There are a handful of features that every company should be using to promote itself on Instagram. This helps to reach its target audience and get more people to convert. The first thing is learning more about the audience the company has on the platform, which is done through Instagram insights, and then there are the newer features including automation tools and Instagram Reels.
Analytics
No social media platform would be as successful as many are these days if it didn’t have analytics tools. These allow companies to keep track of their overall performance on the platform. When it comes to marketing on Instagram and promoting the company on the platform, companies must track all of their promotional efforts. This way, they see whether they are performing as well as expected and generating positive results. Fortunately, Instagram has its own analytics, tools, and platform that allows companies to get a vast amount of data and information. This data is about the performance of its content, advertising campaigns, and more called Instagram Insights. It’s important for companies to remember that the analytics tools are only available for accounts that use Instagram for business. Also, these types of accounts can also be connected to a company’s Facebook business page.
How to Access
To get access to the analytics tools, companies must go to their profile and open up the graph symbol. Inside the Instagram Insights platform, which is the analytics platform for Instagram, companies get to see a lot of important metrics regarding their performance, including the total number of website clicks, profile visits, impressions, reach, number of story views, and the performance of each post the company has previously made, including the impressions and engagement for each one of them. Aside from all of that, companies can also see a lot of information that is important about their audiences, such as the breakdown according to age and gender, location, the number of followers the company already has, and any recent trending growth, their daily activity, which is also broken down by hourly for each day to help companies determine the ideal times when they should be sharing content on the platform.
Through Instagram Insights, companies can get a better idea of how their reach, engagement, as well as impressions, are performing monthly, and how those numbers are performing in comparison to the overall follower count of the company’s account. There are plenty of tools, such as instagram engagement rate calculator tools, that can give your analytics more context and meaning. When a company compares all this information against the posts that had the highest performance on the platform by the business and analyzes each one of them, it can figure out various patterns and trends with its target audience that helps companies create more effective promotional and marketing efforts.
Automation
Another benefit the companies can get from using Instagram is by utilizing the opportunity to create automated messaging. This was introduced last year after only being available on Facebook. After all, this platform has come a long way since the days when it was just a simple photo-sharing app for everyone. These days, Instagram has become a place where anyone can discover and connect with other people and brands. Around 90% of people that utilize the platform tend to follow at least one company. Plus these types of people regularly tend to reach out to the companies that they follow on the platform. This can be either in the form of replying to a story from the company, interacting in the comment section of a post, mentioning it in their own content, or directly reaching out with a direct message.
To make the entire communications process a lot easier for companies, Instagram introduced a new tool. It allows companies to manage all the conversations on the platform in a single place. This way, companies can automatically keep track of all the conversations that they have with other people all over the platform. This is whether it’s in direct messages, comments, replies to stories or posts, and simple mentions. Additionally, companies can also create automated messages to immediately reply to users whenever they reach out. This makes them feel more valued and motivates them to convert sooner, and generates higher retention rates with consumers overall.
Reels
A couple of years ago, Instagram decided to introduce a brand-new feature to compete with the ever-growing, popular social media platform, Tik Tok. Instagram Reels are short, vertical videos, lasting from 10 to 60 seconds. They can be shared on the Instagram feed. Additionally, they give companies the opportunity to appear on the explore page of users. This is where they can be seen by hundreds of thousands of potential customers. This brand-new feature from Instagram provides companies with a very unique opportunity. It gets itself in front of a potentially brand-new audience that doesn’t follow the company quite yet.
This is especially true if the company creates engaging and interesting videos. They are a lot more likely to show up to more people on their explore pages. This allows companies to increase their growth on the platform and generate a lot more sales. This new feature also creates a great way for companies to allow their target audiences to learn more about the business by showing off the company’s personality, filming behind-the-scenes videos, and other creative content.
Companies can also use the feature to present their products and how they’re used for the followers, launch new products through teasers, as well as curate user-generated content to make the audience feel even more valued. That’s why it’s important for companies to start using Instagram Reels as part of their Instagram marketing campaigns, to generate a lot more attention, and increase their followers, which, in turn, will help companies increase their sales and revenue.
Ronn Torossian founded 5WPR, a leading PR firm.
