You chose to follow these business accounts. You actively choose to follow them every time you see their Instagram Stories or posts. Think about how you use Instagram to promote your business.
1. Find out why Instagram is a good choice for your business.
It is important to set goals when using any marketing channel. Instagram is no exception.
These are some common goals for Instagram businesses:
- Brand awareness is increased
- Create a community
- Demonstrate your company's culture and values
- Sell products and services
Your written goals can be thought of as a formalized way to check your gut. This encourages you and the team to be more deliberate with your Instagram content. You can always refer back to them and make sure everything you share is in line with those goals.
2. Optimize your profile
Your profile is your homepage if you use Instagram for business. Your profile has 150 characters, a link and some action buttons that can win you over.
First, create an Instagram business account. You can expand your profile, track the performance of your content, and even sell on Instagram with business accounts.
Next, create a compelling Instagram bio. Include the following:
- A brief description of the activities of your company
- Your category/industry (Shopping & Retail, Business Service, Restaurant, etc. );
- Your brand's tone should reflect your personality
- Contact information (phone number, email, address, etc.
- Bonus: Create a profile image that is easily identifiable
It is important that people instantly recognize your profile picture when you choose it. This means that most businesses will choose one of these options:
- Logo
- Logomark (the logo without any words)
- Mascot
There is no right or wrong in this and you don't have to choose one. But think about what will make your brand most memorable for people who visit your page.
3. Your visual aesthetic
Instagram is all about visuals Consider the aesthetic that you want to project on your business website.
Be aware of your color scheme. The most successful Instagram accounts use a limited color palette to create their unique style. Oneika Raymond, for example, prefers bright colors and high contrasts.
It's crucial to consider the font you use and how it compares to other fonts on your website. Shine with Natasha for example, maintains a consistent look using bright yellow and white colors, as well as a standard font across all Instagram posts.
4. Post regularly
You can be visible in the timelines of your target audience by sticking to a consistent posting schedule. Instagram wants to provide content that's most interesting to users, so it searches for relevant content and recent content.
Instagram's algorithm uses machine-learning to analyze each user's activity and adjust their timeline accordingly. People don't like what's not visible. Regularly posting helps you appear in people's feeds, and gives them more opportunities to interact with you. Your content will be more popular if they interact with it more often.
By scheduling posts in batches, you can ensure that your account is always up-to-date and your schedule doesn't get cluttered. Scheduling makes it easier for you to experiment with different posting times. There is no one best time to post Instagram. However, there are times that you can reach your most targeted audience. Buffer allows you to set preferred times slots. All you need to do is add content and your posts will be automatically placed in the next slot.
5. Use hashtags to reach new people
Hashtags are a standard way to categorize content across many social media platforms. Hashtags enable Instagrammers to find content and accounts to follow. Track Maven research found that posts using more than 11 hashtags get more engagement.
It can be hard to group, save and organize hashtags. Many people have saved groups to their phones so they are ready to copy and paste to every post before publishing. Buffer customers have the ability to create and save hashtag groups directly from their Buffer composer.
6. Engage in community
Instagram is not a sales tool. Instagram is a social media platform. Learn to socialize.
It's important that you respond to any comments made by others. It's a great way of building a community on Instagram by responding to comments. Buffer's engagement tools allow you to respond directly to comments on Instagram posts.
Engage prompts are another great way to encourage interaction. In Instagram Stories, you can play with interactive stickers such as questions, polls, and sliding scale rankings.
Use your caption to ask people questions and encourage them to comment. Although it may seem cheesy, think of it as a real conversation. It would be strange if you talked at someone rather than with them.
7. Try different types of content
Instagram is more than just photos. Instagram now offers a wide variety of content types, including:
- Video
- Reels
- Stories
- IGTV
It's crucial to share diverse content types if you want to grow your reach and engage on Instagram. We shared this in our Instagram growth guide.
8. Analyze your data
We can offer you one of the most valuable Instagram tips for businesses: regularly review your Instagram analytics. You need to track how your content performs in order to increase your followers, engage your audience, and promote your company on Instagram.
Instagram Insights is an integrated analytics tool that can be used to analyze Instagram. However, it cannot be accessed from mobile. To see key metrics like shares, likes, comments and saves, you will need to open each post individually.
Third-party tools are required to look deeper at analytics on a desktop. Buffer's analytics, for example, can track trends and compare performance. You can also create custom reports around metrics that you are most interested in. These are the goals we mentioned earlier. You can keep track of them with custom reports.
Remember that metrics are only valuable if they provide you with something useful. While likes can be great for your ego, is that the reason you use Instagram for business? If you examine metrics that show you what motivates your followers to continue coming back to your content, and to pay for your products or other services, you'll be able to gather more useful insights.
Let's suppose you make a tutorial video for IGTV. Shares and saves indicate that people found the tutorial useful and wanted to return to it again, while likes and comments are more passive. If you are running a campaign to increase brand awareness, however, likes and new following are important success metrics. You must place results in context of your goals when analyzing them.