If you are considering investing time and energy on social media accounts for your business, you may be wondering about many different things. Will your brand’s social media accounts affect your SERP ranking in any way? Is it worth it for you to invest in social media for your company and brand? Does it matter? Well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But here’s what you need to remember:
Humans are and will always be social creatures. It’s really no wonder that social media sites have become a big hit. Everyone just craves interaction with everybody else. According to research, we also tend to trust whatever our friends and family recommend us, hence it will strongly impact our purchasing decisions. In fact, it is very common to actively ask people around us for recommendations when we are looking to buy something. For instance, we can ask our friends how the new restaurant in front of the office is, which make up they are using, where they bought that coat, which schools they’re sending their kids to and so on.
Aside from asking people close to us, we also tend to ask similar questions online when we are looking to buy something off the internet. Hence, if you are a business owner, it doesn’t really make any sense if you are not using a social strategy for your businesses. Yes, you should use social media to promote your brand!
Should You Use Instagram?
The main question here is, should you be using Instagram to promote your brand? Yes, when it’s your brand you’re looking to promote, Instagram is THE social media platform for you. No, not every company needs to be on Instagram. For some companies, investing time and money on Instagram is a bad investment. For instance, it’s not really for your consulting firm. Instagram is for celebrities. It’s for fashion blogs, beauty blogs, art and everything show-offish. In fact, it’s great for beauty brands. It’s great for sharing pretty photos. If your company is in the beauty category, you MUST have Instagram. We are not saying that if you are not a beauty brand, you should not use Instagram. What we’re saying is that, if you want to use Instagram for your business, do it right, like a beauty brand! Instagram has amazing built-in features that you can use to organically promote posts, sell products through links and basically engage your customers.
Why Beauty Brands’ Instagram Feed Looks Better
If you have been looking through successful Instagram accounts, you’d see that they look better than ‘normal’ Instagram accounts. No, it’s not those beautiful models, scenery and the way they photograph their products. It’s more of how their photos look cohesive. These photos look like they’ve all been curated and edited together. How do they do this?
It’s pretty difficult to point out exactly each factor that makes their Instagram accounts aesthetically pleasing. Especially when you’re not a professional designer or photographer, it’s really difficult to tell. But anyone can easily tell that they have beautiful subjects, there are primary focal points and a lot of negative space, the hues in their accounts are basically pinkish, whitish, or anything pastel. Sometimes there’s a pop of color too. Color schemes are apparent, and it’s obvious they don’t change their color palettes with every photo they post. We can easily see that the photos they post are edited so that each one complement the other.
These brands also stick to the 3×3 grid format on Instagram. How do they do all of these?
Well, we can assume that they have professionals working for them, like photographers and designers who can easily manage the color balance on their photos. However, you don’t really need master designers in order to have an Instagram feed for your brand that looks as good as these beauty brands’ feed. We’re going to tell you what you need.
What You Need For A Flawless Instagram Feed
First of all, in order to achieve a feed that is as good as any beauty brand on Instagram, you need to plan. The posts have to be planned in advance. You just have to have the right tools and avoid spontaneity. There are tools that you can use in order to effectively put your plans in action.
Some of the IG apps you can use include VSCO, Built-in Analytics, Planoly, Unum and many more. Some of these apps you can use to visualize your photos in a grid format, some you can use to edit your photos and others you can use to schedule your posts. Post-scheduling apps will post on Instagram directly on the scheduled date and time, which will make your job easier.
All of these sounds like a lot of work for your brand, especially if you do not have a background in design. Yes, it’s challenging, but once you get it working, you can reuse and enjoy the fruits of your labor again and again. This means that you can actually feature a product again and again, using different colors and different settings. It’s repetition but it looks great and that’s what sells on Instagram.
Not Just About The looks
Beauty may be popular on Instagram because of how their feed looks, but that’s not all of it. Looks matter on Instagram since it is a visual platform, but it’s not the whole story for sure. Of course, these brands shell out a huge amount of money to advertise their products and accounts on Instagram, but they also use hashtags and photo tags that contribute to their success.
Hashtags naturally boost the exposure of your posts and your brand’s account so that you can be easily discovered by your potential customers. You can use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, which you can use to your brand’s benefit. You can search for the most popular hashtags that apply to your brand so that your post can be more discoverable. You can also use Photo tags. You can tag people, such as celebrities as well as your products. Tagging your products in your posts can help in making your product more discoverable.
You can also talk to your followers and get engaged through your captions, comments and through Instagram stories.
