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topseogigs · 7 years ago

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Traffic Blueprint – Instagram Style

How to get more traffic using Instagram

So, you should hopefully see why Instagram is something you need to be involved with but how do you go about making sure you do it right? That’s where this guide comes in, we are about to make sure that your Instagram efforts don’t go unrewarded. We will go into all of this in more detail throughout this guide but as a brief overview here is what to expect as you read through the following chapters.

No account-ing for taste

How to make yours stand out Not all profiles are created equal so these few simple tips that are often overlooked can really make yours stand out from all the rest. Images are worth a 1000 words Because Instagram is such a visual site there are certain things you need to make sure your Image is doing. We tell you exactly what you should be looking for in the images you are going to be posting. Best posting practices It’s no good posting 19 images in a row at 1 o’clock in the morning of your demographic so we tell you the best practices to make sure you get seen and don’t overdo it. Engagement and Following You need to be seen to be followed. Here we give you the best way to find and follow people that will return the favour. How to use Story Highlights to your advantage I am a story teller… and my story must be.. Oh… right… wrong gig.

Stories are a great tool for Marketing and we will give you some ideas and tips on how to use these to the best possible level and create traffic. Hash ta la vista baby… Now you can follow hashtags not just users… see why you should be doing just that. By the time you are through you will be a fully-fledged INSTA-GATOR for sure

How to make your account stand out

Instagram is a picture based platform so a lot of what sets you apart from others is the images you use but it isn’t all of it. Many people overlook the fact that their profile is a big part of showing exactly who they are and what they are trying to promote.

When you set up your profile keep these tips in mind.

Emojis make you stand out from the crowd. Using relevant emojis on your profile means users can see at a glance what you are in to. Make sure you include a little about what you do so that anyone just glancing can see if you are the right profile for them. Your profile picture is also very important as it will show people at a glance who you are or what you do. As with all social profiles if it is to be a certain target audience try to make yourself relevant to them e.g. a photo of you fishing if your profile is going to be all about fishing. Otherwise just use a nice headshot so that people can see there is a human being behind the account – some people may use different images for different target audiences aside from their own but do make sure that you have the right to do so, do NOT just take someone’s image from off the internet and use it.

Be sure to add a relevant link in your bio so that anyone that lands on your profile can go to wherever your prime location is you want to send traffic to. This way even if they get here through different means they have a chance to go to whatever place you want to send them.

Throw a quick Call to Action just before the URL as well so that people click it when they read your bio – you can add emojis to this to make it really stand out. If the link is particularly long then use a shortened link somewhere like bit.ly or something similar in order to be able to have a much more attractive looking link. Try and keep your username relevant to whatever your niche or target audience is going to be and if you can keep it the same as it is on other social platforms within the niche this is ideal so that when people search for you online they find all your profiles at once. This is a great way of taking over the front page with all your different profiles and getting more and more people to follow and visit your stuff.

An image speaks a thousand words

We have already covered how to create the actual images in other parts of this course so we won’t go into it again but there is one thing we must keep hitting home about Instagram, and that is it is ALL about the images/videos. If you want to be taken seriously on the platform you CANNOT post blurry boring pictures, but you MUST follow these few rules: High Quality – By this we don’t mean you need to have models on the beach and correct lighting for every single shot but it is important that it isn’t a horrible quality, fuzzy, out of focus shot that people have to strain to see what the subject is. People come to Instagram to see fantastic images and they have a lot to choose from so if yours isn’t up to scratch they’re going to just go on and look at someone else’s.

Funny – People love to be entertained so something funny is always going to grab the attention more than something that isn’t. Now not all businesses or niches will allow you to put humour into it but when you can it is a good idea because this makes it more likely to get the love that you are looking for.

Interesting – Throw down some crazy facts or maybe something of relevance to your niche that someone didn’t know about. You are more likely to get that double tap this way than any other because people love to associate with something interesting because by association they become interesting themselves.

Tips – People love a good life hack or a tip to save them time, or really any tip whatsoever to make whatever they’re doing that little bit easier, more fun or more interesting. You can find lists of tips on almost any subject online and you can use these to create images to post to your Instagram. The better the tip the more likely people will love it and this will get you more and more followers. Link this to somewhere you want to go that is relevant to the tip and you’re on to a winner.

Best Posting Practices

There are a few things you should take into consideration when posting on Instagram. To get the best out of it you need to make sure that you are following at least a few of these rules every single time. You should make sure that you are posting consistently. This can mean different things to different people but it should always be fairly regular so people come to expect you to post when you do. The general rule of thumb is post one to three times a day at prime times for your audience. By prime time we mean when your audience is most likely to be online and checking out different posts.

