Instagram is my JAM-- it's a powerful platform in and of itself- understanding instagram places with be paramount to your success-- depending on the demographic of your audience you can really dial into competitors to build brand awareness... While working and in close connection with with brands such as @TVROPT, @CharlieByMZ, and Uniqlo... these brands heavily use influencer marketing. (for an amazing article on this concept https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-influencer-targeting/ ) You don't have to pay an arm and a leg for influencers-- and influencer don't have to have industry clout.. they could be the trendsetters of high school etc-- and their are ways of finding these local people on instagram.

Let me know if you have any further questions after reading that article! :D

The commodity industry you have entered is extremely competitive.

Social media marketing is a methodical trial and error approach to marketing. We create ads, curate website content, run A/B tests for conversion pages, give out freebies, hyper-target social media profiles through mining of hashtags and trends, running more A/B test from the A version of a prior A/B test thus segmenting even further and hopefully improving conversion of leads or sales much faster.
You cannot expect to have a social campaign solely on one platform – every platform is natively connected by our desires from each.

A person might see a friend like your page or product on facebook but disregard it, then later jump onto twitter and see you are helping a customer with sizing questions or suggesting a trendy hat for a sunny or rainy day, then later checks Instagram for cool pics their friends and celebs are posting… your goal there is to top their predisposed assumption of you by having their friends/users upload a pic of your website or product proudly modeling it/bragging about it, thanking, etc. Your own posts shouldn’t be pushy. If you sell clothes post pictures of situations you see your clients being involved in. such as having coffee at Starbucks or eating a bagel by the park or jogging, or reading a book in bed… once in a while throw in outfits, always understating the discounts or promos… people are there for imagery not to be sold.
With that said, here some things you should try:
1. Have dedicated segmented time either by day or hour for sharing thoughts, ideas, lessons or tips with other developers online through local blogs (I say local so that you can meet & greet the bloggers and make true connections so that you can better promote each other. Have their blog link to your twitter feed, or Instagram or even Facebook.
2. Target social media accounts – each social media has its purpose, unwritten rules and expectations; leverage these 3 and target users who you see wearing your items, have dedicate landing/conversion pages for each profile and social media. Facebook user mentality who clicks on ads is different than the mentality of when you would click on an ad on Instagram – so each link should customized to that mentality and then further each be split into 2 variations to measure what works best and improve from there.
4. Conversion pages are not websites, they have one single simple purpose such as getting email leads, getting users to download an ebook, sign up for a trial, watch a video, make a social share, etc. for this the content has to be directly targeted to the audience you are sending there, using their preferred vocabulary and imagery.
5. Use tools such as Sumome.com to find out what your visitors are doing while visiting your site.
6. Use paywithatweet.com to have people literally pay for a low cost feature service you can offer for ‘free’ to a client when bundled with something else or as standalone such as an ebook or newsletter signup.. the cool thing about pay with a tweet is that users can pay with several social actions not just twitter.

Hi there! First off, make sure your account is set up to receive engagement. Make sure your profile is PUBLIC, make sure to include information about yourself and your business in the profile, and add a website (even if just a splash page) or contact info if you don’t have a website set up yet.

The best way to build your audience and following is by using hashtags with your posts. If you don’t use hashtags then only your current followers will see your posts on Instagram. All it takes is for you to do research on keywords related to your business, brand and target audience. You mentioned women’s clothing, so start by writing out all related words (such as: women, clothing, fashion, retail, etc…). Then you want to search via Instagram to see if these keywords are being used currently as hashtags. Use the ones with at least 100K posts, and then take a look at the feeds for the hashtags you search, and see who else is posting on there. Check to see what hashtags they are using.

Another great way for your industry to build momentum on Instagram is by working with fashion bloggers. Partner up with some popular or trending fashion bloggers on Insta (you can search terms such as ‘fashion blogger’ and then see who comes up as a top user); you can reach out and let them know about your clothing line and see if they’d be interested in featuring you to their followers.
There’s so much you can do to build a targeted following and also lead traffic back to your site. Keep it simple and keep it authentic.

I can help you even further by showing you more strategies to build a quality following and also coming up with great content to keep your followers engaged. Good luck and congrats!

One year ago I was like, "How the Hell This Happened!"

We were absolutely dominating a local niche with an Instagram account. We were getting all the traction

Competitors started to see value in growing on IG as well

One of my friends noticed that, and called me, asking me if I was worried. I replied with an ego-fueled and arrogant answer like "Nobody knows how to grow an Instagram account properly like me in this niche."

6 months after, a competitor became the new leader on that platform

Why? It was because he was spending much more time on building a community, rather than a mere following. Trying new innovations more than me. I completely underestimated him.

We're still doing well anyway, but, yeah, was a good lesson for the future.