5 Keys to Market Your Cannabis Brand with Instagram
If you are reading this, there is a good chance you have struggled to market your cannabis brand with Instagram. Even personal profiles get hit hard with “shadow bans” deleted posts or, even worse, having your account completely deleted. Jeez.
There aren’t many things as frustrating as dumping a bunch of time, energy, and even money into your social media presence only to have the entire thing gone as you were just gaining traction.
The good thing is that there are several things you can do to mitigate the risks of trying to market your cannabis brand with Instagram. Here we tell you what they are.
You might be questioning why you would even want to go down the Instagram rabbit hole and the potential to lose the fruits of your hard work. The answer is simple. Instagram, whether you like it or not, continues to be one of the greatest story telling outlets for any business, but especially cannabis brands.
If we have learned one thing throughout the pandemic it is that technology has been one of the primary ways we connect with our family, our friends, and our products. This means that, not only is your audience going to be on social media, but they are also actively looking to engage with meaningful stories and interactions.
This is why you need social media.
- Get found organically.
- Tell Your Story
- Show off your brand
- Engage your community
As a brand, you have a unique opportunity to showcase your products and, more importantly, tell the world your story and why they should even care. When you do this, people are going to become part of your story.
They are going to know you, trust you, and eventually purchase your product if it fits within their lifestyles and budgets.
Essentially, if you aren’t trying to market your cannabis brand with instagram, you are doing it wrong. Just remember, social media is about building a community, and you need to be a leader in YOUR space and provide value to your community. Do good, and good shall return to you.
2. Understand how you can be found on Instagram
Even seasoned users of social media don’t know all of the ways you can be found organically on Instagram. Here are the big ones to keep in mind:
Account Handle.
Your handle [@yourAccountName] is one of two searchable fields that link directly to your account in Instagram. This should reflect either your business name, or the industry keywords you think someone might use to find you. If your handle matches the search query, you are likely to pop up first. Think about this one.
Name in Bio
Your name in Bio is the second searchable field that links users directly to your account. Again, this should reflect either your brand name or the specific keywords you think someone would search to find a business like yours.
Location tags
People often search for photos by location, so if you are a cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles, for example, you should tag different locations of interest within your geographic area so people searching for those areas might see your post, engage with it, and even head over to your feed to learn more about you and how to find you. Be strategic and think outside the box on this one.
Hashtags
Hashtags are also searched, so think hard about what hashtags represent your brand in a way that people may find you. There are always thoughts on how many hashtags should you use on a post, but Instagram only allows you a max of 30 hashtags. We always recommend you get a few hashtags with large amounts of posts, a few with medium amounts of posts, and several with few posts that more directly target your specific niche. Just make sure you don’t use banned hashtags to promote your account!
Shared Posts
Your goal should always be to create content that people will like, save, and then share to their own accounts. In the cannabis space, this means tagging partnering brands or people who might want to share the content you have created.
As a brand, you have a unique opportunity to showcase your products and, more importantly, tell the world your story and why they should even care.
3. Know how to be successful at Instagram Marketing
- Use Video. IGTV, Reels.
- Create good content
- Research your hashtags
- Write engaging captions
- Tag accounts that might share
- Use location tagging
- Be consistent
- Tell your story
4. How to Avoid Getting Shut Down
You can NOT Sell Cannabis on Instagram.
The first and most important thing when you market your cannabis brand with Instagram is that you can NOT, under any circumstances, say you sell cannabis on social media. Wait, then why would you use social media to promote your brand?
Instagram is your story telling platform, not your sales platform. Understand this now.
Saying things like “Come in and get 10% off on your favorite cannabis product” is a huge no-no because it says to people you sell weed. This will most likely result in you getting the post flagged and removed. And don’t be fooled if it doesn’t happen right away. Something you post may take months to get flagged, and if you’ve continued doing the same things you might get several posts removed in a short period, which can result in you losing your account.
What should you do instead? Tell your story. Why did you get started in the industry? What is unique about your products/brand? Tell a funny story about a day at work or teach your audience about an interesting part of production.
Anything you post on social media should either educate, entertain, inspire, or convince. Just make sure you don’t say you sell anything and you are a huge step ahead.
Beware of Hashtags
The second important thing for using Instagram to market your cannabis brand is understanding how hashtags work. Hashtags are great for getting seen by your potential audience since whoever searches for or follows those hashtags may see your content. But this doesn’t come without a risk to cannabis brands marketing themselves on the platform.
Instagram will ban hashtags if the content being tagged goes against their community guidelines. If you use a hashtag that has been flagged as inappropriate, you are likely to get a shadow ban on your account.
