No. 2 Instagram strategy for Bakery and Cake makers
If you are a sweetilicious cake maker, then you should definitely have an Instagram Business account. But, having an Instagram account is not enough. Having good engagement is the key. I repeat, the key to a good business is having customers and prospective customers to keep engaging with your content. Just posting pictures with no relevance is not gonna benefit you much but, the right strategy will. I will list out some significant points that you can use to build your business stronger. If you run a bakery and a cakeshop, this is just for you.
Upgrade your Instagram Bio to an exquisite level
Make sure you have a wonderful bio. Your customers and fans do tend to visit your profile a lot than you can expect. Having a wonderful bio do keep your fans on their toes. How you can improve your bio? Keep it simple or complicated, but make sure to display your brand or your personality in those words. It can be humorous, interesting, intriguing and colourful.
You should definitely use some of the emojis and symbols wherever possible. Add some of your relevant links in the bio and tag your personal account if you want to display who is running the brand to your fans. Add a branded hashtag that you created just for your own sweet business.
You can change the font in your bio as well. To do that, check out the links below.
Image for reference >
Note: Make sure you are satisfied with the font before confirming your changes because Instagram doesn’t allow to change your username more than twice within 14 days. To change the username again, you can do so after 14 days.
If you have multiple links to display, you can also use the Linktree Service (Snapshot below) . Here’s the link to their service: Linktree
Some examples of good bio description for your reference. Do give their page a visit for sweet-filled treasures 🙂
Sweet Instagram accounts from India :
Perfect Captions to go with your product.
If you are putting a post online and there is no caption, then it will lack a soul. Your caption should encapsulate the meaning of the picture being posted. We have already created a post on ” The art of writing a perfect caption every single time on Instagram“. Check this article to write beautiful captions that can go along with your posts.
Do not forget to tag people whom you are delivering the cake to drive good engagement.
First impression(s) definitely matter for your audience
Instagram is a visual medium and people come there for the warmth of their eyes. Being noticed in the crowd is the first step to gain attention. Your pictures need to tell major part of the story that you are going to weave. Being said that, DO NOT POST PICTURES which are IRRELEVANT to your business. You may end up losing some of your followers if they find your account to be deviating from the topics that they actually followed you for.
I cannot emphasise more on the fact that good pictures are a must for good resonance with your actual sweet creation. The basics of photography is always about lights, backdrop and subject (your cake in this case). You can invest some money to get some accessories for the setup to set a beautiful background for your cake to be the centerpiece. If you are creative enough, you can use the household things for creating amazing setups as well.
Here are some beautiful tutorials how to take beautiful pictures of your cake: 1. Expert Photography 2. Sally’s Baking Addiction 3. Pretty Witty Academy
I have included some videos that you may find useful.
Value the engagement more than anything
If your fans and customers engage (like, comment, share, save, etc.) more with your content, it will make your business flourish more. If you are a believer of having a good following over engagement, then let me tell you that your efforts of expanding the business through Instagram will be in vain. Target your activities more on engagements as better engagement will lead to better following anyway.
There are various engagement rate for various amount of reach or follower count. Here’s an Engagement calculator to check your engagement rate.
Engagement rate of 8% or more is considered a good rate.
Engagement rate of 5.5% and above is considered performing very well.
Engagement rate of 2.4% and above is considered performing very well.
Engagement rate of 2.1% and above is considered performing good as per average industrial standards.
Engagement rate of 1.7% and above is considered performing very well as per average industrial standards.
Engagement rate of 1.2% and above is considered performing good as per average industrial standards.
Content is the KING
Best content grabs the eye of your customers. Instagram provides you with multiple ways to post content on its platform (viz., posts, stories, reels, videos, IGTV, carousel posts, Ads, etc.).
Utilise stories to the maximum as Instagram users are getting more interested in people’s lives and 24 hours of visibility makes the content look fresh and updated. So leverage Instagram Stories. Want an easy way to make Instagram Stories? Use Canva.
