Since Instagram made its appearance a photosharing app in 2010, it has quickly evolved into the most attractive social media platform for promoting and marketing business. That is evident from the numbers that show more than 25 million companies across the globe are already using Instagram for business. The reason seems obvious because companies gain the most extensive exposure on Instagram as 200 million visitors have a look at least one business profile every day, which confirms Eric Dalius. Facebook is more popular in connecting people with content from social circles like family and friends. But brands are finding Instagram friendlier for promoting business by leveraging its high engagement to achieve business goals with support from a band of loyal followers.
Why Businesses Choose Instagram
Marketing campaigns on Instagram have high prospects of return because not only most Instagram users, almost 80%, follow some businesses on the platform, but nearly 60% of them discover new products or services on Instagram. People take a lot of interest in brands that appear on Instagram and even purchase products on the platform after discovering it. Instagram, too, keeps inviting and embracing businesses by improving its features and making it more business-friendly. From Instagram ads to shopping on Instagram, the features are just also attractive for taking companies on Instagram, believes Eric J Dalius, who outlines the steps to take for using Instagram for business.
Create an Instagram Business Account
You might already be talking about your brand on Instagram by publishing brand-appropriate content for the followers of your personal Instagram account. To use it exclusively for business, you must have a business account. You can either create a new business account or convert your personal account into a business account. Only if you publish brand-related content in your personal account makes sense to convert it into a business account to maintain continuity of brand experience with your followers. Or else, creating a new business account is a better option. Having established the account, develop a strategy for using Instagram for marketing.
Develop an Instagram Strategy
Your Instagram strategy will depend on the target market or, more specifically, on the audience you want to connect with your brand. Besides determining your existing customers, identify who else takes an interest in your brand by looking at your other social media channels’ analytics. Set a value statement for your brand and do some competitor research.
Create your goals that define what you want to achieve and focus on the performance metrics like engagement, awareness, conversion, and customer, which are the stages in the customer journey. The goals must align with any of the performance metrics. To stay connected with your followers on Instagram ensure that you maintain a schedule of posting that meets the expectation of your followers. This will help to keep them aware of your brand without ever losing sight.
Optimize Your Profile
For the best results, optimize your profile by tweaking your bio to accommodate enough information within the small space of 150 characters that echoes your brand voice to convey the brand personality. Include hashtags in the bio to help show user-generated content, and including emojis can help communicate information concisely. To make the bio easy to read, use line breaks and spacing. Complete the profile in all respects by including the website link.
Use the brand logo as the profile picture but maintain consistency across various social media platforms so that people can instantly identify the brand.
Create a visual identity of your brand that makes it easily recognizable. Decide what you want to showcase in the posts, which in most cases, are the business offerings like clothes for businesses of clothing line and food for the restaurant business. To create visuals of services showcasing customer stories is a good option. Decide a content theme, create a consistent visual look with chosen colors and filters, and easily attract aesthetics that catch the eye when followers scroll through their Instagram feed.
Use Amazing Photos
Post great photos to make Instagram work for your business. You can click pictures on your smartphone without the need to hire a professional photographer. For the best photos, use natural light that makes colors richer, shadows softer, and pictures more beautiful to look. Avoid harsh light like the afternoon shots and use different angles to make images more appealing. Use the grid lines of your phone to focus correctly by maintaining a proper balance that makes the photo interesting. Edit the images to retain the aesthetic brand that makes the photos more recognizable.
Use Instagram Stories to Tell Great Stories
Instagram Stories have a vast user base of 400 million people daily user. Almost 40% of them become interested in some product or brand by seeing it on Instagram Stories. Businesses account for a third of stories posted on Instagram Stories. Stories and the feature remain to live for 24 hours and disappear after that, but you can use it later. It gives immense opportunities for grabbing attention with photos and videos. Tell brand stories that have a good structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Insert a strong call to action at the end of the story that converts the stories into views that you can measure. Write compelling captions to make photos more meaningful.
Audience Growth and Engagement
Find the community on Instagram relevant to your brand by engaging with brands and people they already follow. Start monitoring hashtags related to your industry and comment on photos that seem appropriate to make your presence felt. Hashtags make it easier to find content on Instagram as people can search hashtags, and you can create your brand hashtags. Respond to mentions and comments and work with Instagram influencers to gain a loyal and engaging Instagram following.
Find influencers whose followers take an interest in your brand. Even small brands can use micro-influencers to gain traction in marketing by accessing a small but dedicated band of followers. There are many more things to do on Instagram, but doing what has been discussed here will provide the springboard for making a great leap forward.
DepositPhotos – business instagram
