Explore 6 bite-sized steps to improve your Instagram visibility—without spending a rupee.

While the founding principles of marketing remain the same, the way we reach our audience has definitely evolved in the last one year. Instagram is no exception. Here are a few ways in which brands can gain organic following on Instagram.

The pandemic has definitely had its altering effect on the marketplace. While the demand end of the market has lowered, brands have been forced to reduce their marketing budgets. Some have even gone ahead and stopped paid promotions altogether. In this demand deficit situation, digital platforms have modified their product to attract marketeers. These platforms have taken crucial step to become marketing focused. Instagram is one of such platforms.

Instagram has managed to sustain it's growth inspite of the global market hitting an all time low. But brands have stayed away from the platform and are doubtful about Instagram's effectiveness as a marketing tool.

But what we forget as marketeers is that these marketing platforms have always been marketeer first platforms. And they are introducing new features for us continuously. It has been my observation that most of us marketeers do not update ourselves with the latest changes on the social media platforms. Of course the platforms do not help the cause. They publish the changes in terms in the legal language. Believe me, no one apart from lawyers can understand these terms. Optimisation of the Instagram is possible through these 6 tips.

Connection is the new king

Instagram has always been a community engaged platform. 90% of the users follow businesses of their interest on Instagram. It has been well-observed, yet completely ignored that people want to do business with people.All things being equal people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like and trust. A faceless company logo and stock photography, not so much. The engagement your connections create is the Holy Grail.

Video for branded content

Instagram will follow the Indian user wherever he/she comes from. The video formats enable brands to break the barrier of language. Anyone can go live, make IGTV videos or Reels in local languages. Instagram reels is the new tool and IG is going all out to promote it. It promotes reels by brands basis the users interest and preference. I would urge any brand manager to explore this avenue since IG is more likely to showcase your reels to the rigt audience. And that too, at no extra cost! Instead of posting videos on feed, try using IGTV. IGTV supports long-form, vertical, and full-screen videos between 15 seconds to 10 minutes in length — a great complement to the classic Instagram videos that are limited to one minute.

Tell stories

Instagram puts Stories right up at the top when you open Instagram. When an account you’re following creates a story, it shows up at the front of your Stories, as do those you watch most frequently. People consume stories because that’s where the real, raw, authentic visual story is. The feed is so highly curated that people like to tap through. Insider's view or behind-the-scenes are popular topics and the easiest way to connect users to the people behind the brand.

Augmented Reality Instagram Games

Augmented Reality Camera filters open up a huge world of possibilities. Majority of our audience has found comfort in the combination of playing games on social media, thanks to the ever increasing popularity of AR games on Instagram. It sounds strange at first, but a silly interactive game on a social network appears to be the perfect antidote to the collective lockdown woes. Even though it was only in the past year that Facebook opened up its Spark AR creation tool to the public, allowing anyone to upload their own creations to Instagram, the number of filters and games on Instagram is simply increasing. With Facebook's Spark AR creation tool brands can create AR supported content easily and swiftly.

Instagram SEO

Can we use what ywe already know about SEO to drive organic growth to Instagram. The platform provides built-in search functions that act like its own mini-Google. The trick is to use Instagram as a search engine. The next question is: Can we use the same Google SEO principles on Instagram? While the basics remain the same, SEO on Instagram will be adapted for the platform. You can start with basics such as including your primary keyword in your display name and @Username. You can also use your secondary keywords in your bio and treat hashtags as keywords.

Instagram Geotags

When you add a geotag to your photo, you pin your location to that specific photo. The function of this tag is that it allows your photo to be found anytime a user clicks on the same geotag on another photo. You may ask why geotagging matters on Instagram? This public sharing of content puts a physical location to content, which brands can ultimately take advantage of to engage with users. Brands with brick and mortar locations can see all the various content tagged to their location.