particularly with people we want to reach out to—we can invite them to be on the podcast.”

B2B social engagement is a little different for Boston-based restaurant management platform Toast.

“Restauranteurs are not sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day, they’re out on the restaurant floor,” says Kelly Esten, senior director of product marketing at Toast. This means unlike many B2B pros, LinkedIn is not the natural place to find them.

“We’re reaching restauranteurs wherever they are, whether it is on Faceboook, Instagram or via text messages,” she says.

On Facebook, the company recently launched an online community, called Food for Thought. The goal is to give restaurant professionals a place to communicate with each other. While a benefit is, of course, brand building, the intent is not to promote Toast in the community. “We try and stay out of the way—it’s more about our customers,” she says.

B2B Social ROI

For Constant Contact, how the success of a campaign is gauged depends on the goal. “It depends on what we want to accomplish. We’re putting a lot of content out there, but the ROI is different than, say, with email [offering a] free trial,” Budreski says. ‘It’s more of an impression, rather than getting them to take an action right at that moment.”

Toast looks at social ROI through the lens of engagement. Existing customers are the company’s number one source of referrals, says Esten, so using social to connect with them and encourage them to talk about the brand is important.

Christensen says Thoughtbot primarily considers paid social when gauging ROI, which can be a bit more straightforward to track than organic efforts.

“Organic social is trickier,” she says. “If we can track it, great. If not, we continue to share and follow best practices because we can ‘feel’ the results, even if they’re less tangible.”


Hear more from Lindsey Christensen, Hannah Budreski and Kelly Esten at LeadsCon’s Connect to Convert 2019 in Boston, Sept. 25-27


 

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Inside the NBA’s Social Media Slam Dunk: Ideas to Steal https://www.chiefmarketer.com/inside-the-nbas-social-media-slam-dunk-ideas-to-steal/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/inside-the-nbas-social-media-slam-dunk-ideas-to-steal/#respond Wed, 11 Sep 2019 20:43:54 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?p=260898 The NBA is flexing its marketing muscles and showing why it continues
to outperform all other sports leagues when it comes to social media.

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NBA Lakers
The LA Lakers take the top honors among NBA teams for the highest absolute increase in social media engagement YoY.

In an off-season marked by big moves by some of its biggest stars, the NBA is flexing its marketing muscles and showing why it continues to outperform all other sports leagues when it comes to social media.

According to a recent report from MVPindex, the NBA grew the value of its social media footprint by a whopping 132 percent year over year (YoY), despite a drop in domestic ratings and impressive inroads into the Chinese and European markets. The league generated a total social value of more than $13.7 billion and created a record $1.1 billion in value for its brand partners, compared with the second-place NFL creating $343 million in value for its brand partners during the same timeframe.

By any measure, these numbers demonstrate incredible value and growth for the NBA and its sponsors, even at a time when their traditional broadcast viewership dipped in 2018-19 by 4% overall and 5% for national games across ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV. Behind this success is a deliberate focus on social media as a value generator, and a consistent and disciplined social media strategy that others would do well to emulate.

How do they do it? First and foremost, they simply post more content—132,000 times more to be exact. However, real social media value does not simply come from the quantity of posts, but the quality of their content. How effective is the content in driving engagement? Do fans like, comment and share the content or simply scroll by it?

The NBA is a star-driven league, and it knows it. It leverages its players’ popularity and capitalizes on its diverse personalities by persistently emphasizing and amplifying key moments in their lives, both on and off the court.

The Los Angeles Lakers take the top honors among NBA teams for the highest absolute increase in social media engagement YoY. This increase was due in large measure to the star power of Lebron James when he joined the team in the last off-season. Social excitement around the team is likely to propel even further since the Lakers traded for their coveted power forward, Anthony Davis. The league is already generating hype for the 2019-2020 season by capitalizing on these and other off-season moves. It’s no wonder that the NBA’s opening night features James and Davis facing off against NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, now with the Los Angeles Clippers.


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With that said, marquis matchups and All-Star appearances aren’t a prerequisite for social media success. The NBA’s most engaging tweet of the year featured Derrick Rose’s 50-point game on Halloween. It was Rose’s first start in more than a year, and it had been seven years since his last 40-point game (2011). These types of comeback stories and other celebrations of player milestones strike an emotional chord with fans.

