Instagram is a social media and a search engine. Tags on Instagram can help companies display related searches to increase coverage. Therefore, tags can be a good way to expand exposure. When conducting brand marketing promotion, use tags to the greatest extent to expand influence, and you can also @ celebrities to attract traffic. Community topic tags cover very active users. Although these niche tags do not cover the number of posts like popular tags, they can directly link to target consumers. Using tags can directly access the number of clicks, engagement and potential users of brand accounts.
There are two related areas of posts on the tag page, including “Popular” and “Latest”. Generally, newly published posts will not appear in the popular posts for the time being, but they will easily appear in the “Latest” section, which is equivalent to a wave of free natural traffic. If the brand post published is positioned as a post with sufficient appeal under the tag, then the picture and text will stay in the popular post for a long time. As long as people search for the corresponding tag, they can easily find the brand’s post and expand its influence. As shown in Figure 6-19, this is a lipstick post of the Chanel brand. When it was published, @ the famous Italian makeup artist Lucia Pica, the influence of the product was expanded through celebrities. At the same time, two tags were added to the post, of which the tag “CHANELMakeup” has 550,000 posts, expanding the audience of the post.
When doing tag marketing promotion on Instagram, you can also create a tag on your own. Just use the “#” sign plus the brand name or any tag you want to create, such as #apple. At first, only the brand company itself may use this topic tag, but as the account and store continue to operate, it will gradually attract other users to start using the corresponding topic tag to share after purchasing the product, that is, “sharing pictures”. Chanel Beauty Brand has attracted a large number of fans in this way. Expand the community through new tags, slowly accumulate small and medium-sized precise tags, and with such tags, there will be more and more fans and tags. This helps to expand the influence of the account and brand.
Using popular tags on Instagram is also a way to promote brand marketing, such as the weekly popular #TGIF, #MotivationMonday and #ThroubackThursday, etc., you can share some content around these themes to fit the brand and products to be promoted. Popular tags help find popular topics related to brand products, and conduct reference and tag analysis.
In addition, the application of # is very rich, and Instagram accounts need to be expanded in combination with brand characteristics or marketing promotion goals. For example, ask experts to share pictures and then #brand; or ask various KOLs to share, #activity name; or even take advantage of the popularity, such as #xmas, etc.
Which brand products are most popular on cross-border e-commerce platforms, and then promote such products. On the AliExpress platform, you can first check the specific sales situation. Search for the main keyword, choose to rank by order volume, find similar products, analyze the order volume, and then enter the product details page to check the product rating and user reviews. To see if the product is popular on Pinterest, just search for the main keyword and find similar products. It is similar on eBay. Search for the main keyword and view the most commonly purchased similar products. The more popular the product, the better the effect of Instagram celebrity promotion will be.
1. Find celebrities
After determining the product, you should find a suitable Instagram celebrity for marketing promotion. There are many ways to find celebrities, including special celebrity resource websites, Google searches, etc., or you can choose to find celebrities directly on Instagram. Here we take the example of finding influencers on Instagram. Before finding influencers, find out the topics and keywords that potential customers are interested in, write them down, and then search on Instagram based on these keywords. For example, if you are making cat phone cases, you can advertise to young women who like cats, cute things and kawaii style, and promote cat phone cases. Therefore, you can use words such as “kawaii” to find Instagram influencer accounts.
By searching for corresponding keywords on Instagram, you will get a lot of Instagram account information, so you need to screen them. First, analyze whether the account language is suitable. If the target market is an English-speaking country, then non-English accounts should be excluded. Second, analyze the number and quality of fans. You can choose an account with 100,000 to 300,000 fans. The price of influencers with millions of fans is expensive, and the quality of fans and participation rate are much lower than those of accounts with 300,000 or 400,000 fans. It is not cost-effective from the perspective of cost-effectiveness. Of course, specific analysis is required for specific situations. Third, analyze the content quality of the influencer account. Check the content of the posts of the influencer account, check how many marketing posts there are, how often, how many different types of advertisements there are, and analyze whether the product is suitable for promotion in this influencer account. Generally speaking, if an influencer posts ads frequently or there are many types of ads, there may be problems with the influencer’s account. Fourth, analyze the user engagement of the influencer’s posts. Because Instagram influencer marketing is very popular, some bad influencers use machines to fake followers, which makes the fan data inflated. There are some tools that can analyze the quality of influencer accounts, such as the “How to Spot Fake Instagram Followers” tool on the Influencer marketing website.
2. Contact Instagram influencers for marketing promotion
After selecting the influencer for marketing promotion, you need to contact the influencer for communication. You can contact the other party directly on Instagram. If you have the influencer’s email address, you can send an email directly to the influencer. You can refer to the following template during the communication process:
Hello! My name is Kate. Your account is really awesome! Are you interested in paid shoutouts?If yes, could you, please, let me know your prices so we could discuss the details? I can make the shoutouts for you in my account as well.Thank you in advance for your reply!
3. Quotation of influencer marketing
Generally speaking, the quotation of influencer marketing is $1 for every 10,000 fans. However, the price of some popular influencer marketing has skyrocketed, and sometimes it is normal to quote $5 for every 10,000 fans. Therefore, it is necessary to bargain with the influencer and make a choice based on the actual situation of brand product marketing.
The price quotes from influencers are usually in the following format:
My rates:
$10 for 24 hours post+caption+link in bio.
$12 for 24 hours post+caption+link in bio+stories.
The first one states: $10 for 24 hours, with the content of the post + title + product link in the bio. The second one adds an Instagram story, so it becomes $12 for 24 hours.
4. Pay the influencer
After determining the price and content format, you can pay the influencer. There are many payment methods. You can use PayPal’s “goods or services payment” to pay. This method means purchasing goods or services from the influencer. If there is a problem with the marketing service provided by the influencer, you can apply for a refund from PayPal. There will be a transaction fee for payment using PayPal, which is usually paid by the brand.
5. Determine the time for influencer marketing promotion
The time for influencer marketing promotion is usually only 12 hours. If it exceeds 12 hours, the effect will be much worse. You should know when the influencer’s posts are generally seen by the most people. Since Instagram provides the function of analyzing followers, you can ask the influencer to provide an analysis report to understand who will see the marketing promotion content. The following is a template for requesting an analysis report:
Could I ask you to send me your account insights? I’m interested in gender, age of your followers.I also need the info about your followers, activity during this week.
6. Publish content
After determining the time, advertising content, audience, etc., as well as the price of the influencer marketing promotion, you need to determine the specific content to be published by the influencer. For example, for product image promotion, you can add discounts, free global shipping and other information in the appropriate position of the picture, or you can make a puzzle, which can better show more aspects of the product. At the same time, you can refer to the advertising content of competitors of similar products on Instagram. Examples of content in image promotion are as follows:
Awesome Cat Cases for iPhone and Samsung from ABC Company. Free shipping worldwide!
SALE prices! 45 days money back guarantee! Only at www.***.com (active link in my profile). Follow@** for more deals! Tag a friend who would like it!
Regarding marketing promotion content, tags should be added when writing titles. Before the influencer starts advertising, upload the ad to your own account first. At the same time, in the title of the ad to the influencer, remember to @ your own account so that interested users can directly click to jump to your account. After the influencer starts marketing promotion, follow up with your own account and the influencer’s account in a timely manner. If the user has any questions, reply in time. The last step is to analyze the specific data in order to evaluate the effectiveness of this influencer marketing promotion.