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Formula Revealed: How your business can dominate Instagram in 2020

Growing your business on instagram is touch, but it's not impossible. Follow our guide to learn how you can this platform to grow your business.
Jul 1, 2019 • 8 minute read
Updated on Jan 23, 2020 by Closed User
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If your business isn't using Instagram you're seriously missing out

Here are a couple of Instagram statistics that should really get your attention:
There are more than 500 million Instagram accounts active every day
8 out of 10 accounts follow a business on Instagram
If your business is active on Instagram, you could experience incredible growth.
But it’s not a matter of just being active. People won’t start following you just because you're a business on Instagram.
You need to create posts that will make people WANT to follow you.
To help you understand how to really leverage the potential of your Instagram business account, we’ll examine how Lootcrate is crushing the Instagram game, and break down their formula to help you start taking advantage of this growing platform.

Lootcrate

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 1
Lootcrate is the world leader in pop culture fan subscription boxes. It's achieved impressive success on social media so it’s well worth examining their efforts.
Specializing in the gaming and superhero niches, Lootcrate sends monthly “crates” packed with pop culture merchandise to subscribers.
Its content strategy is specifically geared towards creating engagement around pop culture topics.
So what is Lootcrate doing right?:

Use of Memes to share the latest news.

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 2
In this post, Lootcrate is indicating its anticipation of Nintendo's upcoming new game, Animal Crossing.
Instead of just writing a dull, long post to educate their followers about this news, Lootcrate summarized it in a couple of lines and delivered it with humor.
Humor is a common theme used in most of Lootcrate’s posts and it's a great way of breaking down barriers and getting sales.
Lootcrate used a meme generator to create this meme. We'll walk you through how to generate your own memes at the end of this post.

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Just remember to stay consistent with your brand if you choose to create memes. Your goal is to entertain prospective customers, not just anyone (more on that later).

Subconscious brand awareness

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 3
In this example, Lootcrate took a pop culture scene and added subtitles to it to make it relatable to life.
By doing so Lootcrate is subconsciously integrating its brand into the everyday lives of its consumers.
Think about what you could do to make your customers naturally think of your brand when they consider a problem you're capable of solving.

Strategic partnerships

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 4
In this post, TikTok (a video-based social media platform) partnered with Lootcrate in order to increase its app downloads.
Followers of Lootcrate are encouraged to download the TikTok app, and refer a friend to do the same, in exchange for a free Lootcrate bundle.
As a result of this partnership, TikTok is growing both its mobile app downloads as well as its Instagram following.
For a partnership like this to work, the followers of both parties have to share the same interests.
TikTok chose to partner with Lootcrate because followers of Lootcrate are highly likely to enjoy TikTok’s product.
If you want to grow the number of followers of your Instagram business page, you could adopt the same strategy.
Simply find a page with followers that would be interested in your product and negotiate a partnership with mutual benefits.
What TikTok did really well in this example was to have Lootcrate ask people to do two things in exchange for a free gift:
Download the TikTok app
Refer a friend
That way TikTok achieves a chain reaction of almost continuous growth.

Viral posts

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 5
The motivation behind all the posts on your Instagram business page should be to achieve high levels of engagement.
Since Instagram is a social media platform, it rewards posts that encourage user engagement.
Lootcrate achieves a high level of engagement from its posts because it shares posts that are guaranteed to generate engagement.
How does Lootcrate know its posts will be popular and therefore engaging?
It sources these posts from websites that showcase trending content, such as Tumblr.
We'll give an overview of how to find trending content on Tumblr at the end of this post.
But Lootcrate doesn't just robotically repost these trending posts. It personalizes them with a caption:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 6
Writing, a well thought out, relationship building caption will get your page noticed by the Instagram algorithm and therefore help you grow.
A great tip for writing an engaging caption is to pretend like you're texting a good friend. 
This will guarantee ease of readability and make it incredibly relatable.
Lootcrate also posts Twitter updates that are likely to get its followers engaging:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 7
 

Making followers feel special

[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 8
Every now and then Lootcrate showcases a follower wearing their merchandise.
Not only does this make them feel special, but it also encourages other followers to purchase merchandise and post photos of themselves wearing it in the hopes of also being featured.
This results in an ever-increasing number of sales and free marketing as each person posts of a picture of themselves and tags Lootcrate.

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Consider giving free branded gifts away to followers that tag you in photos of themselves alongside your products
This could be a T-shirt with your brand name, or a mug or stationary with your logo.
For best results, aim to be as creative as possible. 
Here's an example:
If you sell environmentally friendly mops, you could showcase people that tag you in a picture of themselves with your (clean mop) on their head.
A fun and quirky competition like this may even end up going viral!

