Brand awareness is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to the success of your business. Building your brand implies investing time, energy, and money into making your brand recognizable and familiar to a certain group of people. These potential customers of yours need to be in constant touch with your brand and keep adding more and more into the image they’ve created about it. One of the best places to incorporate these tactics is definitely today’s most popular social media platforms, with Instagram being one of the most dominant ones.
With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is the place you want and need to be. Building your brand on this social media platform a step you can’t skip if you want to move forward and stand shoulder to shoulder with your biggest competitors. If you’re confused about building your brand on Instagram, or you have no idea what it implies, don’t despair.
The guide below will break it down into smaller steps ad help you build your personal brand on Instagram without much trouble. Here’s what you need to know.
Visual Identity
Instagram is primarily a visual platform. This means that people focus most of their attention on the visual appeal of the post.
If the post manages to get their attention on a visual level, they might even read what the post is about and get into more detail.
This is why your brand needs to develop a visual recognition on Instagram.
Visual recognition is based on:
- The design of your posts
- Brand colors
- Prominent fonts
Each post that you create needs to have consistency in terms of its design. People need to know it’s you before they read it.
For example, when we think about Coca Cola, the world-famous beverage brand, we instantly think about the color red. This is the color they use in all their marketing and social media strategies, making their posts recognizable and unique.
Make sure you develop a visual consistency in your posts. Use brand colors and fonts in all your posts and make sure they all have mutual characteristics.
Style & Tone
You have a certain base of followers and a target audience you’re trying to reach. By defining them, you’re actually defining your brand’s style & tone on Instagram.
Each post that you write and publish says something about your brand.
You need to determine what you want your followers to think when they read your posts and how do you want them to feel.
You can see a clear difference in style if you analyze these two brands’ Instagram presence:
- M&M’S
Their style is fun, laid-back and a bit goofy. They make jokes and write in a conversational manner. - Swarovski
Their style is semi-formal and provides specific information about their products. It’s more of an informative nature.
Determine what style you want to use, and nurture it throughout all your Instagram posts. Give your brand a voice and never recede from it.
Your Hashtags
Using hashtags on Instagram is a must if you want to build your personal brand and ensure your posts are engaging and popular.
However, you need to know how to properly place hashtags on Instagram to achieve the desired effect. So, let’s break it down:
- Branded Hashtags
Branded hashtags are those you’ve come up with and are using as a specific reference to your brand. You can ask your followers to use the same hashtags so that together you create a separate corer on Instagram.
One of the best known branded hashtags is Nike’s #justdoit with more than 17 million Instagram posts using it in the description. - Popular Hashtags
Following the trends on Instagram regarding your niche is a must. Monitor your competition and popular use popular hashtags to enhance your posts’ performance.
Build a hashtags strategy around the above listed two types of hashtags and make sure your brand has a hashtag base of its own.
Be an Active Instagram User
Instagram isn’t a platform for advertisement, although it’s widely used for this purpose. It is, however, a platform for connecting people.
As a brand, you’re using Instagram to:
- Reach out to people
- Create bonds with them
- Communicate with them
- Hear their opinion
- Stay connected
But, Instagram is a two-way street. This means you need to start engaging with other Instagram account and show you’re not just an account for advertising your brand. You need to:
- Continuously follow accounts
- Write comments on posts
- Answer to comments people leave you
- Like pictures and stories
- Repost
- Respond to DMs
Show your face in different corners of Instagram and people will be able to connect with you easier. This will improve your brand identity immensely.
Call to Action
Your followers need a little push in the right direction, to inspire them to be more active in engaging with your brand.
It’s your task to motivate people to like, comment, share, or react to your posts in any other way.
The more they engage with you, the more they’re growing to like and your brand is getting stronger consequentially. You could:
- Ask them to use a certain emoji as an answer to your question
- Ask them to choose between products/looks/quotes
- Ask Yes or No questions
- Ask them to rate something on a scale of 1 to 10
- Tag someone in your posts
Make sure there’s an open invitation for your followers to get active and tell you how they feel or what they think.
Then, don’t forget to answer.
Variety
Building your brand on Instagram requires you to master this platform and unveil all its secrets. Then, you need to make use of everything the platform has to offer.
To put it simply, you need to strive for variety.
This will ensure that your posts stay interesting and that your followers never know what you’re going to do next.
Therefore, make sure that you use:
- Stories
Post stories on a regular basis to constantly remind your followers you’re there. - IGTV
Create and posts longer, compelling videos about your brand, the people working for you, your offices, background stores, etc. - Polls and Questions
Invite your followers to vote or answer a question using the stories’ Poll or Question feature. - Product Tagging
Tag products on your posts to give instant access to your website and help your followers find what they like. - Videos
Create informative, useful or entertaining videos that your followers will enjoy watching.
Be versatile and use all of Instagram’s features to empower your brand.
Influencers
You can never have enough followers and there isn’t a way for you to draw a line and say “I’m fine with that number”. On Instagram, you always need to strive for more and try to engage as many people as possible.
One of the best ways to further build your Instagram presence and strengthen your brand is to team up with an influencer.
Influencers are those people who have an admirable base of followers who respect their opinions and trust their recommendations.
Choose an influencer who is:
- Related to your niche
- In accordance with your brand identity
- Interesting to your followers
Per your resources, propose a collaboration and get them to advertise your brand on their account.
This will open a whole new door for you and help you expand your own influence even further.
Monitor Your Success
Finally, there’s one last thing you need to do to ensure you’re constantly improving your Instagram presence and your reach.
You need to monitor your success.
Pay attention to your metrics and conclude about:
- Types of posts your audience likes
- Time of day they’re most active
- Your competition and their similar efforts
- Engagement and reach
Know your numbers to be able to change things up and improve them on the go. Make the required changes and work on removing the type of content that is performing poorly.
This will definitely help you build a strong personal brand on Instagram.
Final Thoughts
Building your personal brand on Instagram isn’t something you can do overnight. It requires a strategic plan that you need to follow and a patient approach. Although it’s complex, it’s far from complicated. All you need to do is follow the right steps.
The guidelines above will help you smoothly get to the point you want to be. Use them to create your own strategy and stay on the right track. Work hard and act like a professional and you’ll have a powerful brand with an admirable reach.
About the Author!
Daniela McVicker is a social media expert with years of experience in the field of building a brand on social media. She is also a content editor for Top Writers Review and a blogger. She uses her professional experience and writes articles which are valuable and helpful and gives her readers practical advice on how to succeed.
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