Hi there,
Here at SiliSlick® we have been building our social media accounts to increase traffic to our website, and generally expand the awareness for our brand, SiliSlick® Knives and Knife Accessories. We live in an exciting time, when the Internet is established and ever-growing. Because of this, many new avenues have opened for marketing and sales to reach even more people than ever before - and social media plays an enormous role.
SiliSlick® is a relatively young company, with about three years in the kitchen knife business. In that time, we have grown from a two-product enterprise to offer eight different products, from knife sets the original silicone baking mats. In the past few months we have placed extra emphasis on social media now that our product line is established, and have promoted our products on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest beyond our usual advertising.
Recently, our Instagram has absolutely taken off, thanks to a new strategy we have began implementing. In the past month, our Instagram account has gone from 50 followers to nearly 1,000, and all followers are real, legitimate people who have followed us because they are interested in our products. Below is a simplified, easy-to-follow guide to increasing your following on Instagram, and driving traffic to your online store!
1) Make sure the link to your website is in your bio. If you have not done so already, make the account a business account. Finally, gather or procure high-resolution, quality pictures of your products for posting.
2) Begin by posting what you feel is the best picture of your products, with a call to action directing viewers to your bio and the website within it.
3) Write down a list of hashtags that you feel are relevant to your product. If you need to, go to established competing Instagram accounts and see which ones they use. Write down these accounts as well.
4) Here is the hard part: interact with Instagram users - using the collected hashtags (users who like or post related content) and established Instagram accounts (users who follow them). Go to these profiles; like some pictures, (especially if the picture contains content relevant to your product), and most importantly follow them. Do this as often and frequently as possible!
You will get a small trickle of likes and followers from just regularly posting nice pictures with relevant hashtags, but to truly promote your brand/account you must reach out. Because you will be targeting these users based on an established interest in your type of product, you are guaranteed to get significant follow-backs and likes. Many of the users you reach out to will take a while to respond, and some will completely ignore your efforts - but there will be a large portion (about 45% of users for us) will follow you back after you promote yourself. You will certainly be following more people than follow you, but this issue will resolve itself as your account gains traction and begins promoting itself through its own popularity.
This strategy has worked with amazing success for us, as we increased our following by more than tenfold - with all followers deciding for themselves to follow us because they liked what they saw. This process also begins your relationship on a good level, because potential customers see that you took the time to like and follow them with no guarantee that you would receive compensation.
In the past few months, we have seem Instagram go from directing around 10% of social media traffic to our site to directing 90% of it. All this as our other social media accounts remain directing traffic at the same levels as before. This is only possible because Instagram has millions of users, and is also statistically the best social media platform for prompting interaction with its users.
With some consistent and diligent work, you can build a legitimate and relevant following on Instagram, and take advantage of its amazing efficiency. In a short time you will see traffic to your site increase, and sales along with it. It's also nice seeing the lovely things people comment in addition to the supporting likes that flow in.
If you have any questions about this process, let us know!
Stay slick...