Lesson 7

Interacting with the target

audience
Lesson 7. Interacting with the target audience

In the last lesson we have discussed development and return or remember your name. Either way, they will
promotion strategies and their place and necessity for certainly visit your page.
Instagram business. You have learned how to create
strategies and what characterizes short- and long-term
strategies. Today’s lesson is about increasing the num- LOOK FOR INTERESTING ACCOUNTS
ber of followers. You will learn how to quickly build up Search people you need by hashtags, visit their
an audience, establish the connection to your follow- accounts and do the same — show interest. Let your
ers and disseminate the content by tagging friends. comments be lively, joke, use emojies, softly provoke
dialogue. But be careful and mind your language. Com-
ments are the fastest way to interest somebody, but
SHORT-TERM STRATEGY at the same time you can easily annoy that person.
We have mentioned different strategies in the last Stay within limits. Do not like the whole feed of the
lesson but focused on long-term types. Today we are user and comment every photo, especially if they do
going to show you the strategy that works right off not respond.
the bat. It is called Direct Impact and its results can
be seen with a naked eye. It makes the strategy ideal Visit pages with the most followers that could be an
for impatient and mobile businessmen. example for you. They might be your audience, choose
the ones you like and try to talk to them. Try to care-
The idea is to comment and like photos related to the fully select those people and follow only those you like
sphere of your business and follow relevant accounts. and who can potentially be interested in your business.
But make sure you are careful and polite so not to make
an impression of a spammer. Do not be persistent or You do not need much time for these simple actions, 10
you can be tagged a promotion ‘junk’ account and minutes a day is enough to bring positive results soon.
undermine the trust in your company.
If you break the strategy into steps, in practice it
Every person whose page you visit must be your poten- looks like this:
tial client. And you need to address them person-
▶ The person sees a notification about your activ-
ally — efficient communication is key to this strategy.
ity — likes and comments — in their profile.
But how do you make contact?
▶ They go to your profile and see the information
you put there. If the profile looks fine, anybody
CONTACT will note that.
Let us try to explore what the correct interaction looks ▶ The person interacts with you in response — likes,
like. Enter the profile and choose any account from the comments and asks questions in direct.
list. Choose the last post of that person, like it and leave
▶ Then follows you.
a pleasant comment. After that, return to the profile
and click ‘Follow’. Account owner will get a notifica-
tion and will learn of your existance. This is an ideal scenario. Not everybody who you show
interest in will answer you, but it is still worth trying.
When somebody follows, comments or likes your pho- Most people are used to answer interaction with inter-
tos, you see relevant notifications about the amount action, this is how it goes. And it's a shame not to take
of activity at the top of your account. Do not skip it! advantage of it! But to follow you, the person needs
Respond. Answer their comments and like back. Peo- to notice you first. So the number of your followers
ple on Instagram like attention very much. depends on your activity.

And they like to see interest in their page in general,

especially if it is comments to their posts and likes. INTERACTION WITH FOLLOWERS
They will definitely want to look at the person repson- ▶ Contests
sible out of curiosity. They might like your photo in

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Lesson 7. Interacting with the target audience
You need not only to attract new followers, but
also treat the existing ones! You need to interact
with them sometimes. Here are a few strategies
for that. You can use them if you have enough
followers, at least 500.
The first strategy is to hold contests. Contests
on Instagram are one of the quickest and most
efficient methods to promote any account.
For example, ask to share your post and choose
a winner among those who did using a random-
izer. And the winner gets a prize. The contest will
not get popular and people will not repost it if
the prize is not worth it. Do not try to give away
token gifts. You can draw certificates for a cer-
tain sum on purchases in your shop or popular
gadgets. The idea is for the people to get an
opportunity to win a prize for telling about you
to others, i.e. their followers. They will promote
you among their friends.
You need to select a nice photo to hold such
contest. It may be the photo of the prize or just
some attractive photo. It should motivate to
participate in the contest! You can also give
your followers a creative task and ask them
to take their own photos on a set theme. For
example, let them take photos of them or their
close ones using your product. The author of
the best photo wins.
You need to come up with hashtags for your
contest. Try to propose unpopular and unique
hashtags. You see all the participants of your
contest by following the hashtag.
Set the contest terms, i.e. requirements to participate
and rules. They must be as simple as possible so the
more people can take part. Here are the common stan-
dard terms:
1  Follow your account.
2  Repost the contest.
3  Mention your account and put the contest
hashtag at the photo.
4  Specify the contest period.
5  Specify how you are going to choose and
announce the winner.
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You need to announce the winner with a separate
post — people need to see that there is a reason to par-
ticipate in your contests! Contact the winner in direct.
And it is even better to organize a live translation of
choosing the winner so the people can see that every-
thing is transparent and real. A little doubt in your hon-
esty can sink your company’s reputation!
▶ Tag a Friend
Another good strategy of interacting with the
audience is to call them to tag their friends. This
will help you to accumulate many comments
for your posts and what is more important, new
people who can potentially follow you will see
your profile!
The difficulty of this method is that people are
not always ready to intervene in the affairs of
their friends. You need to give them a good
reason to do so. People must be interested in
the topic of your post to accept your rules of the
game.
If you are in a restaurant business, you can post
photos of different dishes and ask how well your
followers know their friends: they need to tag
their friends who love that dish very much.
If you are a fashion designer, ask your follow-
ers to tag friends who liked an unusual design
of a beautiful dress. It will help you to start an
interesting interaction between people instead
of simply asking for likes and comments. People
love to communicate and you only need to
choose the right topic!
In order to build lasting relation with your target
audience you need to know as much as you can
about your potential clients. Find out their aver-
age age, gender, geolocation, goals and income.
In addition, you can look for future clients on
thematic forums and in groups.
So, today, we have discussed interaction with the
audience. You have learned how to establish con-
tact with new followers and look for interesting
accounts. In addition, we have talked about hold-
ing contests to communicate with the existing fol-
lowers to keep interest in you and promote you
among their friends.
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Lesson 7. Interacting with the target audience

In the next lesson we are going to discuss how to

attract people using email marketing and build last-
ing relations with potential clients. You will also
learn how to join email marketing and Instagram
promotion and what you should not write in you
mailing pieces.

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