Nuts and Bolts
With over 300 million users and over 5 million photos uploaded each day, Instagram has become a social media outlet that is essential to reach your audience. Does your strategy include Instagram? If you know your customers or clients you can begin to tell a story. Begin by learning what engages your audience and what content will elicit a response. Then follow the top trends and find the message of the day that is the right fit for your brand. You can use between 30-50 hashtags on each post, but do the research, they should be the hashtags that balance popularity and relevance. Then you want to use great content. It is obvious your followers want to see great things. Original and authentic content is best. To spice things up, you can run contests and quizzes just to engage the audience on another level.
When the strategy and tactics are in place there are a few tools that can help you with the nuts and bolts of posting, managing, engaging and measuring your Instagram success.
First step is to set-up the tools on your phone or tablet. You can’t at this point access Instagram from a desktop so the work may seem more difficult but I’ve set-up short-cuts to make like easier. Download these free apps to make great use of your Instagram (Hint: keep them on the same page on your phone or tablet):
- Instaquote
- allows users to type text whether original or quoted
- allows users to credit authors
- Photogrid
- allows users to create photo grids, scrapbooks, photo edit, create templates, filmstrips from photos on your cell or photos from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox, Google image
- allows users to share to Instagram, Google+ Facebook, Twitter, etc..and most importantly Takeoff (see below)
- RePost
- allows users to repost content from Instagram to their followers with their own hashtags
- only allows users to RePost in real time
- TagsForLikes
- allows users to pick a category so that they can see a list of pre-written hashtags and copy and paste
- Dropbox, Google Docs
- allows users to drop a convenient list of #hashtages they have pre-written and then just copy and paste.
- Drop photos into Dropbox for easy access to your phone apps
- Takeoff
- allows users to schedule Instagram posts ahead of time from apps such as Photogrid and Instaquote (Because of Instagram’s Terms the app does not post for you. TakeOff pings your phone or tablet at the pre-set time to post. Then just push a few buttons to post to Instagram.)
- gives users suggested #hashtags
- Iconosquare
- Provides basic metrics to measure your success on Instagram
Working with photos and graphics are a time consuming chore. However, with these free apps you can create great content for your Instagram account.
Finally, if you’ve done it all correctly your fans will do the sharing of content. In addition, you should showcase the best of the UGC user generated content to appreciate your followers and encourage engagement. Was this blog useful?
Homework: Schedule your Instagram posts for the week using each app!
Yolanda Ortega
President, Amusing Violet
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