You can also use the built-in search feature within Instagram to see popular and trending hashtags. One of the worst things you can do to your followers is not post. They want to know what is happening with your organization, how their donations are helping the mission succeed, and what is coming up next that they can get involved with. You want to make sure you don’t overdo it when promoting events on Instagram. There is nothing worse than annoying all the followers you worked so hard to get and deterring them from attending. As you begin planning your contests, it is important to create rules linked to each of your contest or giveaway posts.

Launched every December, the campaign asks followers to submit creative photos of Starbucks’ famous red Christmas cup. The hashtag has 37,000 entries to date, so it’s safe to say it’s been a success. It’s an approach that has paid dividends for the best user-generated content campaigns. For instance, Starbucks’ #RedCupContest is a perfect example of transforming followers into brand advocates. You can also create hashtags for a specific campaign or competition, showcase brand advocates or encourage user-generated content.

This poll feature is a neat way to conduct simple target audience research, but use it sparingly. The next section is called decision, because it represents the users that click on your link. By doing this, they’ve decided to interact with your brand and move off of Instagram to your website or landing page. In this chapter, we will mainly cover strategies on how to lead people through this step. It’s a big one—where things escalate from merely looking at cool photos, to potentially giving you money. At Foundr, we cycle through a handful of different lead magnets so our audience doesn’t get bored or annoyed by the same old offer.

The point of social media platforms like Instagram is to build your brand. Don’t just focus all of your efforts on getting more followers. You might have a similar product or service as a competitor, sure. But no competitor will have that specific video of an enthusiastic customer raving about their experience with you or that unique snapshot of someone genuinely enjoying your product. So encourage people to create content showing off what they love about your business. Additionally, you can also tag your posts with locations.

It’s a good idea to use this information in your content planning. For example, if your audience skews younger, you may want to post more frequently to align with how often they’re on their mobile device. It’s also important to look both at how individual posts and different content types perform against each other. Your Instagram post then appears in the feed like normal, the only difference being the “sponsored” notation at the top and the call-to-action button. Instagram Stories for locations work for both cities and individual businesses, landmarks, etc. For example, if you tagged your story from the Golden Gate Bridge, your story could end up in the story for both “Golden Gate Bridge” and the general “San Francisco” story.

You can learn more about how to run Instagram ads by clicking here and here. You must research and test to know the ones that will work best. Read more about buy Insta Followers here. Although, as part of Instagram’s plans to focus more on videos, they’ve extended the length to 60 seconds.

The best way to do this is to first find a hashtag that vaguely describes your product – for me this would be #embroidery. I take photos of my worktable, by embroidery drying rack, anything that looks pretty at the moment. Close ups of your products – for me, this is often a shot of embroidered flowers or vines because they’re so pretty. If you are purchasing more than one campaign simply complete each campaign and add to cart and then return to build your next campaign.

Post across all over your other social media profiles — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. — and invite them to follow your Instagram profile. They are already following you on social media, so they are obviously interested in what you offer, so give them another way to socially connect to your brand. Along with the contact option, business profiles have access to analytics, or as they call them, Insights, giving users access to impression and engagement data. If you use your Instagram account for your business, you might want to consider converting your personal profile to a business profile in order to take advantage of these options.

Some people may, for example, offer to buy followers or participate in comment exchanges to create “fake” engagement. As enticing as these proposals may be, don’t take the risk. Your account could be suspended or even deleted by the platform.