With hundreds of millions of daily active users, Instagram is among the finest free tools for engaging your consumer base. Yet you can’t just throw yourself into a posting frenzy and hope to see results. Sure, posting on a frequent basis is vital, but it must be a fragment of a wider social media promotion campaign.
Instagram is releasing tools to help business owners thrive on the photo-sharing social media network, from collecting data to offering services.
It’s never too late to sign up on Instagram and attain popularity. Businesses can advertise services and goods, build their brand, and increase revenue on Instagram with the correct marketing approach. Here’s all you need to know about how to use it to promote your company. The more consumers are aware of your brand on this site, the more confidence you will gain and the more powerful your subsequent promotional strategies will be.
1. Use photographs that look professional.
Instagram is an image-based online community, so posting aesthetically appealing material is essential. Generic images aren’t going to cut it. Take photographs, tweak them, and ensure you’re building an Instagram layout that’s harmonious.
2. Utilize Instagram stories to your advantage.
You can share recorded videos, still photographs, live videos, boomerangs (videos that cycle back and forth), basic text, music, and focused photos on Instagram Stories. You may also use labels to display information like your location, temperature, user tags, and hashtags.
The polls, questions, and sliding bar stickers make it simple to connect with your users and conduct surveys. Some users take advantage of the questions functionality to host weekly Ask Me Anything sessions, which are a brilliant way to get answers to popular topics.
Stories Highlights, which remain on your account until you delete them, are another approach to attracting attention to your company.
3. Share real-time video.
In contrast to Instagram Stories, users may record Livestream videos that vanish, similar to how Facebook Live and Snapchat work together. Through the remarks, you may provide clients with a behind-the-scenes peek at intriguing parts of the company, exhibit items, and address live queries.
The video will stay in your Instagram stories for 24 hours until it expires. You may post a video you’ve recorded or shoot one straight through the app to post if you want it to stay on your Instagram feed. You may still apply filters and modify the header if you capture or submit a video.
4. Engage in conversation with other Instagram users.
It’s critical to engage and communicate with your Instagram followers, just as it is with any other social media network. It entails the following platform features:
Tagging: When you upload something on Instagram, you may add tags. The software allows you to look for the user’s profile by typing in their name. After you’ve tagged other users in a picture and uploaded it, other users may touch the image to see who’s been tagged.
Liking: Liking other users’ posts is an easy way of connecting with them. Double-tapping a photo or tapping the love icon beneath the post will like it.
Mentioning: You could use the “@” sign to tag other people in your Instagram comments or post captions, just like you can on Twitter.
Commenting: A remark icon is located next to the like icon; simply press it to go to the photo’s comment section, which includes a comment box where you may type what you want to say. When you’re finished, click “Post.”
Direct messaging: You may send other users’ personal instant messages, photographs, and videos from here. Tap the Plus icon in the top right corner and pick Send Photo or Video, or Send Message to send a new DM. You and the receivers can message back and forth after you’ve sent the text. Until they can view your DM, those who aren’t currently following you will be asked if they wish to allow you to send them photographs and videos.
5. Using Instagram to promote your business
Businesses can advertise on Instagram, just like they can on other social media platforms. There are three types of advertising formats:
Video ads: These advertisements appear to be ordinary video postings but with a Sponsored label on top, much like the picture commercials.
Photo ads: These photos appear to be normal picture posts, but they have a “sponsored” label above them. It also features a Learn More link under the image in the bottom right corner.
Carousel ads: These advertisements resemble picture ads, except they have many photographs that consumers may swipe over.
Instagram users’ home feeds have all three ad forms. These promotions facilitate four goals: video views; website click-throughs; mobile app installations; and general awareness.
6. On Instagram, you may sell your goods.
Instagram launched the Shop feature in November 2020, allowing users to explore and make purchases from companies from within the app.
Commercial posts that allow consumers to buy products may also be used by small companies to sell things on Instagram. A company just sets up a product catalogue that is linked to their account. The product is then tagged in the same way that a user is tagged in a post. You must have a business profile and sell tangible products that meet Instagram’s merchant agreement and commerce regulations in order to make a commercial post that helps you make the purchase.
7. Make use of hashtags.
Hashtags are a wonderful way to help Instagram customers locate content. Hashtags can comprise letters and numbers, but no non-numerical characters are allowed. #DaveAndBusters, for instance, functions as a hashtag, while #Dave&Busters doesn’t at all.
Appropriate hashtags may be a very successful method for being noticed as users can both search for hashtags and click on hashtags they see in posts in the app. Ensure, however, that you’re utilising the appropriate hashtags for your brand.
On Instagram, hashtags like #nofilter (an image that’s not been severely manipulated with filters), #selfie (a picture of oneself), and #tbt or #throwbackthursday (vintage photographs) are prominent, but they may not be appropriate for you or your company. It’s a good idea to look at other well-known businesses, as well as individual users and bloggers in your field, for hashtag ideas.
A total of 30 hashtags are allowed in an Instagram story or remark, although that many would be overkill. To receive great answers, the fewer hashtags you use, the better. Using a lot of popular hashtags may garner you a lot of likes from other users, but it’s unlikely that you’ll get a lot of followers, and the responses you receive will most probably be from users who may not be interested in your company but just admire your picture.
