We understand that social media is a highly powerful and effective marketing platform. Although Google has categorically denied the fact that social media is used as a search engine ranking factor, we have actually noticed the importance of utilizing social media for engaging a community, building a robust brand voice, and promoting content. However, once you have managed to create an audience on the social media platforms, how could you draw their attention from wonderfully curated feed to effective conversions via IG?
We know that Instagram is a phenomenally popular and versatile social networking site that is not just a visually attractive channel full of fashion bloggers, scenic drone shots, and doggies’ influencers, but it is also a robust platform that could be leveraged for selling products. Instagram is the second most popular social media platform after Facebook and it boasts of the maximum or the highest rate of engagement.
The photo-sharing app’s popularity goes on increasing by the day. IG today boasts of over 1 billion MAUs and it has announced the introduction of a long-term novel video app, the IGTV. As per https://www.forbes.com, “Identifying the needs, challenges and desires of your target audience—which often align with your own interests—should play a central role in fine-tuning your unique voice. What keeps your customers up at night? What’s their number one struggle in life and business? What would make their lives easier? What are their biggest aspirations and dreams in life?” We know that the answers to these vital questions play a pivotal role in defining this strategy. Using these kinds of questions for effectively guiding your overall social media presence would be helping you in crafting posts which do not simply look nice and beautiful but in fact, they are far more relevant to the interests of your target audience making sure that they would be really driving engagement hence, more traffic. Let us examine some expert strategies to effectively drive traffic to your website from Instagram organically.
Incorporate a Link into Your Bio
All Instagram accounts have just one strategic place on their profile where you could provide a clickable link and that is precisely the bio. You must make it a point to make the most of this opportunity and incorporate a link into your Instagram bio. It is best to consider using a shortened URL for keeping the space uncluttered and clean. You must necessarily include a link in your Instagram bio that leads either to your shop, homepage, a purely promotional landing page, or wherever you are aspiring to drive traffic to. The Link in your Instagram bio is supposed to be the only location meant for hyperlinks that all accounts on IG could be able to utilize. We understand that business accounts having 10K or even more followers would be having more hyperlinking opportunities.
Engage Your Audience Creatively by Using Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is presently a pretty attractive feature that provides greater opportunities for creativity. Instagram Stories was first introduced in 2016 and within one year, it had obtained more than 300 million DAUs. This was certainly much more as compared to Snapchat’s 187 million DAUs. Instagram Stories certainly is a relatively novel feature and it is to some extent still untapped for generating and sharing content in a truly unique manner.
Instagram Stories have certain compelling and striking features and that may include location tags, GIFs, boomerangs, stickers, and even filters. However, the most attractive and interesting feature of stories is the ability to actually ‘swipe up’ on a post on Instagram Stories. Apart from incorporating a link straightaway into an Instagram Story is supposed to be the only other effective way of directly linking from your Instagram to your website.
Businesses and brands could use stories for creatively entertaining and influencing their target audience. Stories must be informative, fun, and engaging to get automatic IG likes. Stories must not overtly attempt to sell. We know that Instagram Stories would do the disappearing act within 24 hours. However, thanks to the highlights feature, there is an opportunity to save some of your best stories to your Instagram profile for driving traffic constantly to the links present in your Instagram Stories. Here are some expert tips for engaging your target audience on Instagram Stories.
Allow your target audience to observe the true personality of your workplace or office by taking them behind the scenes.
Provide product demonstrations and give your target audience sneak previews associated with new releases.
Post boomerang videos, add polls, use fun stickers and GIFs and make the fullest use of the Instagram Stories’ growing list of features.
Make the Maximum Utilization of Instagram’s Shopping Feature
In 2017, Instagram came up with a shoppable feed for exclusively the Instagram business accounts with more than 10 followers. This feature would be letting brands to effectively link to all their products from their Instagram pictures directly. Thus, it became simpler and easier for users to buy from the app directly. Earlier brands could actually link to the products only via a sole link present in their bio. When an Instagrammer tap on an image with products tagged, he would be seeing annotations of every item’s price, name, and a specific link directly to the precise product page on the website of the business or brand. Moreover, the Instagrammer could consider clicking right on the ‘Shop’ button that is visible on the top portion of the specific brand profile, for viewing a feed of all pictures with products tagged. Commerce is surely going on in full swing on Instagram and would continue to grow and prosper with Shoppable Stories.
Rely on Analytics for Perfect Understanding of Your Demographic & Ideal Posting Time
Instagram Insights helps business accounts by providing key metrics so that they could chalk out their posting strategy effectively and land up with more engagement and definite conversions. Thanks to Instagram Insights, you could keep track of account activity. It provides Impressions or number of times your posts have actually been seen. You get an idea of your reach that is detailed information about unique accounts that have actually seen your post. Thanks to this effective Instagram Analytics tool, you could get a clear idea about the exact number of link clicks on your Instagram bio. Moreover, you could get an idea of the accurate number of profile visits or views and the exact number of accounts that have started to follow you. Instagram data analytics is the best way of understanding your target audience and accordingly, you could tweak your overall social media strategy. You would be well-equipped with facts such as the best posting time, the type of content that is getting the maximum engagement and response and performing best. You may use all these Instagram Analytics to your greatest advantage by religiously posting at times when your target users are most active on the platform. You simply need to plan in advance and post around ten minutes in advance of the peak activity time so that once the users log in; they would find your content waiting for them.
Conclusion
You must by now be convinced of stepping up your marketing strategy by including Instagram in it. Instagram is the best way of driving more traffic to your website and gaining more conversions. You must realize that Instagram has proved itself to be an effective marketing platform for selling products and successfully driving organic traffic directly to your website if used strategically. You must from time to time do a thorough social media audit to keep track of your competitors and accordingly develop a winning content strategy.