Fans also vote with their hearts when it comes to optimism about the next game or even the next season for their favorite teams. The most engaging post from the Milwaukee Bucks, for example, was a final score graphic of their playoff loss to the eventual NBA Champs, the Toronto Raptors. The copy delivered a clear message to fans: “Our story is just beginning.” Over the course of their incredible season, the Bucks earned 1.1 million new social followers with 67% coming on Instagram. It’s no coincidence that league-wide, Instagram also accounts for more than half of the social media value created by the NBA for its brand partners even though it represents just 16% of the league’s branded posts.

In addition to its marquis players, the NBA has another advantage – a relatively long season and hundreds of games. Each team in the NBA plays 82 regular season games, and there are an additional 60 to 105 games during the post-season’s best-of-seven matchups. The league runs continuously for about nine months from the end of October to the middle of June (not to mention a burgeoning summer league for young and developing players).

Leveraging the abundance of opportunities, the NBA derives success from a deliberate strategy to capitalize on organic content and amplify it on the social media platforms that their fans use most. From every game-winning shot, breakaway, and dunk on the court to off-court moments like the runway show from parking lot to locker room and the post-game press conference, every moment is fodder for engagement.

Aside from having access to an enviable amount of compelling content, the NBA and its teams treat social media as the significant marketing channel that it is, dedicating mindshare, expertise and marketing budget to support it. For example, the Memphis Grizzlies more than doubled their social engagement rate YoY by putting more emphasis on platforms with higher engagement from their audience. They made the biggest gains on YouTube and Instagram in part by providing things beyond scores and highlights, including special events, charitable endeavors, player milestones and play-profile draft hype.

All of this social engagement creates huge potential value for the league’s sponsors and their respective brand activations. Seven of the top 25 brand activations in 2018-19 came from jersey sponsors, who also took the opportunity to active beyond their physical brand placement. In many cases, incidental branding meant that post copy didn’t need to be branded to give great visibility to sponsors.

Media backdrops are perhaps the greatest unsung heroes when it comes to generating brand value for sponsors on social. The Cleveland Cavaliers generate the most brand value for their jersey sponsor, Goodyear, but the Cleveland Clinic, which has a proud position on the team’s press backdrop, generated nearly the same value.

Many sponsors also take advantage of key plays or images from games like Budweiser’s “Photo of the Game/Quality Fact” promotion. By associating their brand with the best image from the game, Budweiser is connecting with fans outside of traditional beer advertising and product promotions. Other activations happen via final-and half-time score graphics like Frost Bank’s Final Score update for the San Antonio Spurs, which generated 92% of Frost Bank’s value from social media activations with NBA teams.

The NBA social case study is one upon which any brand or property can capitalize, regardless of industry, simply by asking themselves the following questions:

  • What is the most engaging social platform for your audience?
  • What assets provide the most visibility and impact for your sponsors?
  • Who are your strongest personalities or thought leaders?
  • What are your target customers or fans excited about already?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, it’s time to invest in a social media measurement solution that can tell you. After all, you can’t manage let alone leverage something that you aren’t measuring.

The NBA’s recipe for social success ultimately comes down to a deep understanding of its fans, as well as the league’s unique assets and inherent strengths: star players and compelling personalities that provide an abundance of both on-the-court and off-the-court moments that offered a rich content pipeline. Combine all of that with a smart and well-resourced social media strategy and the ability to collect and leverage data, and you create value. Value for your partners, value for your brand, and value for your business.

Kyle Nelson is co-founder of MVPIndex.

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How to Grow a Meaningful B2B Instagram Following https://www.chiefmarketer.com/how-to-grow-a-meaningful-b2b-instagram-following/ https://www.chiefmarketer.com/how-to-grow-a-meaningful-b2b-instagram-following/#respond Wed, 02 Jan 2019 21:46:29 +0000 https://www.chiefmarketer.com/?p=251019 For B2B marketers, using non-business social platforms like Instagram can be tricky. Here's tips to make visual platforms work.

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instagramAs a B2B marketer, it can be tricky trying to connect with buyer personas on non-business social platforms like Instagram. B2C companies can more easily watch and listen for their ideal customers using hashtags that would indicate a possible interest in their brand.

For example, someone posting a selfie in NRG Stadium using the hashtags #HoustonTexans and #GoTexans is likely to be interested in NFL Christmas swag being sold via Instagram’s Shopify integration. But how often do you see that same person, who happens to be a web developer, posting pictures of their code editing software using hashtags like #coderlife? Possibly never. Yet she exists and is, in fact, on Instagram.

