Instagram journey for a Brand + e-commerce store

Hello guys !

I'm pretty new to all these internet marketing strategies and I just recently joined BHW !
I really want to thank you all for all the amazing content that you share with newbies like me

Let's jump to my journey. I currently have an accessories brand and an e-commerce running.

My struggle has been driving targeted traffic to my e-commerce. I haven't used any paid ads, etc.

I think that Instagram (and Pinterest later) perfectly fits my strategy to drive more customers towards my brand.

I followed a lot of users's journeys here but most of them were not brand but niche related (fitness, fashion, food, travel,etc)

So they just have to scrape pictures of others big accounts and post it and follow/unfollow and they can get a bunch of followers.

As for me, I haven't really find an answer because I don't have a lot of pictures, of course I have my e-commerce products pictures but I think it's really spammy if I only posts those, I prefer posting lifestyle/ambiance photos with my products.

I tried to look at my competitors but they don't have that many pictures too. My competitors that have many pictures created a hashtag and are already well known for users to post their own pictures and then the brand use those users-generated pictures.

But I'm far from this and there aren't a lot of people having my products yet.

So what I lack is content !! I would like to know if you guys have any advices to find a way to have a lot quality content so I could post 2-3 photos/day.

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My current stats using MassPlanner :

26/04 Followers 1517 Followings 2281 (just started unfollowing)

I try to post at least one picture a day but I'm afraid I'll be out of pictures soon !

Thanks all for your help and for those who will follow my journey :gift:

Hey buddy!

First of all welcome to this forum. Very good that you're already taking action! I'm following quite a similar journey as you. I'm also using IG too create an audience and eventually I'll monetize it too with my branded eCommerce store.

As for the content. You're focussing on one account right? Than I would recommend not scraping images but manually posting/scheduling them. Just take a few hours to gather a few hundred images and schedule them. This way you're 100% sure that you will be providing quality content. For a n eCommerce store you really want to have a good reputation. If you scrape images and a bad image gets scraped&posted by accident it can hurt your reputation.

Good luck with your journey and I hope that you will be succesful!

WhatDoesTheFoxWant said:

Hey buddy!

First of all welcome to this forum. Very good that you're already taking action! I'm following quite a similar journey as you. I'm also using IG too create an audience and eventually I'll monetize it too with my branded eCommerce store.

As for the content. You're focussing on one account right? Than I would recommend not scraping images but manually posting/scheduling them. Just take a few hours to gather a few hundred images and schedule them. This way you're 100% sure that you will be providing quality content. For a n eCommerce store you really want to have a good reputation. If you scrape images and a bad image gets scraped&posted by accident it can hurt your reputation.

Good luck with your journey and I hope that you will be succesful!

Click to expand...

Hey thanks man for your support !

But you said taking a few hours to gather a few hundred of images. I would like to know if I post my competitors stylish pictures is it ok since I'm basically their competitor too ?
I don't really get it when you said take a few hundred images. I checked a lot of instagram brand's pages (not niches) and basically it's their product on all the pictures but done in a way that the pictures are HQ and not only their products pictures.

Are you selling one brand on your e-commerce store too ? or several ?

I'm only having my brand that's why I ask this since I don't have a lot of pictures to publish.

ltdisturbed said:

Hey thanks man for your support !

But you said taking a few hours to gather a few hundred of images. I would like to know if I post my competitors stylish pictures is it ok since I'm basically their competitor too ?
I don't really get it when you said take a few hundred images. I checked a lot of instagram brand's pages (not niches) and basically it's their product on all the pictures but done in a way that the pictures are HQ and not only their products pictures.

Are you selling one brand on your e-commerce store too ? or several ?

I'm only having my brand that's why I ask this since I don't have a lot of pictures to publish.

Click to expand...

Well this all depends on your needs. With a branded eCommerce I mean that I'm building a brand for the website, social media accounts and everything. But I'm not selling products from an own brand if you understand what I mean. I just built a brand who sells others' products (dropshipping).

As for your content, you can choose which way to go. Either post a lot of images related to your brands' niche or only post product images. For my journey I'm posting a lot of images related to my brands' niche and once I hit a certain amount of followers I will start promoting products.

