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How To Grow Your Podcast With Instagram

April 13, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Podcasts are content creation, marketing, and self-education all wrapped into one. As you land more guests on your show, you’ll attract more listeners and a stream of guests requesting to get interviewed on your show.

It’s powerful when you interview multiple people each week who promote their episode when it goes live. While it’s great to tap into other people’s audiences to expand your podcast, you also need to look towards your audience.

When you think about promoting new content to your audience, you should immediately think of your email list. That’s your most important asset.

However, a growing but overlooked opportunity for many podcasters is promoting your episodes on Instagram.

Instagram is a social network with highly engaged users. More brands are using Instagram to communicate with their audiences, but there’s also a great opportunity for podcasters. In this blog post, you’ll learn how to grow your podcast with Instagram.

Consistently Publish New Episodes

Before we focus on Instagram, we need to first focus on your podcast. Consistent uploads will make it easier for you to harness Instagram’s full potential with promoting your podcast. You should at the very minimum publish one new episode per week.

If you believe you can publish more than one episode each week, then do it. I currently publish 5 episodes on Breakthrough Success each week, and this gives me more episodes to promote on Instagram.

Promote Each Episode With An IG Pic

When you publish each new episode, tell your Instagram followers about that episodes. You can create a picture featuring the guest, your podcast’s logo, and the title of the episode. It’s better to make the guest’s picture as big as possible (at least half of the picture).

Here is one of the Instagram posts I published to promote a Breakthrough Success episode. I’ll publish something like this for each new episode that comes out.

Hosting webinars is one of the best ways to get clients for your services and customers for your products. I recently got to chat with Corena Bahr who’s been developing and delivering webinars and virtual training over the last 15 years for Fortune 500 companies and for several start-ups. She’s delivered over 1,000 webinars to date. Here’s some of what we covered: –Structuring your webinar for success –Attracting attendees to your webinars –Tips for hosting a successful webinar LINK IN BIO

A post shared by Marc Guberti (@marcguberti) on Apr 6, 2018 at 7:19am PDT

I use Canva to create the pictures I use to promote Breakthrough Success episodes. The great thing about using Canva is that I can copy the image and modify it for each guest. All I do is change the guest’s picture and episode title to reflect each new episode that goes on the podcast.

Snippets & Quotes

Since I publish five episodes each week, I create more content that I can then promote on Instagram than most podcasters. However, if you publish one episode each week, you can promote that episode in multiple ways.

I strongly recommend creating a picture similar to the picture format I use, but for the six day gap between episodes, you can share quotes and snippets from the episode.

You can share a powerful quote from the guest and tell your followers they can listen to that episode. You can also take a small snippet from the episode and publish it on Instagram. You can tell your followers that they can listen to the episode to hear the rest.

If you find three powerful quotes and a snippet, you have four additional opportunities to promote each episode on Instagram. You can even use Throwback Thursday or Flashback Friday to promote past episodes.

Link To iTunes In The Description

One of the initial deterrents for Instagram was that links in a picture’s description are un-clickable. While this is still the case for links you put in the description, there’s a clever way to promote each episode.

In your bio, change your link to match your podcast’s iTunes link. The key to dominate with your podcast is to dominate iTunes. Sure, there are Android users, Stitcher, and other options, but in my research, interviews, and coaching I’ve received, iTunes is the golden road to victory.

With this link in play, you can tell your followers that they can click on the link in your bio to listen to the latest episode. This will be accurate since you’ll promote new episodes as they come out.

Even for a Throwback Thursday or Flashback Friday post, you can tell people the episode number, and they can still find the episode by scrolling. I’d recommend against giving your readers too much to scroll through to access the episode. If you’ve published 100 episodes on your podcast, don’t go back to Episode 7. Scrolling that far down on a smartphone takes too much time.

If you promote Episode 80, that’s not as much to scroll through for anyone interested in listening to that episode.

In Conclusion

Podcasting is an incredible opportunity, and Instagram is an incredible opportunity for attracting more listeners to your podcast. By consistently publishing new episodes on your podcast, you give yourself a greater capability to promote your podcast on Instagram.

