3 Tips to Build your Brand on Instagram

You need to build your brand on Instagram. Period.

If you’re not an influencer, a mommy blogger, or a handmade jewelry artisan you may have just rolled your eyes and are “this close” to clicking away, but I urge you to stick with me for just a few minutes while I make my case. 

Instagram turns 10 years old this October and currently has 1 billion monthly active users. Yep. You read that right. Those users spend an average of 53 minutes a day on the platform and 90% of those accounts follow a business. I hope I have your attention now. 

Whether you’re building virtual reality for real estate, a coding bootcamp, autonomous lawnmowers, or yes...even selling handmade jewelry...you can go after your ideal customer on Instagram with the right strategy. Any type of business can benefit from it because 83% of Instagram users admit to using the app to discover new products and services, 81% to research products and services, and 80% decide whether to buy. 

So now that you’re convinced you need to be building your brand on Insta. Let me give you three easy tips on how to start.

1 - Prioritize Current Followers 

Stop going after new followers. I know that that sounds counter-intuitive. Can’t you only build your brand by building your following? The answer, quite simply, is no. Brand does not equal audience.

By focusing so hard on gaining new followers, you’re ignoring the ones you ACTUALLY have. Whether you have 30 followers, 300, or 300,000, right now you have an audience of people who want to hear from you, who hit “follow” for a reason. Talk to them! If you can’t convert those 30 people, you will never convert 3 million.

2 - Post Regularly

If you want your audience to get to know you, your voice, and your brand, you need to be pushing out content. Instagram ranks newer content first. This means that you need to be posting regularly to be higher up in people’s feeds! Come up with a reasonable schedule for you to post whether that’s 3 times a week or every week day. And please don’t ignore Instagram Stories! Over 500 million accounts use Insta Stories daily and this is a perfect opportunity for you to talk to your audience by asking questions, and doing polls and quizzes. 

3 -  Provide Value

The days of gaining millions of followers by just posting pretty pictures are over. While you do need a nice photo, Instagram users are looking for so much more these days. Think about what your value-add is. Are you educating? Informing? Entertaining? People are trading their time for your content. Make it worth their while. For a jewelry maker, this could be a tutorial on how they create their pieces, or a series of posts teaching their audience how to style the jewelry. No matter your business, be strategic in what value-add you’re providing. By setting yourself up as the expert you are making your brand/businesses a go-to and will ultimately convert your followers into customers.

If you can shift your mindset and nail down these three things, you will have laid a solid foundation to truly grow your brand/business on Instagram. Just remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day! Stick with it and be consistent and over time you will see the results you desire!

Did you enjoy this post but want to know more about building your brand on Insta? RSVP here to our next workshop on February 18!