Don’t you just love seeing brands kick ass at social marketing?
We’ve noticed that our friends at Thanks store (they’ve got a couple of physical stores and an online shop) have being doing great things with their Instagram account.
They’ve got almost 10,000 followers – and it’s growing rapidly. So we decided to ask them about the secret to their success.
We sat down for a coffee with Sophie (Thanks Instagrammer-in-chief), who gave us a few pointers…
Thanks’ top 5 tips for Instagram
1. Know your audience
Pay attention to what people are responding to the most. Take the time to feel out what your audience like and what they comment on the most.
Sometimes it’s not even the stuff that’s relevant to the business itself that’ll work the best – we recently posted a blog for the website about caring for cacti which had great photos. We been sharing them on Instagram and they’ve done really well!
2. Set the tone
Although a constant stream of new stock always gives us something to post about, we try not to focus too much on products. We want our followers to get the same vibe from our photos that they’d experience in store – the plants, incense and playlists that give our stores their culture.
3. Plan to be spontaneous
We have to be flexible day-to-day and share photos of whatever stock comes into the store, but we also make sure we always have a few things up our sleeve.
We use an app called Latergramme to draft and schedule posts, it’s really helpful for planning!
4. Make it look good
We want our Instagram feed to be on the same level as what we see overseas – so we’ve got a pretty high standard for what we post!
Most of our brands have photos from their campaigns (seasonal collections) we can use, and we often do in-house product shoots, too. We want all our photos to look professional.
5. Use your networks
At the end of the day, we’re a pretty small team and we don’t have the budget to hire models and do grand photo shoots for every single Instagram picture.
Instead, we reach out to people we know to help us create content. We often use people we think are interesting as models, and we’ve surrounded ourselves with a great community of creatives who help us out.
It’s a win-win – we get great images and content, they get more experience and the chance to have their work featured.
A special thanks to Sophie for giving up her time to share her tricks of the trade! Follow @Thanksstore on Instagram or view our other Instagram articles.
