From picking the right color palette and choosing a theme to creating a cohesive feed that reflects your brand identity, building a brand from scratch on Instagram is certainly no easy feat.
You ask yourself,
“How should my feed look like?”
“How should it make people feel?”
“Will it resonate with my target audience?”
“Where should I start?”
Do not fret, because we are here to help!
Here are 3 steps to build a strong brand on Instagram:
1. Identify your target audience and gauge their interest
To interact and engage with your target audience, you need to understand your audience demographics, such as top locations, age range and gender.
Instagram offers effective tracking metrics such as likes, saves and shares. In this case, you should focus on the post with most likes, saves or shares on your feed and find out the reason it has gained more attention than the others. This will enable you to understand your target audience’s preferences and priorities, allowing you to curate content that resonates with them the most.
Other than utilizing the tracking metrics to decide on the type of content you should create, it’s best to keep track with your followers’ most active times in order to determine the most strategic time to share your content. Once you’ve recognized the golden timing, you should schedule your post accordingly to maximize content views and interactions.
2. Develop your brand positioning and messaging strategy
To stand out from countless other brands on Instagram, you have to establish a solid brand presence. In other words, you have to invest a significant amount of time on planning and creating content on Instagram.
It’s important for you to build a brand image and stick to it. You can start by establishing a cohesive look for your Instagram feed by using consistent filters and comfortable color palette for your photos.
Since short videos or photos on Instagram Story will automatically disappear after 24 hours, you should seize the opportunity to share more authentic and down-to-earth moments that customers can relate to in a more personal way. To keep stories on your feed permanently, you just need to create story highlights and organize them into different categories. This also enables visitors to instantly grasp your brand concept just by looking at your story highlights.
3. Leverage tools to build long-term customer relationships
By leveraging the tools on Instagram to create relevant organic content, you can easily increase your brand reach, drive organic traffic and grow your business.
To boost audience engagement, using interactive stickers on your Instagram stories is highly recommended. For instance, using quiz sticker can help you to assess your audience’s knowledge about your product while poll and question stickers can serve as means to collect feedback from your audience. If you want to promote an upcoming product launch or special event, you can add a countdown sticker on your story to get your audience hyped up for the occasion!
Instagram also offers a safe space for you to build a community among your customers. With the help of Instagram Reels, you can introduce new products by sharing tutorials and tips of using your products. For instance, if you are selling cosmetic products, sharing make-up tutorial videos is the best way to connect with your customers. You can also share interesting behind-the-scenes content on Reels to portray the fun side of your brand and keep your followers engaged.
Last but not least, you can consider using Instagram Live to host a Q&A session to get your customers actively involved. This way, you can prompt them to offer their valuable feedback and in exchange, you get to answer some frequently asked questions about your products. After all, creating space for honest conversations about your products and services is the key element in building a long-term customer relationship.
In conclusion…
Whether you are someone who is interested in setting up an online business or just an entrepreneur looking for ways to keep your existing business afloat during this pandemic, Instagram has all the features you need to achieve your business goals.
Hesitate no more, experiment with Instagram features now to start a brand from scratch!