It may take some time for you to create the first picture you use. But once you create the first picture, you can tweak that rubric to effortlessly create future pictures for your podcast episodes.

What are your thoughts on promoting a podcast with Instagram? Do you have any additional tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

6 Instagram Hacks to Grow Business in a Month

June 6, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

This is a guest contribution from Lale Byquist

One of the fastest growing social networks is Instagram. Everyone knows about it and almost everyone uses it.

But: Do we truly know the power of it?

While most people believe that Instagram is a website for sharing private photos only, proficient marketers use it as an effective tool for growing business.

Source

Although most brands know reasons for using Instagram, there are some stats to prove that this social media platform is in a high demand for modern businesses:

700 million monthly active users
Around 1/3 of Instagram users have purchased a product online
By 2017, 70.7% of US brands will use Instagram for business

In other words, if you want to grow a business, you’re in the right place.

Creating an effective marketing strategy that includes running Instagram account takes a lot of work. However, if you know and follow recent trends, you can achieve success faster without wasting time or effort.

Here comes a list of tips that will help you grow a business in a month:

1. Create Business Profiles

Instagram takes care of its users and its team has announced a new tool that allows brands to understand their followers better. Now brands can create business profiles that give an opportunity to analyze insights: impressions, reach, profile views, website and email clicks. It also helps to understand what works best for your audience.

Source

Switch your account to business as it allows you to analyze statistics which means understanding your subscribers’ needs better so that you can get more followers on Instagram by suiting their expectations.

2. Fulfill Contact Info

If you want to increase the number of subscribers, give them reasons for doing it! Obviously, people pay attention to eye-catchy content, but they want to know who you are as well, so fulfilling your contact info is a must: add a description, website, phone number, address, and any other information that can help people learn more about your company.

Moreover, you can increase blog traffic from Instagram which helps to turn followers into customers and, therefore, grow your revenue. The only one thing you need to do is to help followers understand more about your company, its values, and how they can make the most out of using your products/services.

3. Use Paid Ads

When it comes to business promotion, get ready to spend money. You want to deliver your message to the target audience, right? If so, you need to use Instagram to target your posts, and it costs money. Using paid ads has become an important element of any social media marketing, and Instagram rolled out this service to help brands grow their business faster.

Three main benefits of using paid advertising on Instagram:

It has great targeting: choose your audience to reach the right people with your ads.

It grabs fans’ attention: people spend an average 192 seconds on the site after watching Instagram ads.

It pays off: Michael Kors posted one of the first paid ads and it earned 16 times more followers than their unsponsored posts.

Any other proof needed? 75% of Instagram users take action after seeing an advertised post.

Invest in Instagram ads to attract high-quality followers and, therefore, succeed with running your brand profile.

4. Share Up-to-Date Content

Having an Instagram profile isn’t enough to grow your audience. You need to post interesting and unique content daily that gives something valuable to your followers. If you want to expand your audience and cause a buzz with your publications, posting up-to-date content is the biggest helper.

Post Instagram stories: a type of disappearing content that is available for 24 hours and doesn’t appear on a profile. It’s aimed at showing current events that are not so important to be on the main newsfeed.
Share breaking news: modern people crave for urgent information. When you share up-to-date content, you earn trust and loyalty which means attracting new fans to your brand profile as you help to follow the recent trends.

If you post current news, you earn followers’ trust and loyalty. Plus, you attract new people who want to stay up-to-date.

5. Backstage Photos are Booming

Instagram is a social network that puts visual content first. MDG Advertising found out that 67% of online buyers rated high-quality images as an important element to their purchase decision. It means that good visuals matter.

As most brands promote themselves online, and they know the importance of high-quality images, it’s a normal practice to buy stock photos.

It’s harsh, but true: Internet users are sick and tired of artificial content. Stock photos don’t look realistic to cause emotions and, therefore, you can’t convey.

