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If your business is not on Instagram, I bet you are missing some important factors for your business!! It is better to have a good reason to sell any kind of physical product and recognize your brand. And the Instagram account does it for you.
Gone are the days where people are too busy watching television and reading newspapers. In the current era, social media outlets have also become popular to ignore. And it has become a companion for people wherever they go. The same goes for the buyers too. They can make their product travel along with them through these platforms, especially through Instagram.
Importance of Instagram for your current business realm
With over 1 billion active users in a month, Instagram has been the most popular social media platform. Many businesses have been starting to note it to keep themselves affixed in the platform to grab more audience.
When many social media platforms are available, why choose Instagram?
If this is your question, the enlisted words will clear your doubt.
- Audience love to hear stories, and Instagram is great at it
- Visual content in Instagram adds weightage to your marketing strategy
- Instagram marketing tips spread your brand to an unbelievable mass of people
- Instagram’s feedback and testimonials seem to be a goldmine for businessmen
- Instagram paves a great way to spy your competitor’s moves
You, as a businessman, might have heard tons of stories relating to why Instagram is good for business. But, how can you explore more knowledge about it without trying or wasting your time?
Businesses have started reacting more to the rapidly growing platform. You might have noticed that around 90% of the top brands have accounts on Instagram. If you are a newbie to this platform or are looking to better your existing Instagram, this blog covers how to use Instagram for marketing!
We have put together the top tips and tricks to promote your business on Instagram. Now, we can also have a quick view of how to create an Instagram business account. When you are too late to create a business account on Instagram, remember every day is a new opportunity.
Let us dive into knowing more about the tips and tricks in promoting your business on the Instagram platform.
Top 9 ways to promote your business on Instagram
Hardly over the years, no one would have expected the growth of Instagram. Being the young, immature Facebook sister, Instagram has become a business hub for both small, medium, and large businesses.
Many businesses have adopted and started adopting Instagram as one of their main revenue-generating tools. Now, unbelievably, Instagram has around 2 million advertisers and 25 million business profiles.
As per Pew Research Center, 42% of the Instagram users live in urban areas, 34% of the users live in the suburbs and around 24% of users in the country. Added, about 39% of women adults have been using Instagram, and 30% of adult men are added to the list too. So, in this equally split platform, businesses have been leveraging multiple thoughts to increase their brand visibility and lead generation.
The enlisted 9 Instagram marketing tips will give you lessons that have also been followed by big spenders, including Nike. Those brands have killing ways to promote business on Instagram. Let us dive into those actually-working ways to promote your business on Instagram.
A business account gives you an initial kick
Creating a business account is the foremost factor to consider before giving a kick-start to your business.
How to create an Instagram business account?
Creating an Instagram business account is your cakewalk. According to Instagram, around 200 million people discover new business accounts daily.
Creating a business account on Instagram helps you provide more details about your brand, product, and other essential information. Why not add in that list and showcase your brand to your target audience?
Let’s start to unveil more about Instagram for business tips.
For new users
If you are a new user, then follow the below steps to create an Instagram business account.
Step 1: Download the Instagram app and install it in your device
Step 2: Once the app is installed, sign up to create an account
Step 3: Enroll all the details necessary for your business profile
Step 4: Once done, you can go to the settings page and select switch to a business page
Step 5: After switching to the business account, fill out your brand details and other essentials
Step 6: Everything is done, and your business account is ready to go! Start posting and increase your brand visibility
For Existing users
If you are an existing user, go to the settings page -> edit profile -> switch to the business account. As simple as that.
Pro Tip: When you are asked to link your Facebook page, try to avoid it. As you want to make it professional, linking your Facebook friends will not help you.
Instagram has become a part of our lives. And for many businesses, it has become the savior. Yet, many businessmen are searching the answer to their question,” How to use Instagram for marketing.”
Create a short and snappy bio
When you have successfully created a business account, the next thing to focus on is your bio. Your bio should quickly glance at your business in a concise and catchy way. In short, you have to summarize your business with an image with the hope to present it.
