With over one billion users, Instagram has become a major medium for social media marketing. Businesses make Instagram mistakes that got them scratching their brains as to why it isn’t working.

Instagram is always adding new features and advertising choices. As a consequence, a slew of businesses is flocking to the platform in search of more visibility and closer ties with their customers (and key demographics).

However, if you look at all of the businesses on Instagram, you’ll discover that just a small percentage are getting popular. Most have a few dozen followers, and even those with larger followings have poor involvement (a truer measure of social media marketing success). Although brands are aware that Instagram is a honey hole, they continue to make the following mistakes, hurting their own efforts;

So, here are some of the most common Instagram mistakes made by Nigerian businesses.

Inconsistent Posting

You must have a long-term publishing plan if you want people to follow you in the long run. Your followers won’t know what to expect from you if you post rarely, and they’ll likely leave you in favor of individuals who post more frequently. This doesn’t mean you have to publish several times a day to see results, but it does mean you need to deliver fresh content to your audience on a regular basis that is relevant to your brand. What’s the purpose of having an Instagram if you don’t use it?

Read More: 7 INSTAGRAM AD MISTAKES YOU’RE MAKING

Never commenting on other posts.

Remember that Instagram is a social media site that necessitates social engagement. Simply uploading your own material is only half of the story; your followers and potential followers are also providing stuff, and ignoring this will make you appear to be using Instagram as a megaphone rather than a genuine communications platform. Every day, take a few moments to remark on some of the photographs you see in your own newsfeed, whether they’re from individuals you know, followers, influencers, or just accounts you enjoy.

Not offering value

People will not draw toward your brand until you provide them with a convincing cause to do so. Every post you create should provide some form of benefit, whether it’s useful or entertaining. On the practical side of things, you may connect individuals to events they might not otherwise be able to attend, hold a contest, or display tips and skills. On the entertainment front, you may upload photographs of beautiful items you’ve found linked to your company or sector, or you can show off your workplace and your staff having a good time.

The more important the material you post, the more likely it is to receive inbound links, which may help your content rank higher in search engines, resulting in more traffic, visitors, and followers.

Hashtags into everything.

Yes, hashtags may help you gain greater visibility; users frequently use hashtags to find new material, and you can show that you know what you’re doing by appropriately following trends. You can’t, however, pack hashtags into every single one of your postings and expect the tactic to work. First, you’ll come out as exploitative, and your posts will have a spammy feel to them. Second, you run the risk of inadvertently using hashtags, which might damage your brand’s reputation in the eyes of an Instagram follower or someone who is really interested in the tag.

Buying followers

When a company starts with 50 followers, it might be frustrating to attempt to find out how to grow to 1,000 or the crucial 10,000 followers. You might put in a few days and gain a few new followers, but reaching a larger number can seem like a lifetime. This is why so many businesses fall into the trap of purchasing followers, but it’s also one of the most costly mistakes a company can make.
A corporation with false followers may be spotted a mile away by any regular Instagram user. Consider an account with 10,000 followers but only 10 likes on each photo. It screams “paid followers!” and, as a result, has the opposite effect on your brand.

It takes a lot of time and effort to build a following of interested, active, and relevant people. It entails producing outstanding material on a regular basis, connecting with your audience via comments, and engaging with and following potential consumers on their pages, and you should gradually see your numbers rise over the course of a few months. Instagram automation tools are frequently used by agency professionals to visualize and plan feeds ahead of time, develop a brand look, and generate a consistent, attractive feed.

Failure to Respond to Feedback

You’ll get comments and reactions from your followers as you upload fascinating stuff. Don’t overlook it! Your users are clearly interested in you, so reciprocate their interest by responding. Even a simple, few-word thank you might brighten someone’s day and motivate them to reply to your future postings. It also gives your company a nicer, more down-to-earth vibe. If you ignore these remarks, you’ll ultimately run out of them, and you’ll lose followers.

Engagement is key to success on Instagram and the brand that engages its customers as quickly as possible is the brand that wins.

Not Growing and Learning

There’s no such thing as a flawless Instagram strategy, and there are always new trends and features to learn about and implement into your campaign. If you want to be successful in the long run, you must learn from your user data, draw conclusions about your campaign’s performance, and make the necessary modifications to maintain your upward momentum. Otherwise, your ROI would slowly diminish as you become static.

Simply having a profile on Instagram, like every other social network before it, isn’t enough to provide a favorable return on investment. To maintain getting better and better results, you must work hard to understand your audience, create high-quality content, and tweak your strategy.

It’s a significant commitment in terms of time, effort (and, in some cases, money), but if you keep your users at the center of everything you do, it will eventually pay off.

Conclusion

Avoid making these mistakes and your brand can better benefit from the hyper-engaged community of Instagram users around the world, instead of scratching your head to figure out what you are doing wrong. If that still does not work, it might be time to defer to a creative agency to do the heavy lifting for you.