Profile: Caterina Atkinson, Instagram Expert

Caterina studied Digital Design for three years at AUT, graduating in December 2016. She specialised in live action camera work and VFX. Initially Catarina worked at Xero as an intern as part of work experience required for the third year of her degree. Now she is full time at Xero working in digital marketing.

Beautiful and meaningful

Assigned to making the Xero Instagram beautiful Caterina opted for changes in the Instagram strategy. She set out to interview and photograph customers to feature and advocate. The change in Instagram tactics was to align Xero’s core values around helping small businesses thrive; through better tools, information and connections. “We also love to introduce people to new wonderful businesses and help them connect via the posts we share on our Instagram account” she says.

Caterina has grown the follower count from nearly 2k to 13k. Now, Xero’s Instagram page is completely dedicated to featuring small businesses around the globe. It focuses on a range of SMB’s with different industries and backgrounds. She explains that “Instagram is a wonderful platform for visually promoting products and services. We especially love to feature businesses who rely heavily on their Instagram accounts to drive sales. SMB’s also love being promoted on our account. Lastly we get many businesses reaching out to us asking how they can be featured as well”.

Caterina’s tips on how to amplify your Instagram following

• Engage with businesses similar to yours.

  Following, liking, and commenting on relevant accounts can help increase engagement for your business Instagram account. It’ll also help you appear as a recommended follow when users follow businesses similar to yours!

• Research your hashtags.

  Do some digging to find the relevant hashtags that have got large communities. Take a look at what hashtags other industry influencers and competitors are using. Also be sure not to overload your posts with hashtags because that looks spammy. Just focus on those big relevant ones!

• Create a branded hashtag just for your business!

  We use #dobeautifulbusiness on all of our posts. Other businesses will also use that hashtag if they are sharing something relevant that they might want us to share to our own account.

• Don’t forget Instagram Stories!

  Stories can be a great way to share what’s going on with your business in the moment. While Xero’s posts focus on small businesses, we sometimes use our story to share what’s going on in the office. For example when we hit a million subscribers! We posted stories about the celebrations in our offices around the world so that our followers could follow along.

• Utilise the link in your bio.

  Got a sale on? Pop a link to it in your bio and direct your followers to it in your post descriptions.

• Post regularly

  Maintain a regular posting schedule without bombarding your followers with too many posts.

• This almost goes without saying, but post beautiful pictures!

  Well-composed photos at a high resolution typically get more engagement than lower quality snaps. Take beautiful photos that will creatively show off your products and services.

• Switch your Instagram to a business profile.

  This will enable you to review insights and analytics to better understand your audience and what kind of content they respond to the most.

So be sure that you’re following @Xero on Instagram to see the next big thing we’ve got lined up for July! We’re going to be revealing a new project that we’ve been working on for months. Through it we’ll be championing our businesses and emphasising the partnership between Xero and its businesses in a way that’s never been done before!

The post Profile: Caterina Atkinson, Instagram Expert appeared first on Xero Blog.

Source: Xero Blog