Social Media Examiner - Is your Instagram strategy outdated?

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Have you been chasing success? Our customers tell us that attending Social Media Marketing World flipped the script and had people coming to them for help!

In this edition:

We’re also covering what you need to build a DAO, plus bringing Twitter news and updates.

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See what tools and apps we recommend to support your strategy.

Instagram Strategy Audit: How to Renew Your Results

Social media marketers don’t like to live in the past, but it is worth looking back every now and then. There’s always more you can do to target your audience, understand their needs, and create an offer that entices them off the social network and into a sale.

IG first launched in 2010 and some of us have been marketing on the platform for over a decade. Over time, it’s easy for bad habits to creep in. You can instantly improve your IG presence, simply by dropping these outdated tactics.

The “follow/unfollow” tactic was popularized by bloggers around 2015. It was an effective hack in the early days of the algorithm when simply following someone would get their attention. It was easy. You followed someone, maybe they followed you back, and then you instantly unfollowed them to keep your feed tidy.

But there are several problems with follow/unfollow:
1. You’ll get followed back by accounts that crave engagement, not accounts from your target audience.
2. You risk getting flagged by the algorithm for spam.
3. It’s disrespectful to other accounts that are trying to build a genuine audience. 

Not to mention that follow/unfollow is slow, time-consuming, and boring! There are much more effective, creative ways to use your time on Instagram.

Engagement pods or engagement groups are other tactics that grew out of blogging. Bloggers are a tight-knit community, and back in the day, some of them banded together to boost their IG engagement. In an engagement pod, you agree to like, comment, or share each other’s Instagram posts. If you scratch their back, they’ll scratch yours.

The problem is that the platform actively tracks engagement pods or patterns of activity that look like engagement pods. So even if your engagement pod is organized elsewhere—for example, through a private Facebook group—IG could limit your reach or even ban your account.

In the right circumstances, a giveaway can be an effective way to build your community or showcase products and services. But it has to be targeted, purposeful, and executed within IG’s guidelines.

Don’t get involved in giveaways with multiple brands. These pop up all the time. Businesses group together to offer a prize with broad appeal (such as gift cards) and ask entrants to follow every business in the group on IG. 

There are two problems here. First, IG frowns on this kind of giveaway; it’s spammy and encourages artificial engagement. Secondly, you won’t attract your target audience this way. You’ll just get a bunch of follows from people who want discounts and deals, and they’ll either unfollow immediately or damage your engagement ratio by ignoring your posts.

The final tactic on our blacklist is untargeted engagement. This is harder to define but it can include things like:
1. Liking posts at random
2. Commenting on posts just to get attention
3. Commenting on posts to announce deals or information about your business

There’s a place for commenting on posts from your target audience or even reaching out to them via direct messages (DMs). But that kind of hands-on engagement has to be selective, targeted, and valuable to the person you’re interacting with.

If you just comment on and like random posts as they come into your feed, that’s spam. It damages both your reputation and standing with the algorithm.

Examining your past content will help you understand what works and where you’re missing out. Specifically auditing your account can get rid of outdated strategies that are holding you back, boost conversions from your profile page, smarten up your evergreen content (like highlights), and explore new (and old) content formats to find new audiences.

For a five-step checklist to audit your Instagram strategy, click below:

• Read the Article.
• Watch on YouTube.
• Listen on Apple, Google, and Spotify.

Here is some more great content you won't want to miss:

Creating a DAO: The Fundamental Building Blocks
Want to create a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to give all members a voice and vote? Wondering how to structure and grow a DAO? Discover how to develop a thriving DAO. 

• Read the Article.
• Watch on YouTube.
• Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify.

Discover the Latest Twitter Changes, Updates, and More
Tune into the Social Media Marketing Talk Show podcast for current news that matters to marketers.

• Watch the Livestream on YouTube.
• Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify.