It’s no surprise that there is tremendous value in a social following for businesses today, particularly with respect to those in ecommerce that can clearly measure conversion and define a return on investment within the various platforms.
After having had some great success using video advertising on Facebook with BottleKeeper, we knew that we needed to spend more time building out the other social channels, and in particular, Instagram, due to the video capabilities and the fact that the network just recently announced that it is opening the platform to outside advertising.?
So we created a simple plan, executed it and more than doubled our Instagram followers in less than eight hours. Now, I know what you?re thinking, ?did you go from 20,000 to 40,000 followers?? — to which the answer is no. But we didn?t just go from 20 to 40 either. We started the day with 410 followers, which had taken nearly three months to build after starting with a nominal 32, and in less than eight hours had 851.
The following steps include exactly what we did to more than double our followers in such a short period of time.
1. Create a contest.
BottleKeeper is a consumer product that is largely sold direct to consumer via an ecommerce platform, not unlike other products and services that you might be selling. What do the masses like more than anything? Free stuff. So we created a visual that included the details for the contest, while making the specifics as simple and straightforward as possible — understanding that if people can screw it up, they will.
The campaign was designed so that the winner would be awarded two free BottleKeepers, and to enter all they had to do was follow BottleKeeper on Instagram and tag a friend in the comment section of the contest post — which they were already looking at. That?s it.
Related: The 100 Most Popular Emoji Hashtags on Instagram (Infographic)
Read more at?ENTREPRENEUR
