27 Digital Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business Using Instagram
Everyone seems to be on Facebook these days from teenagers to the elderly. It has truly changed how we interact with one another. As everyone is using Facebook this has been a dream for marketers but it has also lead to a large amount of younger user to flee to other places.
Where are they now? Instagram.
Instagram has over a billion owners now and it grows everyday. This means that if your business is not on Instagram, you’re not just missing a trick, you’re missing out on communicating with a vast army of potential brand advocates who will share your postings with friends and family on their favourite social media platform
Get started with 9 of our 27 Tips On Growing Your Business Using Instagram
- Instagram recognises the value it can bring to businesses and has rolled out some powerful, business-specific features to make it easier than ever to build your Instagram company profile.
- The first step is to register a business profile on Instagram with the following:
a. Profile photo – use your company logo as your profile photo as this will allow your brand to be easily identified by followers.
b. Account Name – this should be your business name and should be the same name as you use on your other social profiles like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
c. Username – again, use your company name, but be aware that Instagram’s usernames cannot feature any spaces.
d. Website – because this will be the only clickable link featured on your Instagram page, this needs to be a link to your website’s Home Page or to your latest promotional page. Don’t worry about choosing the wrong link as it’s quite easy to change the link using the “Edit Profile” feature.
e. Bio – capture the attention of Instagram users by featuring your brand’s slogan as well as describing your business and products. Explain who you are and what you do and add specific keywords that will target your niche audience. It’s also a good idea to provide your audience with a way to get in touch with your company.
- Remember at all times that marketing is about the audience, not about you, so you need to create Instagram posts that users will want to follow. We are hard-wired to prefer images over text, so the information you want to give your audience needs to be visual to grab their attention.
- Avoid the “hard sell” as this could annoy Instagram users. You need to post some great visuals of your products without droning on about how great they are. Images enable viewers to make their own purchasing decisions without feeling under pressure from you to buy.
- Product photos are one of your most powerful marketing tools on Instagram, so make sure they’re creative images provided by a professional photographer. Product photography is a specific expertise and you need to hire a photographer who can tell a story with each image. All product images should be high quality and high resolution so that your products are looking their best for their Instagram debut.
- Instagram’s format will automatically make your images square within a 612 x 612-pixel frame, so you need to consider this when creating and choosing photos to make sure that nothing important gets cropped out.
- You don’t need millions of followers to be successful on Instagram – you just need the right followers. Start small and establish relationships by engaging with users on a one-to-one basis. Follow your followers, follow other brands that are relevant to, but not in competition with your business. Follow brands that your followers follow too.
- Tap into niche communities by using hashtags. Hashtags act as a search function on Instagram to find relevant followers and brands, so harness the power of the hashtag and make it work for your business.
- Rather than taking on “crowded” hashtags (such as #beauty, or #hair), think about smaller, niche hashtags (such as #weddingmakeup, or #unicornhair) which can be used to stand out from the crowd. On Instagram, niche and detail are effective in targeting the right people who are looking to buy the type of products you sell.