What’s left? If you want to use visuals, create them! Unless you have a great content creation staff, take photos with your gadget! In fact, backstage photos are booming! If people choose your brand, they are interested in your staff and working process that shows them more about your company, its values, and a lifestyle.
Backstage content is exclusive, so sharing it with your followers has an impact on their loyalty as they become a part of a private community.

6. Get Influencers to Promote Your Business

While most marketers try to deliver their messages to the masses, targeting opinion leaders is a key to success.

To begin with, let’s find out who these people are. An opinion leader, or an influencer, is a socially active person who keeps up with the recent trends and news, and this person has won trust and, therefore, he or she gets asked for advice a lot. All in all, it’s a person who has an effect on the decision-making of other people. If influencers speak well of your brand, you’re about to win: a consumer to consumer communication is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions.

Influencer marketing has become an actionable tactic when it comes to business promotion.

Although it has many benefits, get ready for some pitfalls. For instance, collaboration with opinion leaders is a time-consuming task as you need to pick up credible people who have earned trust and loyalty from their followers who might be your target audience.

Once you’ve established good contact with an opinion leader who can promote your business, you’re one step closer to success.

How to collaborate with influencers? Tell them more about your product or service and name reasons for using it (how it can solve someone’s problems).

Give them a sample. To promote your product, they need to be sure that it works well.

Be beneficial to them: you need to pay for this recommendation or give your product for free.

For example, if you run a fashion business, send your item to an influencer and ask to tag your company so that other people can contact you fast.

Source

Every opinion leader has an already existing audience that pays much attention to things, products, and services he or she promotes. Thus, it’s your chance to reach potential followers fast. Give it a try to measure the effectiveness of the results.

The Sum Up

Whatever happens, always put your customers first. Let’s draw an analogy: running a business profile on Instagram is like delivering a speech as you have to do your audience’s analysis to suits their needs. If you show what your product can do for them and how they can make the most out of using it, it’s more likely they will stay with you.

Every business owner dreams of making a business profitable. If you’ve decided to use Instagram as a marketing tool, try to use all tips and hacks to grow your business. All the above-mentioned hacks can help to achieve better results in a month only.

Bonus Takeaways

Interact with your followers and potential fans: like and comment on their content

Include a CTA in your posts: make your followers discuss the topic and involve other people

Use popular hashtags and geolocation to attract potential followers

Run contests to boost followers’ engagement

Add links to Instagram account on other networks

Although running an Instagram business profile is a long-term marketing strategy for growing your business, there are some tips for skyrocketing results in a month. Do you know other hacks that help to grow the business fast?

About the Author

Lale Byquist is a media communications student who runs PrsentationSkills.me website. She is fond of the digital marketing, so Lale studies a lot about it, and social media marketing especially. Feel free to contact her on Twitter or Facebook.

7 Ways To Get More Instagram Followers

October 7, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Photo: (cc) Pixabay

How hot is Instagram for businesses? Well, the social network boasts over 300 million daily active users and engagement is through the roof compared to other social networks. So what’s the trick to increasing your Instagram followers?

I recently posted a picture to my 2,000 Instagram followers that was liked over 40 times. That high level engagement is normal on Instagram. If any of my tweets was retweeted or favorited that many times, I’d be overjoyed.

That’s why brands are scrambling to master Instagram as quickly as possible. They want large, targeted, and active audiences who will fall in love with their pictures and products.

I recently started taking the social network more seriously and was happy to discover that many Instagram growth methods are similar to those used for growth on Twitter. If you know how to get more Twitter followers, then you have an edge when it comes to Instagram.

But there are also some differences that I will discuss within this post. Here are seven ways you can get more Instagram followers:

#1: Follow The Right People

You could technically follow many Follow4Follow accounts to increase your following. However, those followers are more interested in adding you to their own list of follows than your content.

You don’t want an audience of real, yet non-targeted and non-interested followers. Rather, you should be looking to build an audience of targeted individuals who have a strong interest in your brand. Here’s how you find those people:

Find a person in your niche with a big audience.
Go to that person’s most recent post.
Follow the people who liked that photo.
Repeat the process with more influencers’ accounts.

