How often do you interact with your followers via Instagram direct messages? This seems like a really dumb inquiry. It’s easy to ignore Instagram’s more fundamental features since new ones are always being added to aid in brand visibility, audience engagement, and the discovery of new revenue streams.
However, this should not discourage you from using Instagram direct messages to expand your customer base. This basic, often-overlooked resource may help you connect with your audience and grow your business in ways that would be impossible with other mediums.
In this piece, we’ll go through how to use Instagram direct messages (DMs) for both proactive and reactive audience engagement.
Direct Messages on Instagram for Advertising
It’s possible you haven’t given much attention to leveraging Instagram DMs as a marketing tool.
375 million Instagram users regularly using the DM function for a wide variety of communication needs. Instagram Direct Messages are most popular among members of Generation Y and Z; within this demographic, Instagram DMs is second only to Facebook Messenger.
Direct messaging on Instagram, like any other kind of marketing, requires a well-thought-out strategy.
Ahead of Secretly Messaging Your Fans and Followers
Instagram direct messages (DMs) appear straightforward at first glance. And, well, sending and receiving private messages isn’t exactly rocket science.
However, you will need to put some thought into your strategic approach. So, before you start blasting messages at your followers and intended audience, you should take a breath and formulate a strategy.
Plan Your Own Backend Operations
First and foremost, you should make sure your team has the resources to consistently interact with your target demographic.
(Conversely, you don’t want to adopt DMs just to find that you can’t handle the volume as it grows.) Some essential considerations:
- Who will oversee your Instagram correspondence?
- How frequently and at what times will they carry out DM-related activities?
- Could they benefit from collaborating with anybody else on your team?
Since you’ll be adding to your team’s existing workload, you may need to rearrange certain priorities to make room for your DM-related activities. It’s important to have well-defined objectives for any projects you do.
Make a consistent voice and tone for your brand
Your company probably already has a distinct tone of voice. And ideally the Instagram posts you’ve made have reflected the personality of your company.
Instagram direct messages are one place where your brand’s voice and tone really need to come through. However, a more moderate approach is needed here. One the one hand, it’s vital to maintain uniformity. If the MeUndies staff were to respond to Direct Messages from customers inquiring for discounts by seeming more serious, for instance, the consumer would be put off.
However, it’s important to factor in the details of the situation at hand. You should assume a more serious and sympathetic tone if a consumer complains to you through messaging.
Organize Your Message-Sending Process
Keeping the above in mind, it’s important to establish a strategy for interacting with your followers through direct messages (DMs). We’ve already established the need to define:
- Whose job is it to respond?
- How long one has (at most) to reply
- Your group’s strategy for marking chats as read, replied to, and closed.
- (Recall that we said that there is more to DMing your followers than just sending a message?) You should also make Quick Reply templates for often occurring situations.
As a result, you may tailor your messages to address the specific wants, problems, and worries of different segments of your target audience.
Establish the Premises for Your Audience
Once you have the infrastructure in place and the plans laid out, you can announce to your audience that direct messages are available for interaction.
Making ensuring your bio includes a Message button is the quickest and easiest method to achieve this.
Instagram’s direct messaging feature may be promoted to clients on other channels (such as your website or other social media platforms). This will provide them with an additional channel of contact with your staff, which may quickly become their preferred method.
Finally, be sure to specify in your bio whether you won’t be utilising Instagram for a certain function (such as providing customer support) or if you want to use another platform instead. Having many “Contact” links in your bio will come in helpful in this situation.
Communicate With Clients In Response To Activity
In general, there are several channels outside Instagram via which your audience may interact with your brand. You may send them a private message in most, if not all, of these situations.
You can choose to interact with people on Instagram who:
- One of your posts was liked or shared.
- user-generated content that includes your brand’s name
- Reactions to your IGTV and Live broadcasts
- Instagram Story polls with user votes
- Naturally, your audience’s responses should inform the substance of your follow-up messages.
In fact, you should always know how you’ll follow up with interested readers before you publish anything.
Participate in Light of Audience Interests and Habits
Direct messages on Instagram are a great way to start a conversation with people of your target audience who haven’t yet interacted with your company.
Simply put, you want to find new Instagram followers who are like your present ones. This includes:
People that have a similar interest in brands as your present customers.
People who share your interests and use the same hashtags as your existing followers.
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