As growth hacking continues to conquer the business world, visual content is promptly becoming the fuel that powers the digital marketing machine and makes it unstoppable. Both entrepreneurs, marketing and social media experts are finding new, effective ways of reaching audiences and leveraging the potential of a social following. And with networks that focus mainly on what captures the eye, building and developing a business brand has never been easier. Here’s how to leverage two of the main ones, Instagram and YouTube, and significantly extend your audience.
Content Really Is King
Even though YouTube is a video platform and Instagram is mainly about photo sharing (it also includes an Instagram Video option), the marketing rules are pretty much the same for both networks – whichever you choose, your first step should be creating compelling and relative content to offer to your potential customers. To present your brand and make it absolutely irresistible, you’ll need content that simultaneously explains your product and addresses your audience’s needs.
Both videos and photos should be visually stimulating and entertaining, but designed to solve problems, answer questions and inspire. Brandability is all about being unique and easily recognizable, which is why you should choose a coherent theme and a specific style to support your products with a background mood and story.
Consistent and Timely Presence
Every single growing hack that refers to social media marketing suggests the immense importance of a constant viral presence. However time-consuming managing a business network account might seem, it’s easily doable if you carefully analyse your audience’s habits and plan ahead accordingly. People on social media expect new content on a regular basis, which is why your fresh posts should be prepared in advance.
To get the exposure you need, avoid reposting old content and blasting your followers with the new one. Schedule your presence time and take advantage of the peak times of the day – social media is crowded with potential customers at around 9AM, 12PM and 4PM.
Influencer Campaigns Are the Next Big Thing
Instagram hashtags offer numerous possibilities for connecting with trailblazing brands and influential social media personas – when posting, remember to tag some of the biggest names from your niche in order to get their attention and leverage their followers. Influencer campaigns are the latest big thing in digital marketing, and your development can greatly benefit from their potential.
By reaching out to social media favourites, you’re given a chance to get your brand noticed and target the exact audience your business needs for growing further. And, since these favourites are highly influential members of the internet community, having them recommend your product will help you create social proof and build trust.
Be Likable and Supporting
Being socially present through content posting is not enough, not when it comes to community-based platforms like Instagram and YouTube. The whole purpose of social media is a spontaneous and informal interaction between its members, and obtrusive entrepreneurs can easily be considered as intruders. To avoid being ignored, you’ll have to follow the unwritten rules of such an environment and connect with your audience as much as you can.
Always be accessible and easy to approach, and remember to take some time to answer questions and chitchat with your audience. Being likable can significantly contribute to your virtual identity, which is why you should stick around and support other users by liking and commenting on their posts. Learn more about social campaigns and include them in your sharing schedule.
Be Easy To Find
In case you’re a novice in the social media marketing world, it might take some time before you get noticed for the first time. Being an extremely brand-friendly platform, Instagram has borrowed hashtags from Twitter, which made it very easy for each post to be found. Remember to regularly describe your photos with popular, yet relevant hashtags (try #love, #Follow or #PhotoOfTheDay). To make it easy to find, do some serious SEO work and create a keyword-accessible title and description, categorize your content with tags and remember to cross-market it to other social networks.
Get Creative, Appear Stylish
Since Instagram and YouTube both heavily rely on visual content, make sure to devote some time to styling and production. To make your Instagram portfolio truly alluring, carefully think about the style and mood that relates to your brand the most. Fancy smartphone cameras are not only for taking the perfect selfie, so be sure to research camera lens filters, flashes and additional accessories that will help you make the perfect shot.
Shooting in natural lighting seems like the best choice for making the photo really stand out – apart from having a way of making colours more vivid, such light gives you true freedom for editing. The same stands for videos. Whatever your budget, modern technology allows you to shoot, edit and produce quality videos at a reasonable cost. If you pay attention to the audio quality and lighting, your iPhone video can reach millions of views.
Discover Your Inner Writer
Having an Instagram layout filled with captivating images is usually not enough, so be clever and take advantage of captions. The 2000 character limit is just enough for you to add a new tone to your brand. Use #S4S (Shoutout for Shoutout) and include a call to action by asking your followers to share the image or tag the friends they think might be interested in your content. With an annotations option, YouTube videos are brilliant for additional self-promotion. By enriching your visual content with links and hotspots, you can easily widen your email subscription base, and with that, generate new leads.
Utilize Ads
Both Instagram and YouTube offer an opportunity for unconcealed business advertising, which is yet another perk you can use to your advantage. For an additional cost, the platform itself promotes the post and displays it at the top of the feed. Instagram’s Photo and Video Ads include a “Sponsored label” and a “Learn more” link that can send your audience to your website. To add a number of photos for your audience to swipe through, consider Carousel Ads.
YouTube offers an even more tempting option – by paying for your ad, your virtual promotion can be included into other users’ videos, which saves you the cost and effort of making your own. Still, such ads can usually be blocked by users, which is why considering in-banner ads seems like a better alternative.
Social media was created to make the internet community cosier in the virtual environment, and most of us utilise the advantages that this environment offers on a daily basis. And since everyone is already there, Instagram and YouTube are business growth hacks that will definitely help you grow your audience and get noticed, recognized and followed.