While Instagram requires a few additional steps compared to the Twitter approach, you’ll be following people who are:

Interested in your niche.
Active.
Engaging with content related to your niche.

Making a careful selection of who to follow will help you build a relevant audience that engages with your content. Try to be sure that the people you follow will be likely to follow you back.

Not only is it possible to find targeted and engaged users who are likely to follow you back, it’s also easy.

#2: Like The Right Pictures

Google the phrase “how to get more Instagram followers” and you’ll come across the tip I previously mentioned: follow users who like content related to your niche. More people are clicking on particular images to see who has liked them, then following those users.

This is a method people use to gain liked-minded followers. Liking hundreds of pictures related to your niche will put you in front of thousands of potential targeted followers.

Like photos posted by influencers in real time. The sooner you like the picture, the more exposure you’ll get. If you know an influencer posts pictures at a certain time each day, be sure you’re logged into Instagram at the same time so you can be one of the first people to like his or her post.

#3: Post Consistently

Engaging with other people’s pictures and following their active users will put your account in front of more people. But unless your account makes an impression on visitors, you won’t get many followers.

Posting consistently makes your account more impressive. Consistent posting makes it clear to potential followers that you are an active user. Until recently, there was no free way to schedule your Instagram posts. Now you can get the job done with HootSuite, but keep in mind that you must be logged in to the Instagram app in order to post it.

HootSuite doesn’t actually schedule the Instagram post. Rather, it notifies you to post to Instagram according to your schedule. So if you schedule a post for 6 pm, but don’t log into Instagram for the entire day, your picture won’t get posted.

Posting consistently on Instagram requires a bit more work, but it is also more rewarding. Far more people engage with Instagram posts than with Twitter and Facebook posts.

I have two predictions: the first is that the scheduling problem won’t last very long. My second prediction is that Instagram will keep growing, and you’ll want to post consistently now (and let other people complain about the technological restraints).

#4: Optimize Your Bio

Let people know what you do professionally, and who you are personally. List some of your personal interests and professional accomplishments. People who have never heard of you before should immediately get a sense of who you are just by reading your bio.

And no bio is complete without a link to your blog or website. This link will help you increase your traffic from Instagram, and that traffic can equate to subscribers and sales. So should you link to your post or landing page?

If you post your blog post pictures on Instagram and want people to read your content, simply include “Read this post by clicking the link in my bio” at the end of the post description.

If you prefer to include your blog’s link within your Instagram post descriptions, link to your landing page in the bio. Social media is a means to an end.

Successful Instagram users aren’t getting more followers just for the sake of having a pretty number and bragging rights. The purpose of Instagram varies for each person. Some people view Instagram as a way of building an audience and getting more blog traffic, while others want to funnel as much of their Instagram traffic to their landing pages as possible.

If you are using Instagram to grow your email list, then why link to your blog? Link to one of your landing pages to expedite the process.

Of course, if you view Instagram only as a means to an end and don’t bother interacting with your audience, your Instagram experience won’t be a smooth one. No matter which social network you use, interaction is a must.

#5: Include Hashtags

Use Hashtags to get your content found on Instagram. They’re the SEO for Instagram. Choose the right hashtags and your pictures will get in front of all of the people searching for that hashtag.

I like to use at least three hashtags in a given Instagram post. Before I choose hashtags, I’ll put the hashtag into Instagram’s search engine to see how they rank.

When choosing my Instagram hashtags, I’ll mix in the most popular hashtags with hashtags that aren’t as popular. Often less popular hashtags still get a lot of visibility.

Getting a lot of engagement for those hashtags boosts social proof and helps out with the more popular hashtags.

#6: Comment On Other People’s Pictures

Here’s a fun activity. Find a successful Instagram picture related to your niche. Then see how many people liked the picture and how many people commented. I decided to do this with one of my pictures:

41 likes
2 comments

Foundr Magazine is crushing it on Instagram. I decided to look at the stats of one of their Zig Ziglar pictures:

5,021 likes
34 comments

Why does this fun and insightful game help you obtain more Instagram followers? Instagram pictures don’t get nearly as many comments as likes, which makes the comments section an easier place to stand out.

