Instagram has grown into one of the most influential social media platforms at the moment. However, with many brands still not knowing where to start, the team at CAB Studios have listed 10 tactics to help you kick-start your Instagram campaign.

1. 10 Tactics
to kick-start your Instagram campaign

2. 1
Go
the
mile!
When you choose to commit to an Instagram campaign, you
must also make a commitment to stick with it throughout the
duration of the campaign. Huge success doesn’t happen
overnight, and it might take some time for customers and fans
to ramp up and engage. Not even your biggest fans will be
tuning in to what your brand is doing on a daily basis so make
sure you stay on course after the campaign launch.

3. 2
Find
your
frequency
Like Twitter, Instagram is also based around ‘dip in and dip out’
behaviour. As a result, people are more likely to miss your message if
they’re not tuned in when you post. Make sure you ramp up your
campaign to get people excited, then make sharing posts that relate to
your campaign a consistent part of your Instagram strategy.
Major brands post an average of 1.5 times per day to Instagram.
There’s no drop-off in engagement for posting more, provided you can
keep up the rate of posting.

4. 3
Get to
know
your fans
Before you launch a campaign, do some research to
determine how your fans are already talking about, and
sharing their experiences. Successful Instagram
campaigns are built around a connection with the
audience. There is great value in understanding who
you’re speaking to, and with.

5. 4
Evaluate
your
campaign
A successful campaign depends on performance measurement
through analytics to better understand its effectiveness. Instagram
can be a powerful tool for your marketing and a great way to
connect with your fans if you know how to do it right. You need to
know who the most active members in your community are, what
content they’re all sharing, understand what content resonates with
them and how this affects your overall Instagram strategy. You
should then use this knowledge to test out new techniques and
measure how your audience engage with them. Don’t be afraid to
get creative and try new things as long as you remember to evaluate
how they perform!

6. 5
Find your
influencers
We are currently living in an era where social media stars are as, if
not more, powerful in influencing people’s buying decisions than
celebrities. Today's influencers are the tastemakers of the social
web, defining the experiences that your customers are living and
deciding the products that they will buy and the services they want
to experience.
Getting these influencers involved in your Instagram campaign
(Potentially as brand ambassadors) will help you reach a new-
targeted audience with your promotions.

7. 6
Use the
right
#hashtags
Hashtags can be an effective way to increase the number of
people that see your posts, but only if you do it right. With hashtag
use, you can apply existing hashtags that your community is using
to expand the reach of your content or create new hashtags that
benefit your overall Instagram strategy. When using existing
hashtags, research the tags your community is using to
understand what you should be using with your content sharing. If
you’re creating a new hashtag, consider the purpose of the tag
you're creating in order to use it effectively. The more relevant
hashtags you use, the more visible your post will be to the relevant
audience. However, try not to use too much (More than 5) or it will
be seen as overkill or a little bit desperate.

8. 7
Inspire your
customers
to share
The beauty in visual marketing on Instagram is your ability
to showcase your brand in an authentic way through the
eyes of your most passionate fans. The best tactic to take
advantage of this is by highlighting the images that users
post about their experiences with your brand. To achieve
this you will need to inspire your customers with a unique
offline experience so that they post about you on
Instagram. You can then request to use their photos on
your own profile and acknowledge those who approve by
adding their Instagram name to the image caption.

9. 8
Engage
your
community
Engaging your community on Instagram is a tactic that can take less
than two hours but the long-term benefits that you'll see from the
interactions will come when you continue this activity. Instagram isn’t
a one-way channel for promoting your brand. If your goal is for your
community to engage and interact with you then you need to be doing
the same with them. Interacting with the posts your fans are sharing
helps strengthen your relationship with them and also increases your
visibility to their network as your posts will be seen by their followers.

10. 9
Run
creative
comps
As a brand, you can capitalise on the Instagram users’ ‘inspiration
seeking’ mind-set by creating a exclusive competitions.
Competitions can benefit your brand through:
Getting users to like, comment or print screen and upload posts
to win. You can then grow your follower base because of the
expansive nature of each contest.
Creating a competition-specific hashtag and instructing users to
upload photos using your selected hashtag to win, with the best
one winning. You can grow your follower base and add a bit of
personality to your brand with a well thought out hashtag.

11. 10
Mix
Instagram
with web
Finally, uploading Instagram content onto your website can be a
really powerful. If you embed live Instagram content around a
brand hashtag, you can streamline that process by offering
photos taken by existing customers on Instagram to people
who are looking through your website. This makes the website
more engaging and plays the role of a visual reviews directly
from those who have experienced your service before.