Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms that every marketer can leverage to boost business growth. It is a very important social media channel to reach a larger audience and increase brand awareness. So if you do not have a good Instagram branding strategy, you are missing out on something big!
According to Oberlo, Instagram has reached 1 Billion monthly active users, making it a perfect avenue to market your products. With more than 500 million people users every day, Instagram can surely boost your sales.
Why? Visual content is essential to a business’s marketing strategy. As Instagram is a visual feed, it enables you to build more personal connections with your potential customers, thus increasing engagement.
Additionally, this platform is a goldmine of insightful ideas and useful feedback that you can use for development and innovation.
Why Build Instagram Branding?
Let’s focus on these 3 main points.
Brand Trust
When your clients put confidence in your business, it means that you have earned their trust. And when customers trust your brand, it means that your brand has consistently delivered on its promises and stayed true to its values. Instagram branding is really helpful when you want to build trust with your audience.
The easiest way to do this is personalization. Creating personalized content consistently helps your client identify your brand, thus, trusting your brand more than others.
Brand Awareness
You can make the most of Instagram by taking advantage of the tools designed just for business users to increase brand awareness.
Brand awareness is important because it helps your audience understand and become more comfortable with your brand.
When your Instagram branding is consistent, people will be able to identify your brand across multiple platforms. Being familiar with your brand, they will tend to buy more from you compared to others that are foreign to them.
Generate Traffic
Instagram is a platform packed with useful tools and features to increase your traffic. With the right Instagram branding strategy, this platform can be your fast-ticket to more clicks and conversions. Though you cannot link a standard Instagram post, it doesn't mean that the platform can’t drive significant traffic to your site. Take note that you can optimize your Instagram bio link and do so much more for your marketing.
Brands That Are Rocking On Instagram
Before dealing with some strategies to build your Instagram Branding, let us have some examples of brands that are rocking on Instagram.
1. Nike
One great example of a brand with good Instagram Branding is Nike. I love how they feature impactful stories and consistently focus on their mission to spotlight athletes and shoe stories.
2. Tiffany & Co
Tiffany & Co. is another example of a brand that is killing it on Instagram. It leans on its mission to provide innovative jewelry designs and expert craftsmanship while allowing freedom to experiment with fresh creativity. Though they focus on luxury, Tiffanny & Co infuses fun and playfulness into their feed.
3. So Worth Loving
Promoting self-love and worthiness is a tactic a clothing brand–So Worth Loving is using to better engage with their customers. Its mission is to spread positive thoughts while promoting its line of products. To combine its mission and promotion, So Worth Loving posts quote style graphics in between product-oriented images.
How to Build Instagram Branding for Your Business
Posting every single day on Instagram is hard. Without an Instagram branding strategy, you are more likely to skip days and miss out on traffic and engagement.
And with more than 500 million users daily, you surely wouldn’t want to disregard this powerful networking engine.
After going through some of the winning brands on Instagram, let’s talk about how you can refine your strategy.
Here are some steps that you can consider to start your Instagram branding:
Outline Your Instagram Branding Goals
Here are important reasons why specific goal-setting is important for your Instagram branding.
1. Accountability
Your goals hold you accountable. By clearly defining your goals, you can follow specific steps and actions to meet your business’ needs and justify your responsibilities.
2. Budget-friendly
You could have a lot of money for paid ads or you could be laser-focused on content creation. No matter the case, outlining your goals is the key to both figuring out what you need to do to see results and to save money from ineffective Instagram posts.
3. Pay more attention to data
Your goals can encourage you to pay more attention to data. Understanding what’s moving the needle in terms of engagement, clicks, and revenue could help you to put up a high-performing Instagram campaign.
2. Set Up A Brandable Instagram Profile
In order to brand your Instagram effectively, knowing the basics of Instagram profile branding is a must!
Profile branding means that everything that people can see on your profile must help them recognize your brand.
Aside from the content you post on your Instagram feed, some of the things you need to brand on your Instagram are your profile photo, username, bio, and your story highlights.
Let us discuss some tips on how you can optimize your Instagram profile:
Set up a business account
Setting up a business account is free. It enables you to add links to your Instagram stories where viewers can access them by simply swiping up! This is a feature exclusive to business accounts.
One point to remember is that you must add a link to your bio because it can greatly increase traffic to your website.
Optimize your profile picture
Most companies stick to using their logos as their profile picture. The standard Instagram profile picture is 110px by 110px. Thus, it is important to note that the lesser details you put on your profile photo the better.
Optimize your Bio
Improving your Bio by adding a short and snappy sentence is another way for your brand to have a “WOW Factor”.
You can create at least 3 sentences that describe your company or your mission. This shows your audience what would it feel like to work with you.
3. Set Up Brandable Content
Making sure that the content you put on your Instagram feed is aligned is the perfect way to start your Instagram branding. As you can see, the brands we have had as an example earlier, use this strategy for their brand.
Having a brandable content set-up makes people recognize your brand across multiple platforms and thus resulting in an increase in conversions.
4. Post Educational Content
For people to trust your brand, they need to get to know your products and services well. The best way to do it is by posting content that will educate them.
When people understand your product and services really well, they will keep on choosing you rather than your competitors. Posting educational content is also a way to build a good relationship with your followers. They will feel that you don’t just want them to buy from you, you also want to improve their knowledge.
5. Be Consistent in Your Instagram Branding
When you’ve already set-up brandable content and outlined your goals, being consistent is the next important step to optimize your Instagram branding.
Consistency is the key for your customers not to forget about your brand. But you have to put in mind that consistency is different from overwhelming your customers. To prevent your brand from going overboard, you can try posting something on your Instagram story instead of always posting on your Instagram feed.
6. Track Your Instagram Analytics
Let’s say you are already using a perfect Instagram Branding strategy but the question is, how can you be so sure that it is working for your business?
Tracking your results is the answer! Paying close attention to your audience's growth and the number of engagements will give you clues as to what’s working and what could be improved. Your analytics can help you judge the effectiveness of your strategy and show you the effect of your content on your audience.
7. Create Instagram Branding Style Guide
A Style Guide is a set of guidelines that your team should follow, to make sure that all the content they create describes your brand.
It is important to create a style guide as it will make you consistent with everything you are putting on your feed.
Some of the important factors to consider in creating a style guide are:
Size
Posting photos with the same size and resolution can help your brand be more recognizable. It is one way to boost your visual feed while making sure that it is pleasing to your audience’s eyes.
Captions
Instagram captions are limited to 2,200 characters per post. It means you have plenty of room to educate your audience–while being creative. Your team can opt to use a short or long caption, depending on how you would like to portray the message of your brand.
Color Palette
The type of color you should include in your feed is also a smart way to boost your Instagram branding strategy.
Having a fixed profile color palette can help your feed look clean and organized. This will also help your audience recall your brand even outside your profile feed.
Brand Tone and Voice
Lastly, focusing on your brands’ personality will help you come up with the perfect captions for your feed.
This is a very important component of your style guide as it will tell you how you should respond and engage with your customers.
Whether you want to be friendly or professional, or you want to add humor to your brand, it is important to put together your brand voice on paper.
Instagram Branding Strategy Will Help Ensure Your Success
I hope this article helps you realize the importance of Instagram branding on your business.
By following the steps listed above, you will save time and money while ensuring that you are providing better service to your customers.
Building an Instagram Branding strategy is so vital for your team to succeed on social media.
So what are you waiting for? Start creating your own strategy to see better results in your marketing NOW!
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