Post a meaningful comment, and you’ll get more followers from that person’s audience.

Foundr Magazine currently has over 800,000 Instagram followers but the case study post only received five comments. So if you add comment #6, you are automatically exposed to thousands of people. You won’t get in front of Foundr Magazine’s entire audience, but a few thousand people seeing your comment isn’t so bad

#7: Post Awesome Pictures

Not all pictures are created equal. In the end, there are only three types of pictures that I post on my Instagram account.

The first type is something personal. I like it when people can connect with me on a more personal level. I’ve had numerous conversations with my audience about running, dogs, and the Red Sox. I love those types of conversations.

Not only does my audience get to know me better, but I get to know them better, too.

The second type of picture is a motivational quote. I like to inspire my audience so much that I created an inspirational quotes board that currently has over 4,000 pins. I am that serious about inspiring others (to be fair, I’ve got almost 600 contributors helping me with that board).

The third type of picture I post is a picture of one of my blog posts in order to drive more traffic to my blog.

Understand what types of pictures you want to craft and make them epic. For personal pictures, I like candid shots take in the moment. I hire a freelancer for my blog pictures because choosing those images is not my strong suit. For motivational quotes, I edit images using Canva (although I may begin outsourcing those as well).

In Conclusion

Instagram is a social network seething with new opportunities. You’ll tap into a powerful, highly engaged audience that can take your brand to the next level and beyond.

Foundr Magazine is doing very well, and the owner attributes much of the magazine’s success to Instagram. If you take action, you may attribute much of your business’ success to Instagram as well.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for your business? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Instagram

September 30, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Ever get random blog traffic? It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and the question, “What can I do to get more traffic from that source?” I was recently surprised by Instagram traffic to my blog.

I followed targeted people on Instagram to grow my account, and I noticed that Instagram brought 10 people over to my blog that same day. Ten visitors a day adds up to 3,650 new visitors each year. I’m not doing cartwheels over an additional 10 visitors, but neither am I discounting the potential power of Instagram to increase my blog traffic.

In fact, I am doing cartwheels precisely because those visitors came from Instagram. At the time, my last Instagram post was two months old, and the one prior to that was almost a year old. I attracted 10 people to my blog via an inactive Instagram account. Imagine if it was an active account.

That’s why I was doing cartwheels.

Now I’m dreaming of the day my monthly Instagram traffic surpasses my monthly Twitter traffic. One-thousand daily visitors from social media alone has a nice ring to it. Today my blog is consistently getting more traffic from Instagram, and that traffic is growing.

Want to get blog traffic from Instagram? Follow these five tips:

#1: Link To Your Blog In Your Bio

This is how I got my initial 10 visitors. I followed people, they followed me back, and some of those people decided to check out my blog. I was also experimenting with a second method (but more on that in a second).

Linking to your blog in your bio is perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic. It takes a few seconds and requires little to no effort. All you do is edit your bio and add a link to your blog.

It’s that easy!

#2: Grow A Targeted And Active Audience

There are many ways to grow an audience on Instagram. Many sites out there offer myriad ways to grow your Instagram fans, particularly those encouraging you to buy followers.

That method doesn’t interest me. In fact, buying followers will not give you an authentic picture of your account activity and most will be bot accounts. At one point, I used a point exchange site to build up my Twitter audience during its infancy stage (I stopped when my account had 1667 followers), but I did nothing like that for my Instagram account.

I am more interested in methods that will actually result in an audience of people who are interested in my pictures and ready to engage with my posts. And you should be too.

Build a targeted and active audience by hanging out where the targeted and active people hang out. How? First, find an influencer in your niche with a big audience. Next, visit the influencer’s account and look at his or her latest post and who has engaged with, or liked it. Finally, follow all of those people.

It’s that easy. People liked the picture because they were interested in that topic (your niche). These people are likely active and engaged on the platform, so this simple follow strategy will help you build your own audience.