Maybe a small tip:
Open up 2 or 3 more IG accounts who are in the same niche as your brand. Let those accounts scrape images from bigger IG accounts in the same niche. Once those accounts have gained a huge amount of followers you can start promoting your products on these accounts too.

WhatDoesTheFoxWant said:

Well this all depends on your needs. With a branded eCommerce I mean that I'm building a brand for the website, social media accounts and everything. But I'm not selling products from an own brand if you understand what I mean. I just built a brand who sells others' products (dropshipping).

As for your content, you can choose which way to go. Either post a lot of images related to your brands' niche or only post product images. For my journey I'm posting a lot of images related to my brands' niche and once I hit a certain amount of followers I will start promoting products.

Maybe a small tip:
Open up 2 or 3 more IG accounts who are in the same niche as your brand. Let those accounts scrape images from bigger IG accounts in the same niche. Once those accounts have gained a huge amount of followers you can start promoting your products on these accounts too.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip ! I was thinking about this too. I think it's too spammy if I do this on my brand account so I will build others accounts in the same niche then promote my products through these accounts

WhatDoesTheFoxWant said:

Maybe a small tip:
Open up 2 or 3 more IG accounts who are in the same niche as your brand. Let those accounts scrape images from bigger IG accounts in the same niche. Once those accounts have gained a huge amount of followers you can start promoting your products on these accounts too.

Click to expand...

+1 to this as it is the key to helping promote your personal brand later. You definitely don't want to look spammy on your main IG account. For content, it would be fine to use the high quality images of your competitors on these other IG accounts. After all, they are just another piece of the pie, right?

For your original brand and content for your Instagram account (and your eCommerce site too!), this is where you have to get creative. It may be too costly up front to hire a professional photographer, but you will get some useful tips on how to best take pictures of your products. Another good source for this type of work for free or at a significant discount is to find local photography students. They are often eager to do this type of work and would be willing to do this for free. You can even make sure that they will get all the photo credits for their images. This works well if you need amateur models to pose for photos. You can post at a local college to students that you're looking for amateur models needed in an upcoming photo shoot.

Be creative with this and try to get as much original content for your moneysite and primary IG accounts. Treat your brand as if it were a well extablished brand. You would be surprised how a single HQ photo can go viral making your products and brand desirable. Be sure to watermark all of your images too.

Good luck with your journey, subbed!

Dawgtown said:

+1 to this as it is the key to helping promote your personal brand later. You definitely don't want to look spammy on your main IG account. For content, it would be fine to use the high quality images of your competitors on these other IG accounts. After all, they are just another piece of the pie, right?

For your original brand and content for your Instagram account (and your eCommerce site too!), this is where you have to get creative. It may be too costly up front to hire a professional photographer, but you will get some useful tips on how to best take pictures of your products. Another good source for this type of work for free or at a significant discount is to find local photography students. They are often eager to do this type of work and would be willing to do this for free. You can even make sure that they will get all the photo credits for their images. This works well if you need amateur models to pose for photos. You can post at a local college to students that you're looking for amateur models needed in an upcoming photo shoot.

Be creative with this and try to get as much original content for your moneysite and primary IG accounts. Treat your brand as if it were a well extablished brand. You would be surprised how a single HQ photo can go viral making your products and brand desirable. Be sure to watermark all of your images too.

Good luck with your journey, subbed!

Click to expand...

Excellent ideas ! I thought about this before, but I never did it ! Asking for students models and photographers could be really good actually ! It's like hairdresser students even paying you to cut your hair sometimes !
I will definitely try to dig into this and try to find photographers. I already have models/friends too and they said they are wiling to do shootings, only thing was that I'm not that good with pictures, so your idea is perfect !!

I used to watermark my image, but it seems pretty easy to remove if people want to. I removed it but will put it again !

Lots of tips for brand owner like me, and it's very nice to see that since it's different than what most people do here with niche but it's still related !

Do you suggest me to buy proxies ? I have like 2 accounts (one personal and one for my brand on my personal phone) and I just created 2 others account that I will build to promote my brand sometimes, using another phone.

But I use MassPlanner and I want to put the 4 accounts that I own on my free VPS (amazon).

Should I go for proxies or 3 accounts that will promote the same brand from time to time is too dangerous ?

Any recommendations if I should go with proxies ?

Well, good luck to ya!