By Toka

Your brand is everything you’ve got, hence you need to ensure it is well known if you would like to grow your business to the heights you envisioned when you started out. Instagram is a very great opportunity for rapid brand building if you have a good understanding of the strategies to employ.

This post provides tips on how to build your brand with Instagram. Why Instagram? Instagram is the fastest growing social platform available online today – it grew to over 400 million users in 2015 surpassing Twitter in number of monthly users. Better still, according to some sources, Instagram has achieved a considerably higher engagement rate than Facebook and Twitter!

Here are some strategies for brand building with Instagram:

Set Up a Business Account

It should go without saying that your personal and business Instagram accounts should be separate (if not, keep on reading and you’ll understand why). Remember to choose an Instagram username that is in sync with your actual business name if your chosen username is not available. We also recommend matching same as closely as possible to your accounts on other social media sites for uniformity, memory and search optimization. Your profile image should ideally also be the same as your other accounts.

Include a Clickable Link to Your Website

The only opportunity to place a clickable link within your Instagram account is on your bio beneath your name and your description. Use this to drive traffic to your website and boost sales. Don’t forget to add a clear and enticing description of your business on your bio as this is the best way to earn clicks on your link.

Create Original Content

One of the most effective ways to build your brand with Instagram is to create your own content. Your brand has a personality as well as a character and the content you share is the only way to portray what your brand will be perceived as. Be sure that your images tell your story well and showcase what the brand does. But do not create only images and videos that showcase what your brand sells, also create content that shows how your brand can actually be used in share-worthy images as well as everyday life and watch your followers multiply in their numbers.

Use High Quality Images

Posting high quality images is extremely important, as a poor images can earn your brand the wrong impression, no matter how brilliant, attractive or perfectly proportioned the images are. The optimal image size on Instagram is 1080 pixels x 1080 pixels (Instagram used to have smaller image sizes, but have previously increased the size, making room for much larger images, and in turn this means your brand really has the chance to display some awesome high resolution photos!). With high quality images and videos you will easily appeal to your followers and gain further followers who will readily consume your marketing message without you having to do any sales pitches!

Use Hashtags Effectively

Hashtags are the very soul of Instagram! A single hashtag has the potential to connect you to thousands if not millions of new leads on Instagram. Using descriptive hashtags will place your content in front of more people and ultimately grow your engagement and following. To achieve targeted exposure for your brand on Instagram, always include hashtags related to your niche in every post. You can include as many as 30 hashtags in a single post. We recommend a minimum of 5-15 hashtags as research shows that even small accounts that use 11 or more hashtags are able to gain an average of 77.6% interactions. Think of what a 77.6% or more rate of interaction will do for your brand!

Be Consistent

Consistency is key, therefore being consistent should be a top priority for you. Be consistent with the frequency of your posts as well as with the type of images you share. Videos are also excellent to add to your content, but only use them if you can create high quality videos, users will enjoy watching.

Gather Engaged Followers

The key to have followers that actually engage with your posts is to post at the time they are most likely to be online. It is futile posting a stunning image and getting very low engagement because hardly any of your followers saw it. Use the very useful tool ‘Iconosquare’ to find out when most of your followers are online and post at this time.

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