#3: Post Pictures Of Your Latest Blog Post

The day I received 10 visitors from Instagram to my blog I did not include an image from my latest blog post. But if I had, I would have easily doubled my visitors. Posting pictures of your latest blog posts on Instagram is a creative way to use the platform to increase your blog traffic.

Most of my blog post images are 300×300 pixels, but I can quickly and easily resize them to 400×400 pixels so that they are optimized for Instagram.

#4: Post Pictures Made To Spread

If I share a motivational quote on Instagram, it doesn’t usually result in a direct increase in my blog traffic. If anything, I’ll receive an indirect increase in traffic because some curious people will click on my blog link.

These types of posts are designed more for spreading power than traffic power. The stronger your image’s spreading power, the more people that image reaches. Motivational quotes happen to perform very well on virtually every social network. These pictures normally get a lot of engagement and attract followers.

This means my blog post images are seen by a larger audience. Motivational quote pictures motivate others and increase my following, which brings more attention to the blog post images that drive my traffic.

#5: Make Those Pictures Awesome

Each picture you put on your Instagram profile needs at least 10 minutes of care and attention (with the exception of random pics taken in the moment). I hire a freelancer to choose and edit my blog post pictures, and it looks like I’ll be hiring another freelancer for the motivational quote pictures as well.

If you want to create the pictures yourself, use Canva. It’s a free tool that makes image editing a breeze.

In Conclusion

While ten visitors in one day doesn’t look like much, Instagram is attractive because of its potential to bring in serious traffic and revenue.

Instagram users are active and engaged, so if you aren’t already using the platform, start now. You don’t need many followers to get dozens of likes for each picture you post.

The potential Instagram has to transform your business is huge. However, the only way Instagram will transform your business is if you take action.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for business? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Have any Instagram tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Things To Do On Instagram Right Now

October 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Instagram is booming. With over 300 million users, Instagram has quickly emerged as “just another social network” to one of the top social networks on the web. Brands have capitalized on the opportunity and have accrued large audiences on Instagram.

However, not everyone uses Instagram for business. While Twitter and Facebook are established as great social networks for business, Instagram is usually left out. Although Instagram gets left out, it has a lot of firepower.

Instagram recently rolled out paid ads, and these ads should soon enough bring forth sensational results. Why? Facebook owns Instagram, and Facebook ads are the best type of social media ads today. You can get highly targeted likes for less than $0.01 per like.

Facebook has mastered the social media advertising game. Instagram is next. Imagine how game changing it would be if you could get highly targeted Instagram followers for as little as $0.01 per follower.

It’s going to happen, and at this stage of the game, you can grow a large Instagram audience without paying a penny. While a post on a Facebook Page is seen by a small percentage of your fans, an Instagram post will get seen by a large chunk of your audience. The average photo or video posted by an Instagram brand reaches 25-35% of that brand’s followers.

You don’t want to wait any longer. Instagram is the social network that needs your attention now. Regardless of whether you’ve been focusing on Instagram all along or Instagram for business never crossed your mind, these are the four things you must do on Instagram right now.

#1: Post Daily

Each time you post a new picture on Instagram, your audience sees your content. As you begin posting pictures more often, the people within your audience start to remember you. Some people in your audience will remember you so well that they will go to your profile for new posts.

In other words, they won’t wait for your posts to show up in their home feed. They want to see your latest Instagram posts the moment you cross their minds.

When you post every day, you become a familiar face to the people within your audience. As more people engage with your Instagram posts, there will be certain people who you also become familiar with. This is how relationships on social media are built.

The relationships you build on social media can lead to great opportunities. Some of the relationships I built on social media led to podcast interviews, guest blogging opportunities, and more.

Finally, by posting daily, you have a stronger incentive to grow on that social network. If you have thousands of pictures on Instagram, that is an incentive to make all of the work you put into your Instagram account worthwhile. That same incentive is not as powerful for a Twitter account with only five tweets.

