How to Use Instagram for Small Business?

Social media is a booming space for marketers today. Even since its dawn, it has undergone numerous changes. Still, one thing that remained constant is that it involved people, and all of its underlying principles depended on making people develop communities. As a result, it is the best prospect for businesses to find new customers. Social giants like Facebook and Twitter have been there for a while, but there have been new additions, such as Snapchat and Instagram.

Instagram is one of the most talked-about social media platforms people use for socializing and their businesses. With a massive family of 2 billion monthly active users, it is a platform where you can do business with all kinds of visual content you’ve got for your business.

Instagram is still growing, and the number of users is increasing rapidly. Synchronize your business with the rapid growth of this platform, where you can find and interact with your audience and make as many prospective customers as possible who wouldn’t want to use this space for business.

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a photo-sharing mobile application or app. Instagram has followed in the footsteps of its predecessors; Facebook and Twitter are now caught up in their popularity. It has gained a lot of popularity in a very short time. Initially, Instagram was created so that people could add different filters to their clicked photos from their mobile phones and upload them. It was done to make the work of the ardent snapshooter easier. You can also upload from Instagram and decide to share publicly with your followers or with your friends. The video-sharing feature, though, is relatively entirely new on Instagram.

How Does Instagram Work?

Like any social media platform, Instagram has a theme; you must know and follow it to succeed on Instagram. Firstly, you must click good pictures since it is primarily a photo-sharing app. They do not have to be too artsy all the time, but make sure that they depict the theme of your business or timeline so that when people visit your timeline, they can get a clear idea about your Instagram profile. There can be different themes, from food blogging to nature photography and poetry.

Marketing Potential of Instagram

Online businesses always search for scopes for better business marketing. For this reason, business owners indulge in different business marketing techniques. Despite indulging in different business marketing techniques, success does not seem easy for many businesses. To deal with such hardships, they should continue looking for better scopes for business marketing. Proper business marketing strategies are required to make the business work more efficiently. To chalk out the plan, you need to include Instagram as the platform for business marketing.

This business marketing platform comes with many benefits. However, simultaneously, you must be precise with your approach to business marketing with Instagram. First, you need to understand how you can use this platform. You should get accustomed to this not-so-conventional social media platform. Unlike other social websites, this platform is not used to share text-based content. It is mainly used for sharing videos, images, and other multimedia content. Thus, you need to create excitement and unique business marketing content for business marketing through Instagram. Also, it is essential to know the perfect Instagram posting times to get the right Instagram users, as they can be your potential customers and followers of your business.

Now, at this point, you must think about how such a social media platform can help your business grow. How could it be beneficial for your purposes? Find the advantages of Instagram for business marketing in the following section of this article.

Share unique content

Since Instagram is different from other social media websites, it motivates business owners to create and share different kinds of content. Until now, people used to believe that business marketing online content is text-based. Well, text-based content will always have its eternal demands. But, at the same time, other content will also gain popularity. Text content is quite boring for some people. For a change, they want to find more interactive and exciting content. This is why you need to invest in Instagram marketing.

On Facebook and Twitter, people share conventional text-based content for business marketing. However, Instagram users are urged to create different and suitable content. They try to create interactive and exciting multimedia content. This will help their businesses grow immensely, eventually leading to massive business success. Sharing engaging content will increase your followers on this social media platform. You should also know about Instagram’s marketing strategies to gain some followers.

Get ideas on market trends.

Instagram is a youth-based social media platform. There are senior members, but people belonging to the younger generation are mostly found to be Instagram members. This allows businesses to understand market trends. Young people mainly control the market. Thus, a sudden change in the market scenario can easily be understood when you are in touch with a young generation. You shall get an idea of market trends even before your competitors. This is the biggest benefit of Instagram, as it helps your business transform itself in response to upcoming changes in the market.

Easy to mingle with clients

Instagram is a simple social media platform that simplifies communication between two people or user accounts. A business can never grow without proper communication with clients or customers. It will face different hiccups or problems from various aspects. When not interested in engaging with people, you cannot think about running a business. As a business unit, you should find scopes for more friendly and informal communication modes with customers or clients. It helps to build a relationship. This bond of relationship is precious as it allows businesses to grow.

Communication through Facebook and Twitter is well-known to business owners. Instagram could be new for them, though this platform is also praised for its seamlessness. You will get excellent business benefits from effective Instagram marketing. This user-friendly social media platform makes communication between two persons relatively seamless and enjoyable.

Expansion of online presence

At different stages, different business owners come up with the idea of expansion of business exposure. Today, the concept has not changed in the digital marketing world. People would love to expand their business presence over different social networking websites. Many business owners trust Facebook and Twitter. Most of the social media users are indeed from these two platforms. But, simultaneously, you cannot simply ignore Instagram and other social media websites. They may have fewer users, but they can bring good marketing results for your business. Many people like to spend time on Instagram rather than on Facebook and other social media websites. As you grow your online presence, you will get more business benefits. It will surely draw more popularity. It will fetch more potential customers, which would result in higher profitability.

Video presentation for business marketing

As stated earlier, Instagram encourages business owners to get creative with social media business marketing content. Due to the popularity of Instagram, infographic content has become famous. What are infographics? Well, this type of content comes with visuals and texts. Texts are used minimally, while visuals have been used to interpret complex procedures easily. For example, you run a food delivery chain. Now, the concept of ordering food and obtaining it could be complex. Making people understand such a complex concept could be difficult using plain text.

