5 Tips To Get The Most Out Of Your Organic Instagram Presence
Whipping Your Organic Instagram Into Shape
Your organic social media presence is extremely important. Not only is it an opportunity to build a community around your brand and a place to foster brand loyalty, but more and more users are turning towards organic profiles to learn about brands after they’ve seen an advertisement.
It’s up to you to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward when potential customers browse organic Instagram to evaluate your product. Fortunately if you follow these 5 steps, you’ll be steadfast on the path to an amazing organic social presence.
1. Optimize Your Creative
On Instagram photo quality is very important to users. Always use high resolution images and stay mindful of optimal lighting. Your photo is only on screen for a brief moment as users scroll, so it’s important to make a fast and lasting first impression.
Use photos with a ratio of 2:3 to take up as much of the users phone screen as possible. It may be true your horizontal image is gorgeous, but it’s easy to not even see a horizontal image when quickly scrolling through Instagram. When posting images at a 2:3 ratio you ensure that your photo will be the only thing a user sees for at least a brief moment.
Additionally, try to always include a face in your image. It can be temping to zoom in on the product to capture the product details you’ve worked so hard on, but studies show that your photo is more likely to get more engagement if you include a face. In fact, the Georgia Institute of Technology looked at over 1.1 million photos and found that images with human faces are 38% more likely to receive likes than photos without a face.
2. Fine-Tune Your Brand Voice
Think of your brand as an individual. Users no longer want to follow a larger than life corporate giant. Determine your brand values and your brand’s attitude. If your brand was a person how would they talk to their friends? Don’t be scared to use slang with your users or to be sarcastic and witty!
Once you find your voice, keep it consistent. Your brand’s identity is important to users and while it’s important to continually evolve your brand, it’s important not to alienate your current audience with sudden content or tonal changes.
If you encapsulate your brand’s personality and speak to your potential customers as equals and friends, it will be much easier to build a strong following.
3. Engage With Your Audience
A buzzword advertisers love to use when referencing organic social is “community.” Remember that a community isn’t one sided and it’s up to you to communicate with your following.
There are so many ways you can build excitement by engaging with your followers. If a follower posts a piece of content on their profile featuring your product, repost them. Most importantly, tag them! There’s a fine line between engaging and promoting one of your followers and stealing their content. Always be sure to tag the creators in your network.
Remember to stay up to date with users in the comments. If someone asks a question, reply as soon as you can. It reflects poorly on your brand when a question hangs in silence on your page for days.
4. Take Advantage of New Instagram Features
While most of the items above have focused on ways you should cater your content for your audience, this tip focuses purely on taking full advantage of the Instagram algorithm.
Instagram strives to be innovative and is constantly launching new and improved features whether it be a small update to stories or the introduction of IGTV. When Instagram launches a new feature they try to get the feature out to as many users as possible so they can gather a surplus of data on the feature’s usability. By ensuring your using Instagram’s latest and greatest feature, Instagram is more likely to show your post to users.
Remember that even if a user is following you, Instagram still controls the order in which posts appear to users in the feed. No longer can you simply post at just the right time to ensure your audience sees your post right when they open the app. Instagram compiles data on the posts users are more likely to engage with by noting which profile’s posts they like, comment and share the most. If you’re encouraging user engagement and stay up to date with implementing the platform’s latest features, you’re setting your organic content up for success!
5. Give Your Audience A Reason To Follow You
As a user, what purpose will following your brand serve? You can have gorgeous photos, set in jaw-dropping locations featuring stunning models but ultimately Instagram is flooded with high quality content. Distinguish your content by giving users a reason to keep coming back. Note that after looking at only a few posts, the reason to follow you should be crystal clear.
It may seem daunting at first, but there are endless ways you can provide value to your audience. Do you make your audience laugh everyday? Do you give your audience exclusive info and early access to sales? Do you give your audience life hacks or fashion tips and tricks?
Our target audiences are smarter than ever and a simple “Buy Now” is no longer enough to instill passion and build a strong brand following. Take the time to brainstorm the true value proposition your organic social media presence gives your desired target audience.