For example, you can glance at multiple top business brands’ bios. They would shortly narrate their whole business in two to three lines. You can make your opening sentence with your brand philosophy. It helps you more than anything.
Include the backlink to your site in your bio
When you are sure to mention your physical location, then be sure to add the backlink to your site. It may help your audience to reach out faster.
Instagram is a bit anomaly, as it doesn’t work with links in the app. So, you cannot include hyperlinks in the posts. Instead, you can use the bio link app to include a backlink to your site.
Try to add it in your bio and check whether the link directs the audience correctly to your target page. It can be any page, including your newest product, main page, or your blogs too.
Pick up the apt username and photo that illustrates your brand/product
When you pick up a business name, check out the same username as many social profiles with the same name are available.
Ideally, when you pick up the same name coinciding with your business name, pick a handle, and make a slight variation. It can be anything using underscores, abbreviations, or slight variations. But, keep it as close as possible with your brand name.
You can use your brand logo, your products’ mean, or even your team in terms of the photo. Irrespective of the image, it is necessary to depict your brand in the picture. It is more important.
Know more about your audience
No matter what you manufacture or provide, it is necessary to grab the right audience for your Instagram account. When you impose the right Instagram content, it will appeal to attracting your target buyer.
So, what is the purpose of using Instagram marketing tips? If you are intended to increase lead generation alone, even a WordPress popup plugin will do.
But, on Instagram, you need to invest your time in understanding your audience. Take time to find out your audience and study them more. Since you have been using Instagram to promote your brand, you need to consider their thoughts and expectations. You can make use of a social media marketing panel which will help in increased customer engagement. Follow the enlisted Instagram business marketing tricks and facts to know more about your audience.
Ask directly in the feed
In marketing, many marketers would not prefer to ask questions directly to their followers. But, asking questions may help you to unlock and understand your audience much better than the tools.
If you never ask, you will never know. So, Instagram polls seem the better option to make your doubts clear. When you need to understand your audience’s mindset, you can go behind in conducting Instagram polls. It will help you to land on one common solution rather than be confused with a bunch of ideas. It also helps you to keep your promotions on the right track.
Use a listening tool
While using Instagram Insights, you can get the expected results of your followers. But, what to do to grab the attention of your new visitors?
Here is a listening tool.
Social listening will help you to understand your audience through their social media conversions. So, it is essential to rely on the best Instagram listening tool. As a tip, the listening tool is available for every social media platform we ought to use.
If you aim to attract new Instagram users, you need to know what makes them stick to your profile. Monitor Instagram for keywords that may matter to you in this case. You can have a look at the hashtags to use and the keywords to keep an eye on.
Metrics love is always important
Whether it is a website, blog, or social media platform, metrics, and keyword love never fade. It is necessary to keep an eye on the keywords and hashtags we wish to focus on.
Determine what you ought to monitor
Many marketers have been investing their time in potential directions to understand the Instagram strategy.
No doubt! It is not a beating around the bush concept. Instead, the reality will put forth all your efforts. But, everything goes in vain when you fail to add efficacy to that list. As you go along with the Instagram strategy, you need to pay more attention to the goals and build your platform from scratch.
It will likely help you to pick some keywords and metrics to monitor. If your goal sways along with your Instagram growth, then you can focus on the number of likes and followers for your page. You can also focus on increasing your brand’s sales as getting several likes and followers seem apart from this concept.
Thus, when you wish to enter into the world of social media analytics, be sure to know more about your goals and focus on your research. It will help you meet the metrics goal sooner.
Try Instagram Insights
You might have heard more about Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights. As the owner of Instagram, Facebook has introduced a similar tool to help its users gain an image network.
Through Instagram Insights, you can get complete information about the people following and interacting with your account. Instagram insights include,
- Impressions
- Reach
- Website clicks
- Video views
- Follower activity
- Saves
Added, you can also get demographic information about your audience. When you use this information effectively, you can clearly understand your audience and make posts accordingly.
