Google, time and again confirmed that they don’t consider social media as a ranking factor. However, we can’t deny the role of social media for community building and audience engagement. Social networks are playing a significant role in engaging communities and building brand voices.
Instagram, one of the premium social networks need no introduction. The platform is a place filled with visually stunning videos and images loved by all including fashion bloggers, and celebrity influencers. Instagram comes to the second just after the Facebook in terms of monthly active users and engagement rate.
Tips to Drive Website Traffic Using Instagram
If you’re a brand and yet to leverage the Instagram to drive traffic on your website, here are the key points that will help you:
1. Engage and Participate:
As you have created an impressive Instagram community, it’s time to engage them with fabulous and outstanding content. Sharing awesome content will help you showcase yourself as a reputable and valuable member of the Instagram community. Sharing great content will further help you earn followers eager to engage with your content.
But, only shareable content is not enough. Instead, you should focus on establishing a reputation in the Instagram community. It’s highly recommended that you should follow influencers and other brands and join the ongoing conversations. More you interact with the content they are producing, the more you will be able to create a lasting relationship with the members of that Instagram community.
Similarly, if your followers create conversation with one of your posts, actively join the conversation and respond to questions, praise and other sentiments.
2. Repost Content:
Another way out to empower your brand’s reputation on Instagram is reposting content published by your local followers who run business in the area. If it happens, your followers will feel great that their content is being featured by your brand. And it will eventually push more of your followers to take notice of it.
If you value them, they may revert by giving your brand a mention on their Instagram page. It will help you get in touch with their followers and create more followers in your local community. The fact is that when you share content that’s created by real people, your brand looks more approachable. The strategy above seems very impactful when it comes to creating a stronger reputation in the community. It also helps you save your time consumed in creating original, unique content.
3. Keep Your Brand Identity Consistent:
Have you ever thought what it means to join Instagram with your business? This is simply a way to give your brand an extension and a push further. Therefore, you need to be consistent with your brand voice and its tone on Instagram. It should be in sync with how you’re being perceived on other social platforms, say FB and Twitter.
Have you ever thought what it means to join Instagram with your business? This is simply a way to give your brand an extension and a push further. Therefore, you need to be consistent with your brand voice and its tone on Instagram. It should be in sync with how you’re being perceived on other social platforms, say FB and Twitter.
Therefore, the way you interact with your Instagram followers / customers, needs to be aligned with the tone you set in the captions of your posts.
4. Don’t Copy Tone across Channels
Consistent brand voice across social channels doesn’t necessarily mean too much similarity can be damaging. Your content shouldn’t look similar across all channels. They must contain a sense of uniqueness wherever they are posted. The danger of being similar or blanket across all the channels is that your followers find you spread this exact same message multiple times. It stops your audience from connecting with you. Do note that every social network is different and should be treated as such.
Cross promotion isn’t merely to copy and pasting your content from one platform to the next, but to promote themselves across the channels as per their audience’s demand.
5. Follow Trends
While creating content for your brand on Instagram, include the popular and current local trends in mind. The idea will always rock as it will surely garner some local attention since it's interesting to your local followers. Go through the portals and online resources to find trending hashtags around the news and local events. It’s always recommended to follow other businesses, local celebrities, and other community leaders for inspiration on trending and local keywords to use.
6. Use Localized Hashtags
Localized or area-specific hashtags allow people in your area to find your posts and your business through area-specific hashtags. It’s always recommended to use Instagram hashtags that include your area and the type of business you run.
To have a better idea about how to use localized hashtags for maximum exposure, you can use third-party tools such as Hashtagify or Focalmark. They allow you to enter a keyword/hashtag to produce related words and phrases.
7. Include a link in your Bio
On your Instagram business page, the author bio section is the only place where you can include a link. It’s absolutely unmissable. Without the link, your customers won’t be able to visit your website, buy your products, and engage with your brand elsewhere. In addition to your brand link, you may also want to include information about your other social media accounts, like your company’s Twitter handle. And, as a local business, it’s also crucial to include your address, so followers know where to find you!
8. Include Your Website Link in Your Bio:
Instagram allows registered users to include a clickable link in their bio. You can use this space to insert a shortened URL. It’s a best practice to have a link present in your bio. It could be your website link, service page link or the link of your online shop.
The link present in the bio encourages your Instagram followers (potential buyers) to visit this link. Since Instagram profile ‘Bio’ is the only location where hyperlink is allowed, don’t miss this opportunity. Instagram business accounts with more than 10k followers are entitled to have more hyperlinking opportunities.
9. Utilize Instagram Stories for Engaging More Audience:
Instagram’s ‘Stories’ is an impeccable feature that can garner solid user attention and in turn, website traffic. The feature is used by over 300M daily active users. Hundreds and thousands of global brands are using the feature for creating and sharing their brand content.
Instagram’s Stories are popular due to the stunning and creative features it offers. From GIFs to location tags and from stickers to boomerangs and filters, Stories gives marketers, brand and influencers power to deliver more and engage more. A business brand with more than 10k followers can add a link in their story other than the link in the bio.
There are multiple ways brands can leverage Stories to creatively entertain and influence their audience. Through the feature, sharing informative and engaging content is real fun. Create stories that entice users. Don’t push hard selling pitches as it creates utter annoyance. Despite the fact that Stories disappear after 24 hours, you can save some of them to your profile to keep driving traffic to the links in your Stories.
10. Leverage Instagram’s Shopping Feature
Instagram shopping feature is another sure shot way to drive massive traffic on your brand page / website. Back in 2017, Facebook owned Instagram rolled out shoppable feed specially designed for business accounts having 10K or more followers. Using the feature, brands / marketers can link their products directly from their Instagram photos.
When a user taps on a photo shared with products tagged, it shows important annotations of each item including its name, price, and a link to the product page on the brand’s website. Alternatively, users can also click on a “shop” button that can be found on the top of a brand’s profile. Here they can see a feed of all photos with products tagged. As ‘Shoppable Stories’ is all set to hit the Platform sometimes from now, brands will have more business opportunities to unearth in times to come.
11. Use Instagram Analytics to Understand Audience
Instagram Analytics answers a number of key questions on how your Instagram posts are performing. A deep analysis of the analytics data explains slew of metric including the best time to post, best time of user engagement and top performing content on the platform. Take the report into consideration and launch your campaign accordingly. Rightly planned Instagram campaign hits the right audience and brings more visitors on your brand page.
12. Engage with Influencers and Brands:
Instagram is a place where you can meet influencers, brand managers and high profile marketers. Collaborate and engage with them to increase traffic to your Instagram account and more engagement on your Insta posts. You may also partner with other brands. Launch giveaways and request your followers to like and comment on the post to enter the giveaway contest. Request other Instagram influencers to tag you in their post and ask their followers to participate in the giveaways.
You may also sponsor an Influencer to bring larger and more-engaged audience. Offer them free products or sponsor a post on their feed to push their followers to your Instagram account. Request them to tag your Instagram account and link to your website on their Store. It’s unarguably true that Instagram prefers to showcase most popular and engaging content in the news feed. Therefore, content with more interactions and engagement gains top spot in Instagram news feed.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.