Businesses today rely heavily on a social media presence for building up or retaining their brand. A business domain to rank high needs to have an adequate and consistent number of genuine hits. Search engines are often not sufficient for generating SEO results. Hence, significant engines like Google and Bing use Social Signals as a direct or indirect ranking signal. So, Instagram Social Signals do Matter to Business Accounts – even to which do not use e-portals primarily to sell their products.

A good marketing strategy for any business today must consider how to hold the fort in social media. The idea is to channel direct and genuine traffic towards their e-site or information page, thus bettering their SEO ranking. Growing one’s network base on Instagram is a foundational step towards this. Visit SocialsUp for more details on how a business can raise its followers’ network on Instagram and thus build a strong social media presence.

Why Instagram Social Signals Matter

With over a billion active monthly users, the relevance of Instagram as a social media platform today is no longer what it was when it first launched as a photo and video-sharing social media application in 2010. With its ever-growing user database, businesses stand a good chance of generating bulk traffic to their host URLs through user-sharing and likes. Whether a venture is a corporation, a small partnership, or a personal brand, incorporating Instagram into its’ marketing strategy is a must in current times. The more the number of clicks and likes a feed or a post on Instagram receives, the higher is the chance for the business to rise in its SEO ranking.

Not only this, Instagram is primarily a visual-sharing site that also allows for commenting and messaging. This makes it a convenient tool for brand building, attracting potential customers, keeping abreast with popular opinion, organizing revolutionary changes, and generating think tanks.

Hence it is prudent for every venture to consider opening a business account on Instagram. Once that is done, the next step is to devise how best to market itself to take advantage of Instagram Social Signals. 

A new Instagram account begins with 0 followers. As a commercial venture, it is wise to reach out to customers, informing them of the Instagram account’s existence. A business should request existing clients to follow, like, and share its posts without being overbearing.

When the follower base is small, it isn’t easy to bring the Instagram feed the desired visibility. Particular professional sites can help generate more likes and more visibility for the account. Besides, the following could help attract potentially new followers:

• Creation of attractively captioned visuals of products and services offered;

• Adding a link to profiles on other social marketing sites and in emails to subscribers;

• Following other accounts that have the potential of becoming followers. These can be individuals or other ventures whose products may benefit from mutual exposure to each other. For instance, a publishing house may benefit from exposure to followers of editors and vice versa.

2. Ensure the Account is Responsive and Up-to-Date

Active accounts are likely to have more followers. A well-managed business profile should:

• Have regularity in feed updates. How often is considered regular posting would depend on several factors of your business. The most common posting frequency for brands on Instagram, according to recent surveys, is 11–20 times per month;

• Be available for acknowledging and answering queries, feedbacks, and suggestions. It should be able to respond to questions and comments without autogenerating detached statements promptly;

• Keep its followers engaged by activities like hosting trivia, holding informal and formal contexts, and offering feed presence to customers.

3. Use Features of the Account with Care

An Instagram account offers several features that can be used to optimize customers’ flow to one’s business. Depending on what the business is about, two popular and practical uses of Instagram are to:

• Update Stories – The Story feature can showcase new products, upcoming promotions, and display announcements without taking up too much space on followers’ feeds. This enables the business to carry out its promotional activities without annoying followers with too much content on their feed;

• Go Live – Using the live streaming feature of Instagram, businesses can connect with followers in real-time to answer questions, create employer-employee-customer camaraderie, respond, and engage with comments, and so on. Companies could tie up together with artists to sponsor live shows or simply use this feature for attracting followers using a behind-the-scenes approach. 

Hashtags are what sorts out the numerous videos and photos into compartments for users of Instagram. While posting videos and pictures with captions will ground the content in a context, the use of appropriate hashtags will make them searchable for a wider Instagram audience who could potentially turn into regular followers and customers. 

Interconnecting the business account with other social media pages like Facebook business pages, LinkedIn, blogs, and websites will enable the venture to generate more clicks as users of one site often navigate to another through embedded links.

Conclusion

While Social Media Signals are an essential way of generating website traffic, businesses must be open to using various distribution channels to retain their online presence. Nowadays, Instagram is a popular choice for a primary social media platform, but this may change any day. As a business venture, one must be amenable to making changes and adaptations as and when necessary. For now, concentrating on marketing strategies on Instagram is a prudent choice, and the above tips are a quick guide to elevating one's social presence on the platform. This list of publications may be of use for a more detailed step-by-step approach to building up Instagram Marketing Strategies.