Instagram to grow your business may have been popular as a result of inspirational travel and food photographs, but social media has now evolved to a whole other level. Businesses of all sizes and in every industry have discovered that a large number of potential customers are thumbing through their advertisements at all times – in line, on the bus, and at work. Mobile marketing is critical to your company’s growth.
But don’t take our word for it; check the numbers for yourself. Instagram, which launched in 2010 and was acquired by Facebook in 2012, presently has one billion monthly active users and 700 million daily active users. Of them, 400 million people use Instagram stories on a regular basis and 72% of Instagram users have bought a product or service after seeing it on their feed. With a little math, you can see that slightly over 500 million of Instagram 700 million daily users have made a transaction.
They are searching for your company, but as more stories are uploaded and monthly users increase, individuals are missing 70% of the updates from the people they follow. Part of this is due to a new mechanism (almost identical to Facebook’s) that priorities the material that users “value” the most (as judged by regular interactions with posts). You can’t change the formula, but you can learn how to use Instagram to build your business. This entails getting users to regularly like, follow, and interact with your material.
Grow Your Business on Instagram
It takes time and thought to grow your business on Instagram. To get you started, here are ten steps.
- Post Great & Unique Content-
Instagram is a visual platform, thus catchy photos are essential.
To grab people’s attention, you don’t need to travel to Bali or make delectable pastries, but you do need to focus your efforts on distinctive, high-quality images that are elegantly organized and edited. Free photo editing software can give your photos a professional look that sets you apart from the competition.
- Get On a Consistent Posting Schedule-
People buy goods and services from companies that they (and their friends) believe in. Consistently producing outstanding content is a fantastic strategy to create a relationship with potential clients.
Hootsuite now has free tools for posting to social media marketing, allowing you to schedule daily posts all at once. Pro tip: Figure out what the optimum time is to upload material on Instagram and stick to it.
- Play With Instagram Live & Stories-
These two tools will help you bring your photos to life. While a picture is a quick image, Live and Stories can go further and give your organization the personality it needs. They also allow for engagement through polls and other widgets that provide rapid input and make it easier to find links.
Instagram used to delete stories after 24 hours, but it now has features to organize them on your bio. When E-mail marketing managers and business owners found themselves working from home but still wanted to communicate with customers on a human level, going live for companies became increasingly popular in 2020. Using Instagram Live has a lot of advantages. The most important benefit is that followers are notified when an account they follow goes live. This real-time communication is critical, especially if you want to stand out on the network.
Instagram’s Stories Highlights feature allows you to post even more information about your business. Highlights let you collect those Stories into an easy source of evergreen content by displaying them on your profile after they would normally disappear. Because they will be visible above your grid, begin with the fundamentals, such as:
- About: A few of posts about your values, hours, and brand.
- Highlights or locations per location: If you have more than one place, explain about each one and provide images from each one.
- Customer feedback or social media posts: Repurpose customer feed postings or make a visual that promotes reviews from other sources.
- FAQs: Provide answers to frequently asked questions. You’ll save time when responding to consumers because you’ll be able to direct them to this Highlight.
- Features of the product/service: Make a general one or one for each product or service. Some things are simply too big to fit into a single blog post. This is where you can get into the nitty gritty.
- Tap Into Your Industry’s Hashtags:
Consider hashtags to be road signs directing potential customers to your page. Hashtags organize and present content so that users may quickly identify (and follow) content that is relevant to them. Engagement is higher for posts that have at least one hashtag than for those that do not.
For the best results, use your industry’s hashtags sparingly. You can use up to 30 hashtags per post on Instagram, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Find and select the top ten in your industry, then include them in each post as needed.
- Track Your Analytics
All of your hashtag strategy and Instagram stories posts will be for naught unless you’re also studying the stats.
To see how each post is performing, use Instagram’s analytics tools. Click “see insights” under each article to discover who’s reading your material, how they got there, and who clicked a link in your profile.
The world of digital marketing revolves around analytics. Keep track of your numbers and delegate your tasks to them.
- Bring In Guest Poster or Post To Another Account:
Inviting an industry expert to “take over” your Instagram account (or another account for the day) can add diversity and excitement to your account.
Consider a medical account that invites a seasonal specialist for a Live chat, or an architect who conducts a walking tour of New York City architecture to their followers.
- Host a Giveaway
Everyone enjoys receiving free gifts. Even if you don’t sell things, collaborating with another account to hold a giveaway (or coming up with your own innovative giveaway) might help you gain new followers and friends.
Hosting a giveaway is one of the best ways to expand your Instagram account naturally. Free things is something that people enjoy even more than a good sales automation. Depending on how you structure the gift, you might be able to get more post engagement. Add conditions such as saving a post, commenting on a post, or forwarding it to a friend in addition to encouraging people to follow your account. Small businesses can benefit from Instagram contests since they are low-hanging fruit. You can also collaborate with other small businesses with a similar target audience to increase brand exposure. Of course, this technique should not be your exclusive social media strategy. Beyond organizing prizes, give your new fans further reasons to stick around.
- Offer “Followers Only” Promotion
To attract new followers, offer discounts on services, free consultations, or any other incentive (and keep them engaged). The opening sentence of your caption is what draws people’s attention and determines whether they continue reading. You should double-check the rest of your caption after paying attention to the initial line. With Instagram’s latest addition of keyword search, what you write in your caption is more crucial than ever. You used to be able to be cutesy or stylized with your words, and while you can still do so, you should make sure you’re using terms that you want others to associate with you. This could include your brand and product names, as well as broad terms linked to your business sector, similar to basic keyword research.
- Be Attentive
Don’t just post something and then walk away. Answer questions, respond to comments, and “like” what your followers say to engage with them. This is an important component of connection building, yet many brands overlook it.
It’s also worth noting that social media is a two-way street. Also, like and comment on the stuff of your followers.
- Geotag Your Posts
When posting from your small business’s actual location, include the name of the location. You can go back and modify previous posts if you didn’t do so when you first posted.
Instagram to grow your business compiles all of the posts tagged at that location, sorting them into top and recent. Your brand photos live among customer photos. The “View Information” towards the top links to information about the tagged business. All of this adds up to brand awareness and helps customers research your business.
Other hashtag techniques for Instagram to grow your business are as follows
- Including a clickable hashtag in your Instagram to grow your business is a good idea.
- To stay up to date, follow the hashtags for your industry.
- To prevent cluttering your image, use hashtags as the first comment in your post.
- Use both “big-hit” and more specialized hashtags (if you have a lot of followers) (fewer but more focused followers who are more likely to be looking for your exact services).
- Embedding hashtags in your Instagram stories is a good idea.
- In every post, include your customized hashtag.
- Spend some time researching the finest hashtags for your business and using them on a regular basis.
