Instagram has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world.

From selfies to snapshots of what your friends had for lunch, the app allows you to keep up with your network of followers through a stream of multi-filtered photos. While Instagram was already popular, its acquisition by Facebook in April 2012 rapidly expanded its community to 80 million users by July of that year. And daily, that number continues to grow.

Today, it is more than just a platform for sharing personal photos; it has become a useful tool that enables brands to connect with consumers. 

Here are five key points to remember when using Instagram to promote your brand:

1. Frequency

Post frequently — enough to hold your audience’s attention but not too much to where the audience feels bombarded by your message.

Jeff Bercovici, Forbes‘ social-media journalist, advises that consistency is key when it comes to posting on social media, and while frequency is important, lack of consistency is what ultimately affects acquisition and engagement. Below is a graph illustrating follower data of a TV show that stopped posting on Instagram after its season ended:

Source: Union Metrics

2. Monitoring

One of the most important things that a brand must stay on top of is monitoring its social-media pages. On Instagram, keeping up is crucial to fostering engagement. Brand managers must check their pages frequently in order to ensure responding to their audience in a timely manner. Such a strategy will make the brand seem  more personable to their audience. 

3. Engaging

Apart from responding to audience comments, there are other ways by which a brand can engage its social-media audience on Instagram such as “regramming“ (reposting someone else’s photo), running photo contests, and featuring special offers. Regramming allows brands to share their favorite Instagram pictures on their own feeds, and running photo contests allows them to ask their followers to submit their own photos accompanied by a unique hashtag. These strategies encourage audience engagement while also solidifying brand recognition.

4. Using hashtags

Hashtags — indicated with the # mark — work as an organization system on social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. They indicate a topic, give context, and convey tone.

On Instagram, hashtags allow people to search for all of the photo and video submissions that are associated with a particular hashtag. Brands can use this to their benefit by hashtagging their posts to attract people interested in relevant content and also by creating brand recognition through the use of a memorable and unique hashtag.

5. Creating a profile

A little over a year ago, Instagram added introduced a new feature: Web profiles. This visually appealing profile features a brand’s most recent photos, profile photo, and a bio. The compilation of photos as well as information is a compelling way for a brand to tell its story.

A great example of an Instagram brand profile is Ben & Jerry’s:

Instagram is a great social-media channel because it uses pictures to tell stories. With these tips in mind, it is not difficult to start promoting your brand effectively on Instagram. However, one of the most important things to remember is to be creative and do what works best for your brand and your audience.