The nuances of each social media platform can leave you feeling overwhelmed in knowing where to start. Choosing Instagram can prove a powerful marketing platform for your business when used the right way.
To get the most out of your social media marketing on this platform, you need to avoid these seven Instagram marketing campaign mistakes.
Read on to learn these mistakes to avoid and what to do instead.
Not Having a Marketing Strategy
A common Instagram marketing mistake is jumping right into the platform without a plan. Without targets or goals for your Instagram marketing strategy, your content may lack focus, your feed will lack consistency, and your audience will be confused.
Determine the purpose of your account before you start building your audience. Are you focusing on increasing your sales, growing your brand, or building relationships with customers? Your purpose will drive your content, posting frequency, and engagement when marketing with Instagram.
Purchasing Engagement
Whether you use a personal or business account on Instagram, one mistake you want to avoid is buying followers or engagement.
It could seem like having many followers is a positive thing for your account, but purchasing followers to boost your numbers could hurt your business.
People have become quick in determining fakes on social media. Don’t become that person with a large audience, minimal engagement, and a target audience unfollowing your account because they can’t trust you.
Too Much Self-Promotion
Don’t deter your audience by promoting yourself or your business too heavily on Instagram. Your Instagram feed should be focused on your audience and serving them well through value-adding posts.
As you draft content, try not to underestimate the power of regular Instagram posts that seek to engage with your audience and add value to their feed through what you post.
If your Instagram feed becomes too much about sales and promotion, you will start turning away the very people you started off to serve.
Poor Use of Hashtags
If you have seen Instagram captions with every hashtag thought of for that post and thought you needed to do the same, that would be a mistake.
This overuse of hashtags may or may not have worked in the past, but new hashtag data shows that 1-3 hashtags in a caption are best. If using more captions, you can place up to 30 captions in the first comment of that particular post.
Also, make sure that the hashtags you are using are relevant to your account or your business. Try using the Instagram search bar to see what tags are the most targeted for your account.
Not Engaging with Your Audience
Within your Instagram marketing plan, you determined the purpose of your account. Determining this is a great foundation, but it cannot stop there.
When you are clear on the purpose or objective of your account and consistently adding value to your audience, they will want to connect more with you.
A mistake you can make here is not engaging enough with these people. Minimal engagement through comments, likes, or direct messages, will damage the retention of your audience base.
People won’t want to stay connected to someone that doesn’t validate or engage with them in return.
Avoid this mistake by taking the time to respond to each comment and direct message to build a relational connection with your audience. Doing so will increase your popularity among others who will come to follow you because of your intentionality.
Not Tracking Data and Analytics
Another mistake people make when marketing businesses online is neglect in tracking their data and analytics.
Implementing your marketing strategy is not nearly as effective if you don’t track your metrics. Without analytics, you will not know what is or is not working for your audience.
Set up a spreadsheet that you log numbers in each month. You can include details such as the number of followers, number of posts, engagement on those posts, top-performing posts, and so on.
Each month, you will begin to see trends in what has worked well and what you need to change.
The key is to begin making changes as you see them necessary. You may need to adjust your marketing strategy to be more focused on your goals and the needs of your audience.
Missing Relevant Bio Links
A powerful feature of Instagram is the account bio. Don’t make a mistake and miss adding relevant bio links.
Your Instagram feed will be full of content that benefits your audience and focuses far less on promoting yourself or your business. However, what about when someone is interested in buying from you?
The bio on your account will serve the purpose of a landing place for people who are interested in connecting deeper with you and your business.
Keep your bio concise, and place a link to your website, a specific product, or a landing page with multiple hyperlinks. Each visitor to your account will know where to go if they wish to visit your website or buy a product from you.
Avoid These Instagram Marketing Campaign Mistakes
Instagram can be a powerful tool to boost the number of followers of your account, increase your customer engagement, and build your overall business. There is still much to learn about Instagram and ways to utilize the platform.
Develop your marketing strategy and make sure to avoid these seven Instagram marketing campaign mistakes to ensure the best results for your business.
Continue to build your marketing plan, and head over to the business and finance tab to find other helpful tips and resources.
