If you run a small business, you probably use social media to promote your business to some extent. Social media is a powerful platform for business owners, and Instagram has emerged on top as far as this aspect is concerned.
If your business is not on Instagram, you are missing out on ample opportunities. Take a look at your competitors. The most successful ones are bound to have a strong Instagram presence. It would help if you placed your footprint there as well.
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Using Instagram For Boosting Your Business
Instagram has become an excellent social media platform for both business and personal connections. If you don’t have an Instagram business account, create one today. But what is the best approach to Instagram marketing? Follow these tips to get started:
Identify Your Target Audience
You want your audience to be customers or potential customers. You can also create a buzz among those who see your post but are not yet into your funnel. Determine who your existing customers are and use analytics to find followers.
Take a look at how your competitors engage their audience. Analytical tools like Instagram Insights, Monitor Instagram and Social Listening provide valuable information on what your audience says about your brand.
Define Your Goals And Objectives
What do you want to accomplish from your presence on Instagram and, more specifically, your business? It would help if you defined a specific, measurable, but attainable goal relevant to your brand, deliverable in a time-bound manner.
Spend time creating content that relates to your company’s goals and objectives. It’s a good idea to integrate your goals and objectives into a single page document with a title like “Our Vision” and post it on Instagram and other social media platforms.
Add Regular Posts
Once you have a presence on Instagram, you need to be visible. The best way to be seen is to add posts regularly. It provides continuity to your brand to your audience – you don’t want them to tune out or even unfollow you.
Pay attention to the time at which you post your daily content. A lot of speculation surrounds the best time to post content on social media. You can get a handle on the best time by checking your posts’ response level at different times of the day.
If your audience is spread across time zones, you need to consider that as well. It will surprise you to know that posting at a particular time every day makes a difference. You will need to find out the best posting time relevant to your industry. One way to grow your account is to use automation, check out this guide: Instagram Automation in 2020: What You Should Know.
Optimize Your Bio
Starting with your bio, and everything else you put on your Instagram posts, you need to optimize. It means that your information needs to be precise and captivating. The content needs to reflect your brand strongly.
Make fair use of hashtags, graphics, and format your content carefully. Check how your profile picture appears, and format it accordingly. And most of all, ensure that all your information is complete, including your name, username, and website link.
Update “category” appropriately and suitably utilize the call-to-action button.
Create Engaging Content
Now comes the exciting and fun part that will keep you busy for a while. You need to add engaging posts with relevant information. Instagram allows you to “promote” your posts by paying a nominal sum – an excellent means of advertisement.
The visuals on your posts should be in line with your brand identity and need to be magnetic. You will showcase your products or services. But you need to add to the value like including customer stories with lots of well-processed photographs.
Adding captivating videos to your posts is also a good idea. You can use a video maker to create professional-looking promo videos that use filters to ensure consistent colors and appealing aesthetics.
Keep Your Audience Engaged
Networking with relevant Instagrammers and influencers is essential to keep your audience engaged. Use the right number of relevant hashtags. People will identify you with the hashtags you use. You can even create your own branded hashtags. Related article: 15 Best Instagram Hashtag Generator Tools (2020).
You need to include a call to action (CTA) in your bio and posts. Engaging your audience has no meaning if you are not clear about what you want them to do. It may be to download an app, buy something, or visit your website. The CTA will guide them.
In addition to the above, here are a few things you could do to keep your audience engaged that are worth mentioning:
- Conduct a “like” and “comment” poll inviting your followers to participate.
- Use promo codes that motivates buyers while providing traceability.
- Create meaningful captions relevant to your brand.
- Respond personally to all likes and comments.
- Organize Instagram campaigns.
- Run Instagram ads which are cheap and effective
Analyze Your Results
If you follow all the tips provided above but cannot quantify your results, the whole exercise is meaningless. You would be working blind, without knowing the extent to which Instagram is boosting your business, if at all.
One of the tried and tested methods of analyzing your Instagram strategies is “A/B” Testing. Here is how it works:
- Decide on one aspect like images, hashtags, captions, and so on.
- Create different versions of the same aspect.
- Monitor how that parameter fares in each scenario.
- Analyze the data to choose the winning strategy.
- Once you have chosen the winning strategy, you can fine-tune it to improve on what you have.
You can avail of several analytical tools that enable you to monitor and analyze the results of promoting your business on Instagram.
Instagram Will Give Your Business A Jumpstart
The exposure that your business will get from being on Instagram is phenomenal. Of course, by simply creating an Instagram business account is not going to do magic for you. You have to spend considerable time and effort in creating relevant content.
To promote your business effectively, you need to follow the tips outlined here. You will be bound to see an improvement in your business prospects once you start projecting your business using this powerful social media platform.
