With the ever-growing competition on the internet, every business is trying to find an appropriate way to enhance its brand through various social media platforms like Facebook & Instagram. Social Media is an amazing place for this as it provides plenty of opportunities for one-on-one interaction such as video Q&As, commenting, polls, reviews, how-to’s, in fact, you name it, and social media has it. However, the only appropriate strategy that any business should follow is “Jab Jab Right Hook” philosophy: you give give give before you get. You can’t ask anyone for anything if you don’t provide them first. You need to bring value.

Talking about how Instagram works, we can say that it’s entirely a Jabbing platform. You can post images, videos, put up stories, add a location or tag people. Scope of business through Instagram doesn’t go much beyond that. Perhaps, it is simply a platform to give value only to your followers. For example, if you’re a shoe brand, at most you can share a cool picture of that shoe on Instagram. It is quite likely that one cannot think beyond this.

Then, what should be done?

What people don’t think enough of is the link in their Instagram profile. Most of the people would end up putting their website address in their profile, but, what if we put up a post saying “New apparel for sale, link in profile”. Now you have a way to directly link to a point of purchase.

According to Gary Vaynerchuk’s, you could put up a 15-second clip from the most recent episode and add “Link of new episode in bio!” as your caption. But of course, you have to evaluate what works best for your right hook. Like it has been said before, maybe Instagram is your jabbing platform. Maybe it is selective right hooks. Test and learn. See what works. You never know what you might find out.

A Concept:

Here is an effective strategy to kick-off your Instagram game.

Step 1.

You know how important are the hashtags. All the millennial keep using them in their every post to get more and more likes. But we have a well-planned way to implement them. Write down 10 hashtags relevant to your industry. For example, if you’re a food blogger, you could use #foodie, #eatingfortheinsta etc. You get the idea, right? We recommend you to use 7 popular hashtags and 3 geographically targeted hashtags to reach out to the audience in an effective manner.

Step 2.

Once you’re ready with your hashtags, it’s time to start working with them. So, for those who don’t know, Instagram shows top posts for every #hashtag. Whenever you search for any hashtag, you’re taken to the profile of that hashtag showing top posts for that hashtag and you could scroll down to find more. You just have to go search for your hashtag, open the top 9 posts and write a meaningful comment. Please note, you have to write a meaningful comment relevant to your hashtag and that post, and not just spam with any comment or it will only adversely affect your game.

Step 3.

Now repeat Step 2 for rest of the hashtags. Every day you should be leaving 90 comments on best and popular pieces of content of relevance. It seems like too much work but seamlessly scrolling your timeline for an hour a day would be better utilized by creating your presence on Instagram.

Does this Instagram strategy work?

As we’ve been saying since the very beginning, we are all about community. Serving and building bonds with those around us is what drives us. The more value you can give to a community, the bigger and more prosperous the community can become. The way these communities are set up, is through creating good content and being courteous about the people around you. Leaving 90 comments a day will impact 90 people each and every day. You will make 90 people’s day, every single day.

If we see this in a logistical way, there can be 3 reasons why this strategy proves to be effective. First of all, if you comment something value of someone’s post then it’s possible that you grab their attention and they might give you a 10 sec-stalk on your profile. Secondly, if they visit your profile, there are chances that they like or comment on one of your posts too. And if you get lucky enough, you can score a like from a top Instagram verified account which could get you more followers and attention from that particular post.

So, the bottom line is that the chances are adequate to create an elegant and prosperous Instagram presence and create value for your business but for that, you got to add value to the community, be a part of the discussions and be as active as you can, so that you never lose your leverage on whichever industry you’re a part of.

Keep instagramming!

Alok Paul

Co-Founder of Prime Seller Hub.