Instagram is trending socially. The social image sharing app is on the minds and hearts of the general public in Nigeria. Everyone from celebrities, comedians and even political campaign managers are using the app to connect with a wider audience.
People love images and visuals, that’s why this social app continues to gain popularity. People love to share memories with their friends and colleagues and this adds to the growing phenomenon.
Image credit: socialmediaexaminer.com
But as a marketer, applying the strategy of signing up and sharing pictures alone, for the sake of growing your Nigerian business isn’t the optimal strategy.
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And it won’t make your brand stand out of the great volume of content produced every single day.
We have listed some mistakes you have to avoid when operating your Instagram business account, they include:
Random Photo Selection and Posting
When running your social media campaign the temptation to post random photos will occur from time to time, especially if you are the social media manager for an organization or the digital marketer of your business.
When creating content, it’s important that you’re not random but very specific to promoting your brand. It’s great to post pictures of your vacation spot and the trophy you won at last year’s inter departmental soccer competition on your personal account.
But for business Instagram accounts, personal doesn’t mean random, connecting with your audience through your content must be done from the perspective of growing your brand.
It’s okay to be personal with your followers a few times but keep a very fine balance between random posts and relevant posts.
Poor Quality Photos
The nemesis of most Nigerian business Instagram accounts is posting poor pictures. Producing poor pictures and posting them will only lend to devaluing the credibility of your organization.
When you post blurry or unclear photos, you are displaying acts of unprofessionalism as a brand and simply telling your followers that you are unserious.
Image credit: lifehack.com
Every single day, people are judging the value of your brand through various sources, and the quality of videos and pictures you post sends a very clear signal of the quality of your product or service.
Crappy pictures are associated with a crappy brand and high resolution quality pictures and videos are associated with brands that operate in excellence and capability,
Make sure your pictures are centered and are twice the recommended size (1280 by 1280), that way they come out looking very sharp, crisp and high resolution.
Hashtags are like categories for your Instagram posts. Think of an ecommerce website that sells fashion and clothing products. The categories on their website will include: shoes, t-shirts, trousers, underwears etc.
The same philosophy applies during your Instagram posts, when you make a post and you hashtag, you are basically putting that post into a category that’s relevant to your post.
Image Credit: theweblisters.com
Using hashtags wrongly means your post is being targeted to the wrong people, Not using hashtags at all is even worse, in such an instance your posts become arbitrarily placed and not really focused at anyone searching.
Not using hashtags helps to dissipate your content to numerous audiences rather than focus and constrain them to a particular set of demographic.
Your hashtags should be searchable. Keep them short and relevant. #Don’t #overdo # it #cause #we #know #that #content #overload #is #very #annoying.
Hashtags makes you noticeable by audiences within your community, and fans who post regularly on hashtags you are using, will have access to you as well.
Irregular posting
Make sure your posts are consistent and you follow a posting calendar. Make sure that you do not overload your followers with spammy contents, because that will only result in an unfollow. Keep your posts respectable and inviting.
Try to to spread out your high quality on various time periods of the day that way your followers will be happy and content with your quality and consistency.
Not following your followers
Make sure that if you get a follow that you are following back immediately. You don’t have to interact with your followers on their personal accounts, but the least you can give them is a follow back.
This will give you access to what they are interested in and the most likely posts that will get their attention; the only way to give them what they want is to connect with them.
Grammar mistakes
Not proofreading your content and making grammar mistakes, wrong punctuations, misspellings and other grammatical errors all lend to making your brand look very unprofessional.
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You don’t know which one of your posts will go viral, the last thing you need is a post that goes viral after a major grammatical error.
Leaving your audience in the dark
If people are asking questions about your brand, you need to be responding, if people are making comments about your pictures and need more information, you need to be responding to them and engage them.
Engagement is key to success on Instagram and the brand that engages its customers as quickly as possible is the brand that wins.
Making your account private
A lot of people make this mistake unintentionally. Making your personal account private is okay, but when you are dealing with your business accounts you have to be certain that your account is not private and that it’s set to be seen by anyone searching on the Instagram community.
Because there are various people who might be interested in what you are doing and if your account is locked people searching for you will not be able to find you.
So make sure your account is always set on public that way people can easily access you and there are no restrictions to those who want to access you personally.
Avoiding these mistakes will put your brand ahead of other businesses and keep your account looking great and professional.
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