What is a shadow ban? A shadow ban is when your content is no longer visible to accounts that do not actively follow you. While Instagram isn’t forthcoming about this, you can easily tell if your account is shadow banned if you look for your account from a profile that does not follow you. If you are unable to find your account, well…you guessed it. Shadowban.
There are several contributing factors to a shadow ban, according to many reputable resources, and using banned hashtags is definitely one of them. Check the hashtags you intend to use in your post prior to posting.
We like to keep a running list of hashtags used in our posts organized by date so we can check on these hashtags periodically and remove them if they become flagged by Instagram. If you are on any of our social content packages, we do this for you!
Don’t Reuse Hashtags
Going back to the hashtag issue, one of the other contributing factors to a potential shadow ban is reusing the same hashtags over and over. The reason for this is that Instagram is designed to favor fresh, thoughtful content intended to engage the community. Anything that seems like spammy behavior (like copying and pasting hashtags) will contribute to your content getting buried alive because it isn’t fresh, wasn’t thoughtful, and didn’t intend on reaching a unique audience for that piece of content.
We know, it is annoying to do all this work, but if you’re going to put forth the effort to try to make your social media marketing strategy work, it’s worth the effort.
Don’t be spammy.
To elaborate further on what might be spammy, it is anything that didn’t require thoughtful effort to engage the community and fresh content to deliver.
For example, we know that commenting on your target audiences post is a good thing. It creates engagement with your community. But if you comment the same thing on 30 different posts, that is spam.
Or another example: Following (and sometimes unfollowing) accounts within your target audience is also a good idea (they might follow you back), but you are limited to following 200 accounts in a single day. Pushing this edge may definitely come off as spammy, but without a direct statement from Instagram on this issue, we can only guess as to what is spammy behavior or not.
The simple solution? Create high quality content, be thoughtful about your captions and tell your story, make sincere comments on other people’s posts, and don’t copy and paste the same hashtags!
5. Monitor your results
Finally, if you really want to market your cannabis brand with Instagram and be effective, you need to monitor the results.
Instagram provides great analytics that will help you determine who your audience is, where they are, what they like, the best times to engage them, and also provides growth metrics so you can decide what is working and what is not.
Create a spreadsheet to track these important pieces of data over time to help you really know what works. Here are a few things to track from day one.
Audience Insights
Use audience insights to learn about your audience. How old are they, where do they live, when are they most active, what do they like? If your goal is to create meaningful content that either educates, inspires, entertains, or convinces your audience, what better tool can you have than knowledge of who your followers really are.
Content insights
Instagram will give you a detailed snapshot of what pieces of content were most popular amongst your audience (here’s a little hint: it is often some dope video content you made).
Try to find patterns in what your audience likes best. Do they seem to like short, witty captions or long stories about personal topics? Are they more into sports, food, memes, or product information? Create whatever comes naturally from you, what sincerely reflects who you are as a brand and over time you will find the sweet spot between what moves you and what your audience likes. Try to hit 500 pieces of content.
If you have been using your spreadsheet to track these insights, you will have a very good idea of what type of content you need to keep creating. Until then, explore, experiment, and have fun!
Growth tracking
Another important metric is your follow/unfollow rate. When you look at this alongside your content insights, you will likely notice trends with what hashtags are bringing you more growth, what content is bringing people in (or driving them out), and what accounts may have helped most if they share your content.
Working with a multi-state dispensary, we collaborated with a local flower cultivator to take our audience behind the scenes into their grow and processing facilities. The growers shared the content to all of their accounts and we gained 200 followers in a day off of that one piece of content.
Without tracking these metrics or looking into our insights, we may miss the fact that our audience LOVED the video content we created to take them behind the scenes of the industry. Monitor these things.
Conclusion
Developing a clear strategy to market your cannabis brand with Instagram will help ensure you are successful in your efforts. First, be clear on why you should use Instagram and how it can help you grow organically. Then, understand the ways you can leverage the platform to increase your chances of being seen. Know what things we know will help you stand out from the crowd on the platform (and believe us, there are TONS of people on the platform. You need to find a way to stand out). Learn what things you need to avoid to make sure your account is compliant, and monitor your analytics to refine your content strategy and continue to grow!
Follow the community guidelines, create the best content you are capable of, be intentional with your efforts, and provide value to the people you value. It’s a community. Be a valuable part of it.
Lifted Peaks focuses on creating the content you need to stand out, ensure you are being strategic with your social media efforts and, even more importantly, helps you keep your account alive and increase your chances of being seen. Check out our social media packages or reach out to us to discuss how we can help your mission!
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