Congratulations!!! Your brand now has a presence on Instagram, at least with all the buzz going round about how Instagram is a fertile ground for leads generation, being part of such network is a wonderful move for your brand whether big or small. But alas! Engagement around your IG page is low, visitors are not checking your profile out, even when they eventually show up they are not hitting that prestigious ‘follow’ icon. Like that’s not bad enough, the few followers you’ve struggled to gather are unfollowing you at an exponential rate. What are you doing wrong? Here’s what you aren’t doing right.

Your IG Content Game is Lame

Instagram is a visual oriented social media platform unlike other social channels, it’s users rely heavily on visual contents. In order to improve engagement on your page, you have to start creating visual contents which are not only stunning but compelling contents that resonates with your target audiences. These contents have to be contents your potential customers can relates and connects with right away. So, what contents should my brand start producing? There are tonnes of means by which you can pass your marketing messages across to your leads on Instagram, examples of such include visual images, videos and user-generated contents (UGC).

Visual Images
Ever heard of the phrase ‘a photo speaks a thousand words’, that’s what happens on Instagram. You have to start creating stunning and captivating visual images that will relate your messages at a glance, in order to drive traffic to your IG page. Examples of visual images you can introduce into your IG feeds include illustrations, animated gifs, infographics and photos.

Videos
Gone are the days when sharing pictures often on your IG page gets you enough engagement, nowadays in order to keep the traffic coming, you need to incorporate authentic, original videos into IG feeds. Your videos should have a personal feel to them so that your audience’s attention can be grabbed instantly. As a small business you don’t need to invest too much in professional video production equipment to create beautiful videos, a good smartphone and video editing apps can get the job done. Examples of videos that you can post regularly on your page include but not limited to product unboxing, how-to tutorials on natural hair styling, short cooking video showcasing your latest recipe.

User-Generated Content
User-generated contents usually referred to as UGC, are contents such as images, reviews or videos of your products developed by fans of your brand. It could be a photo of a customer posing with your doughnuts or a video unboxing of a pair of shoes a customer purchased on your e-commerce website. It’s the online version of word-of-mouth advertisement. This is the goldmine of social media content, it positions your brand as a trustworthy enterprise because people tend to trust products endorsed by friends and family more than by brands. To influence UGC creation you can offer rewards, giveaways or initiate online competitions.

It’s no longer a breaking news that been on social media channels is another great means of driving in more sales for businesses both big and small but with a tight budget, your small business can’t afford to be on all social networks. How then can you choose the right social network that will help you increase your brand awareness and ultimately optimize sales?

Define your target audience
Firstly, you need to define your target audiences. Before setting out on your social media journey, identifying the type of customers you are looking to attract on social media is a crucial step, not only will it help you tailor your marketing contents appropriately but it will make establishing your presence on your chosen media an easy ride.

Find your target audience
It may seem like everybody is on every social channel but that’s not the case, certain demographics relates more with particular social networks than others, for instance, a relatively a large portion of the over billion users on Instagram belong to young millennials unlike LinkedIn which has more of working professionals forming a bulk of their users. In order to make the most out of your social media engagements, you need to find out the social media platforms where your target audiences are most active.

Congratulations!!! Your website is finally live,you now have your own share of the big web, but alas! something is not right, visitors are not showing up on your homepage despite the stylish and luxurious aesthetics on your page. What’s going on? Here’s the simple answer, your website is not showing up in front of your potential customer search results page when they look up possible answers to their search queries on search engines such as Google.

Contrary to what can be obtained in the offline world, where exquisite store signage and interior designs attract customers to your physical store, the online space doesn’t operate on that dimension. In order to make your website pop up the next time your potential customer enters a search query related to your business, here’s the secret.

Keywords
In the world of the big web you need to speak the language of your customers if you want to be seen and to achieve that you enlist the help of keywords by incorporating them into contents on your website. So when next a potential customer looks up a term related to your bran, your website has a high chance of showing up. These keywords are not necessarily single words they could be phrases, and they are terms online users use to describe their search queries on let’s say Google.

Relevant Content
Different search engines use various algorithms to determine the websites that shows up on search result pages but the basic principle is relevance. To show up on users search results you need to tell Google that your web content is relevant to their queries. Let’s say you own a doughnut shop and you are looking to get more customers online,your potential customers could look up search terms such as ‘fresh doughnuts available for pick-up in Lagos’. To show up for this search, contents on your page must reflect that your doughnuts are freshly prepared at your location and they are available for pick-up at your shop or delivered to certain locations.

All these seems like a lot work right? Don’t panic, let Chromite Solutions do the heavylifting for you, click here for FREE website reviews, let us help you discover what needs tweaking on your website, so you can start showing up in front of your right customers.

Showing up in search result page is a great way for your customers to find you but in order to achieve that you need to find out what your customers are looking for, so you can be able to serve the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Nowadays, there’s an undeniable loud buzz going around about how important having a website is to a business. Whether big industry giants or SMEs, the need to carve a niche on the world wide web is at an all time high and cannot be overemphasized.

Aside from the giving the brand a sense of been in vogue and up-to-date with the current trends, having a website that represent your business in the vast online world helps the brand not only to increase awareness about the services and products you offer but in the long run helps you stay connected and engaged with your customers thus increasing sales and ROI when optimized correctly. Sweet deal, right? Well before you invest any part of your budget into building a website, there’ one thing to considered, of course ,there are a ton of other factors that should be put into consideration before your website goes live but this point trumps them all.

Align your business goals and objectives with the website features.
Yes! Before you get busy with the coding, colours, themes, UX design and all the baggages that comes with web development process, set aside ample time to revise your goals and objectives as a brand and carefully select the ones that you want your website to help you attain. There are numerous website elements out there but not everything will be applicable to your company’s needs and stage of growth. So don’t dump everything in it,not only will it be awkward to view but customers and potential customers might perceive your brand as spammy. Seems like a lot of work right, don’t worry Chromite Solutions got you covered. Okay, what’s the catch?
Here’s how, Chromite Solutions offers free consultancy to help you discover the type of website that is fit for your business,click here to talk to an expert.

Now let’s get practical
Let’s say you own a photo gallery in the offline world and have recently decided to move your business online. You need to decide ahead which of your business objectives you want your website to help you attain. Let’s also say you’ve chosen to increase your brand awareness and number of email signup, that means your website must essentially have a blog and newsletter subscription features. It’s going to be a total waste of time and money to include an e-commerce feature.

In a nutshell, don’t just have a website for having sake, build one that radiates your brand’s personality, one that pitch your business in the online world and to achieve that, take your time during the planning phase to decide what you want your web to do for you and select the appropriate features that can make it happen.