25 Instagram Marketing Tips

Instagram was originally just a fun way to share pictures between friends on smartphones, but has now become a big source of lead generation and branding for businesses worldwide.

Instagram has become #36 in the world in traffic, according to Alexa and ranks #17 in the entire U.S.

It's time to start leveraging its power for your business to increase sales and brand awareness by following my 25 Instagram marketing tips below.

25 Instagram Marketing Tips For Business

1. Use a professional picture for your profile. Whether you are making it to brand yourself or a company, the picture is one of the first things people will see.

2. Make a username that people will remember. It needs to contain your name, company name, etc. that you are trying to build a following for on Instagram.

3. Write a brief, but detailed description for your profile. Make sure it tells what you do, but you don't have to be all about business either. If it's your personal account, talk about your occupation and what your other interests are to relate to people.

4. Add a link to your profile to your website, blog, squeeze page, Facebook page, etc. You want people to have somewhere to go to learn more about what you do if they're interested.

5. Post a picture a day no matter what. Being consistent in your posting on Instagram will help you build a following faster and show people you are active in your branding.

6. Use #hashtags in every post. This is a must if you want to get people to see your pictures. I recommend using at least 10 related hashtags in each post.

7. Connect Instagram to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. The more social media sites, the more exposure you get. If you're going to use Instagram for marketing, go all the way and share each post on these other sites at the same time.

8. Don't spam! People hate it and will never follow you if all you post is sales pictures and ad photos. Post a variety of pictures like lifestyle, what your product has done for people, interests you have, quotes, etc.

9. Use the Followers+ app. This will help monitor how popular you're becoming on Instagram and see a breakdown of your followers.

10. Get the Follow Mate app. This will make it much easier to unfollow people who aren't interested in following you back, follow people who follow you, and search for new people that you aren't connected to.

11. Download the Instaquote app. This will help you edit and write text on pictures before posting them on Instagram.

12. Put your URL, brand name or both on your pictures. Use Instaquote or another app to edit the picture and brand it with something for people to remember you by when they all see it. This will increase traffic and brand awareness.

13. Follow at least 50 people a day. What I like to do is follow people everyday Monday through Friday and take the weekend off from doing so. Then, on Monday morning, I'll clean out those who don't follow back and start following new people again.

14. Follow people to get followers. A certain amount of people will always follow back on Instagram, so one way to get more followers when starting out is to follow people.

15. When following people, make sure they're in your targeted audience. Do your research on who tends to buy your services or product. When you have your perfect audience to target, figure out who they would follow, and then follow them.

16. Find competitors and other brands similar to yours. When you do this, use the Follow Mate app and look at who is following these competitors. These are your perfect audience and you need to connect with as many of them as possible.

17. Use Instagram Direct to send private messages to certain people. If you want to personally connect with people on Instagram you can now directly message them without having to just use commenting or connect on a different social media site like Facebook.

18. Respond to comments. People love it when you actually are active with your own followers. It builds a trust and a stronger connection that could lead to more customer loyalty or just better overall branding.

19. Describe your pictures that you post. Put your take on what's happening in your posts on Instagram, so that people know what's going on or can see why you posted what you did. It will increase interaction.

20. Post short videos. Everyone loves short, catchy videos. Just look at the popularity or sites like Youtube, Vimeo, and Vine.

21. Pay attention to analytics. When marketing on Instagram, you must pay attention to the numbers which tell you your popularity and which of your posts get more viewers and interaction.

22. Pay attention to the top Instagram marketers' posts. One of the easiest ways to get good at marketing or home business, is to just model what the pros are doing and just add a little of your personal touch.

23. Make a cheat sheet for hashtags. Make it easier on yourself by having a note saved on your smart phone containing your most popular, related hashtags  that get a lot of interaction. Then just copy them and paste them in your picture descriptions instead of typing them every time.

24. Follow your Facebook and other connections who have an Instagram. Instagram does a lot of integration for you to create connections faster than most social media sites. Take advantage of it.

25. Make sure to follow your followers back. It's common courtesy to follow back people on Instagram, especially when you are expecting others to do the same for you. Create a good vibe with your followers.

Conclusion Of My Instagram Marketing Tips

You have everything you need to start really taking advantage of Instagram marketing now and all you have to do is take action.

One really cool thing about Instagram is that everything is mobile and can be done on the go. You don't have to be at the office to get work done on this social media platform.

If you liked my top 25 Intagram marketing tips, let me know what you liked about my tips in the comments and check out my post on Facebook marketing.