So firstly, you may believe that as a small business you need to have a presence on EVERY social media platform to be seen.

This, however, is not true. It is important to understand your target audience and analyse which social media platforms are the best to reach your specific target audience. 

Try analysing your target audience against the demographics below to see whether Instagram is the right channel for you.

Instagram Demographics

• 67% of 18-29-year-olds use Instagram
• 47% of 30-49-year-olds use Instagram
• 23% of 50-65 year olds use Instagram
• 8% of 65+ use Instagram
• 51% of Instagram users are Female
• 49% of Instagram users are Male 

YOUR PROFILE

Your profile is where you are selling your brand, so it is important to keep it consistent with your overall branding, optimise your bio and make use of all of the features that Instagram offers, including shop (if applicable), reels, guides and IGTV. 

YOUR BIO

Your bio will be the first thing that your potential customers read - so it is essential to optimise it. Check out the diagram below for information on everything that you need to include in your Instagram bio! 

PROFILE INSIGHTS

Instagram shows you a range of insights from your profile, including:

• Accounts reached
• Content interactions
• Demographics of your followers
• Top posts and stories
• Total likes, comments and saves

Tracking your Insights

If you don't track your Instagram insights you could be:

1. Targeting the wrong audience
2. Not posting within optimal times of the day/week
3. Driving irrelevant visitors to your website
4. Posting too frequently/not posting enough

ENGAGEMENT

When you begin your account, you may feel that you want to solely focus on followers, and gaining as many followers as possible.

However, despite what many people think, the number of followers is not important. What is important, is how engaged your followers are! You could have 1,000 followers and get an average of 5 comments on a post, or you could have 200 followers and also get an average of 5 comments on a post.

Your aim should be to create loyal and engaged followers rather than have a high number of unengaged followers that are not interested in the product/service that you sell! 

How to increase your engagement:

• Focus on creating shareable content
• Be consistent
• Make use of stickers within your stories (e.g. polls) Be authentic
• Create savable content
• Add an element of fun to your account
• Use call to action (e.g. save for later or shop now) Create video content
• Respond to your comments 

REACH

Reach and impressions often get confused, so it's important to understand the difference, especially when tracking your analytics!

Reach is the total number of people that have seen your content, and impressions are the total number of times your content has been seen. For example, your content may have a reach of 10 people but 12 impressions, and this is because 2 accounts have seen your content more than once.

Increasing your reach on Instagram should be one of your main goals, alongside increasing your engagement.

This is because you want your business to get exposed to as many people as possible! 

How to increase your reach:

• Use the correct hashtag strategy
• Create content that people are likely to share
• Find your optimal posting times
• Use Facebook / Instagram ads
• Use Reels

HASHTAGS

Hashtags on Instagram allow your posts to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business. It is important to understand how hashtags work, and to use them correctly to acquire the most benefits from them!

Let's start with the basics - what actually is a hashtag?

A hashtag is a combination of any letters or numbers that appear after the hashtag symbol (#). They can be used to effectively increase your Instagram audience, as when you post a picture with a hashtag, it will appear on that hashtag's page. 

Things you need to know about hashtags:

• You shouldn't use spaces or special characters in them
• You can use up to 6 hashtags on a feed post and 5-10 on a story
• You can't add hashtags to someone else's post

Why you should use hashtags:

• Help to reach your target audience.
• Increases your account's visibility.
• Promote your posts and your business.
• Helps your account to be discovered by new people.

Types of hashtags include:

• Product/Service e.g. #digitalagency
• Community e.g. #womeninlondon
• Event/Seasonal e.g. #internationaldigitalday
• Location e.g. #londondigital
• Acronym e.g. #tbt
• Niches e.g. #modelsphotographer
• Emoji e.g. #smile
• Brands e.g. #levis
• Brand related phrases e.g. #digitalove 

TOP TIP: You can easily create a unique community hashtag for your brand and encourage your followers to use it, similar to how Women Flix use #womenflix

How to use hashtags effectively:

It is important to strategically choose your hashtags to get the most benefits from them. You may believe that using hashtags that have millions of previous uses will result in the most likes and comments on your post.

However, you should refrain from using hashtags with millions of uses and instead, focus on hashtags that are smaller, refer to your niche and are relevant to your industry.

Here are our top tips for finding relevant hashtags:

1. Look at what hashtags your competitors and leaders within your industry are using.
2. Look at what hashtags your ideal client/customer follow
3. Research your audience and identify the keywords that they are searching for
4. Use online tools that find related hashtags to chosen keywords (such as 'Daily Purposes' 'Best Hashtag') 

INSTAGRAM STORIES

Instagram stories are visible to your followers for 24 hours, and after that, they disappear. Instagram stories are a great way to converse with your audience and create eye-catching and fun content! 

Instagram Story Ideas:

• Ask a question
• Share relevant posts
• Show the scenes Employee takeover
• Share a recent or share a throwback 

 

TOP TIP: use fun icons to make your highlights fit in with your branding! 

INSTAGRAM STORY INSIGHTS

Instagram story highlights may be something that you overlook, however, it is just as important to track them as your main feed posts! They can help you to understand how people are engaging with your stories, such as how many people view your profile from a story, and the way in which people navigate through your stories. 

REELS

Instagram Reels are a fairly new way to create short, fun and engaging video content.

Reels can be shared with your stories, the explore page or your reels tab on your profile. 

Why you should be using Reels:

• They are easy and simple to create
• Unlike Instagram stories, your reels are permanent Potential for high visibility
• Viewers can share your reels

Top tips for creating Reels:

• Make it fun
• Keep it short and to the point
• Use trending sounds
• Use transitions
• Use closed captions if you are using a voiceover Share educational content
• Share authentic content that will resonate with your audience 

IGTV

IGTV is a part of Instagram where longer videos (ranging between 1 minute and 1 hour) can be uploaded.

Users are able to watch IGTV videos through the Instagram app or through the IGTV app.

Top tips for creating IGTV videos:

• Keep your video content relevant
• Use subtitles! IGTV allows you to add subtitles to your videos.
• Engage your audience throughout the video using pop-up text
• Promote your IGTV videos on Instagram as well as across other social media platforms
• Use an engaging cover photo for your IGTV including what it is about

Thank you for reading our blog article. We hope you found it informative and helpful in improving your brand's online presence. At Beautifly Digital , we are dedicated to providing top-notch support and services to help you achieve your digital marketing goals.

If you have any questions or need support with your digital marketing strategy, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We are experienced professionals and we can provide you personalised guidance and support to help you achieve your digital marketing goals.

To learn more about our services and how we can help you, please fill out the form on our website or send us an email , and one of our representatives will be in touch with you shortly. Thank you for considering Beautifly Digital as your partner in digital marketing. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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