Social media can be a powerful tool. It helps validate you as a brand. When done correctly, it can increase your visibility and heightens the user experience. For this reason, everyone competes to be on top.
One of the most popular social platforms today is Instagram. It has introduced many changes to different industries and the personal lives of people all over the world. It’s quite easy to see why. The photo-sharing app has since then evolved into an effective business tool for influencers, businesses, media personalities, and the like.
Instagram has made some interesting changes you need to watch out for. Use the system to your advantage. Gone are the days where artificial engagement is prominent on the platform, as organic traffic now has the opportunity to grow and flourish.
Optimize Your Instagram Bio
Your Instagram bio may seem unimportant at first glance. It has a limited word count and you can’t really get that creative with it. But as you might have noticed, influencers and personalities use their Instagram bio effectively as a personal calling card which can potentially attract more followers.
Take a look at your current Instagram bio. What should you put in it to make it look better? Start off with your name, personal tags, and labels. Are you a brand? What are you promoting? What kind of influencer are you? When you add the necessary information, you’re showing your followers what’s interesting about you. This can be helpful if you want to appeal to a niche market and instantly filter out short term followers. You want long-term followers who are interested in your content.
Now if you want to optimize your business account, you need to add your contact information. This can be your email or Facebook page. This can make your page look legitimate and professional. You can instantly separate yourself from the many personal accounts on the platform. It helps to add a call to action to your bio which encourages followers to interact with you.
Fix Your Images
Instagram is a photo-sharing platform. You need to treat it that way, so don’t upload low-quality posts. This applies to your photo quality and caption quality. The right image and caption can bring your photo to the explore page. Then from the explore page, users can engage with your account and see if it aligns with their interest.
It is important to assess what kind of person or brand you are. Do you need a theme for your feed? Are you promoting products? What kind of target market are you looking at? For example, if you’re a photographer, you’d need to post high-quality post-processed photos while also keeping in line with the theme of your feed. Then as an artist, you could be promoting a certain medium and targeting a niche audience. In general, think of who you’re planning to post for and work your way from there.
Cheat Algorithms
There’s another way you can optimize your Instagram images for SEO. Recently, Instagram has rolled out the option to add alt-text to your photos. This works best for public accounts, so make sure you set it up that way before publishing your posts. Alt-text ensures that your images are searchable on Google. Your alt-text should describe the image you just posted. When users are not connected to a network, alt-text can serve as a way for users to know what the image is.
But it’s more than that. The alt-text is not your image caption. Alt-text sends a message to Instagram by making it more visible to people who like your content. Instagram uses the alt-text to see what’s in your image and allows it to appear on their timelines. This means people who are looking for related content see it. Instead of getting lost in the timeline, you can use the algorithm to make sure your followers are updated through alt-text. You can grow your account organically just by adding an alternative text to your images.
To make it searchable to Google, you can use alt-text to add popular keywords that relate to your image. People who search on google use keywords to search and if you apply the same principle. You can make your image searchable through Google’s SEO.
Key Takeaway
Instagram is a powerful social media platform anyone can use. Some still prefer using it as a personal photo album but if you want to increase your presence as a brand, you can try these techniques out. Technology is always evolving and so is your favorite social media platform. You need to keep up with the changes to remain relevant online, no matter what kind of account you are. Evolve and empower your account in 2019 with these tips.
