As a trusted digital marketing expert, Nicholas Bereznai of Durham is often asked whether or not social media marketing is worth the effort. Like so many marketing questions, there’s no 100 percent correct answer. Nicholas Bereznai of Durham often responds by asking how committed a company is to its social media marketing. No campaign can achieve overnight success. Truly powerful social media marketing is done through consistency. Few social media platforms provide the ROI and the opportunity that Instagram marketing provides. Today, Nicholas Bereznai of Durham will provide an overview of Instagram marketing for those new to the idea.
Instagram is often called the picture app but is also well-known for videos. Users can take, edit, and publish visual content to the people who follow them or the general public. Users have control of privacy settings and can interact with people by favoriting their content, commenting on their content and even sharing their posts with other friends and family. For those who haven’t looked to Instagram in a bit, it’s important to note that the app has shifted towards reels, quick video content. Yes, users will still post pictures, but businesses must be willing to create content for their image and reel feeds.
When Nicholas Bereznai of Durham consults on Instagram marketing, he explains that signing up is fairly straightforward. It is better for the client to sign up as opposed to a marketer as they want to make sure they own all of their property and can reset things if their page is hacked. Signing up is as easy as downloading the Instagram app and signing up via email or their Facebook page. After filling out all of the pertinent information and uploading a company logo as a profile picture, there’s a blank canvas to work with.
Nicholas Bereznai of Durham recommends waiting to post or launch the page officially until a company knows the direction they want to take their posts. It can be as simple as uploading pictures and images of daily specials or grow more in-depth with a clear purpose behind each post.
Nicholas Bereznai of Durham recommends developing a social media calendar to help map out a strategy. Some certain trends and hashtags can be leveraged to grow an audience. For example, Nicholas Bereznai of Durham is always looking at relevant national days to promote for his clients. There’s a holiday for everything from national Philly cheesesteak day to national engineer appreciation day. By leveraging sites that list these holidays and using relevant hashtags, businesses can gain relevant followers organically.
Now that a business knows what to post, they need to understand how to post on Instagram. Start by clicking the + icon at the top-right corner of the app. It’s then time to choose the media file you want to upload. To make things easier, have the desired image or video saved to your phone before attempting to post. Once a picture is selected, Instagram will provide the ability to apply a filter to the image. Filters can be a blessing when the lighting is off in an image. Instagram has the ability to edit the photos within the platform. Feel free to check for blemishes and correct them. Finally, it’s time to write a caption. If an employee is featured in the image, be sure to ask if you can tag their personal account. This will, again, help grow the following. Once ready to publish, click Share in the top right corner.
If the Instagram account starts to take off and the team has decided to dedicate time to growing the audience, there are several ways to go about this. The first is to post and gradually grow the audience by providing a place to view content consistently. Even scheduling software allows a company to set posts up in advance. Nicholas Bereznai of Durham recommends having someone oversee this and delete posts if something that would overshadow a silly or trivial post occurs in the news. Another way to grow an audience quickly is to put ad spend behind a post.
Different ad types are available to all business Instagram accounts. Anyone who uses Instagram can tell you that they see ads for certain products or services pop up in their feeds as they scroll. By putting just a little bit of ad spend behind a post, any business can target their content to appear in the feeds of their target audience. What’s nice about this is that there can be a call-to-action in the caption that inspires people to follow the brand and start to receive the content organically.
