If you plan to use Instagram for business, consider your experience with the app.
Search Instagram and enjoy the feed you want. It’s a mix of your personal friends, content creators, cute animals, and brands.
No one told you to follow these company accounts; You have made your decision. Every time you see one of their posts or stories on Instagram, you are actively choosing to continue following them.
But why?
When using Instagram for business, you need to answer this question to potential customers: Why should they come back for more? It also helps you to gain a lot of active Instagram followers.
We’ve compiled the most popular Instagram business tips to help you promote your business on the app.
Figure out why you use Instagram for work
When using a marketing channel, it is important to have goals that you want to achieve. It’s no different on Instagram. If you’re thinking about investing time and money into Instagram marketing, ask yourself:
“What do we want to achieve?”
Instagram’s general business goals include:
- Increase brand awareness
- Building community
- Demonstrate company culture and values
- Sell products and services
Write down your goals and always keep them in mind. Think of your written goals as a formalized check.
This encourages you and your team to be more intentional with your content on Instagram because you can refer back to it at any time and trust that everything you share is serving that purpose.
Optimize your profile
If you use Instagram for business, think of your profile as your homepage. They have 150 characters, a link, and some action buttons that you can use to convince potential customers. So make sure your profile leaves a good impression.
First, make sure you have navigated to your business profile on Instagram. Business accounts offer additional features to grow your profile, track content performance, and sell on Instagram.
Then write a great Instagram bio. Your profile must contain the following:
- Brief description of your company’s activities
- Your category/industry (commercial and retail, business services, restaurants, etc.)
- A tone that highlights your brand’s personality
- Contact details (telephone number, email address, address, etc.)
- Link
The only place in the Instagram app where you can share a clickable link is in your bio, so that’s valuable real estate. You can leave the link to your homepage static or change it periodically to reflect current content. However, link-in-bio tools like Buffer Homepage help you use your link more strategically by turning a single link into a source list.
Bonus: Use a recognizable profile photo
When choosing a profile photo, people must recognize it immediately when they visit your Instagram profile. For most companies, this means choosing one of the following options:
- Logo
- Logomark (logo, without words)
- Mascot
There is certainly no right or wrong here, and you don’t have to limit yourself to one of these options but think about what will help your website visitors recognize your brand the fastest.
Find your visual aesthetic
On Instagram, the most important thing is the visual decoration. But what works for one company may not work for yours. Think about the aesthetic you want to present on your business website, then establish your brand guidelines to ensure consistency.
Note the color palette. Some of the most successful Instagram accounts often use a curated color palette in their photos, which helps them create a distinctive style.
Post regularly
Sticking to a regular posting schedule will help you become more visible on your audience’s timeline. Instagram tries to show each person content they are likely to like and therefore looks for content that is current and relevant to each person’s interests.
The algorithm uses machine learning to continually assess each person’s activity and adjust their timeline accordingly. People can’t like what they don’t see. Posting regularly will give you greater visibility in other people’s feeds and increase the likelihood that you will be contacted. The more they engage with your content, the more they will see it on their Instagram.
You can stay on top of your content by scheduling posts in batches so your account is never deactivated when you’re busy. Additionally, scheduling makes it easier to experiment with release deadlines. While there is no optimal time to post on Instagram, there can be an ideal time to post to reach the largest possible audience. Buffer lets you set your preferred time slots, then simply add content to the queue and posts will automatically be inserted into the next available time slot.
Use hashtags to reach new audiences
Hashtags have become a consistent way to categorize content across many social media platforms. Hashtags help Instagrammers discover content and accounts to follow. Track Maven’s research shows that posts with more than eleven hashtags tend to generate higher engagement.
However, organizing, grouping, and saving hashtags can be tricky: many people save groups on their phones so they can copy and paste them into any post before publishing.
Connect with your community
Using Instagram at work doesn’t mean your profile becomes a constant selling point. Instagram is a social media platform. So learn to socialize.
If someone takes the time to share their thoughts with you, it’s important to respond and show that you’re listening. Replying to comments is a great way to build a strong community on Instagram. Buffer’s engagement features allow you to respond to comments on Instagram posts directly from the Buffer platform, without having to type long replies on your phone’s small screen.
Engagement tips are also a great way to encourage engagement. Play with interactive stickers in Instagram Stories as polls, questions, or escalator leaderboards.
Analyze your results
One of the best Instagram tips for business we can give you is to check your Instagram stats regularly. If you want to gain followers, build loyalty, and promote your business on Instagram, you need to monitor the performance of your content.
Google’s built-in analytics tool is a good start, but you can only access it on mobile devices. Additionally, you need to open each post individually to check important metrics like likes, comments, shares and saves.
If you want to dig deeper and view analytics on your computer, you’ll need third-party tools.
Remember that measurements only matter if they tell you something valuable. Likes are great for boosting your ego, but is that why you use Instagram professionally? You’ll get more useful insights by analyzing metrics that will tell you what motivates your fans to return to your content and pay for your products or services.