Once upon a time, you thought of the population you wanted to connect with. So, you came up with a brilliant way to tell them you existed: Instagram. Then, you created such a fantastic profile that your followers became your clients and then they started sharing your content with their friends.
And they all lived happily ever after…
For your fable to have such a happy ending, you should first set yourself specific objectives, such as:
- Learn to distinguish different forms of media.
- Recognize the most common SMM channels and choose your most suitable one.
- Comprehend what makes SMM effective and the company’s consequences.
- Identify the various objectives of SMM and learn to formulate your own.
This blog, supported by academic research, gives an introduction to SMM to help you set (and reach) your objectives when developing a successful Instagram page.
Assess if SMM is for you
Instagram, or social media in general, may not be necessarily beneficial for you. Before beginning, you should ask yourself if it is suitable for your business, and which channels you should use (twitter, snapchat, facebook, linkedin, etc.).
Ask yourself:
- Does your target market use social media? If not, it would be senseless to waste time and money.
- Would your public profile be appropriate for your target market? You need to be careful when selecting your interests and publishing too personal content (unless that’s your business!); your credibility and reputation may depend on it.
- Can you keep up with instant communication? Interaction with potential clients is much quicker now. This gives your brand an increased human perception, but it also means you may slip up easily and quickly.
- Do you have time? Rome wasn’t built in one day! Keep in mind that developing a social media process is long and intricate.
Types of Media:
If you have the financial and influential possibilities, Belden (2013) suggests you can choose to publish your content through:
- earned media – free ads generated by fans and clients whom respond to content they appreciated
- owned media – all communication generated and controlled by a brand through their own platform
- paid media – costly activities which bring added traffic to owned contents and media
Whichever option you choose, remember that you may always encounter hidden costs. An “addictive” profile requires good text, entertaining multimedia elements, and a solid strategy. Since it doesn’t make sense to have the best profile in the world when nobody knows of its existence, you should begin by resorting to sorts of promotions and ads to reach your desired public, which requires time and money (so make sure you remember it when evaluating your goals!).
Instagram is oriented towards the “cool kids” of which smartphones have become a constant and daily use. This group has been identified and grouped with a specific demographic of individuals born in the early 2000s, known as Generation Z (Williams, 2015).
Instagram has an average of 300 million active users each day and the average user uses this platform to show and share the beauty and events of their lives (Wertz, 2017). Most companies utilize this platform to introduce and advertise their products or to generate online and instore sales.
You can use Instragram’s Power Editor (Ottaway, 2016) to create your ads. The tool follows a similar structure to Facebook and Twitter, as it shows up in the follower’s feed with the line: “sponsored content”. If you want to propose a new line of clothing or furniture, etc., you may also want to take into consideration the rotating ad feature which makes more multimedia available without scrolling through the feed.
To create a page, you should first consider whether you’re a business or a location, a brand or product, if you’re a musical artist, actor, or any other public figure. Complete your page with all the necessary information about yourself, activity, and contact information. Choose a profile picture which represents your business and is appropriate for your idea.
For the content, it is extremely important to make it interesting and light hearted (keeping in mind your target market).
Would your followers want to learn more about it? Would they share it with friends? If you don’t think so, you should work further on it. Among with making your followers laugh, being positive, and sharing quality content, use multimedia to catch attention; also, remember that most of the time playing it safe can be better than making a foolish risk.
The content should follow a consistent style and should be refreshed regularly to keep your followers entertained. Check out Baranovska’s blog (2016), as she gives additional and precice guidelines.
Finally, you must try, try, try!! Nothing comes out perfectly the first time. Keep going at it, and you are sure to achieve positive results.
Be sure to follow next month’s blog post, as I will explain the implementation and analysis fundamentals for SMM.
References
Baranovska, V. (2017). 7 Tips for Using Instagram for Business. Link
Belden, C. (2013). Paid, earned and owned media: Convergence in social media. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, 1(3), pp.243-250.
Ottaway, F. (2016). Creating Instagram Ads in Power Editor: Your One-Stop Guide. Link
Wertz, J. (2017). Which Social Media Platforms Are Right For Your Business? Link
Williams, A. (2015). Move Over, Millennials, Here Comes Generation Z. Link