Using Instagram As A Business

With over 1 BILLION users worldwide, it’s not a bad idea to consider putting your business on Instagram. However, to truly benefit from using the social media platform, you need to know how to use it correctly.

Why should your business be on Instagram?

• As we mentioned before, Instagram has a staggering 1 billion users on its platform, and 80% of those users follow at least one brand on Instagram, with 60% of these saying they’ve found new products or services through the platform. It’s clear people are happy to follow brands on Instagram and these brands are benefitting from these follows.

• Like other social media platforms, Instagram allows you to effectively engage with customers daily. Potential and current customers can comment on your posts, send you direct messages and interact with you in a way that will make your company more visible.

• What makes Instagram stand out from the likes of Twitter and Facebook is that it allows you and your brand many ways to get creative. With its photo-based interface, there’s no limit on the new ways you can come up with to draw attention to your business and show the public your brand has personality.

• Another great reason why you should be on Instagram, it allows you to partner up with influencers which can be seriously beneficial for your business as depending who you team up with, you could reach millions of new potential customers.

We could go through the many reasons why your business should be on Instagram, but we’ll be here all day, by now you should’ve decided whether or not you want to be present on the photo-sharing app and if it’s a resounding yes, read on!

Tips for using Instagram for business

First things first, switch to a business profile. Before you even start posting, make sure your account is an Instagram Business Account as this will allow customers to easily reach you through the contact buttons. You can create Instagram ads without going through Facebook, and you get access to Instagram’s analytics tools which provide stats for each of your posts and allows you to see how they’re performing – this is key to know so you can adapt your content.

Make use of Instagram Stories. As one of the channel’s most popular features, Instagram Stories are photos and videos that disappear 24 hours after you post them. The benefits of using Instagram Stories is that they are prominently displayed at the top of the main feed, meaning they’re the first thing that followers will see when they open up the app. They’re also great for getting your product, services and message across which may sometimes be missed when you post straight to your feed as due to the Instagram algorithm, followers won’t always see your latest post on their feed.

Speaking of Instagram Stories, as we mentioned before, Instagram is one of the best ways to interact with your audience and Stories is a great way to do just this. You can repost images or videos that people tag you in; you can run polls, ask questions and get involved with your followers and potential new followers.

Knowing when to post can make a massive difference to how many people will see it. The consensus is to post before work hours, around midday (when everyone is on their lunch) and evenings from 7pm. If you’re a business to consumer (B2C) company, post on weekends, however, B2B will probably benefit more from just posting on weekdays.

When you’re posting images to your profile, ensure that your images are high quality. Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean hiring a professional photographer every time! All you need is a decent phone camera, use natural lighting to your advantage and edit your photos using photo editing apps (we recommend Afterlight).

Remember those all-important hashtags! When you’re posting, you’re going to want to get the best reach and engagement you can and using relevant hashtags will help with that. When you’re using hashtags, try thinking about what words your target market might be searching and what might be popular on that specific day, for example, #MondayMotivation. Whatever you choose, though, don’t go overboard, we recommend sticking to three to five hashtags per post, so you’re not bombarding your followers with them.

We hope you found these tips useful.

If you want some more help for using Instagram for your business, get in touch with us and we’d be happy to help!

Grow with us.