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There are many avenues that businesses and organizations can use to promote themselves. One of the more popular options these days is using social media, where brands can directly interact with their audience and promote their products or services. Being active on the various social media accounts is a great way to grow your audience and make more sales.

One of the best social media networks for promoting a brand is Instagram. However, for it to successfully work, you need a solid Instagram marketing strategy to build upon. In this guide, we’ll go over the steps you can follow to set up your own Instagram marketing strategy and get it running.

Set Up Your Instagram Account

The first step is to create your account. You’ll want to set up a new profile on Instagram for your brand. Choose a name that comes as close as possible to your brand name – you may have to play around for a little while until you find something that is available. Once you create your account, you’ll want to spend some time filling out your profile. Choose a profile picture and put a link to your website in the description.

Determine Your Audience

Next, you need to have a good idea as to who your audience is. If you have been running your business for a while, you may know who it is. You can use the information on your customers to determine who is most likely to have an interest in buying your product. These are the people you will want to gear your Instagram account towards. Start learning what other accounts these people might follow, then give them a follow as well.

Create a Content Calendar

Perhaps the most important part of your Instagram marketing strategy will be your content calendar. The best way to get results from Instagram is by regularly sharing content that people want to see. If you don’t post often enough, your audience may forget about you.

A good way to avoid this is by scheduling content in advance. When you schedule Instagram posts, you can plan ahead of time how often you want to post. Try to create different kinds of content, such as posts, stories or even going live, and keep your Instagram feed regularly loaded.

Make Use of Hashtags

To start growing your audience on Instagram, you’ll need to get your content in front of more people. A good way to do this is by making use of hashtags. Hashtags are words or phrases you can add to your post, preceded by a # symbol, that users can click on. When a user clicks on the hashtag, they’ll see all other posts that have this tag in them. By using multiple hashtags on each post, you can group your content with a wide range of categories and get other people to notice them.

To learn more about using hashtags on Instagram, you can check out this guide.

Interact with Your Instagram Audience

As Instagram is a social media network, you’ll want to use yours to interact with others. When people comment on your posts or ask questions, you should do your best to reply to them. If other users post pictures about your product, leave a comment on the photo. You should also make sure to respond to any direct messages you receive. If you can engage with your audience, you’ll bring in more followers to your account.

Promote Your Instagram Elsewhere on the Internet

Another strategy to gain followers on Instagram is by promoting it elsewhere. For starters, you should have a link to it on your website. You can do this by including a simple text or image link, or you can use a social media plugin.

Besides that, post links to your Instagram to your other social media networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. If someone is following you on one social media account, they are likely willing to follow you on another one as well. Use any opportunity you find to let your audience know about your Instagram account and the type of content they can find there.

Consider Running Paid Instagram Ads

If you have the budget for it, running ads on Instagram is another good way to grow your audience. Ads on Instagram will display your content to an audience that you target. You can define your audience by a range of factors, then have your posts appear in their feeds. Best of all, you can decide your budget, so you can start small and see if Instagram ads are right for you.

For more information on how to get started with Instagram ads, please visit this guide.

Analyze the Results of Your Campaign

The last thing you’ll want to do is analyze your results. As you run your campaigns, you should track what works well and what doesn’t. For example, if your audience seems to like one type of post over another, you should consider posting more of that type of content. Besides, as you gain more followers, you can study what your audience looks like. You can then use this when targeting your ads or developing new products.

Finally, you should measure how much of your traffic comes from Instagram. This way, you know how well Instagram performs compared to your other sources of traffic, such as Facebook or search engines. From there you can determine whether you want to spend more or less money on Instagram promotions.

Get Started with Your Instagram Marketing Campaign

When done properly, Instagram can be one of the best sources of traffic to your website. Instagram can even be used to make sales directly, giving you another source of revenue. The key is posting regular content to an audience that is interested in it. From there, it’s just a matter of being consistent and getting more followers to your account. By following the steps above, you should be able to get started with a strong Instagram marketing strategy.

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