With Instagram’s growing popularity, most companies are having a hard time adapting to the growing photo-gimmick market. As many apps take over traditional advertising, businesses must make their presence felt everywhere. Social media marketing should be an important part of every marketing manager’s job description, along with a great SEO knowledge and strategy that can help reach higher goals and increase user interest. To help you start developing Instagram SEO strategies, follow our top ten tips below.
Source: Deposit Photos |
1. Finish Your Profile on Instagram
One of the best ways to take advantage of SEO on Instagram is to finish your brand’s profile on Instagram. Your profile should include a photo of your company, bio, and website link. However, even though many people won’t immediately visit your site, the more you post on your profile, the higher the chances this will happen. Reposting photos, commenting and liking photos, and uploading photos of your own to highlight your brand is a great way to bring in new users to your company. The more engaging your posts are, the more likely you will get more clicks, likes, and comments per photo on your company’s profile.
2. Use Hashtags to Your Advantage
Using select keywords and/or hashtags are a great way to promote your brand and to allow for more people to view your content. Here are the basic guidelines you should follow when using hashtags:
Source: pixabay |
- Create custom hashtags to promote and track your content
- Only use hashtags that are relevant
- Prevent yourself from overusing hashtags
- Take advantage of trending hashtags to generate more traffic on your company’s profile
- You can also use the hashtag generator feature when you use Social Studio. They don’t generate random hashtags; instead, it uses an algorithm and creates a hashtag combination that is optimized for skyrocketing your account’s growth.
Also Learn: Grow your Email List using the Instagram Account
3. Get Creative
Your profile is a good area to feature the story of your brand via photos. However, remember to be creative with your posts to grab the attention of your viewers. Examples of what photos you should be sharing include “behind the scenes” photos, photos of how your products or services are rendered, etc. Take advantage of this social media platform to gain referral traffic.
Here are two tactics you could try:
– Create story storms – this is a continuous stream of updates treating a certain event, idea, or subject;
– Connect with other Instagram accounts and try to collaborate for takeovers – this are similar to Snapchat takeovers, and allows you to reach out to an entire new audience and the same think applies to the person/Instagram account you collaborate with.
Also read: Instagram or Snapchat What is Better for Your Business
4. See Who Has Unfollowed You
A lot of developing your Instagram SEO strategy will involve trial and error. You will need to implement strategies and see what works and what does not. One way to do this is by figuring out who has unfollowed you. This will let you know if your SEO techniques are encouraging users to engage with your profile or driving them away. To see who has unfollowed you, download Unfollowgram.
5. Don’t Forget to Include a Call-To-Action
Even though Instagram is a primarily photo-sharing platform, you can also use it to promote text as well. A great option on your photos to bring more interest to your company is to add a small call-to-action in the caption of your photos.
Simply ask your audience to:
– Like photos
– Tag friends
– Comment on photos
Or, instead or making the call-to-action button in the text description that is associated with the image, you could include the call-to-action in the visual.
Another approach for driving interactions is giving users a this or that choice and then asking them to ‘like’ for this or ‘comment for that’.
Source: pixabay |
6. Primarily Share Good-Quality Content
Since Instagram is all about image-based content, you have to make sure your content is good-quality for your viewers to enjoy. You can take advantage of affordable tools such as Photoshop to give your photos more detail and improve their overall quality before posting on your company’s profile.
7. Work on Promoting Your Other Social Platform Profiles
Do you also have a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube account?
Cross platform promotion is a huge trend, especially for Instagram. For example, even if you post a photo on Instagram, you have the option to also post it on Facebook and Twitter as well. This helps your viewers on each platform view your other accounts using a single post.
This cross platform can help boost your likes, comments, and clicks across all your accounts. However, make sure you don’t do it too often, or it may seem like you’re spamming all of your accounts.
Twitter is very popular amongst people, especially the ones that want to see funny, interesting or news-related tweets from celebrities, influencers or authorities in different fields. Even if it’s not really tailored for images (given the fact that all you can do when creating a tweet is type or copy-paste), you can share, for example, links to your website that contain the images from Instagram you want to promote.
Source: pixabay |
8. Incorporate Your Instagram Photos onto Your Website
You can boost your overall SEO by embedding links to your Instagram profile on your company’s website. This process is not difficult and will result in an improvement of your SEO ranking.
This is also related with the twitter advice on tip number 7.
9. Create Contests
This is another frequently used technique that brands use to drive engagement. Create a contest and offer a prize to the winner. You will need to set up the rules as well, so require everyone who wants to enter the contest to follow your page, share your post, use a hashtag, or leave a comment. People love receiving free stuff, so they will most likely do what you ask them, thus increasing your engagement.
10. Use Instagram Advertisements
Instagram ads are one of the best ways you can expose your brand to new audiences. Though the ads cost money, it is well worth it. You will likely see a return on your investment very quickly. These advertisements will draw in new people to your page and your other content.
In order to boost your company’s SEO and overall online searchability, you must get creative with your tactics. Instagram is a great resource to have when it comes to creating brand awareness, improving SEO, and gaining new customers. Do you have any tips to share about Instagram SEO? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
| About the Guest Author:
Barret Selby has been working as a recruiter for 7 years, and now he is an HR consultant. His goal is to to help people choose their career path and be more prepared for the job interview that can change their life.