Hello all,
No interview this month, I’ve just been too busy!
Today, I am sharing four small and simple changes you can make to your platforms, to increase your brand visibility and potentially increase your chances of getting noticed by companies/brands! Please note, these are just some tips to help you improve your Instagram, and they are some things I’ve learnt along the way in my Media career. If you’re interested in these PR kind of posts, please do check out my previous one here.
1. Establish your own branding
What I mean by this is who are you and how do you show that through your posts? Are you a beauty lover, skincare addict, lifestyle obsessed, etc. If you’re a beauty lover, then post beauty content (self explanatory), if you’re into showing off your lifestyle or a curated lifestyle, then do that by posting authentic images – your breakfast, your outfit of the day, your favourite clothing brands, etc. Find out what you want to post and establish that niche. Think about your personal brand here.
Using myself as an example, over on @icxbeauty I post about makeup and skincare, because 1. I love those things. 2. I am a beauty blogger as well, so it makes sense to post about beauty-related things. What would be considered “off brand” for me, would be to post fashion posts, because that is not what my “brand” is all about.
2. Location. Location. Location
On your Instagram account, it’s good to have your location somewhere. What I mean by this is having your city located somewhere on your profile, whether it’s in your bio or tagged in your photos. Trust me, this helps a lot, especially when brands are creating city-specific campaigns and are on the hunt for influencers that are suitable. There have been times when I haven’t been able to include some people in campaigns because whilst they had a great page, they weren’t located in Sydney or Melbourne when working on specific campaigns, or they simply did not have their location somewhere on their profile, besides “Australia”.
On my page, I have “Sydney, Australia” in my bio. I’ve seen people tag their city location in their photos, or they have “SYD” or “MELB” in their bio. It just makes it easier for brands to see whether some people are suitable for the campaign or not.
3. Contact details!
In my experience, an email is the best form of contact between an influencer and the brand. Having your email listed somewhere on your profile makes it easier for brands to contact you, if they deem you fit for a campaign. Having it in your bio is a fast way to get recognised/contacted by brands, or having the ‘contact’ or ’email’ function (for business pages) is also good too! I know some people state ‘DM for collabs/enquiries’ which is alright, because there are some instances where people will get DM’d for opportunities. Though for the vast majority (once again, in my experience) emails are the best way to contact an influencer, as the brand can send PR opportunities to a bunch of people at once.
4. Engagement!
Simple as that, engage (liking, commenting, sharing, saving) with posts is an easy way to improve your brand visibility. Try to make a habit of it everyday or on most days, to spend some time engaging with others. This helps you and helps others as it increases your engagement rate. Some brands tend to look for influencers with a good engagement rate, there is no point in investing in someone with 22k followers but with a 1% engagement rate – e.g. averaging 100 likes per post and averaging only 30 comments per post. To calculate your engagement rate, just google engagement calculator. I would suggest using a few different ones, because they’re all not 100% accurate, so using a few different sites will give you an idea of where you’re at.
When I am looking for influencers for campaigns, I check their engagement rate and narrow it down to those with the best engagement to include in the campaign.
That’s it for my four tips to improve your brand visibility on Instagram. They’re very simple changes you can make, but I’m sure they will help a lot in the long run. If you enjoyed this post, let me know below, and if you want to learn more about PR related things, then let me know as well and I would be happy to write more about it!
Enjoy the rest of your week!
With love,
VQP. usu BEAUTY
Great point about location! However, I’ve had many interactions with brands where they approach me and I’m like, “I’m from Aus… are you sure?” and then they so oops no sorry US only lol. So it would be helpful if they read my bio hahah.
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That’s funny! A similar situation has happened with my colleague, where she reached out to someone (thinking they’re from Australia) but they were from the UK! There was no indication of where they were based, which is why I think it’s pretty important to include your location! 🙂
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