12 Instagram Marketing Mistakes Your Competitors Wants You To Make
A lot of people ask questions about how to use a specific marketing tactic when in fact we are all trying to find out either of these two things.
- How to get more leads and clients in my business
- How to increase the sales in my business
It’s important that we all know that there are many channels and routes to success but the principles behind it are learned from the journey we make towards our successful destination. In this article, we are going to look at the mistakes our competition hopes we keep on making on Instagram and how we can learn from it and use these lessons to improve on the things we are doing in our business.
Mistake #1: Making Your Instagram Account Private
A private page is a big turn off for a lot of people. Why should you force someone to follow your account just to see a product you want to sell?
Instagram is viewed as one big window shopping experience for a lot of businesses, there are a lot of potential followers that may find you through search, tags, or referrals. They may like, comment or share content, but there are many who will not follow but will still utilize your services. A private page will just put a stop on all activities that can be beneficial to your business. Unless someone is really adamant to know what you offer, most will leave a private page quickly.
When a person sends out a request, it still has to be approved, which depending on when it was sent can take up to a day to receive approval. When have you ever waited a day to view something and still remembered or wanted it?
Mistake #2: Inappropriate Profile Pictures
Your profile picture immediately draws the attention of everyone who invites your profile. The photo used should look great and align with your brand preferably a professional headshot. Your photo should be recognizable and a good representative of your business. You should aim to use the same profile picture on all of your social media profiles. This continuity will strengthen your brand presence.
For personal brands, use your picture but for most companies and organizations, it’s best to use your company logo.
Mistake #3: Leaving Your Instagram Bio Blank
Your Bio should clearly explain why your Instagram account exists is key. It’s a place where people instantly look to determining what your page is about, what content you share on your page and why they should start following you. Savvy business owners want to reach their ideal clients on Instagram and if your audience does get to your profile and can’t figure out what you do, how can you make that connection and potential sale with them in the future? So be clear!
Make the most of your first impression with an Instagram bio that informs and excites. The Instagram bio is the only place you can include a clickable URL to your website or another platform, so ensure to use the most effective URL.
Mistakes #4: Low-Quality Photos
Your business needs to appear as professional as possible online.
Prospects are out to judge your brand as well as your brand’s quality in various ways. The quality of your pictures and videos needs to send a message about the quality of your product or service. Believe it or not.
When viewing High-resolution photos it is instantly associated with “quality” and “professionalism”. The opposite is true for crappy photos with poor resolutions.
When creating an image make sure your pictures are 1280 by 1280 px which is twice the recommended size so that the picture turns out to be a high-quality image. Be sure to size your images correctly, making them perfectly centered without any odd-seeming cut-outs.
Mistake #5: Posting Images too Close Together.
Your posts need to breathe so give a little “elbow room” so to speak. Most comments or likes will occur in the first hour. Keep in mind that posting images too close together may limit the exposure a certain picture may receive as well as you push your own content down. No one likes to feel spammed either, it a page posts 5-10 images back to back most are likely to feel overwhelmed and often unfollow. When you schedule leave an hour or two at least in between posts.
Mistake #6: Don’t Post at Off-Peak Times
When you post on Instagram during times your audience isn’t online don’t expect high engagement rates. It’s that simple. You need to post on Instagram when your audience is online, which is usually during the early morning commute (6 – 9 am), in the afternoon during lunch break (12 – 2 pm) and in the evening after people have left work (from 6 pm onwards). When you post at peak times, your profile will be exposed to more of your followers, so use an analytics tool such as WhenToPost App to see when your audience is most active.
Mistake #7: Don’t Write a Lazy Caption
Captions are as important as the image itself, and although they are not seen first by Instagram users, they are crucial in providing context and information that might have been conveyed through a photograph. Try to include a question or call-to-action in your Instagram caption to spur conversation and encourage comments and engagement. Avoid having long captions as this can turn people off and make them scroll past your image and never look back.
Mistake #8: Not Engaging with Your Audience
Raise your hand if you like feeling ignored! Nobody? Then my advice to use is to Engage, Engage and engage! That’s the long and short if it. It makes no difference if you have 100 or 10,000+ followers, you should carve out time to answer their comments as much as you can. Of course, some can’t be avoided, if a customer posts on an image 2 years ago, you may never see it. But for the majority make it a point to at least review your last week of images for new comments that may have been missed at the end of the week. Even if it’s a few days old, a potential client will appreciate the effort over never getting a response.
Mistake #9: Not Using Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are a great way for you to engage with your followers on a more personal level or try out new strategies. Be creative and think of adding pictures and videos that your followers will love or that they will find useful.
The better the post, the more engagement you should get. If the post is really popular, it might even be featured on the “Explore” page. This is marketing gold and a great way to get new followers. Your content must be top-notch to be featured.
What classifies as top-notch content here? Content that is highly engaging and focuses on one particular topic. This will make your posts more targeted instead of more general and can win your points to get on the Explore page.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t make it to the “Explore” page, this feature is worth using and there are many different ways to put it to good use.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
• A behind-the-scenes video. People love having a look at what goes on behind the curtain. This will give you a chance to introduce your staff and let your clients see the faces behind the names, they might have been hearing.
• Sneak peek at a new product line
• Send out holiday or birthday greetings
• Create a tutorial on using your product that conveniently shows it to the best advantage
• News about a great sale or special offer
• Create tutorials that are of general interest but is related in some way to your target market but doesn’t make any sales attempts
• Updates.
Mistake #10: Inconsistent or Repetitive.
Now, this is a double-edged sword here, you can under post as well as over-post. Presenting a clear, stable view of your business is ideal. It builds trust and consistency. People buy from brands that they like, trust and feel comfortable and secure with. You shouldn’t go days, much less weeks without posting new content. Pushing out your service or product is great but make sure to have customer experience as the focus. Present a varied view. A page that only preaches Buy, Buy, Buy won’t achieve the desired effect and seems quite disingenuous.
Mistake #11. Not Using Hashtags Correctly or Not Using Them At All
Hashtags and business go hand in hand. Hashtags are a fantastic way to gain exposure and increase your reach in the crowded space that is Instagram. If you don’t use hashtags you don’t give yourself a good chance of being discovered by like-minded users who are looking for and engaging with content about your industry. Not only do you miss out on growing your followers with hashtags, you also miss out on potential customers knowing you exist, so not using hashtags is a big mistake.
Use hashtags that are relevant to your niche and ensure they aren’t flooded by irrelevant users. Small, specific hashtags might not see a high volume of usage, however, they are more targeted and super relevant, so the leads you receive have more potential to convert. If you don’t want to overwhelm or take away from your witty caption, add your hashtags as a comment below the image to keep each post uncluttered.
Mistake #12: You Haven’t Put in a Call to Action
This should go without saying in any marketing initiative, but it’s something that many users neglect, both new and experienced.
And don’t think just in terms of marketing and sales here. Depending on your Instagram business objectives, this could be as simple as asking a question.
Don’t assume that everyone is going to think of liking or commenting on your posts automatically – encourage them!
They might not think it’s important or it might not even occur to them. Ask them to like, comment, or follow you. If they like the content you provide, they’ll be happy to help out.
Are you guilty of one or perhaps all of them? Don’t feel alone, most of us made at least one or two of these errors when starting out. What matters now is that you take steps to correct them. Looking over this list what are some things you see can be improved on your page? Leave any questions below! To learn more, head over to (Offer – 12 Key Steps to Optimizing Your Page To Bring In More Paying Clients)
