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How To Grow Your Brand Through Instagram

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“Instagram has over 800 million monthly active users and the platform is a great marketing tool if utilized effectively.” –Forbes

Looking to expand your personal brand or business by using Instagram? Here are a few helpful tips.

Your Bio

Let’s start with the basics — your bio. It’s typically the first thing users see when they visit your Insta page. You want it to be short and sweet. While remaining eye-catching, simple and creative, you also want your bio to give a snapshot of you who you are. Brainstorm a few words associated with your company/brand, and that will help you come up with a phrase users will remember.

AM:PM PR’s Instagram bio: Creativity. Strategy. Socks with sandals. #ampmpr ⏰

Consistency

Keep your content consistent. Although it’s fun to experiment with filters, users will keep visiting your page if it follows a general theme. Choose one filter for the majority of your photos, and pay attention to how much white/blank space is present in each of your photos. A balance between the two is important. If you switch off between these two styles of photos or simply stick to just one, it will result in a overall more visually-appealing page.

It’s important to be regular with your posting schedule. Post every day and include a group of relevant hashtags under each photo. This will allow new users to discover your page, plus, unchanging hashtags will pool your content into Insta categories related to your field.

Examples of hashtags for a food blog/Instagram:

#foodblogger #food #foodie #foodphotography #instafood #foodstagram #foodlover #yummy #delicious #foodblog #foodies #healthyfood #instagood

AM:PM PR’s usual hashtags:

#agency #publicrelations #PR #pdx #branding #agencylife #portland #creative #art #portlandia #business #pragency #socialmedia #follow #brand #creativeagency #ampmpr #instafollow #instagood #creativity #media

Engage

Follow similar users. Not only will this increase your followers, (similar businesses will typically follow back) but you can also gather ideas for future content. Comment on other’s posts, reply to Insta stories and message people who reply to yours. You’ll grow an engaged fanbase in no time.

Connecting Your Website or Blog

If you are using Instagram to ultimately promote a larger businesses, website or blog, make sure to link your Insta appropriately.

When promoting new blog content on your Instagram page, here’s a few tricks:

  • Use call to action words. Examples: “New blog post is up! Click the link in my bio to check it out,” “You aren’t going to want to miss this week’s blog post! Visit the link in my bio to read.”
  • Use a platform like TapBio to immediately direct users to your latest blog post. “Rather than constantly changing your Instagram profile URL (to go with your latest post), you can easily add slides equipped with links to your Tap Bio corresponding to your latest Instagram posts. Tap Bio could be a powerful tool for social media stars, digital entrepreneurs or anyone trying to market themselves via Instagram.” – TechCrunch
  • Use Instagram stories to continue promoting your latest blog post through out the week. Use Insta stories to advertise new content instead of repetitive photos on your feed.

Highlights

A fairly new feature, Instagram highlights are an awesome way to display your archive of Insta stories. To organize them, divide the highlights into categories. Add a creative, consistent cover for each that compliments your theme colors for an extra touch. (See below for AM:PM’s highlights.)

Need more ideas/content inspo? Check out AM:PM’s Instagram page here!

marcus harvey at AM:PM PR speakeasy

Beyond Pavlovian Behaviors: Social media Owns You

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What if you spent hours, days, weeks, months curating a perfectly branded social media profile, and one day it just disappeared with no explanation?

That was an intriguing story shared earlier this month at our Speakeasy event with Portland entrepreneur Marcus Harvey.

You may recognize Harvey as the successful entrepreneur behind Portland Gear and Creative|35 and curator of the @Portland Instagram handle. His fascinating story was first reported in detail at The Oregonian and the article inspired us to invite him in for the Speakeasy event.

marcus harvey at AM:PM PR's Speakeasy

Weeks after the event our team found we were still discussing the one story he shared that wasn’t an example of his remarkable success – his acquisition of the @LasVegas Instagram handle.

Harvey said that he followed the same strategy curating the Las Vegas account that he did in growing the @Portland handle (now with 102k followers). Once he identified and acquired @LasVegas, he began a regimented effort populating the account with carefully curated, branded content – exactly as he’d done with the Portland account.

Then one day he woke up and the @LasVegas account was gone.

He tried contacting customer service at Instagram, of which there is none. After various creative attempts to reclaim the account, including the use of an attorney, he gave up and resigned himself to the reality that @LasVegas was gone. He still doesn’t know exactly what happened, but surmised that it may have resulted from his effort to operate the account from a Portland IP address.

Regardless, it was a startling reminder that when it comes to social media, as professional content curators, we own nothing.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – all of them. They brought our social profiles into this world, and they can take us out of it.

Have you, dear reader, had any similar experiences with social media?