Are you looking to market your dental practice or any kind of business online but don’t know how to get started?
With online marketing becoming a big trend, it’s a good idea to get started sooner rather than later. But which site do you start with? There are so many tools such as Facebook, WordPress, and Pinterest.
You should consider using Instagram.
Ever since its release almost 8 years ago, Instagram has gotten over 1 billion users active monthly, and the number is only growing. Couple that with how easy it is to maintain Instagram engagement, it’s the best site to start up an online marketing business.
Now, if you’re thinking of ways to market yourself, your practices, and products on Instagram, then great! Here are 8 ways to help you.
Why Instagram?
Instagram is a visual-based site compared to other social media sites. And it gives you an advantage if your main goal is to post your products or to show your services to other people without needing long blocks of text of explanation.
With photos making up a large portion of content posted on the site, Instagram is the perfect place for online marketing.
Knowing Instagram is an important and effective tool is only half the battle. You now have to learn how to market yourself on Instagram and bring more patients to your clinic.
Videos Are Important Too
Videos are a great way to engage users to view your product or services. Especially to the younger viewers, who are less likely to get engaged when they should read. And considering that they make up most of the active daily users, 59% of them, videos will be one of your more important Instagram posts.
Instagram offers a lot of choices when it comes to video type of media
Videos
Instagram allows you to record videos of up to 60 seconds in length. You must keep in mind that when Instagram plays your videos, it always plays with no sound at first. Make sure to remind your viewers to turn the sound on or make sure your Instagram posts are understandable even without sound.
Gifs
Gifs are perfect for short, looping videos that allow you to emphasize something. This is a great, quick way to showcase something neat for your viewers.
There is also another type of gif called a boomerang that loops back in itself. A perfect choice for zoom-ins.
Know Your Audience
Like with anything, to sell your product, you must know who you’re selling to.
As stated above, most of Instagram’s daily active users are millennials from ages 18 to 29. Putting this into consideration, you’re going to want to appeal to their age range. Knowing what catches their eyes while they’re scrolling past the dozens of posts displayed on their Instagram will help you gain views and attract an audience.
Scout Your Competition
Now that you’ve established what you want to sell and who your target audience is. Now might be the time to see who else is posting things like yours.
Check out their profiles to see how they’re posting their products. With that knowledge in mind, you can either work on their ideas or take a different approach to set yourself as unique and/or innovative.
Focus on User-Generated Content
USG for short, it refers to products that receive free advertisement by consumers through various forms in social media.
A great example of this is what Coca-Cola did with their “Share A Coke” campaign. It generated such a big buzz that they got their customers to share their own photos with a coke in hand, turning them into advertisers.
User-generated content gives the people the feeling that you are a trusted brand because they’ve seen posts about you from people they trust. This feeling of community camaraderie will increase your chances of getting noticed by others.
Also, encouraging your clients to share the work you’ve done will give them a sense that they have an influence over the community. This good feeling they’ll get from you will likely show when they talk about you to other people who are looking for a good recommendation.
Want to focus on the most popular user-generated content? Reach out to Instagram influencers. They’re the folks online who have thousands of followers and can cause a rippling effect if they mention you and your clinic.
Master the Art of Creative Hashtags
When you’re creating a business, it’s important to know the things you can do that helps you gain revenue. When you’re setting up Instagram for business, the things you need to know how to do is making hashtags.
Hashtags are Instagram’s way of connecting things that share a common theme, and make your content easier to discover, provided you know what hashtags to place.
A way that you can use this to increase your Instagram engagement is by looking at what hashtags your audience uses and coming up with a post that can use the hashtag as well.
Another way for you to gain more followers is by making fun and creative hashtags. Come up with a catchphrase that’s fun an easy to remember, something that can relate to your practice or your products, people will want to use it more if they think its catchy and hits their ear right.
Also, try using creative wordplay in your hashtags or puns to make them more memorable, don’t be afraid to get creative and load up on hashtags.
Use Scheduler Tools
There will come a time when you’ll be busy and will have the thought of posting something on your Instagram account pushed out of your mind. And with most brands posting around 6 posts per week, you have to keep up if you want to get noticed.
Scheduler Tools are what you need for this job. You can use them to plan and manage your uploads for the month, and it uploads your posts on the day you scheduled them on. Definitely, a must have if you have trouble managing uploads.
Link Your Instagram to Your Facebook Page
There’s no denying that Facebook is still the leading social media site in the world. So connecting your Instagram with your Facebook profile will help you get more noticed by your friends.
You don’t have to worry about uploading twice, because Instagram has the feature that lets you share what you’re about to upload on Facebook too.
Increase Your Instagram Engagement Now
With all the competition you’ll have on the way, staying ahead of the curve with these 8 guides is more important than ever. Make your account now and watch your Instagram engagement increase with every post.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us today.