One of the best ways to ensure Instagram marketing success is to follow tried and tested tactics.
But why stop there?
Why not go beyond effective yet run-of-the-mill IG marketing methods?
When done properly, unconventional yet creative Instagram marketing tactics can do wonders for your efforts, helping you generate leads, increase engagement, and drive conversions and sales.
Start with the five strategies below.
1. Hold Q and A sessions on Instagram Stories
If you want to boost your Instagram audience engagement rates, interaction is the solution.
Cheesy rhyming aside, interacting with your audience can help you connect and engage with your audience better.
What better way to do that than holding Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions on Instagram Stories?
Q&As allow you to interact with your audience like you’re having a regular conversation with them. It helps them feel more connected to you (and your brand), encouraging engagement.
For instance, you can include some of the top or favorite questions to ask on an Instagram Story—from “Who’s your favorite shark on Shark Tank?” to “What item from our summer collection would you want to win in a contest?” in your IG stories.
Holding Q&As makes your brand seem more human and relatable, which can also help you build trust with potential customers.
However, running Q&As and publishing other IG stories and content can take time and effort.
To streamline your Social Media Marketing (SMM), leverage modern platforms such as Vista Social.
The platform’s affordable yet comprehensive and advanced SMM features can optimize your tasks and workflows—from social media post scheduling, queuing, and smart publishing to auto-generated reporting.
Image source: vistasocial.com.
Vista Social also offers unique features that most SMM platforms don’t have (or at least don’t do well), such as the Universal Mentions feature. It auto-populates the right username to the corresponding platform on your posts (e.g., @vistasocial on Facebook and @vistasocialapp on Twitter).
Image source: vistasocial.com.
Run Q&As in your Stories to increase engagement and streamline posting your content with a reliable SMM platform.
2. Post influencer takeovers
If you’re thinking of working with influencers (or if you already work with one), run influencer takeovers.
Takeovers allow cross-promotion and collaboration to support your Instagram marketing efforts.
Influencers can take over your account for a few hours or a day and share content aligned with a specific niche or their area of expertise while also benefitting your brand.
This influencer takeover from department store chain Dillard’s is a classic example.
Image source: instagram.com.
An influencer takeover is a great endorsement strategy for your brand. It can foster trust, and you can tap into the influencer’s established following (and vice versa). Your followers can also benefit from hearing from an industry expert.
Use powerful customer engagement platforms to draw insights on your potential customers, helping you come up with topics they will most likely be interested in.
You can leverage the information to provide valuable and helpful content to your audience, helping you raise brand awareness and increasing your engagement.
3. Repost content from other brands
Reposting content from other companies can help support your Instagram marketing initiatives.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Not if you do it properly.
When done right, reposting other brands’ content can help you get more exposure for your business.
Most brands are likely to reciprocate when you tag them in your post and promote their content (be sure to include proper attribution).
Some companies might even follow you back and promote your content without prompting, exposing your brand to a bigger audience.
You can repost content manually or use third-party apps that let you select accounts and the content you want to repost quickly.
Reliable reposting apps can also tag the original profile automatically to ensure you give proper credit.
If you didn’t think of including reposting others brands’ content on your Instagram as part of your content development strategy before, then now is the time to do it.
4. Run giveaways with other businesses
Another way to work with other brands to boost your Instagram marketing efforts is to host contests or giveaways with them.
You can choose businesses with similar customer profiles and run giveaways to help you both gain high-quality followers. It can also support your lead generation efforts.
Ask your audience to follow your and the other brands’ profiles and like and save the post on both pages, as Family Nest Printing did below.
Image source: instagram.com.
You can also promote your giveaways across other popular digital marketing software and platforms. For instance, you can use Mailchimp to automate sending emails informing your subscribers of your Instagram giveaways.
Collaborate with other businesses on giveaways to help expose your brands to each others’ audiences. It can help widen your reach and, in turn, increase your engagement opportunities.
5. Give and receive shout-outs
Another form of a reposting strategy is to use shout-outs.
Ask other brands within your niche or industry to share your content, and you share theirs in exchange.
You can then share the shout-out posts from users or brands and ask to use them for your User-Generated Content (UGC) campaigns. You can also include shout-outs in IG Stories.
Canon does this well by asking IG users to give the brand a shout-out by including #mycanonstory in their post descriptions of photos taken with a Canon camera.
Image source: instagram.com.
You can also use shout-outs to share other content.
For instance, if your brand has enough clout, you could do shout-outs with Apple Inc. (It can still happen). You could share quick tips and tricks on how to speed up videos using iPhones and give a shout-out to the brand.
Using Instagram shoutouts is a great marketing tactic that can help you and the other users and brands gain a significant uptick in your following and even your credibility.
Get creative with your IG marketing
Just because age-old Instagram marketing strategies work doesn’t mean you limit your initiatives to them.
Think outside of the box and get more creative with your IG marketing efforts, starting with the five tips in this guide.
While adopting unconventional tactics can sometimes take a bit of trial and error, the rewards can be more than worth your time and effort once you nail them.
Marc lives and breathes writing. He writes just about anything and everything under the sun from digital marketing, web development, and cryptocurrencies among other things.