Social Media Marketing Plan For The Sparks Foundation: Inbound Marketing on Instagram

 

Why Inbound Marketing?

Hubspot describes “Inbound methodology” as a “method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you.”

According to Hubspot, the inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:

1. Attract: Drawing in the right people with quality and creative content.

2. Engage: Presenting insights and solutions to their most common issues in a clear, precise, and subtle way.

3. Delight: Providing help and support to empower your customers such that they advocate for your product themselves.

Image credit: Hubspot.com

Why Instagram?

Before diving into why Instagram should be used, let’s look at some stats:

1. Instagram has more than 1 billion users. With 120 million users in the USA and 80 million Indian users.

2. 67% of daily users are 18-24 years old.

3. Food, education, finance, and career-focused influencers receive the most engagement in India.

4. A daily user below 24 years, spends an average of 32 mins on Instagram.

The Sparks Foundation works for the education and skill enhancement of college-going students. By organizing workshops and providing internships and mentorship, TSF is helping students get the start they need for their dream careers. As the stats above mention, the most active age group on Instagram is 18-24 years, i.e., the exact target audience of TSF. Targeting the exact audiences is the first step of effective marketing. Coming to the time they spend, getting a min or two won’t be difficult. And as the influencers working in the domain of education are among the top followed influencers, it won’t be difficult to reach and grow.

Making A Profile

Having a perfect profile is the first and most important step for impactful and effective marketing on Instagram. Various things to keep in mind for building an awesome Instagram profile are as follows:

1. Making a Business account

2. Choosing the category of business

3. Choosing Identifiable name

4. Perfect profile picture

5. Sizzling Bio

6. Using the one link effectively.

Making a Business Account: Instagram offers two types of user accounts, personal and business. As the TSF would belong to the business category, it should create a business account. Furthermore, the IG Business account provides additional tools for analyzing the reach and audiences and thus helps the organization grow its marketing reach.

Choosing the category of business: Choosing the category helps the followers understand the type of content you’ll be posting and connect to your target audience. The Instagram Explore section serves users the content they like, and thus by categorizing the account it makes it easier for the algorithm to list you in the Explore section of the target audience, who would love to consume the content you create.

Choosing an Identifiable name: With 1 billion users and about 9.1% fake bot accounts, it’s really hard to find a unique and precise name for your account. But, a name to correctly identify you is a must. A simple and identifiable name, reflecting your organization is best.

Perfect profile picture: For the profile picture is the first thing users see in your profile, it must be perfect. Most organizations use their logo as the profile picture of their social media accounts. But a photoshopped and more graphic version can also be used. 

Sizzling Bio: You get 150 characters to define you and what you do in your bio. So it is very important to use those limited number of characters in the most optimum way. Keeping it short, precise and on the mark is the key. Not using full sentences, but only keywords and a lot of relevant and good-looking emojis. Emojis make your profile attractive and catchy.

Using the one link effectively: Instagram gives you the option to put one link on your profile. And because the count is only one, it is important to use it effectively. Most organizations use it as the link to their website. But at times of some important events, it can be used as a direct link for registration. For example, TSF can use it for the registration of new batches of their internship programs.

Posts & Stories

Instagram is all about pictures and looks. So while posting anything, either a general post, reels, or stories, aesthetics should be kept in mind as the first and most important factor. While some photographers use the same moody style for posting their pictures some writers use the same template to share their thoughts. Posting on Instagram is an art and art knows no boundaries and templates. With new and easier-to-use tools, a lot of young content creators are coming posting without format but maintaining the aesthetics as their primary focus. While there is a class of experts who advise creating a grid of 3*3, there are many others who advise posting in minimalistic templates. Although, for posting something on Instagram you may choose any form or template or without any particular style, but keep in mind, aesthetics and consistency are the keys to success.

Caption and Hashtags

There is no appropriate length of the caption or a fixed format for it. Different types of accounts share different types of posts with various captions. Personal accounts share some lines of poetry or cool statements, while commercial accounts share detailed information of their product in the caption and informational posts have stats and other details in the caption. So the length of the caption varies with the type of post. While detailed information is appreciated, it is advised to keep it crisp and precise.

What most of the commercial and business accounts fail to realize is the importance of using relevant hashtags in their captions. Relevant hashtags help to identify the type of post and content you share. And also it helps the Instagram algorithm to share your post to people who would love to consume the content you create. Various websites can help you identify the most used hashtags, ‘Hashtagify’ is one of them. For more such websites click here.

Engaging Audiences

Engaging audiences require more than just consistently posting and uploading stories. Many commercial accounts and also some influencers use the giveaway funda. They announce giveaways in return for likes and comments on their posts and thus increasing engagement. TSF can announce giveaways (such as internship offers) in return for likes, comments, and shares of their posts. Organizing contests is another way of increasing engagements.

Sample Instagram Profiles

1. Maintaining Aesthetics

This profile of a food blogger maintains aesthetics in each and every post. One improvement here can be in the length of the username, it’s too long.

2. Caption and Hashtags

 

This example focuses on the caption and using hashtags appropriately. Although the caption is lengthy, it’s written in bullets and the use of bright emojis sucks away the boredom from the text.

3. Use of Grid

This one from the same literature-oriented account shows how grids can be used. Grids are a nice and easy way to publish regular content but taking the example of this one, the color combination should match perfectly. Here in this case the right one is classy but the middle and left one uses subtle colors and thus ruining the grid.

Sample Posts

1. Dream Internship

This can be used as the first post to announce new internship program batches, with a short and crisp caption about the GRIP and the different domains of internships.

2. Looking for internship

This can be used as a secondary post or reminder post about TSF’s internship program. “Link In Bio” refers to the one link we can publish on Instagram profile.

3. Perfect Internship

Inbound Marketing is about educating the audience and help them make better decisions. This post might help students/enthusiasts identify the best internship for them.

Conclusion

The Inbound marketing strategy works best for the organizations targeting youths and students. As the target audience for TSF is young, inbound marketing would prove to be efficient and effective. The key to success is the consistency of posting the content online. Covering all the programs would be easy and simple with all the steps mentioned. Making an IG profile is the first step but it’s only the start of the journey. Regularly posting is a priority while maintaining the quality of the content. Keeping all the things in mind, the journey of social media marketing for The Sparks Foundation will be easy and will grow fast.