Posting daily lets you embrace Instagram, see its potential, and grow an audience of people who appreciate your content.

#2: Use Canva To Create Awesome Pictures

One of the main reasons people don’t post on Instagram every day is because they don’t believe they have that many pictures worth sharing. There are only so many pictures within the camera roll. What do you do when you run out of awesome pictures to share?

There are two solutions.

Take another picture
Create a picture

I prefer creating my pictures and then posting them to Instagram. Canva is the best free tool on the web for creating pictures. You get numerous templates, background colors, and add-ons to choose from.

If you don’t like their add-ons, you can always upload your own pictures (or pictures from the web) to Canva’s dashboard.

#3: Consider Outsourcing The Work

The largest barrier that held me back from utilizing Instagram was time. I saw Instagram’s potential but would never have the time to get to it. With the mix of growing my Twitter audience and now focusing most of my time on Udemy, my time was spread too thin for Instagram.

Now most of my work is outsourced. All I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers because everything else has been outsourced. All of that time I once spent following people and scheduling tweets gets devoted to other parts of my business.

Now I am putting more time and effort towards Instagram. But even now, outsourcing still reigns. I hire people to create the pictures for my Instagram account and this blog. I didn’t create the picture you saw at the top of this blog post.

And I have no shame in admitting that. Outsourcing some of your Instagram activity allows you to buy back valuable time that you can repurpose into other parts of your business. Even if you don’t outsource your Instagram activity, you need to outsource something in your business immediately.

#4: Use HootSuite To Schedule Posts From Your Desktop For Free

The second largest barrier holding me back from utilizing Instagram was poor desktop compatibility. Since I do most of my work on my Mac Book Pro, and Instagram isn’t as optimized for the desktop as it is for mobile, I didn’t spend much time on Instagram.

Then HootSuite came through in the clutch (again) by making Instagram a part of the dashboard. Now it is possible to schedule Instagram posts for free straight from the HootSuite dashboard regardless of whether you are using a mobile device or a desktop.

The bridge has finally been connected and made free for everyone. But if you do not cross that bridge to Instagram Domination, then the bridge serves no purpose.

If you don’t have time to schedule your Instagram posts, you can easily outsource that work to someone else so you can focus on your Instagram account’s growth.

In Conclusion

Instagram is a booming social network that is only going to get bigger and better for business. If you do not utilize Instagram yet, then now is the time to start. Right now, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts about Instagram for business? How do you use Instagram? What tips do you have for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Awesome Ways To Use Instagram For Business

September 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Many people see Instagram is a social network with an emphasize on the social and selfies. However, if you utilize Instagram properly, it can be more than that. It is important to remember that there are over 200 million monthly active users on Instagram and that posts with pictures have been proven to get more engagement than posts without pictures. Many brands take full advantage of Instagram while others wonder how they can do the same. In order to use Instagram for your business, follow these five tips:

Take pictures of coupon codes. Only posting pictures of coupon codes on Instagram will give people another reason to follow your business. Better yet, posting coupon codes weekly or monthly will give people a reason to go back to your account and see what has recently been added.
Post a tip of the day with a relevant picture. If you provide a tip for your followers with a picture that correlates with the tip, you will create the type of posts that your audience will like and share with their friends.
Host a giveaway that encourages interaction. Whole Foods knows how to use Instagram very effectively. One of their pictures was of a girl riding a bike with groceries in the bike’s basket. Whole Foods invited its audience to post a picture of themselves riding a bike with groceries with #BikeToShop in the post. The prize was a $250 gift card.
Let your audience know more about business life. You can use Instagram to show people what goes on behind the scenes. Perhaps if McDonald’s did this, we would realize once and for all what really gets used to make those McNuggets.
Let your audience know more about your personal life. Many people forget to do this, but it is very important to include your personal life. This allows people in your audience to know about you and have a stronger connection with you. If a billionaire decided to post on Instagram a picture of a sports team, you would be able to relate better with that billionaire.

Those are the five ways to use Instagram for business. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on using Instagram for business? Please share your thoughts and advice below.