You’ve probably seen the power of Instagram by now. In the social media world, it is one of the fastest-growing platforms. In just a few years, it has grown from one billion users to two billion active users. From customer complaints to a product going viral, the platform offers many features for small businesses and the platform generates 4x more interactions compared to Facebook. From taking advantage of Instagram’s features to specific ideas on how to increase your digital footprint, we explain how to use Instagram for your small business.
Let’s start from the basics.
What Is Instagram Marketing?
By Definition, Instagram marketing is the practice of using the Instagram platform to market a product or service. Marketing on it can involve many different tactics and strategies, enabling businesses to accomplish a variety of goals.
It can be used for marketing in two broad categories:
- Advertising, influencer marketing, and other paid marketing strategies.
- Marketing that uses organic tactics, such as creating organic content (such as posts, stories, and comments), in addition to engaging with the content of other users.
Some of the Goals you may wish to achieve from Instagram marketing include: Selling products or services, Gaining more followers and engagement, Building relationships with prospective customers and other brands or Enhancing your brand’s reputation.
How to Start Marketing on Instagram: The Basics
Start with having a proper business profile – not just a regular personal profile. This allows you to reap the benefits of Instagram’s business marketing features and Insights. It also makes you more credible in the eyes of your audience.
Follow along for some of the best practices that can turn a good profile into an awesome one.
How to Create an Instagram Business Profile
To create an awesome Instagram business profile, you’ll need two things:
- Your Insta account which can be an existing personal profile or one you’ve just created for your business. For brand recognition, create a handle with your company’s name.
- Your brand’s FB Business Page. In order to verify your Insta account, you will need to create this one first
Once you have both these things ready, On your smartphone, log in to Instagram with your company handle.
Tap the circular icon in the bottom right corner. The screen will expand to show another menu. Tap “Settings” in the bottom right corner.
On the Settings page, scroll down until you find “Switch to Business Profile.”
During setup, you will be asked to link your business account to your Facebook business page, as well as edit your business’s public contact information: email address, phone number, and physical address. And voila. You’re ready to use Instagram for marketing your business.
How to Market on Instagram: Creating Your Strategy
Set Up S.M.A.R.T Goals
Creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy requires you to set a clear goal, build individual tactics gradually toward it, and monitor your progress so you can adjust where necessary.
Marketing plans are built around goals and objectives. Read more about ‘How to set up S.M.A.R.T goals for your business. This is a widely used acronym used to guide people in setting objectives for themselves. Goals should be a clear milestone of what you wish to achieve.
Create Your Instagram Content Strategy
Your Instagram content strategy can include several posting options, Choosing the right ones depends mainly on how well you know your target audience.
What are the key demographics of your audience? What do they like to do, see, and experience? What entices and entertains them? How do brands generate trust and motivate them to make a purchase?
You probably need some time to know all these answers, which is perfectly normal. It’s a learning process that you’ll get the hang of as you go. As you gain a better understanding of your audience and what works for them, you’ll be able to optimize your Instagram marketing strategy.
Some Tips for building a strong Instagram content strategy:
- Plan your posts/ creatives keeping your branding strategy in mind.
- Consistency is the key. Be consistent with your content and it should reflect your brand’s identity.
- Observe what other brands are doing on this platform. What content are they using to connect with their audience? Check out top-performing posts from similar brands, your biggest competitors, leaders in specific niches, and the most broadly popular accounts on the platform.
- This competitive research will help you in following the latest trends, best practices and hacks to take you to the next level.
- Create a social media content calendar to plan and schedule your posts.
- And lastly, Make use of Instagram Insights to track your content’s performance. Instagram Insights is a free tool, available for everyone to have a look at the key performance metrics of your account. It also helps you find your target audience on Instagram, their demographic details, etc.
Execute Content Strategy with Top Instagram Features
Whether you are a new business in the market, or you want to strengthen your community, create brand awareness, or even make sales, there’s an Instagram feature to help you achieve your goals. Let’s look at some of the top features of Instagram that can help you connect with users and boost your Instagram marketing strategy.
REELS – The Number One
Instagram and its algorithm are mainly focused on using Reels as the major format for content marketing on social media. It is one of the most organic ways of boosting your brand’s presence on social media. Quality content using trending sounds when marketed as a short-format video gets more reach and impressions than feed videos.
VIDEOS
Building trust with your followers and customers is easy with videos. This video feature is perfect for businesses who want to get endorsements from influencers and celebrities.
According to research, 54% of people who wish to see more video content from marketers are more likely to purchase a product online after watching a video. You can increase sales by showing your products how they look, how they can be useful, and how they stand out in the market. Your brand story can be told with the help of Instagram videos, which can also be used to explain the value proposition of your brand and build valuable relationships with customers and potential prospects.
Stories
This is that one feature that almost everyone uses and loves on this platform, whether they are using it for personal or professional reasons. Stories appear as tappable circles at the top of your followers’ feeds and last for a limited time. Content disappears after 24 hours, just like on Snapchat.
Here are a few ideas for how you can use Instagram Stories:
- Provide answers to frequently asked questions within your company’s niche or about your company in general
- Take your audience behind the scenes by sharing “behind-the-scenes” content
- Get people to check out your blog, ebook, or infographic by promoting it
- Consider having an employee (or influencer) take over your social media for a day
- Take a poll on a hot topic or solicit feedback from your audience
- Host a contest or giveaway in which you ask users to create a post a story that tags your account or includes a brand hashtag
Instagram Live
A popular feature used by big brands as well as small businesses is Instagram Live. These are videos but they are LIVE! For maximum use, live sessions can be recorded on the feed and viewed later as videos.
Instagram Live allows you to engage your audience in a real-time “live broadcast” format. This is an especially helpful feature if you’re attending an event or discussing anything timely or urgent.
Your story will appear first in your followers’ Story feeds when they open the app, and they will also get a notification that it’s happening. But with great power comes great responsibility: use this feature only when you have some truly good content to share, or you might push users away for wasting their time.
Instagram Shops
Meta made a revolutionary leap into eCommerce when it launched Instagram Shops in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic that affected physical businesses across the world.
Businesses use shops to make product discovery convenient and easy by providing a full-screen storefront. Consumers or users can visit a shop from a business’ Instagram profile or from feed/Stories.
Hashtags
Hashtags are virtually everywhere on the internet and off the internet these days. When applied to your marketing strategy, Instagram hashtags are a clear signal to users that your posts are relevant to what they’re looking for. In fact, many users look for content based on hashtags alone. So if your posts are related to a trending topic, be sure to include the associated hashtag. This can help you get in front of the eyes of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
It’s also a smart idea to create a branded hashtag and use it frequently. This hashtag might include your company’s name or the name of a particular campaign, event, or promotion.
Harness the Power of Instagram Marketing
It is a powerhouse in social media when it comes to offering best-class features. In terms of getting attention, stimulating engagement, building strong relationships, and surpassing financial goals for brands, there is virtually no limit to what can be achieved.
The new business world can seem overwhelming and daunting, but new businesses should stay alert, listen, and learn as they go. You will find that Instagram marketing becomes easier and more profitable as you go if you approach it with a growth mindset from the beginning.