What can we learn from Lootcrate?

Post entertaining content that’s related to your brand. You want post engagement to lead to sales, so you want to entertain people that are likely to buy from you.
Save time by reposting viral content in your niche rather than designing it yourself from scratch.
Personalize all reposted content with your own caption. The most effective captions ask followers for their own insights and suggestions.
Encourage engagement with your posts by asking followers to answer a question.
Regularly showcase followers that tag you in pictures with your products in exchange for free gifts (make these competitions as fun and funny as possible).

Essential Instagram marketing tools you should know how to use.

To help you keep your business Instagram page as impactful and entertaining as possible, we’ve provided a list of some essential marketing tools you should have in your toolkit.

Tools to find trending posts

Posting trending posts on your instagram page is a sure way of getting as much engagement as possible.
Below are some popular sources of trending posts. 
Tumblr
Tumblr is one of the worlds most popular blogging platforms. As a result, it's become a treasure trove of some of the most popular content on the internet.
How to use Tumblr
To use Tumblr, simply search a keyword related to your niche and the website will populate the top trending posts related to that keyword.
In our example we searched the phrase “programming”
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 9
The top row shows the top pages that post content related to programing and the subsequent rows show all the top posts related to programming.
If you click on any of the profiles in the top row, you will see all of the content they have posted in that niche.
Sometimes the real gems can be found in the posts of the top row profiles.
To save an image, if you’re using a desktop, right click and save the image.
If you’re using a mobile you can download the mobile tumblr app which will make navigation and saving photos much quicker.
It really handy to have the tumblr app since instagram is a mobile app and, therefore only designed to receive mobile uploads onto the platform.
Buzz Sumo
Buzz Sumo gives you data about how much engagement a particular piece of content has received.
Buzz Sumo is primarily an article and blog database, although it also populates infographic results.
If you choose to use Buzz Sumo content in your Instagram posts, you'll need to create a graphic post that summarizes the blog content and then directs users to click on the link in your profile to read it.
For best results, instead of just reposting Buzz Sumo content, re-write it with your own insights in order to append your branding to it.
You can use Buzz Sumo to give you ideas on trending topics, and then use the top-performing posts to find ways of curating the best pieces of content related to your search keywords.
Or, if you’re feeling particularly creative, you could summarize a top performing Buzz Sumo post in a few graphical slides in Instagram so that users keep swiping to the left to keep reading the content.
This will require clever summarization in order for you to effectively communicate the "meat" of the content into just a few slides.

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How to use Buzz Sumo
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 10
After you type in your search phrase you'll see a list of all the popular content written about your selected keywords.
On the right hand side you'll see all of the see all of the engagement data the associated with each post: Facebook engagement, Twitter shares, etc.
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 11
Clicking on any of the results will take you directly to its webpage.
You can even filter by infographics!
 
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 12
 

Tools to generate memes

Memes are a fun way of initializing engagement, followers LOVE to tag their friends in memes resulting in increased exposure.
Instead of only relying on trending memes, you could create your own memes that are relevant to your brand.
Below are the top 3 meme generators we recommend.
imglfip
The great thing about imgflip is that it gives you the option of either selecting popular meme images to use or for you to upload your own image.
You could  upload an image of a colleague and create a meme about them!
How to use imglfip
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 13
Select to use either a popular image or upload your own.
Here a meme we created using our own image:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 14
For each of the popular images you choose, a set of text boxes will populate on the right for each respective panel.
You can move each line of text to whatever position you like.
If you need to adjust the style of any text, click on its corresponding cog.
Here is one we created that we’re particularly proud of:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 15
Sorry.
Frinkiac
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 16
Frinkiac is a Simpsons meme generator!
Yes, a fusion of the two greatest things in this universe!
Everyone (of note) loves The Simpsons, so creating a Simpsons meme will guarantee laughs.
How to use Frinkiac
In the search bar type in a keyword related to a scene from an episode you wish to create a meme for.
Hint: If you have a scene in mind but are not sure which episode it's from, type a description of it in Google to find its corresponding season and episode number.
Once you select your scene, simply start typing:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 17
Here is a contextually relevant meme we created just for you:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 18
Morbotron
Morbotron is the futurama version of Frinkiac.
The method is exactly the same - find a particular frame from an episode and add text to it:
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 19

Conclusion 

The secret to your business performing well on instagram is to focus on generating follower engagement.
If you focus on posting content that will get people commenting, tagging and sharing, your business page is guaranteed to grow.
 
[Formula Revlealed] How Your Business can Dominate Instagram in 2019.  - Image 20

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