The emergence of social media as the dominant means of interaction has also opened up a new vista for businesses to engage people and use it for marketing purposes. A large number of people spend a large amount of time on social media platforms, providing businesses and the opportunity to promote their products on these platforms in a convenient and cheaper way.
Instagram, with over a billion active monthly users as of 2018, according to Statista, may lag behind Facebook – which has over 2 billion – in this aspect, but it has some advantages over the bigger counterpart. It is another matter than Facebook owns Instagram. The Instagram audience is more involved and participative, their brand loyalty is higher, and the platform provides a more targeted reach for businesses. In case you would like to see your business multiply, it’s about time you lurch on to it by:
Setting Up A Business Account
For a beginner, the first obvious step is to set up a business account on Instagram. It is free. If you already have a personal Instagram account, you can add a business account as well: Instagram allows you to set up as many as five accounts, and you can switch from one to another without having to log out and log in for each separate account. You need to provide an email address and a contact number and can also add a postal address. Tap ‘done’, and you have set up your business profile. That was the easy part requiring little creative or intellectual input.
Deciding Who Your Target Audience Are
First, you have to decide what kind of people you want to reach out to. Keep in mind that most Instagram users are young – under 30 years of age. The USA has the largest number of Instagram users, followed by India and Brazil. A good way to go about this is to see what kind of buyers your product, or similar products, have. Check who follows you on social media platforms.
Checking Your Competitors Profile
You should also check the profiles of your competitors, look up their activity and see what works for them and what doesn’t. Learn from their experience, pick up the useful ones and drop or modify what has failed to pay dividends.
Generating an Attractive Bio
The bio needs special attention. For example, if your company provides assignment help services, then do remember that the Instagram bio must tell the visitor about you and your service creatively as it is just 150 characters long. You can make it cheeky or keep it serious, depending on your product’s or brand’s character. Use hashtags. These are clickable and help showcase user-generated content, which is always more convincing and credible. You can also use emojis.
Adding a CTA
Adding a ‘call to action’ (CTA) button is a must, to let your clients make their bookings, ask questions, place orders, or generally do business with you. You can do this by going to ‘edit profile’ > contact options>add action button.
Generating Quality Visual Content
The primary or most important feature on Instagram is visual content. You have to upload photos and can also stream videos of up to one-minute duration. Videos longer than that are in any case hardly watched.
Being Regular With Posts
You need to be regular with your posts, as your followers on Instagram would expect this. Besides, you need to stay in their minds and be aware of your product. Don’t overdo it, for drowning them in a barrage of posts will put them off and they might unfollow you.
Time your posts according to your product. For food, it ought to be slightly before lunch or dinner. Keep a calendar for events and festivals and be ready with appropriate posts for the occasion.
Using Instagram Stories Frequently
Use Instagram stories. These are known to generate more interest and attract customers. These are photos and small video clips that disappear after 24 hours. Videos on Instagram stories play for 15 seconds – regardless of the length of the original video – and then cut to the next content. This means the video has to be made or edited carefully, to make those 15 seconds serve the purpose. Alternatively, you can split the video into 15-second segments and add each of them to your Instagram story so that they play one after the other.
Instagram stories are available on mobile apps, and they appear at the top of the screen and remote screen monitoring software. They are the first content users see when they open the app and help get greater engagement: a kind of free advertising, upfront.
Making Your Captions Interesting
Give interesting captions to the photos you post. Humour and cuteness always work, as do cheek opinion sets, but avoid being offensive, vulgar or gross.
Using Hashtags For More Reach
Use hashtags – they help reach out to more people. You ought to use about three to five hashtags. Use your company hashtag with the purpose and the theme of your photo.
Engaging Your Audience
Engage with your audience, talk to them. A good idea is to hold contests, ask questions, seek opinions and feedback. As on other social media platforms, collaborating with ‘influencers’ – personalities with a large number of followers – is a good way to attract their fans to your brand.
Always Responding To Client Query
Make it a point to respond to your clients, and don’t use bots that generate automated replies. You have to give personalized attention. You can promote your Instagram account on other platforms. Another good idea is to add the Instagram handle to your email signature.
Final Word
Investing in Instagram ads helps promote your content to a wider audience. The ads on Instagram are slightly costlier than those on Facebook but have 10 times more engagement, and this more than makes up for the cost of investment. Checking Instagram Insights tells you how your account has performed – number of views, number of different viewers, number of clicks, and frequency of your followers being on Instagram, their age, gender, and location. This helps you tweak your content and your posts to suit your ‘market’ and engage with your clients more effectively. And all this should help a beginner get going with business on Instagram. There will, of course, be more lessons learned as you go along. Good luck!
Author Bio:
Koby Mahon is a content writer with four years of experience in brand marketing. Koby, prior to this, was an enthusiastic journalist and an avid blogger. At Online Assignment Expert, he provides students with online digital marketing assignment help.