Use tracking tools to measure your growth
After the successful determination of your goal, it is time to track your growth so far. You can leap a step forward and rely on tracking tools to know your exact position. It is not necessary to delve into paid tracking tools. You can also go for free analytics tools. Here are some tools listed for your convenience.
Use the listed marketing tools effectively and track your growth instantly.
- Owlmetrics
- Iconosquare
- Sprout Social
- Keyhole
- SquareLovin etc
With the help of the listed Instagram marketing tips and the analytics tool, you can understand the Instagram strategy for your business profile. Use it correctly to connect with your customers and take your brand image to new heights.
P.S. Here are some of the best social media management tools that can help with the growth factor!
Voice out with influencers for your brand
While taking a unique approach for your brand, you can promote business on Instagram and share partnerships with their followers. Recently, I have come across my favorite lunch spot named SweetGreen. They pride themselves in serving local and organically sourced ingredients from farmers and trusted partners.
They showcase their business decisions on an online platform and demonstrate them in an obvious way. The post is relevant, well-crafted, and raises awareness for incredible things. This seems to be a golden value for its customers.
Collaborate with your influencers
Influencers seem to have come a long way. Whether you are trying to build your Instagram platform, you need their support to reach a broad audience.
To do this, do research again. Keep following the influencers who have been related to your brand. You can also keep a note of the below-enlisted things.
The right influencer will,
- Have a suitable audience base
- Be vocal and visible to the industry
- Have the power to motivate and influence their follower’s decision
This is why they are called influencers. Just having a huge fan base is not essential. The power to influence their followers’ decisions is what a marketer actually expects from a good influencer.
Share for share
When a group has been in search of influencers, there is a certain category of businessmen searching for a new route. At times, we always do not need influencers to do our brand promotion. Instead, you can reach a new audience in exchange for shares, comments, or links.
Before working with them, figure out what you can offer to them. It is not limited to Instagram alone. You can exchange links to their blog posts too. Make it more productive and beneficial to both ends. If you have a new Instagram page, thrive in the Facebook community.
Focus on people-centric posts
As a primarily visual medium, Instagram has been complementing the marketing ideas of Facebook and Twitter. No hype!! It is a fact.
Usually, images and top-quality stories will grab your audience’s attention more than other links or debates. Added, Instagram has a high shareability rate with stunning graphics. It helps to bring up the audience under the sales funnel.
Role of top-quality visuals
As Instagram has arguably become the most visual social media platform, you can keep your account successful and engaging with visuals. You necessarily do not produce the visuals. Instead, make it cohesive to change your photos into a well-lit image with high quality.
Some basic rules for excellent Instagram visuals are compiled below.
- Lighter images are more successful and are likely to get 24% of likes compared to dark photos
- Make your background space more so the photos seem less busy and receive 29% high likes
- Images with dominant color tone will receive 17% more likes
Apart from these, do not forget to experience the benefits of filters. Photos ‘on the fly’ may become mediocre at first sight. Instagram’s filter helps in transforming your image into the most attractive piece to get users to take action on it.
Follow the 20/80 rule of selling
Ideally, your Instagram posts and account must drive traffic to your website. In the end, it also has to contribute to the lead generation platform. Your focus must not dedicate to selling your product alone.
According to the general rule of marketing on social media, only 20% of your posts must promote or sell your products. The other 80% of your posts must concentrate on satisfying your audience and engaging them with a good feed.
While following the 20/80 rule, you can exactly feel the difference between forcing and promoting your brand to the audience. You can use this rule effectively and showcase your offerings or products to avoid blatant advertising tone.
Use extremely credible hashtags
Hashtags in popular social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram help you organize and categorize your images accordingly. Hashtags seem the simplest way to tag your content and make it easy for others to find it.
Hashtags have been categorized under generic and specific or branded hashtags. As it seems to be the main thing to consider, it has become a mandatory one on your business’s Instagram marketing.