Let’s walk through how to connect with your Instagram audience and grow a meaningful following.

Are You Ready for Instagram? How Your Brand Fits on a Visual Platform

First things first: At this point, you should have done your research and identified that your buyer persona does, in fact, use Instagram.

Your B2B offering might not have any concrete visual components that could translate into compelling Instagram visuals, and that’s perfectly okay. There are other creative ways to visually represent your brand, content and offerings.

If you’re able to use marketing hours to branch out onto social media, you should be rocking a foundation of some great inbound content. Your blogs, e-books, webinars and so on should all have some sort of visual component. Whether it’s a hero image, cover design or slide, this is an opportunity for you to share your valuable content. Accompany the featured image with a text overlay or caption including things like a quote from the author, an excerpt or interesting statistic, a relatable problem or question solved in the content, or the title of the piece.


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Of course, if your offering itself can be visually captured, take this opportunity to show it off. You can use your caption to provide its value proposition—and embrace the platform by being quippy or funny if your brand’s voice allows for it and it speaks to your buyer persona. If you have influencers that use your offering, feature them and a testimonial. Third-party affirmations go a long way on social media.

Ready to move beyond static images? You can use third-party platforms to draw attention by animating your photos, add audio clips and an animated sound wave to feature your podcast, or post video footage.

While planning out your posting strategy, don’t forget aesthetics. Does each image match your brand’s guidelines? How do they look together on your feed? Keeping the imagery cohesive will strengthen your brand and audience recall of it.

Providing Valuable Content to Your Audience

Although creating visually appealing content is extremely important on Instagram, it doesn’t replace the value that you need to be providing. Determine what you’d like the outcome to be from each post. Is it to educate, entertain, raise awareness or build brand authority? Are you hitting your goal with that pretty picture you just posted? We’ve already talked about your inbound content, so how else can you provide value?

Let’s start with Stories. Stories are a great way to notify Instagram users about an event such as a webinar or conference you’re hosting or sponsoring. You can curate professional videos and have them play through a continuous stream of the 15-second stories, or produce them in the moment and post instantly from your smartphone. Bonus: If you have more than 10,000 followers, you can add a link from your stories and users can swipe up to visit the URL. If you have employees or clients that are active on Stories, encourage them to tag you when appropriate so you can repost on your own Stories. Don’t forget to create Highlights by category that live on your profile and allow your audience to re-watch them after the 24-hour disappear mark.

Show off your company culture and employer brand. People have access to all kinds of information about your company online and can see you and all of your competitors with one click. Although your value proposition should be clear throughout your website and social presence, it’s also helpful to feature your company values and culture. More and more people are making purchasing decisions based on not only the quality of the product/service/experience and its price, but the morality of the company as well. Do you have mentor programs? Provide community service? How about sustainable practices? What are you doing to better the world beyond providing it with your goods/services?

Remember, at this point, you’ve identified that your buyer personas are present on Instagram. It’s possible that your future and potential job candidates are also some of the billion monthly active users perusing Instagram. By showing off your company culture, including things like employee events, you’re strengthening your brand and opening the door for inbound recruiting.

Connecting with Your Buyer Personas

Identifying the hashtags your buyer persona uses and then scrolling through the associated content is a great way to start connecting on an individual level. Try searching for hashtags associated with industry events and conferences that your buyer persona attends, even if you won’t be present (but it’s better if you are). Don’t just add the relevant hashtags to your posts, instead view the posts your buyer personas are creating and find ways to interact with them. Avoid commenting something spammy that robots post all over Instagram like “great picture” or “Love this! Check out our page.” Leave a meaningful comment without selling yourself. This is a great way to build brand awareness and show that your Instagram account has an actual human behind it, ready to build relationships.

Leading Your Buyer Personas Back to Your Site to Nurture

You might be thinking, “Well, this is a great strategy to grow my following, but how can I connect this strategy back to my lead generation requirements?” Instagram doesn’t make it easy to link to your site (outside of your bio) unless you have over 10k followers, pay for advertising, or are an e-commerce company using Shopify. That’s where third-party services come in handy. You can use tools like Later or Linktree to create CTAs and link your Instagram posts out individually. This will allow you to drive your audience to sign up for the webinar you’re hosting, read your latest blog, or download your most popular e-book. And this, my friends, is how your Instagram account has just turned from awareness and branding to a lead generation machine.

Nicki Kamau is director of marketing for SmartBug Media.

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