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Five Tips For Developing A Successful Instagram Marketing Strategy Nowadays, it's hard to come by a brand that doesn't want to be ahead of the game on Instagram.

By Lama Abdelbarr

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur Middle East, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

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Nowadays, it's hard to come by a brand that doesn't want to be ahead of the game on Instagram. Why wouldn't they? The platform is growing in size, popularity, and offerings. Not only that, but also 80% of Instagram accounts have been reported to be following at least one business. Surely, you'd want yours to be one of them.

According to Talkwalker Quick Search, Instagram marketing has been mentioned online over 131.8k times in the last 30 days alone. So, how can brands and marketers leverage this powerful platform and build their online community?

1. Identify the type of posts that attract the highest engagement

Using a social analytics tool, marketers can easily identify the type of posts that result in the highest engagement levels. This doesn't just mean whether they are photos, videos, or carousels. Marketers should dig deeper to analyze the posts and determine if there is a theme that ties together the most engaging posts.

For instance, emotion-driven marketing can work very well for certain audiences, while other audiences may engage better with profiles that highlight aesthetics, or have a minimalistic approach (think short captions, or none at all!) It's important to remember that there's no one-size-fits-all solution; instead, marketers should prioritize understanding their own audience, and that of their industry in general.

2. Build a strong network of true influencers

While influencer marketing is increasingly being questioned for its value and actual return on investment, there remains no doubt that engaging with the right influencers can add significant value. Effective influencer marketing campaigns can deliver 11x higher ROI than traditional digital marketing.

Finding the right influencer isn't just about their number of followers. Marketers should be deeply tuned into digital conversations around their brand and their industry as a whole to be able to identify genuine influencers who share the same interests and values as their brand, and who also have a powerful and relevant network to be leveraged.

3. Select the scope

Brands that are homegrown and cater specifically to a local audience should have a different Instagram strategy to those that are global with offices and audiences around the world. Increasingly, we also see brands that are adopting a glocal approach; catering to their widespread audience while maintaining a strong local flavor of their roots. A brand's Instagram schedule of posts should be in line with their scope- taking into account regional peak timings, time zones, weekends, and even the choices of celebrities for endorsements.

4. Define the hashtags

Creative and recognizable hashtags can do wonders for an Instagram strategy. Brands should seek to constantly optimize their hashtags, making sure they have general ones that are used year-round, and campaign-specific ones that engage a targeted audience for a certain duration of time. The key thing here is for brands to ensure they are tracking, analyzing, and optimizing hashtags using a hashtag tracking tool.

5. Listen, analyze, optimize

The social media industry is always evolving and new updates and features are constantly being tested and introduced. A successful Instagram marketing strategy should be constantly evolving too. Instagram analytics tools offer a variety of insights that can be used to boost brand impact, analyze competition, and optimize performance on an ongoing basis.

Need more detail on how to put together a foolproof Instagram marketing strategy? Download Talkwalker's Ultimate Instagram Marketing checklist here.

Related: Six Social Media Marketing Facts You Need to Know

Lama Abdelbarr

Digital Communications Lead - Middle East & Africa, Talkwalker

Lama Abdelbarr leads on digital communications for Middle East & Africa at Talkwalker.

Talkwalker is a media monitoring and analytics company that empowers over 2,000 brands and agencies to optimize the impact of their communication efforts. Currently, they are the only media monitoring platform that analyzes videos- using Talkwalker, brands can get a 360° dynamic brand view with image, video, and text analysis in one easy-to-use, powerful platform. The platform provides users with access to data across traditional, social, and digital channels globally and covers regional languages, including English, Arabic, French, Hindi, Urdu, and Tagalog. Talkwalker’s proprietary image and video recognition technology gathers 250% more brand mentions than traditional print and online monitoring.

Talkwalker has offices in New York, Luxembourg, San Francisco, Frankfurt, and Singapore. It is also the home of Talkwalker Alerts, a free alerting service used by over 500,000 communications and marketing professionals worldwide.

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