How to promote your personal brand on Instagram

Instagram marketing has taken over the business and marketing world by a storm. Many influencers have made the best use of this trend to establish relationships with brands and engage meaningfully with their audiences. To get a real active following for your personal brand on Instagram, you need a strategy in place.

Remember, the key to effective Instagram influencer marketing is to build a successful personal brand that the audience can relate with. If you too are planning to build your personal identity as a brand on Instagram, here are a few tips that can help you build a successful social media strategy: 

  • Identify a niche: It is important to define your targeted field or area that you will be sharing content about. It could be in the field of lifestyle blogging, food blogging, sharing book reviews, comedy, or storytelling podcasts. Identifying your niche helps you in building a clear profile for your target audience so that you can direct your content to the relevant groups and build a better connection, instead of just sharing random things on your profile. Your niche and target group are mainly derived from your purpose and motive of building a brand on Instagram.
  • Build a profile: Once you have identified the area of interest that you wish to be known for as a brand on Instagram, build your profile. Your profile basically includes your user name, bio and profile picture. Keep your username simple and easy to spell so that people can easily find you and mention you everywhere. 

The bio on Instagram has a word limit, so keep it crispy but make sure it reflects every part of the work that you do, including the important keywords. Your profile picture should be relevant to your work. If you are a food blogger, your picture with some food items is more relevant instead of you on a beach. A well-built profile makes people connect to your work instantly when they visit your profile. 

Here is what a well-built profile looks like! 

  • Call to action: One very important element that your bio on Instagram should have is a call to action. For example, if you have a Youtube video channel or a blog on WordPress, put a link in the bio that leads people to that channel or blog. Similarly, if you are an artist who is willing to curate art for clients as per their requirements, there should be a contact detail for interested people to reach out to you. It could be a simple line like ‘DM for personalized art services’, or an email ID for prospective clients to write to you directly. This way, people will know how to reach out to you. 
  • It is all about the pictures: One of the reasons that Instagram is the most popularly used social media platform is because it gives immense importance to pictures. The pictures that you post on your profile should be well-edited and curated to capture the attention of your followers. For example, if you are a food blogger posting about a food item that you recently enjoyed, too much text on a picture will take away the attention from the food item that you are writing about. Your pictures should be so attractive and eye-catching that they slow down the speed of the scrolling follower and is able to focus his/her attention to the post for more than 10-15 seconds. It should also generate curiosity among followers so that they check out your other posts to find out more details. 
  • Hashtags and accounts: It is very important to keep your hashtag game strong because it is a very simple way to get your account discovered. People from all over the world can view your posts if you use the right hashtags. For instance, if you are writing a poem as a part of National Poetry Month, you can use the hashtag #NaPoWriMo2020 which is very popular and trending. To know the trending hashtags, keep checking other relevant accounts of people working in the same field. Or you can use Instagram hashtag tools to find right & trending hashtags. Similarly, to increase your reach, use Geotag, or tag the Instagram account of the places you visit or people you meet.

Even the most popular influencers do not shy away from adding hashtags to their posts.

 

  • Exploit stories: The stories feature on Instagram is a very essential element of audience interaction. Use it to be more candid with your followers and to keep them engaged with the updates from your work on a regular basis. Features like polls or questions on stories also keep the interaction going between you and your followers. It keeps them interested in your work and profiles even when you may not be able to actively work on posts every day.
  • Engage with the followers: An active Instagram brand is one that actively engages with its followers. Social media is not a one-sided information platform like a blog or an online newspaper. The essence of social media platforms like Instagram is in the interaction between people. Comment on profiles, ask people for suggestions for something that they are interested in, make them feel like what they have to say is also relevant and important. Remember, engaged and active followers are happy and loyal followers. This step is very important if you wish to promote your personal brand on Instagram. 

Creating engagement: Building stories through Instagram stories

  • Talk about things that matter: We live in times of information overload where the followers have an abundance of content, whether in the written form or in an audiovisual format. To stand out, you should be able to talk about things relevant to people like economic changes, social issues, cultural issues, or environmental concerns. You can go a step further by giving them some steps to use that can help them during a challenging time. The best example to understand this is the coronavirus lockdown worldwide. Many people on Instagram grew their personal brand by sharing workout videos, art challenges, quizzes, things to do during a lockdown, etc. which were also the need of the hour. Be aware and smart enough to capitalize on opportunities to engage meaningfully and make a difference in the life of the followers. 

This is what an engaging and relevant post can be like. 

  • Collaborations: The world of social media has moved far beyond competition towards a space for collaborations where many content creators with different niches or specializations come together to create unique, quirky and informative content. This way, the followers of two different personal brands also get a chance to interact with each other and see whether the other profile is worth their interest and time or not. It also helps people come up with new ideas for videos, pictures or writing that is worth sharing on their profile. 

Conclusion 

Building a successful brand and promoting it on Instagram is not a challenge. It is important, however, that you keep all things tips in mind and follow them. The idea is to be your authentic real self, create relevant content pieces in different formats that the followers enjoy and share, actively engage with other relevant accounts of similar niches and do this on a regular basis. Consistency is of high value when it comes to promoting any brand on a social media platform like Instagram. As its usage increases, people start demanding new original content every other day, if not for every 6-8 hours. 

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