Promote Yourself on Instagram

Instagram has been growing more and more every day as a social network. It’s simplicity and the fun quality that pictures add has made it quite the favorite among social network sites. With 1,000 comments and 8,500 likes every second of the day, Instagram will no doubt continue to expand in the months and years to come. Working as a business, Instagram should be a welcome addition to your social network. It can help you to bond with your fans and is an excellent way to introduce and promote your products. But how should you go about getting more exposure? Here are some suggestions.

Contests

Contests are like catnip for social networkers, especially the artistic kind of people you are likely to find on Instagram. Photo contests are the obvious choice for Instagram, offer one of your products as a prize. An excellent choice is to have your followers post a picture of themselves using your products. Your main goal is more exposure for your company, so offer a prize that makes sense for your company.

Offering a flashy prize like a TV or iPad will gain you a lot of followers, but only while the contest is running. After the contest many are likely to lose interest. So one of two things will happen; either those followers will un-follow you, or, and perhaps worse, you will have stagnant followers who will never interact with your page.

Photo-a-Day

A popular outlet on Instagram is the Photo-a-Day challenge. The idea is to post a new photo every day for a set amount of time, usually a month. Companies will often encourage their followers to create new photos. This is an excellent way to get your followers involved with your page. Have them submit photos for your Photo-a-Day and choose the best one. This is almost a sure fire way to get some exposure as #photooftheday is one of the top hashtags among social network sites.

Unique Hashtags

The hashtag is the handy tool that lets us search through posts. Instagram also uses hashtags in the same way. They are excellent for helping users enter contests and helping businesses find those entries. Make sure you choose a popular hashtag, but also one that is unique so you don’t have to sift through junk to find your contest entries.

Cross-Promote

Don’t just use one site to promote yourself. Yeah Instagram is best, but promotion works best when it’s widespread, so get on the other sites and promote away. Hold the same contests, or even link them to your Instagram contest. You want the most people to see your products as you possibly can.

Personalize It

Instagram is an easy way for you to personalize your brand. Don’t just post your professional photos, go behind the scenes and show them how your company operates on a day to day basis. Have fun with it. It will make you more relatable. People love fun, and seeing you being fun will make them far more likely to want to follow you.