With its scorching rate of growth, Instagram has become very attractive to online marketers. Even though its current base of 700 million monthly active users is still behind that of Facebook, its significantly higher level of engagement and the visibly younger demographics of its followers are very appealing. With the increasing number of brands trying to promote themselves, online marketers need to think strategically to stay ahead in 2018. Some tips:

Focus More on Video Content

The popularity of video content is rising extremely fast because the cost of production has crashed significantly. With smartphones featuring very high-quality cameras, it has become very simple and cheap to produce videos. Video content has the ability to convey messages in a more personalized manner that appeals to users. Of course, just because videos are a good method of brand communication, it does not mean that all your Instagram posts should be videos. Depending on the subject and the profile of your followers for Instagram you will need to experiment to arrive at the best combination of videos and still photographs.

Leverage the Power of Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

One of the best ways of marketing on Instagram is to combine a great product, an unbeatable offer,and the credibility of an influencer or brand ambassador. There are two ways of approaching it; you can either use influencers to drive short-term marketing campaign or appoint a number of Brand Ambassadors to promote your brand over a longer period. Even though brand ambassadors typically have far fewer followers than many of the acknowledged influencers enjoying an online celebrity status, their engagement runs deeper and they are often in a better position to influence the purchase behavior of their followers. The cost of acquiring brand ambassadors also tends to be far lower with many brand ambassadors being very happy to leverage their follower base for the extra prestige of being associated with a brand and a chance to sample the product free of charge.

Narrate the Story of Your Brand with the Stories Feature

The recent introduction of a Snapchat-inspired feature, Instagram Stories has created an additional marketing opportunity. The Stories feature allows marketers to share content that has a life of only 24 hours. By using this feature, you can create excitement around your brand and users tend to be highly engaged simply because the limited life of the post means that if they do not see it in time they would miss out on it completely. The feature is very useful for conducting product promos or showcasing the brand culture. The keen sense of anticipation that Instagram Stories content has been able to build has already enabled it to beat Snapchat at its own game.

Conclusion

The New Year promises to be one that will have an increased focus on the creation of high-quality content and building more user engagement to drive sales revenue and profits. It will be essential for marketers not to sit back after publishing great content but to interact with their followers intensively to build better engagement.

Author Bio: Harris is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of real Instagram followers for his postings.

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