Society is mobile and is heavily influenced by social media reactions, brand responses and consumer reviews. To be a brand that people talk about, you have to be where the people are – which, these days, is on social media.

Connect with the Right Communities

To be successful with marketing on Instagram, you must be connected to the right communities and have the right followers. When you are working to improve your brand’s presence and reputation, your connections matter.

It helps to be connected to others in your industry so that you can stalk their pages to see who they are following and what they are posting. Based upon your detective-like browsing, you can see what their audiences are reacting to the most so that your brand can be competitive.

Mention Influences

It is a good idea to mention industry influences and entities/people that are heavily influencing your brand. The key to mentioning influences is doing so in the right context. There has to be an appropriate time and reason for the mention in order for it to be relevant.

For example, if a major international corporation visits your brand to potentially do business together, thank them for their time in an Instagram post. This shows that you value their time and potential partnership. At the same time, it gets your followers excited for new developments from both entities.

Using the Right Hashtags

Hashtags make or break a marketing campaign on Instagram. Of course, using trending hashtags is a must, but you must also have brand-specific hashtags and those that are overall appropriate. For Instagram, you should include hashtags in every post, in the brand description and in responses to comments.

Frequent use of hashtags makes your content more prominent in search engine results and makes it easier to track mentions, shares and trends created from the hashtag.

Stay in your Niche

Going off topic confuses your audience and can turn them off. Make posts relevant to your niche at least 98-percent of the time. It is okay to have a little bit of fun from time-to-time, especially when a general society mood change is in order, just make sure it is done tastefully as to not offend a good portion of the audience.

The NBA got creative on Instagram during the 2013 – 2014 season. It brought attention to the NBA Cares initiative and gained 425-percent more followers. This is an example of a major, world-renowned brand spreading the word about a specific cause, staying in their niche and promoting itself at the same time.

Know your Audience

Take the time to browse through your brand’s audience. Look at what their interests are, what types of brand posts they respond to and what really gets them involved. Take a few notes and generate a few posts that resonate with specific groups, leading to more followers, in your audience. The more you engage with them, the better your online reputation as a brand is.

Use Shortened Links

Long links often make society think that it is a dangerous or spam link. Use shortened links, with keywords present, so that your audience sees clean, neat posts without a bunch of symbols and jumbled sequences at the end.

Use Sponsored Ads and Real-Time Marketing

Sponsored ads, similar to those seen on Facebook FB -1.56%, are also proving to be helpful on Instagram. Rather than followers and connections being the only ones able to see an advertisement, brands can share relevant marketing campaigns through sponsored posts with those in a specific target group.

Real-time marketing comes into play here as well. Brands can react to a major event immediately, display their participation in an event to help raise attendance/sales numbers and promote product launches faster. Real-time marketing is becoming more relevant in terms of being necessary because society wants everything right now, they want updates and news stories right now, not hours later on their local news channels.

Bottom Line

Instagram has more than 300 million users with 90-percent of them being under 35 years of age. This social media outlet is for more than just sharing candid photos of friends and gaining a following. Businesses can successfully use Instagram for marketing purposes to boost brand relevance and increase revenues. It is important to take advantage of this social media outlet’s free status to save some costs on marketing fees.

Source by: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/03/25/the-101-of-marketing-on-instagram/#61cdc0ab5db3