If you want people to find your content, then use hashtags accordingly. Here are a few hashtag concepts to keep in mind.
- Do not overdo it
- Avoid overused tags
- Do not spam
From here, we let our eyes into the types of hashtag categories available for your posts.
Pro Tip: An additional tip for running a business on Instagram: While posting, Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags. It is not necessary to use all 30 hashtags as it may make your post look spammy. Make sure to use the right hashtags to catch the attention of your audience.
General Hashtags
Hashtags depend on the content of an image. Frankly, you can keep your posts as broad as possible. But, when you go for broad images, they will hardly get noticed by your audience.
Instead, try something niche-based. Niche hashtags are popular in Instagram marketing and increase your chance of attracting more new audiences. If you want to be more creative with your brand and hashtags, then use the general yet niche-based hashtags to find the right people.
Branded Hashtags
If you are about to launch a new product under your brand, a branded hashtag takes its role. You can use it during contests, influencer shoutouts, or new product launches too.
Branded hashtags seem to be specific tags that apply only to your brand. In that case, you can use something special along with your brand name to turn out the product launch or the contest into a successful one.
Those hashtag types are easily trackable and are easily reachable too. So, it gives a dual benefit to the marketer. You can have a note about the reach of your brand hashtag among your target audience. If you are using it for a campaign, you can calculate the campaign’s success through hashtag reach.
Be an active member
Irrespective of the social media platform, being active seems a predominant one to engage your customers at their peak. At the same time, do not have an excuse to spam your followers with sales material.
It is vital to engage your followers with good feed as possible. When you are active in providing vital posts, you will get more users to comment and share your content. Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes the content with high engagement.
Keep an eye on the enlisted factors to increase customer engagement when you are active on your Instagram account.
Share their images
When you are working hard to build your followers, you need to get appreciation from them. Nowadays, you will get an appreciation when you offer one. So, make your appreciation to your followers or other influencers through sharing or commenting on their posts.
It helps you to build a better image for your brand. You might have come across the Swiss watchmaker SEVENFRIDAY. They would literally ask their fans to share their photos wearing their watches on holiday or on any other weekend.
Once collected, they would turn those images into marketing. They would put those images in their online store as an inspiration or testimonial to other potential buyers. Being active in this way matters a lot to improve your brand visibility and credibility.
Know when to post
A recent poll found that the best time to post on Instagram is between 7 to 9 PM. So, here is the loop. Why not try to post your content at this time and go your A/B testing today?
But, do not just rely on those polls too. If your A/B testing goes well, then make it routine. If not, sit and research your audience’s high engagement time. Instead of being active all time and posting, make your posts valuable with a high engagement rate.
Here are a few Instagram marketing tips to make your posts highly engaging.
- Aim for non-working hours (lunch and evenings)
- Post more during weekends
- Wednesdays and Thursdays seem more engaging than Friday
- Avoid posting during 3-4 PM
In order to have a keen watch on your engagement rate, as said before, you can rely on Social Media Listening tools.
Conduct frequent fun-filled campaigns
The best way to increase customer engagement is to ask for it. Yes, you read it right! Ask for it through contests, campaigns, and other giveaways. It is one of the simplest ways. People always love to chase the chance to respond to a little healthy competition that goes a long way.
Easy Instagram contests include,
- “Caption this image”
- “Share a time when … “
- “Share your thoughts on how this image feels.”
Ask your audience to turn up with some creative answers for the above said general contests. You can share the best responses.
Other than contests, there are two more factors to give a fun-filled experience to your audience. Continue reading.
Share sales and discounts
Beyond the content curation topic, subtly, you need to promote business on Instagram and build a lifestyle story that actually suits your brand. As Instagram is a great place to share your current sales statistics and promotions, use it wisely without any excuse.
You can mention your sale or promotion through image captioning. Similar to the image, you can overlay with text that describes your brand. Do not forget to put a direct link to your bio or to your website.
