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You do not need to be Instagram famous for your brand to do well and see results. To be successful as a business on Instagram, you need to remember that it’s not all about the follower count. Instead, being successful will come from an engaged audience and fantastic content. 

Whether it’s looking at the latest trends, are discovering new ways to engage with your customers, or you are just starting your marketing strategies, careful planning is what you need to use Instagram successfully. 

Let’s have a look at 3 steps you should be following in order to use Instagram successfully: 

Plan Your Content 

You are probably already aware that it’s not just about uploading a few pictures or videos. Instead, you need to plan the content you are going to be using, just like you would in other areas of marketing. 

Some rules you should follow include: 

• Researching the most successful posts in your industry and what’s working best for your competitors. 
• Build content that follows a similar theme or idea. You should build content that could last you around a month or two. Consistency is key. 
• Be unique, but also follow what you know works. If your new theme doesn’t work or engage with your customers, plan a change as quickly as you can, even if it means reverting to old styles. 
• Store your photos smartly. Consider looking at iPhone features such as what is heic files to ensure you have the best quality photos stored and ready to upload to your established Instagram account. 
• Invest in quality photos. 

Use A Call To Action

A question that every business should ask themselves about using Instagram, is what drives users to interact, follow, and engage with your brand? Having great content and photos helps to draw in users, but, does your audience know what they need to next if you’re not using the right call to action?

This is where Instagram captions come into play. They are a necessity for a successful account. They enable your audience to understand your post and add context to your photos. Call to action should help you to drive conversion forward. 

Some things to include: 

• Unique hashtags or common hashtagshttp://best-hashtags.com/hashtag/popular/ 
• The reasons for your post such as a new offer or competition
• Your link. On Instagram this will be in the user bio, however, you will commonly see ‘link in user bios or ‘please see the link in user bio in the caption’. You also need to make sure your link is the most relevant and updated possible
• Informing whether the content is an advertisement
• Any other relevant information

Engage With Instagram Users

If you are new to Instagram and are still in the process of building your brand presence on Instagram, you need to take the right steps towards building engagement. If you are a smaller brand you may also want to consider following your fans or ‘power users’. 

You also need to make sure you are genuine with your Instagram account. You should be using it to engage with your users and only follow them if they are producing content that is relevant for you to follow. Some brands regularly re-post or re-gram user-generated content from their users, so this may be something you think about including on your platform. You may find that some of your fans are already producing great content featuring your products or services. See if you can use their content in a collaboration that works for you both. 

Ideally, you should avoid robotic interactions as much as you can. Most people would prefer no response over a thoughtless automated message. Even huge brands take the time to gives fun and quick responses to their followers on Instagram. You don’t need to have a full-on conversation, but replying where you can go a long way in terms of engagement and customer loyalty. 

This does mean that it can pay off to have your Instagram account manned throughout the day, so make sure you are willing to put in the effort needed to respond. If you want good reviews and recommendations, you need to be ready to use Instagram as a platform for communicating with your users. Some businesses to choose to employ a social media manager or outsource to a freelancer to look after their Instagram responses following some guidelines. 

There are many ways you can connect, but if you get Instagram right, you will have an Instagram account that is a great source of information and entertainment for your customers. Do you have any other tips that could help? Please share them in the comments below.