Define Your Target Audience
The first thing you will need to understand is your target customer. In other words: Know your audience. Taking the time to define your audience ensures you are targeting the right people with your messaging and also gives you focus.
Research Your Competition
Even the most niche of businesses or brands will have a handful of competitors, that’s simply the nature of business these days. Competitive research can help give you a better understanding of the overall landscape as well as insights into what resonates with potential customers. Be sure to check out how your competition is using Instagram for their own marketing as you embark on your Instagram marketing activities.
Develop a Strategy
Having a strategy to guide your marketing activities on Instagram is crucial to success.
While there are many approaches a brand might take in developing their strategy, those who take a customer-centric approach might start with asking questions about their customers. In other words, who are they and why do they follow you? Everything from how often you will post to what kind of content can be discerned from this kind of activity.
Decide on an Aesthetic for Your Brand
Here’s where the branding part comes in. Notice it’s not number one on this list.
There’s so many ways you can approach this point and it all really depends on your brand. The content you upload should be recognizable and in line with your overall identity. It should also clearly represent what you do and what you are about.
Post Relevant AND Original Content
These days you’d be hard-pressed to find Japanese Instagram users actively following and engaging with brands that aren’t producing their own original content.
If your brand is on Instagram but not producing relevant and original content, then you should not expect this particular channel to support your sales funnel in any truly meaningful way.
Additionally, posting relevant and original content is one of the most straightforward ways to grow your Japanese Instagram account, as you are actually giving people a reason to follow you as opposed to simply hoping that they will.
Create a Posting Schedule
When you’re creating a lot of content, managing your Instagram operation suddenly becomes a much bigger issue. A posting schedule or content calendar can really help you stay organized and on task.
There are a number of tools are out there, like Hootsuite or Buffer, which allow you to schedule your Instagram content in advance. While the various tools will each have their own respective pros and cons in terms of features, the main takeaway is that having a schedule allows you to more efficiently implement your Japanese Instagram strategy and there are solutions out there to help make this task more efficient.
Frequency
Regularly uploading content to Instagram can be a great help in growing your account. While there’s a lot of theories surrounding the exact impact frequency, in other words, how often you post, has on your Instagram account’s performance, the thing we can say for certain is that posting on a regular basis keeps you top of mind–and therefore more relevant–among potential Japanese customers.
Consistency
If you decide to use Instagram, it’s not a decision that should be taken lightly, it’s important to commit to putting in the work on the platform. There’s nothing worse than following an account only for the quality to drop. When this happens it can lead to an exodus of people who unsubscribe, which never looks good. Consistently posting content that your followers want to see (e.g. images, photos, videos) is important to maintaining a good Japanese Instagram account.
Engage With Your Customers
Social media is meant to be social. This may come off as a self-evident statement, but you’d be surprised at the number of brands who miss opportunities to actively engage with customers on social media when they initiate conversation with the brand. In the case of foreign brands marketing to Japanese, this can be due to their inability to communicate properly in the language.
Brands that actively engage their Japanese Instagram audience are rewarded with greater loyalty, so it’s a good idea to have someone who can communicate with followers and potential customers as needed.
Analyze and Iterate
The final point is to take every opportunity to make your Instagram account better. Analyze your performance data. Test and try out new content that improves upon previous content that performed well with your target audience. Businesses on Instagram have access to various types of data that can help inform your content decisions. Don’t let that data and insight go to waste.