Instagram Promotion Guidelines – Steps to Follow and Key Rules

Since Instagram has 1.074 billion users, the visibility that a brand can get is enormous. However, the advantage of visibility comes with heaps of competition that needs to be tackled well. Hence, brands are trying to find ways to get in touch and interact with the vast community of Instagram: with regular users and business profiles ready to invest in their social networks each passing day. The right way out, however, is by following successful Instagram promotion guidelines.

Era of Instagram

Instagram, as a social networking platform for brand promotion, works like a magic spell. So boosting your Instagram profile is an essential thing, and you can buy followers from the best companies. It is a prominent digital hangout space for young millennials. Therefore, brands are constantly striving to step up their Instagram game by creating a viral IG image getting them thousands of new followers and clients.

Still, some brands even can’t fully engage their potential customers because of a lack of knowledge. In addition, an Instagram algorithm 2021 presents bloggers and business account managers with surprises, and not everyone knows how to please it and get good rankings.

Using Instagram for Business

According to statistics, 36.2% of B2B decision-makers are already using Instagram for business, and more than 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day.

Suppose you are looking to jump right into the entire Instagram promotion thing and make Instagram one of your main social media marketing channels. In that case, you need to be aware of the proper Instagram promotion guidelines to convert your passive shoppers into confident customers who will eventually build a loyal community for your Instagram brand.

Instagram Promotion Guidelines – Steps to Get Officially Started

Now that you are all set to get started, you need to have a social media marketing plan. Having an appropriate way around will help you boost your posts with ads for brand visibility and help you monitor, measure, and tune your Instagram promotion campaign. Eventually, you will be able to get more Instagram followers. Let’s explore the steps you need to take to get started with your Instagram promotion strategy.

Get a Business Optimized Instagram Profile

The most crucial setup in your Instagram Promotion strategy is to set up a Business profile for your brand as it has its own benefits to offer. Since users expect companies to provide all the relevant info they’re looking for, having a legitimate Business profile just helps.

Having a standard account name is the first thing to consider. Use an appropriate Profile photo, mainly the one that has your business logo design. If your brand has just come up, generate a Logo and use it for marketing purposes. It will help your new audience readily identify your business. Then add the URL of your website to the Instagram Bio that should hook. In one brief phrase, you can:

• express your individuality
• emphasize the advantages
• add CTA(f.e. a discount for subscription)
• tell facts about your company, show that you’re an expert in your sphere
• add your phone number for clients who need more details
• just write it in simple, straightforward language, and avoid using expressions like “we’re the best and our services are quality”.

Create a Great Instagram Strategy for Target Audience

Having a complete idea and an accurate analysis of your target audience and what they expect from a brand like yours should be one of your Instagram promotion strategy priorities. All that it takes to work is understanding what your target audience on Instagram is.

Once you know it, start to strategize your Instagram storytelling, Promotional posts, and audience engagement accordingly. It is crucial to design your posts so that they truly resonate with your audience.

Still, the fastest way to get on with Instagram promotion is to buy followers from reputable third party social media platforms. Buying followers, likes, views, or other kinds of engagement will boost your organic growth and come in handy in the long run. Just make sure you do it using websites that provide genuine Instagram followers (read: real accounts), like Socialwick. Also, ensure they offer affordable pricing or a free test trial.

Know Your Instagram Promotion Goals

Once you decide to go ahead with your Instagram promotion guidelines, you need to make sure that your goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely.

Following this SMART strategy is essential to set the right goals and not chase stuff that won’t work for your brand.

There are more than 800 posts made per second on Instagram across over 1 billion monthly active users. If your goal is pure brand awareness, that’s the most prominent use case of Instagram promotion. For other reasons, you can use Instagram promotions on a Cost-Per-1000 Impressions (CPM ) basis. Some part of these Instagram promotion techniques is for increasing visibility and engagement, for which boosted advertising will work.

Work on Posting Great Content at All Times

To begin with, you should develop a content strategy that suits your brand. All your Instagram promotional content must include unique posts and high-quality images branded/watermarked with your logo.

Visuals Matter

The visual part of Instagram remains a factor that hooks visitors’ attention. A couple of years ago, you could skip it and focus on storytelling, tell about life hacks, and helpful tips but not in 2021.

What is a visual on Instagram? It is a general impression of your profile. It’s a combination of shades, angles, presentation, style, and the main idea of ​​the account. High-quality representation implies that the profile will be eye-candy. Even if it is made in different shades, the overall picture is attractive and stylish. A visually elegant profile attracts world groups and audiences by its aesthetics – they repost it, and hundreds and millions of people see your photo. However, the need for quality content is more than just essential. Thus you get striking interaction and traffic.

Use Instagram Stories Frequently

It’s not a secret that Instagram stories have become an integral part of a promotion. Nowadays, it’s essential to consider the details, create strategies that suit your account, make at least an approximate plan, and analyze how followers react and what they like more. Notice that more stories mean a better reach rate. About 20 stories per day are standard for accounts with a big audience.

Some valuable tips to follow:

• use the swipe-up feature in Stories which is only available to Instagram business accounts.
• like posts, your stories need reactions so that the algorithm will show them to more users. That’s why today, you should ask for feedback and reactions, create various games, special tasks, or ask questions.
• also, it’s modern to use Reels (short video content with music and text). Thus, you should learn how to create attractive videos and engage users.
• there is a necessity to add text to your stories as sometimes it’s not convenient for users to listen to them. You can use templates to present the information.

Besides, for a good post engagement, you can offer users to vote for one of the options, ask to rate a thing from 1 to 10, offer challenges, or even promise gifts for activity.

