It goes without saying these days, but social media is a hugely valuable tool for businesses. There are so many opportunities for integrated advertising, promotion and customer relations in an environment which is informal and personal. Things like influencers, sponsored posts and feed advertising all make social media a great place to promote your business. One of the best, in this regard, is Instagram, a social media platform with an enormous number of users, some statistics putting it at over 500 million daily. Despite how fertile Instagram is as the soil for marketing and business promotion, a lot of businesses struggle with how they should operate on Instagram to the greatest effect. This is something which no amount of business school will ever really teach you. One of the best methods is by doing an Instagram Challenge. When executed properly, taking part in an Instagram challenge should really boost your business’ engagement with followers and would-be followers. With that said, let’s get to grips with what an Instagram challenge is and how to use it effectively.
What is an Instagram Challenge?
Instagram challenges mostly appear the same in basic format but have differences in the details. “Usually an Instagram challenge involves an account, or many accounts, posting every single day for a period of time with content which has a consistent theme”, explains Felix Gray, marketing blogger at LastMinuteWriting and ResearchPapersUK. The theme could be anything from innovative uses of your products to employees with special stories. The key idea is the consistency, so that the challenge lasts a certain amount of time, 50 days maybe, or a month, and you never fail to upload. If you don’t upload, then you’ve failed the challenge. Beyond that there aren’t really any other rules to obey, it’s extremely flexible. The content can be all sorts of different things but once you do choose your niche you want to stick with it.
Boosting Your Following
Gaining followers is always a bit of a tricky one for business Instagram accounts. Having followers is great because you can market to them so easily. But there’s usually an initial reluctance amongst average users to immediately start following company Instagram accounts. Challenges give users a reason to follow, to see the challenge play out, and allow you to engage with the hashtag meta in a consistent way. You’re giving yourself a much greater chance of scooping extra followers by using a challenge as a tool to promote your page. For more of an edge, you can use Saas solutions like Social Walls to make the most of the user generated content dragged on social media by your hashtag challenge! All the posts linked to your challenge will be aggregated and display in the same place (web or TV), which will boost the interest for the challenge and make people want to participate to see their post displayed as well!
Boosting Engagement
One thing that companies, even ones with lots of followers to start with, struggle with, is keeping their followers engaged. Instagram success is a highly statistical, complex issue that you could have data scientists study for years. In general though, consistency, meaning the regularity with which you upload content, is absolutely key for success. “Challenges breed that sense of reliability and consistency which works wonders when you are trying to maximize the average user’s engagement with your page”, says Harry Stokes, business writer at DraftBeyond and Writinity. People like, share and comment on more of your posts the more you are able to get them in the habit of seeing your posts appear. What’s more, is that your hashtag frequency will increase the amount that you are visible through hashtag searches, something which is certainly going to work to boost engagement in your page.
Developing Character
The final benefit to completing your own Instagram challenge is developing brand identity and page character. Corporate pages which seem corporate can be really off putting in the context of Instagram, a laid back and social environment. Doing challenges makes your page seem like it has some character and allows you to display some human emotion and psychology behind the external face of your brand. This will always work to create a much more engaged and interested followership and help you to boost you page overall.
Conclusion
As you can see, Instagram challenges, for as simple and quotidian as they might seem, are actually hugely valuable and can revive and boost your business’ page. It doesn’t’ take much work just a little know how and absolute consistency. With these, you should be well on the way to success.
Author’s Bio
Harry Conley is a content editor at LuckyAssignments and GumEssays. He develops training procedures and manages the workflow to give writers supplemental support instruction.
