Instagram marketing mistakes you should avoid

Since the explosive growth of instagram and the recent acquisition of it to Facebook, more and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon to get some of the instagram juices.


As there are many things that have been suggested for you to try when using Instagram as a marketing platform, conversely there are things that you should avoid also.

In this post I will describe some fatal things that you could do on your Instagram account that could lead to potential tarnishing of your brand.

Dont copy other people's photos

When I say dont copy, I mean that you should not take some else's photos and brand them as your own.  This not only is unethical and downright illegal, it can have negative consequences with your brand. People would distrust your company for carrying out such practices.

However there is nothing wrong with viewing someone's photo and get inspired from that photo.

Not thinking about hashtags

Properly using hashtags can help your photos get discovered better and  as a result it will gain more followers. The flipside of this is that if you over use hash tags, your instagram company account might seem spammy and people will be put off by that.

Too many posts or too little at one instance

There is nothing wrong with posting quality photos. However if you suddenly decide to post 10 or 20  photos at the same time, then it will clog up your followers feed. This could have negative effects such that they will unfollow you. You should avoid flooding your followers feed with so many photos at the same time.

You should be consistent and post photos in a spaced amount of time. As an opposite of posting too many photos at the same time, you dont necessarily should post one photo in one day, then forget it for a week or month, then post another.

Regularity is the key.

Not engaging with your community

As with anything else, active participation with your followers will lead to better results for your brand and marketing campaign. Should not neglect the community.

5 simple tools for instagram marketers

With the rise of instagram reaching over 100 million users, current marketers can use tools to aid them to help their marketing efforts.

Tool 1: Statigr.am

The first tool that we are going to look at is a research marketing tool called: statigr.am/ This is a neat little web application that helps you manage your instagram account for marketing purposes. The application advertises: 

... you can find them on statigram in order to browse your photos and share with your community more easily than with your mobile.
And we even made some improvements, to allow you toPROMOTE your IG account outside InstagramMANAGE your community on a user-friendly platformANALYSE your activity through professional statisticsENGAGE your community with photo contests your followers and unfollowers on Instagram. delivery method.

  

Tool 2 : Instachimp

This tool connects your MailChimp letters with Instagram. From their website, they advertise the following:

Instachimp connects Instagram with MailChimp so you can share your best photos easily.  

Tool 3: InstaQuit

This tool helps you track the visitors that have unfollowed you so that it would not be worthwhile for you to keep following them. It also allows you to track your current follows. I guess this tool is a small subset of the statigram web app. From their page, they say the following:

 InstaQuit allows you to trackWe will collect your statistics several times a day and let you know by your preferred 

Tool 4: Instapress.it

 Are you a active blogger and use wordpress often? If so then this app would be useful to you. Users can install this plugin into their wordpress site and connect their photos with their instagram account. 

Tool 5: Webstagram

 This is quite a good tool to search for trends and popular statistics related to instagram. For example you can find the popular hashtags so that you mark your pics with these hashtags with the chance of getting more followers. You can also find common themes with popular pictures. I found that popular pictures are ones that are cute – ie cats or puppys and that it is personal, geo tagged.


So in conclusion chose a tool that would suit your business the most and it will gel well with the kind of marketing that you are aiming for with your Instagram account. Personally I prefer webstagram and Statigram for research and to manage my current Instagram marketing efforts.

5 Quick ways to get more Instagram followers

I am a bit slow to jump on the Instagram bandwagon, since I have only started using it at the beginning of this year. However ever since I have snagged myself a new mobile Samsung galaxy 3 I have been enjoying it since. 

So I started taking lots of pics and but not really getting any followers or even likes from other people. It usually puzzled me that I have about a dozen pics, which I thought were reasonably well, did not receive any likes or followers. While on the other hand, browsing other users, they only have 1-5 pics but getting an over hundreds or thousands of followers.

So I started putting on my marketing hat and analysed their techniques and listed down the things that were common to all of the Instagram users. The below are some of my tips to get more followers to your Instagram account.

1. Produce quality photos

Without quality photos all of your other efforts will be in vain. I found that high quality photos with people in them - not just landscape photos have better chance of getting you more followers.

2.  Use hash tags

Popular hash tags will get you more interest and followers to your Instagram account. As of 26/4/2013, the below are popular hash tags that you should pay attention to:

1.	#love (+)	57,006,349 photos
2.	#instagood (+)	31,095,298 photos
3.	#me (+)	30,139,706 photos
4.	#cute (+)	27,347,348 photos
5.	#tbt (+)	26,703,667 photos
6.	#eyes (+)	23,832,717 photos
7.	#statigram (+)	22,490,737 photos
8.	#photooftheday (+)	22,484,276 photos
9.	#christmas (+)	22,164,834 photos
10.	#instacollage (+)

3. Geotag your pictures

I find if I geotag my photos from overseas trips, people tend to comment on them more and the followers will soon increase. Instagram brings up photos of similar location, so people within your location will see your photos as a priority. It increases followers since it gives them something to relate to - ie your location.

4. Follow and comment others

One good way to get instant followers is to be active and follow others and comment on other people's photos. Although this is not a guarantee, but it is a very good chance if you follow people, they will follow back. If you look at some of the accounts with many followers the follow to follower ratio is relatively even.

However, as with everything else in marketing.. it all about targeting. Make sure the people you follow are not just some randoms, they have to be popular and have photos that you personally like.

5. Personal photos

By analyzing the likes of over 1000 photos, images that are about lifestyle (fancy cars, homes, living a luxurious life) or that are personal tend to get the most engagement. Photos that don’t contain either of those two elements tend to get 11.4% less likes.