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Virtual Assistance
When you think of Instagram, you think of trending hashtags, famous pictures, and catchy captions.
Instagram has certainly peaked regarding its organic activity when we saw an increase of social ads and brand marketing back in 2018. According to the Social Media Examiner’s 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Instagram has jumped from being the #4 most popular platforms for marketers to being #2. What this entails is that marketers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have now discovered the rewards of being part of the platform and are now using it as a means to promote their products and services. Now, it is one thing to have a page of your business or company on Instagram, it’s another to use it effectively.
This is where our virtual assistants come in. As part of their job descriptions and depending on the tasks delegated to them, they can handle several of a business’ social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Now if you’re a businessperson with all the necessary social media outlets but don’t know where to start in social media engagement, it’s best to hire a trained virtual assistant. Many of them specialize in a specific skill set within an industry and work according to your specifications for the job. They reduce workload stress and keep things organized to yield an efficient outcome for your company.
Most VAs are tasked with social media management, which means they are expected to work on the promotional value of the business while the full-time staff can work on bigger projects from an already existing pool of clients. As this improves the overall productivity and time management of the entire company, it also lets the virtual assistant focus on smaller details that can significantly boost the business’ presence online. One of those details involves Instagram engagement.
Why is Instagram engagement so important?
Simple. It’s business. If you want people to notice you, you need to get in with what’s trending. Nowadays, what’s trending is Instagram. Most businesses assume the followers are what keeps you on top of the trending page but it’s not entirely true. It’s a combination of followers, likes and comments, which play a role and affect your Instagram engagement rate. So in order to raise your engagement, you need to make sure you have a dedicated following to your page and consistent likes and comments to your content.
Not only is Instagram part of the trend but it is also a practical method to get noticed by people. Accordingly, 80% of the users follow some type of business online with 72% of them purchasing a product they noticed on the site. If you play it right, you’ll be able to follow the same line of statistics. However, it takes a lot of work to do so. You’re going to need the necessary effort and consistency to reach the same success other small businesses have garnered.
But there’s an issue here—you might not have the time to do so, especially since businesses and companies are constantly working on updating their products and services. This is why most of them hire virtual assistants to do social media management and to keep the workload off the full-time employees. VAs take the unnecessary weight off your shoulders and push you to work on more important matters. Because social media presence should not be ignored or pushed aside, it is absolutely vital to find quick solutions in regards to capturing the attention of your audiences through one glance at your Instagram page.
What are the ways you can get more Instagram engagement in 2019?
- Post content regularly
Photo by Jeremy Levin from Pexels
Nobody wants to follow a dead business which is why it’s crucial to plan your schedule on what, when and how often to post content. Being active online can keep your followers hooked and interested to what you’re posting. However, there are a few things you need to keep in mind when you plan a post and what you should do to avoid spamming your followers’ feed. These are:
a. Follow your specialty.
If you’re a business selling software products, you need to make sure most of your posts cater around the software theme. The reason you have followers in the first place is that they thought your product was interesting and relevant to what they were looking for. Posting content not directly related to your business can hurt the way your audience perceives your page and make you lose subscribers.
You can recruit VAs who have skills in visual design to create visually attractive content to your audience while also following with the overall theme. Delegate tasks that require them to create a brand both eye-catching and memorable. Because Instagram appeals to the visual perception of its users and relies on pictures telling a story, it’s crucial to keep your followers interested with what you have to post.
b. Know when to post.
This is something you can quickly figure out with the help of Instagram’s “Insight” feature. It allows you to see when your followers’ are usually online on their devices. Have your VA consider this and assign them to post during these hours. It makes it easier for your content to reach other people and to see a product that might interest them into buying.
c. Know how often to post.
There is such a thing called too much content. While you might want to seem active for your audience, you need to do so in a way it won’t be classified as spam. Most users who become increasingly annoyed with being advertised or shown the same product tend to unfollow or block the page. You don’t want a similar scenario to happen so it’s critical you instruct your VA to keep content systematic and scheduled.
- Use hashtags for visibility
Photo by Lum3n.com from Pexels
When users post online, most of them use #hashtags in their captions. This gives visibility to their content and allows other people to view what they posted. The more hashtags you generate in your posts, the more it appears on the “Explore” feature on Instagram. The users who are following that same hashtag will see what you’ve posted on their feed and if they like what they see, then they’ll tap on the “Follow” button right under your page. You can also use this to your advantage in researching on which hashtags involving your products are popular. Ask your VA to do this for you and you’ll expect to see results soon after.
- Write the right captions
Captions complete your post. They add information to what you’ve just posted and can help generate comments from your followers. Having more comments mean an increase in engagement rate. Of course, there are several tricks to catch the attention of the audience and to push them to like and comment on your content. You can post two pictures of your sample products and ask which one your followers would prefer. Not only will you accumulate a number of replies in the comment section but you will also figure out what are the things your audience is looking for. Have your VA apply this the next time they post content—it really does help in improving your engagement rate!
- Engage your audience
Communicating with your audience is a good way to keep them interested and satisfied with what you’re posting. However, the level of engagement you want to have requires constant uploading of posts and regularly talking with their audience. You can even use Instagram stories as a way to directly communicate with your followers in the forms of polls, questions, and many more. If you don’t have the time to do this, the quickest solution is an expert VA experienced in the field.
Social media has relatively become a new form of marketing strategy in the millennial times. Gone are the days of cold calling a random stranger, or plastering advertisements on bulletin boards and door-to-door sales pitching. What doesn’t work anymore will fail to impress a technologically advanced era. What works for other people can definitely work for you too. In light of this, virtual assistants have swept the marketing industry in a flurry of optimized business opportunities and high engagement rates. Don’t settle for just an Instagram post that rarely gets updated—hire somebody to do it for you and watch as all of your numbers in followers, comments, and likes exceed your expectations!