If your audience is business based then this could be during office hours in their time zone, but if your audience is recreational and usually doing this sort of thing in the evenings and at the weekend then there’s no point posting between the hours of work because they are unlikely to see it. Something that breaks this rule is lunch times and break times in certain industries where people are looking for something to do and they will take a look on their smart phone and double tap something to pass the time.

You may find you need to test and it will more than likely be a case of trial and error to start with to get the optimum time to post, but eventually you’ll be able to see exactly when the most engagement occurs and make sure that you always have something happening around then. As we mentioned above good image quality is a must, people will be very quick to move past anything they think it’s below par as they have so much to choose from. Add emojis and hashtags to your posts. Emojis are used in such a way that you will stand out from the blanket of text sometimes appearing and can also tell people what your post is about at a glance.

For the best way to use hashtags please see the hashtag hero guide that you have as part of this course, but just be aware that you should always include them to get the traffic that you deserve. Another thing to try and do is to keep updating your account with images, which should happen if you’re consistent anyway, so that you appear in the ‘latest’ section of the app when people are browsing through. This not only keeps your content fresh but also may get extra eyeballs on to your subject because of the fact you are appearing in this section as well.

BONUS TIP Want to post images from your computer instead of the phone? Check out http://gramblr.com/uploader/#home – great tool for doing just that.

Engagement and Following

You are going to want to have as much engagement as you can on all of your posts because this is going to ultimately lead to more people following you and more people double tapping your content and therefore more people getting to whatever links you want to put out there. One of the methods to do this is to go onto your feed posts on Instagram and browse the various people and images/videos on there. Pick a few of the best ones you see on there and leave comments that show that you have actually looked at the image or at the small piece of writing so that they can see you are paying attention.

It doesn’t have to be anything too in-depth it just needs to show that you’re not just spamming without even looking at what it is about. You will also see what people have commented on these images and you can talk directly to them by tapping their names to tag them and then entering your comment to get their attention. Try to make the comment relevant to what they said so that you are adding to the conversation. This is a great way to join the conversation and get noticed.

Another very cool way to get engagement and a following is the add a Call to Action such as ‘Double Tap if you Agree!’ at the bottom of your content. It may seem fairly obvious but a lot of people miss this step out and it is an easy way to get people to add a like to your content. You can flip this around for any sort of situation and get them to double tap for some other action as well, for example ‘double tap if this annoys you too’ – it doesn’t always have to be about the nice acceptance/experience lol

Instagram traffic – Story Highlights

Story highlights are a great way to show people exactly what you’re about or what products you’re into. You can add multiple images or videos to them and they will show up as a highlighted story on your bio for people to click on Don’t forget that you can only show a few of the characters of your title on the front page so if there’s something important you think will make people click make sure you include that word right at the start or they won’t see it until they click through.

When you get 10000 followers, which you will in no time, you can add links to your highlighted stories as well but even when you can’t do this feature make sure you add a call to Action at the end of each one after building them up through your story. The easiest way to do this is to tag yourself in the story and then add the URL you want them to go to in your main bio which is allowed at any level and get them to click that.

Once you have the added link option and can do a different one per story.

A few ideas for engagement could be to give a freebie away in return for an email or you can let people know who you are through a series of different stories, or showcase one of your items or something you are selling.

These highlighted stories are a great way to show people exactly what you’re about and what your profile is concentrating on. One thing to be aware of though is that public stories are only available for 24 hours by default and then they are deleted, however you can save them to your archived stories if you want to by changing this in your settings.

Go inside your story settings and make sure the ‘archive’ slider is on and they will be safe there for you to see at a later date.

Hash ta la vista baby – follow me if you want to live

Instagram now also allows you to follow hashtags not just people. This is great because it means that you can now research different places and different things to use on your own posts using this new follow feature.

It is used in much the same way as when you follow a user except you are following everyone that uses this particular hashtag. This is a great way to find other users as well and it also gives you a list of suggested tags to follow based on your interests when you go through to this page. Once you follow one of these hashtags by clicking it you then tap the follow button next to it you will see posts that use that hashtag more often in your feed and in the stories. This means you can keep a track of what everyone else is posting in that particular subject matter to make sure you are on top of your own game. You can also go through people’s profiles and then see what hashtags they are following to see if there are any you would like to follow yourself. As you will have seen in Hashtag Hero the better the hashtag you can use in your own post the more traffic you will get by stepping in front of what is already there.

from best seo gigs https://www.topseogigs.com/traffic-blueprint-instagram-style/

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