In the last decade, social media has changed how people communicate with each other. Instagram has evolved into one of the most popular social media platforms on earth, with a global reach of 1 billion active monthly users!
It’s no surprise that it continues to be an important marketing tool for businesses today, but there’s a lot of competition with so many potential clients. So how do you stand out from the crowd and build a brand?
It all comes down to branding. Branding is a way for you to create a cohesive message that resonates with your customers and tells them what they’ll get out of working with you.
In other words, building a brand is the foundation to success on Instagram in 2021. It sounds simple, but there are lots of steps involved. Here we go:
Establish Your Brand’s Identity
Just like you have a name and persona, your brand should be its own entity. Potential customers should get a sense of who you are when they get to know your brand’s identity. Here’s how to create one from scratch.
Purpose
Hopefully, one of the first things you did when you set up your business was to identify its purpose. Why does this product or service exist? What problem does it solve, and how does it make the world better?
The answer to these questions will help you decide how to present your brand and what voice it should have. Of course, your purpose is to make money but try to dig deeper into the why.
If you’re building a brand for your yoga studio, then your purpose is to make people healthier and happier. If you own a physical product, you might find it helpful to create a mission statement.
Name and Logo
To have the best corporate identity, you need a memorable name and logo that conveys a clear message at first glance. The colors, fonts, symbols, and any other design elements should be in line with your product or service too.
Using an app like Canva makes it easy to keep things consistent because you can use the same fonts and colors across all your designs. Your name and logo will often reappear on your Instagram account, but also on your website, emails, invoices, online advertising, and much more.
So make it count!
Voice and tone
What type of personality should your brand have? Friendly or formal, enthusiastic or reserved? The voice will depend on what product you’re selling and how it fits into a particular culture.
You could also decide to be more than one thing at once—a tech company that’s also hip and cool or a suave designer for kids.
Your tone will depend on the voice you choose to use. If your brand is formal and reserved with traditional values, then it’s important to be more concise in what you say. On the other hand, if your brand has an enthusiastic personality that fits into pop culture trends well, you can be more conversational.
Brand Message and Values
What are the main messages you want to send? Do you believe in kindness, quality, or innovation? Branding is about building trust with a customer base and establishing your brand as an authority on your topic.
Each of these core beliefs must align with what customers expect to see from a brand like yours. That’s why it’s also important to do competitor research and analysis and get inspired by what’s working.
Choose Your Content Strategy
A content strategy is an important part of building your brand because it will save you time and prevent head-scratching in the long run. The goal is to prepare this advance so you can put it on autopilot, and then focus on other aspects of your business!
Types of Posts
Instagram is all about visuals. That’s why it’s best to post at least one photo or video per day.
Photos should be high quality and not too staged, while videos can have a bit of editing and some production value. The goal is for your followers to get a peek into what life looks like in your company. You’ll also need to post a mix of content to fit the needs of your audience.
Visual identity can be created by ensuring that each post has the same branding and a cohesive look. When someone looks at your profile page, they should know it’s you.
Think about what kind of content you want to create. You can tell a story, be informative, or offer advice- the possibilities are endless!
Your strategy should match what your brand is about and where your marketing goals lie. For example, if your goal is word-of-mouth outreach, then viral videos might be a good strategy. Instagram Live is also a great way to build an audience.
Actionable Hashtags
Simply posting and waiting around for likes doesn’t work. You’ll need to be active and post regularly, using the proper tags. But you can’t just post any random words!
To get the best results from your hashtag strategy, you want to make sure they’re relevant to your brand but not too competitive.
For example, if you own a fashion boutique with lots of dresses, #fashion would be both popular and difficult for you as the store owner to succeed because there are so many other brands in that category already.
You might instead try hashtags like #dress, #weddingdresses, or even a hashtag that’s specific to your brand. In fact, you can create your own hashtag for your brand on Instagram and encourage your followers to make it popular.
Posts with hashtags receive on average 12.6% more engagement than those without, so don’t overlook them!
Get Social!
At the end of the day, regardless of what you use it for, Instagram is a social media platform, and you need to put in the work! The rewards will come once you accept the online community and it accepts you. Not everybody is comfortable with social media, but everybody can do social media marketing using these tips.
Engage With the People
Once you’ve posted your perfectly tailored content, it’s time to interact with the endless stream of people on the Internet. The ultimate goal is to gather like-minded people and build an online community around your product or service.
To do that, you’ll need to be visible, helpful, and responsive.
Take a look at people’s comments tagged with your brand name or hashtag – don’t pay too much attention to the negative ones! And try not to get sucked into arguments on Instagram. Instead, keep it friendly by answering questions posed in DM threads.
The Instagram algorithm values engagement, so you should make this a top priority. Comment and like other people’s content, and they’ll do the same for your posts – it will amplify your organic reach on Instagram. This means you’re more likely to end up on the trending page!
When someone sends you a DM or comments on your pictures, be sure to reply promptly, and try to respond to everybody!
Giveaways
Giveaways are also a great way to foster a sense of community on Instagram and a great way to get the word out about your brand or product. How it works is you offer something to the winner, usually a product or service. Share your giveaway with all of your followers and post it as often as you can. This way, people will know when they’re entering the contest!
To enter the giveaway, your followers will have to share your post or tag a select number of friends in the comments. Using this technique can easily make a post go viral and bring in hundreds of followers quickly.
A cool tool for giveaways is Sweep Widget, which makes it simple to streamline the process.
But don’t just take our word for it! Check out this article for more social media marketing tips from Instagram influencers, and boost your brand’s appeal effectively.
Build a Brand With Paid Advertisement
The methods we explored so far were all part of an organic marketing strategy. Organic marketing is the best kind for most because it constantly evolves and grows. The only downside of this tactic is that it takes a lot of time to provide results.
Why use paid advertisement?
Some of you may be wondering how to build a brand faster than that. Paid advertisement is something you can use to promote your Instagram brand quickly and effectively, all while minimizing the time you spend on marketing.
IG ads or promoted posts will allow you to target people based on their interests and location – making it easy for you to deliver your message to the ideal customer. Organic advertisement still works, but it may take time to see results.
In this fast past world, time is of the essence, so it might be interesting to look at. You don’t need thousands of dollars either; You can start it at a low budget and scale as you grow. There are two main types of paid advertisements you need to know about.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is when you pay an individual or business to promote your products or services. This is often done through Instagram posts but can also be on YouTube channels and blogs.
This type of marketing works great when done correctly. You’ll need to find an influencer relevant to your niche and that is willing to include your brand’s message in the promotion.
An influencer shout-out can do wonders for your brand’s authority in your industry and strengthen the value of its name.
Instagram Ads
With these ads, you promote your business to the people who follow similar accounts like yours. It’s a great way to reach potential customers that are already interested in what you do or have to offer.
Targeting ads can be tricky for new businesses, but it’s something to keep in mind as you start building your brand. You can target different age groups, gender, interests, or locations with these types of ads which gives you more control over who the ad reaches and how they’ll respond to it.
The ad copy should, once again, reflect your brand’s identity and core message.
Build a Brand and Keep Learning!
Oversaturation can make it tough to build a brand on Instagram in 2021. The good news is, if you know what to do and how to do it well, the future of your business doesn’t have to feel so uncertain. Knowledge is power.
In this post, we talked about establishing an authentic identity that stays consistent throughout all of your content, both from a visual perspective as well as with words used through hashtags or voice.
There’s so much more to learn about building a brand, and we’ve got all the info you need. Feel free to visit our blog to stock up on knowledge, and turn your ideas into reality!