If you open a business account on Instagram, you’ll find that the platform has a lot to offer to help you with promotion and exposure. In fact, Instagram rolls out features to help businesses a lot, so it’s got a lot of options to get you out there, in front of your customers.
You can set up a normal profile rather than a business profile, and while there are always going to be pros and cons, a business profile enables you to have access to a lot more features that will boost your business – as well as those all important Instagram insights too.
Your Business Account
A business account will have some extra options in the bio, such as adding your website URL – make sure you fill it all in to get the most out of your profile.
You can also link your Instagram profile to Facebook, which isn’t entirely recommended from our point of view (cross sharing the same content, yawn) – but useful for sharing odd bits and bobs from your story and images. If you didn’t know already, Instagram is owned by Facebook too, so it’s not a major no-no.
Be Consistent
Always key – but for your images, be consistent. We suggest you think of a theme first – you could theme it based more loosely just on your product, on a colour palette, be monochrome, etc – there are lots of options! It’s not a huge necessity, but will help you when it comes to getting that all important content. You want your timeline to look well thought out and curated, which is why a theme can be very handy. Make sure your images are consistently professional looking, and use the same filter for that themed approach.
Stories
We’ve written a blog or two about stories, and you’ll also see our digital column in the Aberystwyth EGO in October, all about the rise of Instagram stories. It is one of the most popular features when it comes to this platform, although if you are an avid Facebook user, you’ll have spotted it across there too.
Stories are hugely on the rise, most often, your customers and potential customers will watch your story before they go to your feed (if they even get that far). Stories have a much better reach, and can also step outside of your business theme by being much more personal and cheeky. There are a whole host of features that comes with Stories, like asking questions (polls), using Gifs, stickers, emojis, tagging, hashtags and so much more. Really explore these and use them as best you can for your business. Keep an eye on our stories tab here on the website for more information on how to use Stories on Insta, because we’ve barely mentioned anything here other than get on them!
Be Social
Always interact with other people and profiles on Instagram. They reckon that if you do this for around 30 minutes after posting to your feed, it will increase the visibility of your post. We’ve not had a chance to fully test this one way or another, but it does hammer home the point of being on social media – socialising. So you can like, comment, mention, message and tag on Instagram – go for it.
Hashtags Galore
The mother of the hashtag, this is where you can really go wild and hashtag left, right and centre. We recommend 30 specific and relevant hashtags to your post, switch them up don’t just use the same ones. A nifty feature on Instagram at the moment is being able to follow hashtags, so it’s really important to make sure that they are relevant and specific to you.
Go Live
Yes, we know. We cringe too. In fact, Kerry Ferg hates going live but, she will. It’s a fantastic way to increase your reach and engagement online, and video is hugely up and coming so massively important for business.
Want to know more? Keep an eye on our blog/news section as we’ll update with tips and tricks, advice and more on how to use a range of social media platforms for business. We also offer training packages which can be for individuals or small groups.