My Instagram account passed 1,000 followers in the wee hours of this morning.
I don't say this to brag, but to highlight that my target has been achieved. This was set out in my Instagram experiment, which I started 14 days ago.
The aim of the experiment is to find out if Instagram is worthy of social media investment. In short, I think it is.
How has this been done?
- No followers or likes have been bought, I have noticed that some others do employ this tactic but I think it's something that can hurt in the long term.
- Very high quality content has been produced that is aligned to my natural skills.
- Real comments made on influential accounts.
- Following accounts that resonate with the content I have produced.
- Strategic linking with other social media accounts, which syncs with my overall content marketing strategy.
- Have real conversations with people who have influential accounts.
- Like and follow other accounts that resonate with the content marketing strategy.
- Defollow those accounts who turn out not to be fruitful.
These essentials can be applied to most social media efforts. Basically it's produce great content, be yourself, talk to people and help others.
Simple really.
The benefits have been:
- Increased traffic to my site
- Increased email subscribers (due also to offering a quick and easy report to download)
- Connections built with influential people with established followings
- Ideas generated simply by observing more closely what works and what doesn't on a new social media platform
- Content created specifically for Instagram can be used elsewhere and possibly to build links (going to experiment with building links with my graphical quotes this week)
People who have never conducted any Instagram experiment tell me it only works for specific things, like selfies, makeup, food... etc. But I have found this not to be true and discovered countless cases of people making it work for them in niches such as laundry, dentistry, currency exchange and so on. I will cover these case studies in a future post.
It comes back to what I always tell the people I coach; it's about communication and persuasion. Social media platforms are simply mechanical devices to allow this to happen. You can use any system which helps you reach the crowd to market your brand, products and services, it's simply down to decoding the means to be successful and doing it.
There is the issue of ROI of course, but the effort I have got to where I am in a couple of weeks is minimal, partly because I have done this a number of times before with other social media platforms and similar techniques and attitudes work across different platforms.
The bad news is that is may not be as easy for you. This is after all my job and I spend a lot of time thinking about the issues and have had years of experience. I am prepared to take on a few clients to help them boost their Instagram efforts though, which allows you to go about building your business and allow my experience and skill to help you with your social.
Get in contact if you wish to get help with your current social media management.