Are you a newbie entrepreneur or marketer ready to tackle Instagram for your business? It’s a popular platform with an audience out there for you somewhere, so it’s a practical decision. However, Instagram is not as simple as posting fresh content and hoping people flock to it. Spreading news about your brand takes work, and encouraging engagement requires even more. There are many elements to factor in when composing an Instagram strategy, and not all newbie marketers are prepared for it. Sure, you know that you need to create intriguing content—but what other challenges have people in your position run into?
Setting concrete goals
This one seems like a given, but not everyone does it: before you begin, determine what your goals are. Vague statements about getting thousands of followers and making viral posts will not get you very far. Your goals give you something to work toward, and well-defined ones give you a better idea of how you are performing and how far you still need to go. Be specific about what you want to achieve with Instagram, and once you accomplish them, make some more.
Picking the best tools
You should not execute a social media campaign without guidance. Mentorship helps, true, but we are talking about social media analytics tools. Without them, your social media strategy could become a tedious affair of trial-and-error.
Instead, analytics tools can provide you with actionable insights into how your campaign is performing. What kind of content reaches the furthest? What content provokes the most engagement? Where are you followers from, how old are they, and what else are they interested in? The more you know about your followers and what works and what doesn’t, the more effective your strategy will be when you amend it accordingly.
There are different tools for different measurements, however. The top Instagram tools are platform-specific, which can provide you with a significant amount of insight into your Instagram account, but not Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or something else. Some even allow you to schedule all of your social media posts ahead of time and publish material from one dashboard. Some tools are not meant for analytics, but instead help give your followers, like SocialSteeze. Take a look at the best Instagram tools and decide which ones are the most appropriate and affordable for you (and Instagram does provide included analytics for business accounts).
Accounting for competitors
Newbie marketers also don’t always know how to assess the lay of the land sufficiently. Knowing who your competitors are is one thing, but evaluating their social media strategies is another. What strategies are they employing that work for them? What kind of content do they produce? Analyzing your industry’s landscape on Instagram is not just about your competitors, either—what are people saying about your field? Is there a current mood, and what is the reason for it?
How to budget
Another challenge neophyte marketers face is budgeting. How much are you supposed to spend on social media advertising? Much of it depends on what you are capable of doing yourself—but even then, creating well-produced videos, well-edited photos, and visually compelling infographics might require tools that cost money. Will you hire a freelancer to design content that you do not have the skills for, or will you stick to what skills you have and use resources available to you (paid and unpaid)?
Advertisements are another matter. How much money should you set aside for putting Instagram ads in front of the right people? According to Influencer Marketing Hub:
“You can expect that you will have to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC) on an Instagram campaign. If you prefer to run your ads on a cost per mille (CPM) basis, focusing on impressions, then you are likely to pay around $5 per 1,000 visitors on average.”
Accounting for SEO
Google says that social media does not directly influence social media rankings, but it can indirectly, and there is also SEO within-platform to think about. Newbie marketers need to optimize their profiles and make content as shareable as possible (and enable sharing features to different channels, of course) because Google does notice the number of people who link to it.
Getting the hang of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing can be an effective way of tapping into existing audiences. However, merely asking a famous individual on Instagram or another brand to give you a shoutout in return from a fee is not always how it works. Some people charge hefty fees, and not everyone has the right audience, so it’s imperative to put significant thought into the influencers you approach. Running multiple influencer campaigns can also be time-consuming (especially if you are marketing for clients instead of your own business), so navigating such partnerships takes some getting used to.
Instagram is a useful platform for brands to take advantage of, but inexperienced marketers may face a few challenges upfront. If you are new to marketing, what are some obstacles that you have encountered?
