How to promote your business on Instagram
Nowadays, many companies try to find the ways to build communities on Instagram and interact with them in order to boost their sales and brand visibility. In fact, promoting your business on Instagram is one of the most effective marketing ideas. These days, Instagram has over 800 million monthly users, and it’s a great place to market your business.
There are various techniques that can help you effectively promote your business on Instagram. So, where should you start?
1. Create a Business Instagram Account
First of all, you should create a business account on Instagram. This account should be separate from your personal account.
Your business account should not include your personal selfies and any information that is not related to your business. Keep it professional.
Your business posts must show how people can benefit from your business, stories of your customers who are already using your products, the story behind the services you offer. Marketing is all about your audience, and not about you.
The content you post and your commitment will determine how many followers or potential clients you will have from Instagram.
2. Fill Out the Bio page.
Although, many people skip this part, it is very important.
It is crucial to have the right information in your Bio page on Instagram.
It is not so easy, because you have only 150 characters to create a picture of your company. Keep it catchy and interesting. Make sure that it has “the main” information about your company and link to your website. In fact, on Instagram, the Bio Page is the only page that can show your link clickable. That is why do not forget to include your website link, so that people can directly click over to your website or targeted landing page.
Right now, you cannot search Bios on Instagram by hashtags, so you don’t need to include hashtags in your bio. Just short, but most important information about your company.
Use logo or company name as a profile picture, because all of your posts, comments will be accompanied by a thumbnail of your profile picture.
Bio is the last thing people see, before they follow you. When someone wants to Follow you on Instagram, they have to click the “Follow” button on your profile, and they will see your 150 characters bio. Therefore, your bio is very important and it has to make your potential followers see the value they would get if they follow your business.
3. Attract followers
When it comes to followers on Instagram, it is not the number you should care about, but the people.
In order to get people following your business, you have to give them value – great content, interesting story, fun pictures, or any other reason why would they add you to their Feed.
Your posts should not be too pushy, they should not look like hard sales pitches. Your Instagram followers may become your loyal customers, but you have to earn their trust first with worthy content, and without trying “to sell” them all the time.
Here are some of the ways you can use to attract a large number of followers.
-
Post on regular basis.
Post about 5 new images per week, it will maintain your company’s presence on your followers feed, without overcrowding and annoying them. You don’t want to be “too much”.
Analyze your traffic statistics and choose the ideal time for you to publish your posts. Create a schedule and follow it. Some businesses post only late at night, because there’s not much of social media going on during late night hours and the posts may have a better chance to be noticed. Others post early in the morning. You will have to watch your traffic and choose a time for yourself when people are more likely to see your new posts.
-
Make your pictures tell the story.
The pictures you post are critically important. The pictures that worth a thousand words can make a magic.
Ideally, your pictures must tell a story. Instagram, indeed is an image-centric platform. Better your picture is, more likely it will get likes, shares, comments and maybe more “google searches” of your business.
If you try to sell a product for example, instead of posting just your product image, try to post the lifestyle and story surrounding that product. Strengthen your brand by giving people the feelings associated with your product. Give your followers the reasons why they should buy from you, without asking them to buy. Your pictures should show people how would your product make them feel, what would it do to them, how would it change them, without yelling how great your product is. It’s all about them, your audience, here.
The quality of a photo is important too. Instagram automatically formats your images into square. Therefore, try to edit and crop your image before posting, so that you don’t loose a part of it after you post. Your images must reflect professionalism, and quality (just like your business!).
-
Add attractive hashtags
Hashtags can help your post to be easier to find, when searched for certain keywords. Instagram links hashtags by keywords into communities, making your post more visible and searchable. Usually, somewhere between 3 and 5 hashtags has shown the best results. Adding too many hashtags will look messy and not professional.
4. Interact with your followers.
Interacting with your followers is very important. Make sure that you spend some time every day to socialize with your audience, by linking your followers’ comments on your post and replying to the comments.
Interacting with your audience may help you to establish better relationships with your community, convert followers into customers and improve your customer service overall.
You may consider creating a survey or a contest on Instagram. This will allow you to get more engagement and more followers.
5. Engage in affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective approaches to promote your business online. By connecting and working with different bloggers, YouTube users, Instagram celebrities, you have a higher chance to make your company more visible and your brand more recognizable.
Affiliate marketing gives an opportunity for Instagram influencers to earn a commission on each sale they refer to your business, as well as helping you to maximize your brand visibility and sales. Affiliate marketing on Instagram made it possible for businesses work creatively together and influence more people.
If you are trying to make your brand seen by more people, grow a community, that truly relates to your brand, then, you should definitely try to promote your business on Instagram.
Recommended Article: Benefits of Social Media Sites for a Business
