More than 1 billion people use Instagram monthly. Can you fathom the myriad of possibilities for business on Instagram? Read on to know the methods of promoting a business on Instagram.
They say, “First impression is the last impression”. So we must work hard to make our first impression impactful. Maintaining a good profile is as important as opening an account itself.
- Feed
A pleasing feed is very important for you to get noticed. This is a business account, so make sure your feed has no trace of you as a person. Maintain a theme that goes with your product or service to draw in more people. A pattern and colour code should be decided before putting up the posts which highlights several aspects or uses of what you are selling. This would establish a unique identity. Post frequently to show you’re active and alive.
- Profile Picture
This small thumbnail image is what’s going to be your business's identity. Keep some classy, professional and relatable picture in your profile that is self-explanatory about what your product is. It can be your company’s name or logo mostly. You have to keep this consistent because everyone’s going to recognise you through that.
- Name
Your page name is your brand. It’s advisable to name your page as your business’s name or anything related to that. The name must be easy to find, short and unique. Try making the name self-sufficient.
- Bio
Instagram is all about visually pleasing content. It’s crucial how you present your products.
- Pictures
Nothing can be more alluring than visually aesthetic pictures of your product, according to your feed and event of post. Take care of lights and settings. Use Instagram filters to make them more pleasing.
- IGTV
You can use IGTV to upload videos of more than a minute duration to demonstrate your product in use and communicate its features to the target audience. Your product should be brought out with your confidence and utility you create in customer minds.
- Reels
Without interaction, you won’t be able to grab customers on Instagram. You need to build a loyal following and customer base to flourish your business. There are several ways to do that by various inbuilt tools provided by Instagram.
- Use your DM's to answer queries and converse about the utility of your product with your potential users. Ask for suggestions and take them in confidence that you are available and ready to help them out anytime.
- You can go live on IG to allow multiple users to interact with you face to face. This would also ensure great engagement if you talk about the product's journey, consumer experience etc.
Under the insight tab, you can easily analyse the audience response to your posts, know your audience and monitor their behaviours, most active hours and days to find the best time to post and know which post is doing better and why.
4. Use Stories
Stories are the best part of Instagram. They allow you full customization of the media you want to share and disappear after 24 hours. You can save them as story highlights for future reference by your audience. The stories have several stickers to help you reach and relate to the maximum audience:
- Support small business stickers and shopping tags can help you direct customers to your website or page and urge them to buy the products they like on the story.
- The location sticker helps you gain local customers as well.
- Make your stories interactive through question stickers, polls or quizzes. This would enable the user to feel that their views matter and increase your engagement manifolds.
- The mixture of text, image, GIFs, stickers etc allow you to express yourself creatively and make the products appear more relatable to your buyers.
- It can be used to build hype around a new product.
- Re-share the stories that tag you on your feed to build up loyal customers who use your product. They will feel valued and automatically promote your product.
5. Promote Using Ads on Instagram
The good thing about Instagram is, if you have a good set of close friends and relatives, you can ask them to low-key promote your goods and services easily, without costing anything to you or them. Not only this, but you can also advertise and promote your page at low weekly costs on Instagram, to multiply your reach exponentially. Instagram would promote those posts in between the stories of your target audience. It’s really affordable considering the amount of business it would bring.
6. Use Hashtags, Tags and Comments
For business, you need to get noticed by the users other than those following you. For that you can use
- Hashtags
Hashtags are the keywords related to your products that are trending and are followed by multiple people. The hash tags would display your post on the feeds of even those people who don’t follow you but can be interested in what you would offer.
- Tags and Comments
Edited by - Sravanthi Cheerladinne
Social