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Despite the fall it suffered a few days ago, Instagram has become one of the preferred social networks for millennials (71% of its users are under 35 years old), with more than 500 million active accounts every day on Instagram. Worldwide and 1,000 million active accounts per month. 

That is, 20% of the world population. This has made companies from all over the world deploy their marketing strategies on the platform. In fact, according to Instagram itself, 90% of users follow at least one business account, which has made it an opportunity. 

To commemorate the 11th anniversary of this social network, which was created on October 6, 2010 by its creators Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, IEBS Business School, the leading digital business school in online training, explains how to exploit Instagram as a sales channel for any business.

Create engaging content

The key to being successful on Instagram is to stand out from the rest by offering attractive and valuable content to the target audience in order to capture their attention. To do this, you have to analyze the objectives of the company to decide what to show, have a defined brand identity and a lot of visual creativity. In addition, the images must be accompanied by a catchy text that encourages them to be shared and now you can make more followers through Goread.io expert’s strategies.

Join the Reels

A reel is a tool within the platform that allows you to upload multiple clips of up to 15 seconds of video, with effects and filters. It gives free rein to creativity, since it allows you to record and stop the video and has its own statistics. In addition, it helps attract a new audience and, if the content is visually attractive, it is possible to achieve virality and positioning in the “Explore” tab.

Use Instagram Stories

According to data from the platform itself, 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories every day, and a third of the most viewed stories belong to companies, so making use of this functionality is very important to grow. Geolocation and mentions to collaborators, for example, will help to have more visibility, as well as adding gifs, music or stickers.

Defined style and aesthetics

Maintaining a consistent and differentiating style on Instagram is a key factor. Having a defined aesthetic makes your profile more attractive and interesting. 

For this, it is advisable to establish the colors that will predominate in the profile, the composition of the photographs and the filters that will be used. These concepts must be aligned with the logo, identity manual, website, etc. Everything should reflect the same.

Show the most human side

Social networks offer brands the perfect opportunity to show their most human side and allow them to be personified. Both in terms of history and the values ​​that are hidden behind a logo. To do this, it is recommended that brands show the world who they are, their identity, be authentic and consistent, and build a storytelling. In addition, posts that use humor tend to get higher engagement and are more likely to go viral.

Create community

Interacting with the public and being close to users not only ensures comments and content sharing, but also gives the possibility of converting those followers into future clients and brand ambassadors. The community is like a group of friends on Instagram, so you have to generate conversation and approach, always answer, ask questions, listen to the audience and be constant.

Schedule the content

Planning content on Instagram takes time and dedication, it more easy now with Goread. It is advisable to have a content calendar with specific dates related to the company’s sector in order to create related publications and schedule their publication during peak viewing hours. 

According to statistics, the best hours are from 3pm to 4pm and from 9pm to 10pm on Monday, Sunday, Friday and Thursday, in order of relevance.

Pay attention to what’s new

Instagram is a constantly changing social network whose developers are constantly modifying, making changes to the algorithm or launching new features. For example, the platform has recently launched the “Search on the map” option. It is a function similar to Google Maps with the difference that the social network uses the most popular images of the platform as a search engine. 

The objective is to find nearby places such as parks, shops or restaurants and they are classified using hashtags, so it is important to use the most appropriate ones according to the sector of each business.

“The millions of users that Instagram has make it a very attractive social network to increase sales, increase visits to the web, create a community and be in contact with your target audience” , explains  Oscar Fuente, Director and Founder of IEBS. “Learning to use networks as a digital marketing tool is essential for today’s companies that want to expand online. 

For this reason, these professional profiles are among the most demanded by companies, since they become the voice of the brand and manage relations with its audiences and its reputation”.