With more than 1 billion monthly users, Instagram is getting ready for global domination, threatening to dethrone even its millennial predecessor, Facebook. Instagram is undeniably an immensely powerful channel when it comes to marketing and affiliation. In fact, we’ve seen a wave of self-made influencers who then become very powerful affiliates and even brand ambassadors stemming the social media behemoth! There is no doubt that Instagram holds an immense monetisation potential and it is an extremely powerful platform that continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.
Given the sheer size of the global audience, there’s a niche market out there for all kinds of forex affiliate marketers from the educational websites, to the signal provider or lifestyle trader. Regardless of the kind of content you create, Instagram can help you reach a new, tech-savvy demographic that you can leverage to increase your conversions and returns. But how can you gain an Instagram following in the first place?
1. Establish your Niche with a Perfect Bio
Before anything, you first need to make sure your Instagram bio is attractive. It needs to be able to tell your audience who you are, what you do and what is it that you want them to do, including a clear call-to-action.
2. Engage your Audience with Interesting Content
Instagram is all about content, and not just any content. It’s about sharing high-quality interesting content. Having a sizeable fanbase does, mathematically, increase your chances of appearing in the feeds of more users. But what’s the point of that if people don’t engage with you or your content? The trick to increasing engagement is to create content that solves certain content needs for your audience. When it comes to a forex related profile, you could choose to provide your audience with actionable market information, real-time trading, your personal strategy or EA, trading tips, your set ups, your views on what’s currently happening in the markets or even just some inspirational posts on what CFD trading means to you and how it reflects on your lifestyle.
3. Post regularly
Posting regularly is one of the ingredients of Instagram success, it’s a platform that requires you to be very active. Ideally, you should be posting at least once a day. If you can post more than that, 2-3 times a day, you will get better reach and engagement, enabling you to grow your account. There are a number of tools you can use to automate your posting or distribute your content to a number of social media platforms at peak traffic hours to optimise engagement.
4. Leverage the Right Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to improve the discoverability and reach of your content. Instagram allows you to use a maximum of 30 hashtags; but you should always remember to use your hashtags wisely. Try using ones that are relevant to your posts and will help you reach out to bigger audiences, but feel free to get creative and witty with your hashtags, as well. You may also use a hashtag manager to keep them organised. You can use it to store all your hashtags separately or in groups, which is really handy if have more than one account to manage.
5. Utilise Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories can be used in various ways. It’s a brilliant feature that should be utilised regularly as it increases engagement and makes your account look more credible and approachable. More importantly, when your account surpasses 10,000 followers, Instagram allows you to start adding hyperlinks within your stories!
You can now also take advantage of Instagram’s recent update which includes the ability to display story highlights on your profile. You may consider creating a few highlights to promote and encourage your audience to follow you on other social networks or even visit your website if you have one.
6. Improve your Content Quality
One of the most important things you need to do to monetize Instagram is to improve your content quality. Standing out in an ocean of content creators will give you the edge you need to truly drive and convert traffic. Always use high-quality images and never repeat your pitches. Additionally, you should strongly consider leveraging video content in the form of Stories or even on IGTV to stand out.
7. Build Relationship with Other Content Creators
An important element of growing your reach and influence is cultivating relationships with other content creators from your niche. You could always get in touch with them and ask them for a shoutout on one of their posts. Or you can actively engage with them and their followers on their posts. Better yet, you can collaborate with them to create content together.
8. Engage with Your Followers and Targeted Audience
Ultimately, being an Instagram success also comes down to how you engage with your followers. If you show that you are an actual human behind that profile picture and actively reply to your audience’s comments and direct messages regularly they will be more likely to engage with your content and convert down the line. This also applies to engaging with your followers content. Leaving a few likes, comments and following back your audience will help build positive healthy relationships encouraging engagement and trust.
Sources:
Hootsuite, Omnicore, Sked Social & Shane Barker as of May 31st 2019, 4:00 PM GMT.
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