We have been using the Free elements in Canva for almost all our graphic editing needs. Here’s the link : Canva (Disclosure: the link contains a referral id).
We have also created a Free Resources Mega list if you are interested. It contains a long list of stock photo sources, illustration sources, stock video sources, etc.: Free resources that you can use for growing your business to an exceptional level.
If you are on Pinterest and want to know much more, we have created a Pinterest board for cake makers and bakery owners: Here’s the link to the board: Getmarketingfit on Pinterest – Instagram strategy for Bakery and Cake makers
Hashtags that increase reach
Hashtags’ prime functionality is to help index your content. I won’t bring complex jargons here to confuse you. We have made a kickass tutorial for that. But how to choose the best hashtag?
Use our FREE Hashtag Generator(Check out our Menu Bar button on the top with the name – ‘ 
Hashtag Generator ‘ .
Click the button below on how to find the best hashtags for use on Instagram. In short, the hashtag strategy suggests to use relevant hashtags related to content only, location based hashtags, product based hashtags (for e.g. chocolate cake), and brand-based hashtags. The Hashtag generator will help you see the actual no. of times a particular hashtag has been used on Instagram and it only contains the top 30 hashtags.
Sponsored Ads help increase reach
There are ways to reach organic growth to a very good level but with sponsored ads, you can accelerate this process. If you build your cake making business on Instagram the organic way simultaneously with Ad promotions, the results are explosively amazing. We have tried this approach with our clients and we surely know it works. We know that budget constraints pull you down to go the extra mile and approaching an Ad agency for the same might push many of the small cake shop owners off the edge. That’s why, we made a simple tutorial for you to run your own ads without any ad agency’s help. Make sure you optimise the ads along the way. You can click the button below to know how to run ads.
We have been working with some cake business owners and one of them is Saira’s Kitchen. Here’s her profile: @sairaskitchen.in .
She is an amazing baker who turned the sweet business into a huge success by working her plans out in this pandemic.
You can check her profile for amazing treats that she bake.
She has increased her followers from 250ish to 1.5K+ in a period of 3 months.
Most of her success is from her consistent efforts to post content and of course, making delicacies. We tested out various hashtags for her cake posts together with bakery items posts on croissants, cookies, variants of cakes and pizza. The organic growth was pretty much overwhelming and she performed very well. Now she’s a proud entrepreneur with amazing cake making skills.
Note: This is not a paid promotion, but an appreciation mention of one of our early acquaintances.
Consistency is the game
Without consistency of posting content on Instagram regularly is a huge NO. Not because I am telling you, but because it is true. Followers expect you to post regularly and consistently. I have seen people posting content regularly, with the same vigour every day. They reaped the benefits as well.
Consistency is the biggest challenge in the organic growth and you have to take care of it wisely or else you will lose traction of your engagements. Creating content in advance is the best way to tackle this challenge. Do not publish any of your posts without a caption. Even though Instagram is a visual medium, some people do read your caption. They love the story behind the picture. So , give them a compelling story.
Everyone needs proof
A business with the proof of success works wonder. If people invest something, they need returns. So, give them one. Add testimonials to your Instagram Stories and tag your customers on the posts. Customers also feel involved in helping you to grow and if they like it, they will oblige to write you a testimonial. Leverage word-of-mouth(WOM), as WOM is still one of the most important marketing growth hack that can never be replaced. So, show your potential customers why you are the most liked cake maker out there.
Get a bakery website of your own
Once you manage to grow your business, you can invest some decent amount to get a website of your own where you can showcase the cake designs, testimonials from your clients and even go the e-commerce way to let customers buy directly from your website. If you do want to check out some bakery website designs, check this link for 62 Bakery website designs by ColorWhistle : Click here for – Bakery Website Design Ideas and Inspirations
If you are unsure whether to invest money to get a website, you can try Free website creation tools like WordPress.com, Wix.com, Google My Business and many more.
If you are wondering why ‘No. 2 Instagram strategy …’ as the title then the answer is simple; there will be no single way to get the best results. The best will come out from your own experimentations. So keep experimenting to get the best results 🙂