If you would like to take your brand tangibly to real people in your target audience, but don’t fully rely on SEO, then the next best option now is to explore social media. There are plenty of popular social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Snapchat to name a few. Even though there are many more, the way users interact with contact on each differs.
If you own an e-com business, then you may be pretty much following the Amazon tactics. Amazon used to engulf the search results while people check for various items. So, if you have a unique product to sell online, it is ideal to make people know that it exists as they won’t be searching for something which they don’t know about.
Here comes the importance of social media.
Social media takes you to people
Social media gives you the ability to reach to there where your consumers are. You can play creatively on this platform to grab their attention by making them know what you got to offer. The biggest among the advantages of social media promotion is that it gives you a competitive edge against the faceless e-com giants too as social media is a leveled platform for all.
So, social media matters and it should be made a vital part of your e-com promotion strategy. If you are trying to establish a start-up e-com brand or want to get more global customers for your unique product, then there is no other place than social media for you to spread the word.
However, as discussed above, each social media platform is different, and you need to be very careful while choosing the most appropriate social media site for you and while developing your strategies. In fact, irrespective of your nature of the business, one unique platform which serves to all well is Instagram now. With more than 400 million active users landing on to it daily, you can find users of any kind out there to engage with.
E-commerce promotions on Instagram
Below, we will discuss some actionable tips to Instagram marketing, which are successfully used by the top e-com marketers from across the globe.
1. Research on the images which worked well for others
Instagram is an image-based social networking platform, and your followers would like to see consistency in your visual elements, which is the reason why branding the images becomes vital. Visual consistently equates to trust, and this is true to the core on Instagram. When people find your brand trustworthy on social media platforms, they tend to purchase from you. There are a couple of things you need to do for this.
- Make consistent visuals
- Prepare a cool color scheme to adopt
Before doing it, it is advisable that you get a bit of inspiration for this you can:
- Create a list of your competitors. If you are into textiles, then try to explore what your market competitors do on Instagram and the level of engagement they receive.
- You can explore the hashtag and user search options on Instagram to shortlist the competitors and check how their images speak for them.
- Make a note the characteristics of those you liked the most and prepare your own stories similar to it.
2. Prepare a brand guide for your Instagram activities
As we discussed above, consistency is the essential aspect of Instagram to create trust and gain more followers. You can create this consistently by trying out various types of filters, color overlays, but try to add your brand logo to all the content you make. You can also check out https://gramblast.com/ for more ideas, but being creative is the key to long-term success.
You can maintain consistency in terms the visual elements, but you have to ensure diversity regarding the content you share with your prospective customers. Remember, Instagram is an entertainment social network platform, and people are out here not to see a tiring line of advertisements back to back. If you explore Nike brand on Instagram, you may be seeing that they are posting things which related to strength, happiness, emotions, and focus, etc. which complement well to their primary focus of selling sports-related goods.
You can follow the below guidance on preparing a brand guide:
- Step #1: Sing up on freestyle guide preparing sites like Canva
- Step #2: Select typical social media image size as 800×800 etc.
- Step #3: Name your creation appropriate as Instagram Branding Guide.
- Step #4: Select an appropriate font you want to use.
- Step #5: Choosing a color scheme If your e-com store is already running, then you may probably have a brand color scheme.
- Step #6: Select the most appropriate colors you want to choose for your brand guide.
Using such tools for Instagram brand content preparation is super easy, and you can quickly apply this set scheme to your images.
3. Engage with your audience and convert them too into inspirational posts
Everyone takes a picture, but people love to see a good photo. A good photo is not everything about its angles and shades. On Instagram, a good photo is the one which is a marvelous piece of art and can evoke real human emotions. Instagram revolves around the concept of sharing images, so your images need to tell real stories when it comes to spreading your brand awareness.
There are plenty of apps out there which you can use to work on your basic photos and make them more acceptable. Some of the best photo editing tools apart from PhotoShop for Instagram are:
- Canva
- Snappa
- PicMonkey
- beFunky
The best Instagram marketers are someone who can effectively use the content of your followers itself to spread your word. For this, you can think of using their pictures featuring your products to be shared with the consent or run hashtag contests to get enough content for generic promotions, etc.
Doing all these, one thing you shouldn’t forget while using Instagram for promotions is to prepare your bio well and to put your website/product link in it. In fact, bio is the only bridging between the viewers seeing your content online to the landing or product pages on your website where your goal of real sales takes place.