With 1.22 billion monthly users, Instagram is the second most-downloaded app worldwide. It’s perfect for growing a business focusing on stunning visuals and unique aesthetics – like architecture. For all the apparent reasons, Instagram and architecture make a fantastic match.

If you plan on using this social network to grow your architecture firm, you should know that you’re not the only one; far from it. The marketing potential of Instagram’s photography-centric model is so immense that, as an architect, you can’t afford to miss out on leveraging it.

The following tips should help you get some competitive edge.

Work on your visual content.

When it comes to beating competition, nothing is more important.

Businesses from all industries and niches have been using Instagram as a marketing platform for a decade now. Most of the best practices and strategic moves are already familiar to experts and enthusiasts. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most effective.

However, if you don’t have attention-grabbing content, these techniques can’t help you.

In the world of social media marketing, content is the inviolable king.

Hopefully, your architecture business already has a portfolio. If not, start applying all that skill and talent you’ve been refining for years. To stand out from the crowd, spend a few days researching the competition. This insight will help you create something unique.

Quality-wise, investing in excellent renders is always a good idea. CGI imagery comes with many advantages over traditional photography, never failing to show an artist’s work in the best possible light. Sketch some ideas and start developing them – the more, the merrier.

Find hashtags relevant to your niche.

When promoting your business on social media, hashtags ensure that your target audience sees the content you’re posting. There’s an entire philosophy surrounding Instagram hashtags, so let’s get started.

Here’s how to find and use architecture-related hashtags:

• Find trending hashtags by spying on your competition.
• Use a social listening tool to track hashtags (and more).
• Look at the hashtags that your audience is already using.
• Rely on Instagram’s Related Hashtags feature for help.
• There’s no need to use more than ten hashtags per post.
• Use a combination of popular and niche-specific hashtags.
• Use event hashtags whenever that’s appropriate.
• Use Instagram’s Insights feature to analyze your reach.

Why is using a combination of popular and niche-specific hashtags a golden rule?

Because popular hashtags are easy to discover, they are usually the most frequently used and followed. The hashtag #architecture currently has 166 million posts! Even the most unique content would easily get lost in this multitude, so you need to narrow that down.

Regularly post, share, and comment.

There’s a lot to think about when creating an Instagram marketing strategy. After defining your target audience, you must follow them for a while to see what they like and how they behave. You also need to understand what you’re up against by keeping an eye on your competition. All of that takes time.

The rules of marketing engagement on any social network require you to post high-quality content and do that regularly. Posting once or twice per day should be good enough for an architect. If you don’t have that many projects, you can share other people’s content.

Whatever you do, you must not forget to socialize with your followers.

Instagram is an incredible marketing platform, but first and foremost, it’s a social network. In addition to liking, resharing, commenting, and answering messages, you can also include polls in your Stories. That will help you engage with your audience and learn more about them.

Use analytics to analyze engagement.

We’ve already mentioned tools for social media listening and an Instagram feature called Insights. Both are valuable for tracking your marketing strategy. Insights can show you your target audience, how they use Instagram, and how well your posts are trending.

Analyzing engagement every day allows you to improve your efforts on the go.

For instance, both the social media automation tools and Instagram’s analytical features can help you figure out the times of day when your audience is most active. That way, you can schedule your posts for peak hours and ensure they will get maximum reach.

Work on writing captions.

Instagram captions boast incredible power when it comes to audience engagement. Unfortunately, no one can tell you the right way to write them. Captions must be unique and hit the right notes with your audience to be likable while showing your brand voice.

There are several general rules you should follow when writing Instagram captions:

• The first sentence should be attention-grabbing since Instagram hides the rest.
• An effective marketing caption should include an exciting call to action (CTA).
• A caption should offer tips and tricks or ask questions to increase engagement.

Should your captions be short and sweet or long and story-driven? That depends on many factors.

The best you can do is try both and use analytics to track which approach is trending better.

Conclusion

Ideally, you should be able to market and grow your architecture business on Instagram by using the magnetic power of your work alone. Your talent, skillset, and renders should be able to speak for themselves. Unfortunately, architecture is a highly competitive field.

Instagram marketing requires some time and commitment, but it pays off.

It will take you a few months to set up and improve your business profile and learn what your audience expects to see from you. After that, you should be able to automate everything using a social media tool and go back to doing what you do best – creating brilliant architecture.