How to Market Your Cake Decorating Business on Instagram
Over the years Facebook has dominated the social media landscape and how businesses market to their customers however with them changing their algorithm often; it’s hard to know if your customers see your pictures.
Enter instagram, the new kid on the block and in my opinion perfectly designed for Cake decorators as cakes are very photogenic and a picture speaks a thousand words.
For this reason, I have put together the top Four strategies to get the most out of Instagram!!
GIVE VALUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE!!
Most people look at instagram as a way of gaining popularity and celebrity status however unless you as world class movie star or singer that gives value elsewhere, you will have to give people a reason to keep following your accounts.
There are many ways you can do this including, proving knowledge and Tips, providing comedy relief/jokes, giving your opinion on various subjects, giving inspiration to your audience or simply adding some form of entertainment like music or videos. It’s important that your followers feel there is something to look forward to when they come to your account.
It is important that every time you post an image or anything, you ask yourself, “What am I giving?” as this will put you in the Give Give Give zone which will also make you feel better as we all like to help others.
MAKE YOUR PAGE A NICHE!!
I have talked about the importance of a NICHE in my previous posts many times however this is for a good reason. There are Billions of people on Instagram and sadly you are not the only Cake decorators in your country or your community so if you simply post Images of Cakes, you are likely to lose out.
The best strategy is to decide whether your page will reflect your business and specialty i.e. specialize in Fondant, flowers, Birthday cakes, drip cakes, wedding cakes, Figurines and models etc. You can also decide on the look of the page and the style the pictures are taken as some can chose black and white images (not recommended), different filters and shades, images with people or simply Cake images with a complimenting background.
The Feel and mood of your page will very much determine how customers view your business and the quality of your products
LABEL YOUR IMAGES!!
We all know a lot of time goes into managing these social media pages from setting them up, taking pictures, writing comments, responding to people etc. so it’s important that your images are not stolen or used by others.
Use the various tools available to add a “watermark” on your images or in the background to ensure that it doesn’t distract from the cake image however it’s placed in a way that doesn’t allow someone to cut it out and use your image.
The easiest of cheapest way to do this is to have a Card (with your business name) placed on the side of the cake when you take the picture.
Take credit for your own work.
ENGAGE WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS!!
This has to be the ultimate cheat code for winning on Instagram or any other social media platform for that matter. Simply posting beautiful pictures on your page and getting likes won’t help in building your followers or most importantly converting those followers into customers.
It’s very simple however it is very important that you respond to every question or comment a follower leaves even if it’s a thank you or a compliment as this will help bring life to your page and let people know that there is someone behind the business and it’s not just a machine posting images.