Use promo codes in contests to drive engagement
When you cannot place the link in the image, give users the information they need. The information formally includes what they can buy, where to buy, and why they should buy.
So, the one answer for these can be given through “Promo codes.” Using promo codes in contests gives you an amazing return. Promo codes seem perfect because of easy tracking. When someone buys a product using your Instagram promo code, you can easily keep a note about the source of the sale.
Contests always serve as a function for your followers to do some promotional work. You can mention your brand name in their photos and make them more promotional. In return, your contest can feature a free gift or promo codes for their purchase.
Stick towards free Instagram marketing tools
Instagram and its tools have been leveraged at a faster and more good pace. Every update and tool listing on Instagram helps you to do more. Instagram helps you to beautify your photos, track performance, and stay ahead of your competition.
Though there is a pool of Instagram marketing tools, you can stick to a few tools that add weight to your Instagram marketing.
Use editing tools to make your photos more attractive
Posting more appealing photos on Instagram is not a big deal. Hopefully, you can use the editing tools that help you to have an idea about changing the background. It will also help you to determine the overall look of your Instagram feed.
Check out for more options on your Instagram. There are muted pastels, vivid brights, or desaturated neutrals. Make use of the editing tool irrespective of your color palette. It will make your image blend together with increased cohesiveness.
Use Instagram analytics for a better understanding
Instagram has a suite of business tools, apart from editing tools. The business tools handshakes with the businesses to get a better understanding of their account and its performance. Instagram Analytics is one such tool that includes account insights, impressions, reach, profile views, website clicks, call clicks, and email clicks.
Instagram Analytics is available for every business account though you do not pay to advertise. Many Instagram marketers have been using this tool to understand the demographics and build a brand strategy.
Promote Instagram Handle on website
There might be a huge number of people that are unaware of your Instagram presence. Hence to create awareness about it, you need a smart technique to promote your Instagram feed handle. And this is where the strategy to embed an Instagram feed on a website comes to the rescue. It creates an integration between your website and your Instagram handle, enabling your website visitors to find your handle and follow you on the platform.
Now, it’s your turn to boom your Instagram presence
Instagram is a young, hot, and fast-growing social media platform. Successful advertisers have surrounded it. With the promotional tips and tricks discussed here, a business person can cater to many ideas to increase customer engagement and brand visibility.
With a whole section of dedication, Instagram has already been a hub for businesses to improve their credibility and sales ratio. The tidbits of information and your business’s promotional ways will get you off to successfully start your business account. Dig more about your brand and your audience. It will help you to grab this opportunity and increase your presence on Instagram.
Leap a step forward to undergo the actionable tips mentioned to promote your business on Instagram.
FAQs
Is Instagram free for businesses?
Business profiles on Instagram have free features to enjoy. It would become a noteworthy social media platform to get recognized by their audience and resembles a base for their promotions and brand visibility.
What is the difference between the creator and business accounts on Instagram?
Creator and Instagram’s business accounts differ in labels. Creator gives high flexibility to have huge labels to the users’ brand. At the same time, Instagram’s business account gives you the label that you have been labeled on Facebook
What are the 5 promotional strategies for business accounts on Instagram?
In order to improve your brand visibility and credibility, follow the enlisted Instagram tips and tricks for business.
- Avoid being too salesy
- Attract followers with likable posts
- Partner with social influencers
- Use hashtags effectively
Try to add high-quality content and images
Can you have 2 Instagram accounts?
Having multiple Instagram accounts is possible. But, at a time, you can be logged in into a single account. You can add your multiple accounts to your device and log into your account simultaneously.
How do you get approved to sell on Instagram?
In order to sell your products on Instagram, follow the steps below.
- Use the latest version of the Instagram app
- Convert your account into a business account as demonstrated above
- Be an admin of the page or the account you ought to manage
- Have a product catalog associated with your Facebook account
Now, you can sell eligible products, physical goods meaning no services
