5 Tips to Help You Find Marketing Success with Instagram

Instagram seems to be a little like marmite in the business world, people seem to love using it to promote their business or hate it! I’m not going to get into the absolute basics of Instagram as that’s been covered by many people already and this blog has some great info if you’ve never used Instagram before.

I’ve only recently started to use Instagram more often (for a different business) and it’s been a somewhat steep learning curve on how to get marketing success with it, so this blog is talking through what I’ve learned so far to get more success with my Instagram marketing efforts.

1. Set up templates on Canva

Getting the photos just right can quickly drain your time and energy but using templates and Canva can really cut that time down. Create a range of templates for the different types of content you’ll be sharing on Instagram and use them whenever you have new content to schedule.

Not only does this help you save time but using the same colour palettes, themes, and template designs consistently will help others recognise that a post belongs to you and enable that rapport with your audience to build more easily.

The great thing about Canva templates is that you can share them with others. So, if you do outsource to a VA for some tasks, you can both use the templates to get things just how you want them to be.

2. Decide on what you do have time to do on Instagram

Stories and reels are big trends right now and they do increase your reach but they are time-consuming to create and you need to be doing them often to really make the most of them.

If you aren’t able to commit much time to Instagram, consider using multiple images that share your story. These are good for getting attention but can also help you get the message across quickly as people often ignore the captions and comments.

Creating an Instagram strategy that takes into account when you have the time to take photos, edit them, write captions, schedule them and interact with your audience is vital. Instagram works well for social media marketing but it can be time consuming, so having a plan can help you establish where to direct your time and resources more effectively.

3. Use the right hashtags

You need to be doing your research here (especially as not all hashtags mean what you think they do!) Hashtags do help you get more reach and it’s recommended that you use a lot of them per post – as many as 11!

Consider product/service-related tags, local tags, trending tags and audience-specific tags when you’re creating your posts. Understanding your audience well and knowing what they’re interested in and the tags they will search for is important in ensuring your posts are getting the reach they deserve.

Luckily, the Later scheduling app has a hashtag finding tool that’ll help you find the right tags for your post and business easily as you’re creating your posts. This post from Flock Social also has lots of information on how to grow your Instagram following.

4. Use link.tree for your links

Links don’t work in Instagram posts so it can be difficult to direct your social media traffic back to your website or landing pages.

Using link.tree is a popular way of getting around this. You create a page on link.tree which contains the links you want your audience to visit and link the link.tree page into your Instagram bio.

There is some debate over how effective this is (will people look?) and whether this might be negative to your website’s SEO, so if you do stories and reels do remember to tell people to visit your website and read out/show the link on your video to try and generate a few more visits.

5. Collaborate with others

Getting started with Instagram can be a slow and tricky process. It’s so different to other social media marketing platforms that the learning curve can be steep (as I’ve found out!) but the business community on Instagram can also be incredibly supportive.

A good way to start getting noticed on Instagram is to comment on other’s posts, collaborate with local businesses on stories and reels (this can be done at networking events, if you’ve met up for a coffee, etc) and tagging (with their permission) other businesses into your posts can help you get some traction and new followers.

I hope you’ve found this blog helpful, and it’s given you some ideas on how you can improve your Instagram marketing efforts. Have you got any more tips or suggestions for Instagram? I’d love to hear!