Go Live

Live streaming helps bloggers and businesses connect with subscribers and increase customer loyalty. People see you alive, feel your emotions, and can ask questions. Also, it’s a great idea to invite somebody to discussions(a professional in your sphere), exchange audiences, and delve into those topics that would be difficult for you to reveal on your own.

Post Videos to IGTV

This type of content is considered to be an excellent additional tool for generating organic traffic. It provides free opportunities to share your subscribers more valuable information as the duration of videos can be up to 60 min. That’s why we highly recommend you to learn how to use IGTV if you still don’t know.

Blogging

When it is about brand products, you must come up with content capable of feeding your followers’ curiosity. If you have entailed your Instagram page as a teaser for your brand’s blog, that is even better. If you plan to, you can look at the best templates for blogs, choose the ideal one and then implement this practice. You can post teaser content on your Instagram post to drive traffic to your official blog.

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Know the Right Posting Frequency

This point in the Instagram Promotion Guidelines is a very crucial one. It will eventually decide how your Instagram posts are going to perform. You should carefully determine their frequency while executing your Instagram social media brand-building strategy. Having a predetermined posting frequency is also important because you put in a lot of work to creating the right Insta-worthy content for your brand. If you post it at the wrong time, it might not perform as expected in terms of Instagram likes, shares, clicks, and traffic.

For a brand, you can safely post at an average rate of 1.5x per day i.e., up to 3 times a day. The time to post the content can be between 8 AM-12 PM or 5 PM-8 PM. However, don’t post too often or post too less because that would annoy your audience or end up forgetting about you.

We’d recommend using SocialPilot free tool for scheduling posts in advance.

Cooperate with Instagram Influencers

The social media influencer culture has taken the world of brands by storm. So many brands cooperate with famous influencers with a massive following to rise up in the Instagram ranks. There are different ways to get an influencer to endorse your content or brand and its products/services. But, before you choose your influencers, make sure that a significant part of their followers’ preferences relates to your brand’s products.

Build Relationships with Other Instagrammers

To promote an Instagram post or story from your brand’s business profile, you need to venture out and engage with other brands which are relevant to your industry. It will entail your likes, comments, and feedback on their Instagram posts and stories so that they can notice your activity on their page, acknowledge it, and do the same for your brand’s Instagram promotion on their page.

Exploit Instagram Ads and Instagram Campaigns

Having an Instagram business account provides you with the advantage of creating promotions with the Instagram app to boost the visibility of a post on your business profile. These Instagram promotional Ads can tend to several objectives, such as getting viewers to your Instagram profile, making them visit your website, or take action for the products you are currently optimizing. Like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, these Instagram Ads eventually help build awareness of your brand when they start appearing on your users’ feed.

Measure Performance of Your Instagram Promotion

Once you have materialized all your ways of promotion guidelines, it is time to measure the overall performance. You can use Instagram Insights to get the relevant data on follower demographics and actions, as well as your content. By having this data in your access, you will be able to measure the performance of your Instagram promotional activity and see how each of these activities is performing for your brand.

Key Rules to Follow as per Instagram Promotion Guidelines

There are certain ground rules that Instagram has laid before you go ahead and kickstart your Instagram promotional activity. These Instagram official rules set out the terms and conditions for members and the consent on complying with applicable regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered.

Considering the other rules that need to be followed as per appropriate Instagram Promotion guidelines, here are some more of them:

Use specific Hashtags to Build your Brand’s Community

We call this one a rule because if the promotion running Business account fails to use a specific hashtag, it’ll fail at getting a good number of users who might be interested in the promotion due to the reduced visibility of the promotional posts. Once you have a specific hashtag, your brand will be able to track the conversations and opinions. Also, you can try  Awario for free and monitor new mentions or discussions.

Promote Your IG on Other Social Media to Get as Much Exposure as Possible

Once again, this is more than just a rule since many promotion participants navigate their way to the official Instagram post through other social media channels. So, it is crucial to promote your Instagram on other social media channels as well.

Hard Selling is a Big NO

“Your followers want to know who you really are! Share your struggles as well as your triumphs. Be open, vulnerable, and create an opportunity for them to connect with you on a deeper level. Don’t just tell them why they should buy from you” – Becky Dickerman.

Always remember that Instagram now has become a platform where marketing works through reference or influence. So, don’t go out on the platform persistently selling your offer. That could be a very annoying experience for your followers. Instead, go for a softer approach to help your followers believe that you are interested in building long-term relationships. Cultivate trust and nurture your audience rather than just make money.

Incentivize Your Followers to Tag Your Business Profile in Their Photos

It’s a beneficial way to engage your audience in your Instagram promotional activity. Let’s say that you have a clothing brand that has just launched a new spring collection. What you can do to further promote your line is to ask your followers to tag your business profile in their pictures where they wear your clothes.

It will incentivize your followers emotionally and can be a good boost for the popularity of your brand. You can also often share your followers’ tagged photos to raise their morale.

Establish Relationships with Loyal Followers

All your Instagram promotional campaigns should be focused on the outcome.  Furthermore, it should drive loyal and interested followers rather than piling up random Instagram users who have nothing to do for your brand. In case you know how to improve Instagram pages and you’re ready to share your experience with other users, the MotoCMS Instagram promotion website template is a perfect platform to tell the world about your services.

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Summing Up Instagram Promotion Guidelines

Instagram focuses on giving businesses the opportunity for rich, visual storytelling in their marketing campaigns. When you are struggling with the Instagram promotion for your brand, having some help can be of great use. The above Instagram Promotion guidelines are going to be your key to running several successful Instagram promotion campaigns.

Tip: if you have an online store, read a detailed guide on how to use social media for its promotion. So, drop and comment below and tell us about how helpful these Instagram promotion guidelines are.