8 Instagram Hacks That Will Drive Sales From Millennials

So it’s been six months since you launched your Instagram Account.

In theory, its purpose was to connect your brand with the thousands of millennials that ‘gram it up’ every day while somehow turning those followers into cash. In reality, you’re failing to convert all those millennials and their double tap love hearts into actual paying customers. The worst part is, you have no idea why you’re failing.

Well I’m here to help. In this 5 minute read, you’ll find a list of 8 Instagram Hacks & Secrets That Will Drive Sales From Millennials; transforming your Instagram Account into a lead gen machine on steroids.

So let’s get started.

1. Create Call To Actions That Actually Result In Action

One of the beautiful things about Instagram is it restricts your ability to link off site and spam your follower’s feeds with BS.

From a user’s point of view, this is a feature of sheer brilliance. From a marketers point of view, it’s a massive road block on the Lead Gen Highway.

Luckily for you, the work around is simple. Simply place the link you want traffic driven to in your website address field in your bio. Then, all you need to do is reference this link on your next post through a call to action. Something as basic as “To find out more, click the link in our bio” will suffice.

This is an awesome work around and it only require your followers to click twice (once on your profile link and once on the website link) to be connected with your desired website. Gone are the days of pasting a non clickable, text heavy, boredom inspiring chunk of dirty text that no one will go to the effort of typing into their mobile browsers, especially not ADD centric millennials.

2. Increase Exposure By Placing Call To Actions As A Location Extension

Placing extra information or even a web address as a call to action in the location extension field (that appears above your image in your follower’s feeds) can be a great way to capture extra attention.

Personally, I’m not a massive fan of this method, however, I have seen other account’s action this effectively. Do heed this warning though: do not over do it, too much of any good thing is always a bad thing (AKA don’t spam your audience, nobody has time for that).

3. Add Line Breaks To Your Instagram Captions

Nothing will bore your users into swiping away from your image more than lengthy captions that are not separated by any line breaks.

There is no doubt in my mind that white space is an extremely powerful tool for cultivating increased attention and engagement, or simply making an caption look neater (see screenshot above). The problem with line breaks is, you have to be sneaky in order to create them.

So how do you do it?

1. Create your desired text, complete with the line breaks / white space you want
2. In order for your paragraph to work, you need to remove any characters, spaces or emojis following your text
3. Publish the image and BOOM, you now have spaces breaking up your text heavy caption – just nobody call the grammar police

4. Get More Instagram Followers

Your goal should always be to make it as EASY as possible for your customers to learn more about you.

One of the most frequent questions I get as a digital strategist is, “Paul, can you tell me how to get more Instagram followers?”

1. Follow the followers of accounts that are homogenous to yours
The idea behind this is simple. By following those people that Like / Comment or Follow account’s that are similar to yours, you will get roughly 10 – 20% of these people following you back.

This plays on the curiosity that many people have when someone follows them. More often than not, when someone follows you, you feel inclined to see who that person is. This results in you checking out their account, and if you like what you see (which is likely given you already follow a similar account) you may follow them back.

2. Follow accounts from relevant hashtags
This works on exactly the same premise as part 1, expect you find accounts to follow based on the hashtags they are using.

My tests show that, as of the date this article was published, Instagram limits you yo following 50 people, per account, per hour.

Please note that one main disadvantage of this (almost spammy) method is the fact that your feed will now be inundated with accounts that you do not know, hindering your ability to be authentic and engage with your community accordingly. Or you can even buy Instagram followers from time to time but don’t let them carry you away.

5. Why Your “Thanks for following” Test Just Won’t Cut It Anymore

One of Instagram’s defining points of difference from other social networks is it’s user experience. Namely, what makes Instagram so great is it’s built on a foundation on highly engaging, high value, image and video content.

Whilst I commend those that go to the effort of posting a “thanks for following” comment in response to being followed (here have a cookie), I do believe it’s time you up-the-anti and start thanking your new followers via video direct message.

Have no idea what i’m talking about? Play the video below to get a better understanding of what I mean.

“But Paul that looks like a lot of effort!”

It sure is, but that’s the beauty of it.

Think about receiving a video reply from someone you just followed. This person has gone out of their way to thank you, putting their ego on the line by putting themselves out there and actually taking the time to thank you personally for following them. If this strategy isn’t an example of sound community engagement, I don’t know what is.

6. Add Line Breaks To Your Bio

Just like I mentioned in Point 3, there is no doubt in my mind that white space is a powerful tool for cultivating increased attention and engagement in your posts. The same train of thought can be applied to your bio.
There is no reason why your bio should be an unattractive ugly mess of copy that is all on the same line. Your goal should always be to make it as EASY as possible for your customers to learn more about you. And one of the easiest ways to do this is by adding white space / line breaks to your bio.

Method:

1. Log into your Instagram Account on a computer
2. Edit your bio and add spaces / line breaks just like you would in a word document
3. Hit save and you’re done!

7. Track Your Call To Actions With bit.ly

Failing to track your social media analytics is up there with the Top 5 Digital Marketing No-No’s of all time. Just because Instagram doesn’t have an analytics suite (yet) doesn’t mean you can’t bootstrap your Account to measure your success and optimise it for the future.

Link shortening services like bit.ly are an essential weapon in your digital marketing analytics arsenal. These services allow you to:

• shorten long, ugly, naked URLs
• track the amount of traffic the link receives
• track your link performance over time
• track where your links occurred geographically
• plus many other useful features

By simply turning the website link in your bio into a bit.ly link, you unlock a new world of content and copy analytics and optimisation which will improve and refine your Instagram strategy over time… ultimately leading to more sales from your Instagram Account.

8. Talk Your Target’s Talk

The big thing about millennials is… they are immune to your sleazy, stale, old school, almost embarrassing call to actions.

Don’t know what i’m talking about? Maybe these golden oldies will ring some bells…

“CAN’T WAIT FOR THE WEEKEND”
“WHAT A GREAT NIGHT”
“BOOK NOW SO YOU DON’T MISS OUT”

Let me share a secret with you. Millennials are tired. Really tired. Like, really really tired of you trying to push your shitty sales messages at them in an attempt to push your product.

If you address your community with copy and call to actions that don’t align to your demographic’s lingo, you will only serve to alienate and annoy your potential customers.

This ultimately diminishes your ability to create leads and monetise your channel, which is the OPPOSITE of what we are trying to achieve. Still confused? Feel free to come learn more here on my personal blog.