When I found out a few years ago that Instagram was evolving into a business platform, I thought that this could be the beginning of its end. Today I openly admit my mistake – according to the hootsuite.com portal, over 25 million companies are already logged in to the service and today I will show you how you can use it in your business.
First: Create a business account
Let’s start with the question of why you should be among the active Instabrands at all. The answer is people. According to hootsuite.com, the number of active Instagram users has exceeded one billion this year. What’s more, 80% of them follow at least one brand, 75% visit the websites of companies they follow, and 60% use the portal to obtain information about products. Simply put, your customers are probably already on Instagram, and if you haven’t created an engaging business strategy for this channel yet, now is the best time to change that.
Let’s start with the basics. Instagram allows you to run 2 types of accounts – private and business. The former allows you to post photos and videos, follow other users, and interact with them. The second is a real marketing combine – it gives you access to statistics, advertising and sales tools and demographic data of your audience. How to put them on? Converting a private profile – below I have prepared tips on how to do it.
Second: prepare an action strategy
Before you post your first photo, think about who should actually see it. Simply put, define who your customers are and check who follows your business account (competitor research is also welcome – you can find the most important information on m.in socialrank.com portal). And then adjust your communication to their expectations.
Next, think about the goals of your publications – ideally they should be SMART:
- Specific, i.e. those that cannot be interpreted loosely – e.g. “I will increase the number of followers on my account”.
- Measurable, i.e. formulated in such a way that you can easily measure their effectiveness – e.g. “I will increase the number of followers of my account by 500”.
- Achievable, i.e. ambitious, but realistic to achieve – e.g. “I will increase the number of followers of my account by 500 in the next month”.
- Relevant, which means that they should provide a certain value to the person who implements them – e.g. “increasing the number of followers will make me learn how to manage a large community on Instagram, which has been my dream for a long time”.
- Time-bound, or simply put, with a fixed deadline – e.g. “I will increase the number of followers of my account within the next month”.
With such a prepared strategy, you can calmly take care of developing a publication schedule. Before I get to it, I warn you – I don’t know a universal recipe for what days and at what time you should add new materials. But I can show you at least 2 ways to work out your own scheme of action. Do you want to know which ones? Continue.
Third: act and draw conclusions
I won’t be revealing if I say that the best way to an optimized publication schedule is… publication. Testing different times and formats (by the way – m.in. canva.com portal will help you prepare content) is the key to getting to know your customers’ expectations. You will find out, for example, whether 2 posts a day annoy them and whether competitions arouse haters in them. By analyzing your profile statistics, you will also find out at what times they are most active, and from there it is a short way to increase your reach organically.
And most importantly – you don’t have to limit yourself to just following your own profile. I can bet that there are at least a dozen representatives of your industry on Instagram – take advantage of it and learn from them. You’ll save a lot of valuable time that you can use to get your community going. Let me explain what I mean.
Fourth: #taguj and @zaczepiaj
Social media is people who want to interact with your brand, so don’t be afraid to engage them. #Taguj your posts so they can find them more easily in the archive – just mark the selected terms with the “#” symbol and the system will assign you to the search results. Particulars? You are welcome.
It may seem completely pointless at first, but you’ll change your mind when you look at your profile from the perspective of the 95 million posts that appear on Instagram’s homepage every day (in 2016, hootsuite.com counted it – we can only guess that the current data is even crazier).
In addition#tagami there are also harassments, i.e. @oznaczanie other people (including brands!) in publications – all you have to do is add the “@” symbol in front of the user’s name and the system will call him to reply. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t mention one of the masters of marking – the Daniel Wellington brand. The company uses photos of its followers on its profile (with their permission, of course), tagging them in posts at the same time. Effect? An average of 20 thousand likes under each photo. Soon these may be your results, you just need to take the first step as soon as possible. There is no need to wait – according to digitalgyd.com, today alone there will be 500 million active users on Instagram. And I can guarantee you that your potential customers are among them.