I know what your thinking, "Typical click-bait title" and your right but your reading this aren't you? The funny thing is, this title is completely true for one of my Instagram clients Rocket Comicz. I started working with Rocket Comicz in January of this year and wrapped up the paper work for an agreement involving the online sales this week! I am stoked because #1, comics lol, who wouldn't want to have an interest of a Comic Book Store that features vintage comics and vintage toys from the 1960's to the present, and #2, I had a blank slate to start with marketing wise. Here are 5 ways I was able to triple the Rocket Comicz followers in one month.
1. Strategy
I am not sure at how familiar you are with the Comics industry, but I'm going to bring you up to speed pretty quick on one important thing when marketing this kind of business. Every Wednesday comic book publishers release new titles. There usually is as few as 40 to as many as over 150. Put your marketing cap on and tell me what that means. Right, content! We basically have unlimited content to share across all different kinds of social media. With all that ammo I started to game plan what I would do. I decided to use a combo of our Instagram Growth Program, email campaigns, and client participation. I also re-did the website before we got started to make sure we had consistent branding on all of our online profiles.
2. Instagram Growth
I wanted to grow the instagram because we started using a Shopify store as our main website and online sales engine. One of the main reasons we landed on Shopify was the social integrations. We could connect the online store inventory and check out to our Facebook and Instagram accounts and tag products in post that allowed customers to buy comics and toys directly on our social accounts. If you want to start your own Shopify Store click here. With that arrow in our quill, we started laying out a posting schedule that included the new releases every week and the new pre-order collectibles Rocket offers.
The Instagram account for Rocket Comicz started at 234 followers when we started implanting our game plan. In the last 30 days we have grown the account to over 664 followers with more following daily and cultivated more account interactions by team working with the Rocket Comicz team on content. The screen shot below shows the steady growth in followers.
Rocket Comicz already did an amazing job posting to facebook. They put the time and energy into making their Facebook Page a virtual hub for news about toys, comics, and entertainment. Our job was to increase the instagram following to the same reach as facebook and their constant post gave us a great place to start. It never hurts to grow different social media accounts at different rates. On Instagram, you can connect your Twitter and Facebook to your Instagram account and share your post to all three platforms. There are a ton of benefits to that including scaling your screen time and posting time but the draw back to that is not hitting your audience when they are online. Facebook has amazing Analytics that tell you the optimal times every day to post based on when your audience is online. You can also get into what kind of voice you should use based on your audiences age or sex but that is a blog for another time. If you want help growing your instagram account, contact me to go over some of our marketing packages.
3. Targeted Audience
One of the most important things you can focus on while growing your instagram account is your audience. Being a Local Comic Book Store, Rocket Comicz wanted to focus first on a geo targeted audience to build more awareness in their area. We set up the instagram to follow, comment, and like comic and entertainment related post from Kalamazoo and Portage area users. Next we expanded to influencers in the Comic Industry to raise awareness that We have tons of comics and toys! The photo below shows the most liked photos in the past 10 days. Keeping your feed interesting keeps your users engaged. With comics and toys, we can always introduce pops of color. I feel that this is important when people look at the feed as a whole. Pops and blips of color help lead them down your photos, leading them through your post and helping them get to know your brand better.
4. Targeting with Hashtags
Since day one, hashtags have been one of the primary modes of search. In June, Instagram boosted the discoverability of hashtags with a new explore page aimed at making discovery “immediate and effortless”.
Finding the right tags will take some research, but the power of utilizing the most relevant and widely used hashtags will garner the best results. Here are a few ways we choose the tags we use for Rocket's Instagram:
We find competitors and check what they’re using. The competitors we look at have large followings and are obviously successful based on their interactions, so there is a ton to learn from the.
Use Instagram’s search feature – plug in key terms and phrases and go from there. Often, one hashtag will lead you to the next.
Identify the group of active users in your target. Are they using tags that are relevant to you and what you’re about? We found several that worked for Rocket Comics and boosted their post visibility to the target market.
5. A Great Website
The last thing we did to get our instagram growth up was to make sure that we had the website on point. What does that mean? We worked with the Rocket team, using one of the awesome logos their team member made to rebrand the whole company. We used the branding across the instagram, facebook, and website creating a strong feeling of conformity. This gives customers confidence when they want to make a purchase. They know that the same instagram account they follow is the same website they are spending their hard earned dollars at.
Working on all five topics above constantly will give your instagram account a boost in growth. When you start an account it can be intimidating to think about getting to that magic 10,000th follower so you can do swipe up actions in your story but don't get overwhelmed.
If you don't know where to start, contact me and we will point you in the right direction!