The use of infographics and video presentations will make things easier. They will help your business explain new products better. In addition, a video presentation will help people understand more about your products, especially if they are newly launched, and people are less knowledgeable about them.

SEO on Instagram

Like any other social media, Instagram also has a search engine connection. Therefore, it is beneficial if you make your content with search engine optimization so that it will appear on top of Instagram and Google searches. Also, Instagram now allows a different profile to be set up for business owners. Moreover, you will have some extra features than the private personal accounts, such as insight into your followers’ activity, which is a great advantage as you will know when they are most active and on what posts, and then you can repeat that timing and similar content to gain more followers. Also, there are options to promote your content on Instagram. For example, you can link your Facebook page with your Instagram business account and provide a link to your website or an affiliate link you would like to promote.

Affiliate marketing with Instagram

You can use Instagram to monetize your work through affiliate marketing. Once you gain enough followers, you can expect that they will trust you, and you can direct them to some products or links you want them to see. Moreover, most of them probably will. You will earn a hefty commission with the traffic going to the website with your given promotional ink. You can endorse products on Instagram, too, with the photo-sharing facility and include promotional content in the caption. Like any other social media, Instagram is based on community work and personal bonding. So, always treat your followers kindly and reply to them as often as possible. Slowly but gradually, they will begin to trust and relate to you. Eventually, it is guaranteed that your Instagram followers will increase.

Do not indulge in apps that promise to increase your Instagram followers, as this increases the chance of your account being hacked. Also, Instagram considers these activities unethical, and your account might get banned.

Ways to Use Instagram for Small Business

Most brands are doing business on Instagram, and many are still thinking about whether they should or shouldn’t. So, my advice for all those newcomers is to start doing business on Instagram; it will help them in many ways.

Today, I have collected some ways to use Instagram for small businesses.

1. Optimize your small business account

First, the most important thing when using Instagram for business is to create a business account that you can operate alongside your account. An Instagram business account enjoys many features that are very useful for understanding your community and conducting your business.

One important feature is Instagram analytics, which lets you learn about your Instagram community in depth. In addition, it gives the user a complete report of impression and engagement data. So, when doing business on Instagram, you must use these analytics.

Another part of optimizing your Instagram business account is using a name and profile picture on other social media platforms for brand recognition. Add a brief bio that tells your target audience what your business does for them, a link that leads your audience to your website, etc.

2. Use high-quality visual content

Instagram is all about visual content. It has many features that visually define your business. So, to get the best results from Instagram for your business, you must use high-quality, attractive, interesting, unique, and engaging visual content.

Photos and Videos: When using Instagram for business, you must use high-quality images. Nothing is worse than posting blurred, unattractive images or videos of your product. Instagram now allows full-size portrait and landscape photos. In addition to pictures, videos must also be posted.

Carousel: Another feature for your visual content is that Instagram allows you to post more than one photo/video in a single post. Your followers only need to swipe to see the collection. For instance, businesses can use this feature to show how a single product can be used differently with a carousel’s help.

Instagram Stories: This feature allows you to add content that will disappear after 24 hours. It has many face filters and options like boomerang, rewind, superzoom, etc., to make fun videos for your followers. Instagram stories also allow you to add a link if you are a verified user. Businesses should use this feature to show their audience the fun side of their business and share the scene moments with them.

Instagram Live: Businesses can use this feature to conduct Q&A sessions with their followers or conduct a live session of any event related to their business.

3. Engage your audience

On Instagram, Engagement is the key to everything. Undoubtedly, engagement is the primary factor in gaining followers on Instagram. However, there are many ways to engage with your audience.

One is to interact with them as much as you can. Show them the human side of your business. Reply to their comments and answer their queries. Comment on their posts when possible for solid interactions.

Follow people who follow your brand. In addition, follow your industry influencers and other brands related to your business.

Run contests for your followers to engage with your followers and reach your targeted audience. For example, ask your followers to tag their friends in your post and follow your brand to win an attractive prize.

User-generated content is another way of engaging your community. For example, you can create user-generated content by reposting your followers’ photos/videos they post using your brand product.

4. Maintain the consistency

Posting on Instagram needs to be consistent. If you use Instagram for small businesses, you should maintain a routine of posting stuff. This routine can be set according to your audience’s engagement pattern. Find out a time of day and posts from your Instagram business analytics results that are most engaging for your business. Use these results to find a balance between how much to post and when to post.

5. Use the hashtags smartly

Hashtag and Instagram are best friends. In almost every post on Instagram, you will see at least one hashtag in its caption. Hashtags on Instagram make your post discoverable to your target audience. So whenever you post on Instagram, don’t forget to add hashtags to its caption. Businesses must use a branded hashtag unique to their business or brand. Hashtags should be related or relevant to your industry and business. Emoticons can also be used in hashtags. Most importantly, hashtags trending in your niche should never be forgotten.

These are some of the most important details that will help you use Instagram for small businesses. Learn more tips to promote business on Instagram.

Winding up!

In business profile mode, you do not have a choice, but in personal profile mode, you can decide to set the privacy of your profile to private or public. If you want to promote your content, you should put it to the public; otherwise, the tags will not help your content appear in the search. Some hashtags might be more popular than others, and you probably need to do a little research before finding the right combination of tags to use on your photos and videos.