How To Make Yourself Stand Out On Instagram (Even When Everyone Else Is Doing It, Too)

Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites on the planet with over 200 million active monthly members sharing 60 million images and 1.6 billion likes per day. Instagram quickly outgrew its first impression as a fun app for kids and has become a serious content marketing, networking and audience-building tool for individuals and brands.

Instagram is one of the best places you can market your business and build followers for your brand. With its ability to reach out to a lot of prospective clients, this is the most utilized platform by entrepreneurs. There are different ways on how you can stand out on Instagram even though most brands are attempting to do the same. You need to be a step ahead of your competition to stand out.

Here are ways on how to make yourself stand out on Instagram (even when everyone else is doing it, too):

1. Get To Work On Your Profile

The profile is the first impression and the ONLY place on Instagram where links are active. That means if you want people to click-through to your site via Instagram, it has to be done here. The most important thing on your profile is creating a clear profile image that represents you.

After that, you want to create a bio that shares who you are and what you do. If someone stumbles upon your profile, he or she wants to know immediately if they should follow you or not. Lastly, you want to provide a link that is truly representative of you or your brand that people can click through and obtain more information from.

2. Optimize The Basics

Research shows that people remember 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see. You’re probably already using your logo as your profile picture and your company names as your profile name in other social media platforms so it only makes sense to do the same on Instagram. Consistency across social media platforms helps people quickly recognize your content no matter where they are.

3. Cross-Promote Your Dedicated Hashtag

Creating your own dedicated hashtag is nice and all, but it doesn’t mean anything until other people know to share your content utilizing that same hashtag. Make sure it’s in your profile but take the game offline and have it printed on your receipts, in print ads, on signage in your store and at relevant events. If you’re on radio and TV, direct people to use your hashtag. Integrate your hashtag with your offline campaigns and you’ll be in a better position to create more hype around it.

4. Use Hashtags

Hashtags are the only way to search on Instagram. This means if you want to be found on Instagram, you are going to have to use hashtags. People follow hashtags and there are a bunch of tags to use if you want to increase likes and comments right off the bat. My advice is to stick to hashtags that make sense for the image you are sharing and use them often. This is also your opportunity to create your own hashtag which can be a great branding tool. You can encourage others to use your hashtag to be featured on your page.

5. Engage With Your Instagram Followers

Everyone gets obsessed with the number of Instagram followers a page has. However, it’s not about the quantity but rather about the quality. You would much rather have 1,000 really loyal followers than 100,000 people who don’t care for your brand. Your aim is to build a relationship with your followers and get the most out of your Instagram experience.

Post photos on a regular basis so people don’t forget who you are. But at the same time, you don’t want to post too often. Sharing lots of photos at once since will take up a lot of space in the feed of your followers. Interacting with your followers is a great way to keep them happy and engaged. There’s nothing more rewarding than building lasting relationships with your Instagram followers.

6. Take Advantage Of Video Posts

Instagram is about visual content. That means you don’t have to focus solely on sharing photos. Videos are fair game too, especially now that Instagram is putting an emphasis on it with its launch of IGTV. You can utilize videos showing reactions to your product, more behind-the-scenes content and funny promotions to help bring your brand to life on Instagram.

7. Mix It Up

Avoid the boring route of posting the same images of your product over and over again. Instead, diversify your feed with various types of content. This could be re-sharing other content from other big pages in your industry, sharing stuff from behind the scenes or sharing content created by your management team.

8. Post Regularly

Consistency is very important to keeping your name out there and connecting with as many people as possible. Instagram works in the same manner. Post at least 3 times per week (at the minimum). The more likes you get on your images, the more you will show up on people’s feed and on Facebook. The more you post, the more you’ll get around and that’s a great thing!

Conclusion

The power of visual communication is hard to ignore. Take advantage of Instagram’s power by optimizing your Instagram presence is absolutely crucial for being recognized on social media. In this post, I shared with you the ways on how to make yourself stand out on Instagram (even when everyone else is doing it, too).