Using Instagram To Empower Your Business (Part 1)

Creating a new Instagram account for your company can be exciting, but did you know that you can also use this social channel as a way to increase your company’s sales and growth? In addition to helping your company grow, a well developed Instagram marketing strategy can set you apart from your competition. In this two-part series, we’ll discuss the top Instagram marketing strategies and how to secure your account to prevent against hacks. Let’s jump right into using Instagram to empower your business.

The Purpose

One effective way to build your overall marketing strategy is to first define your company’s Instagram account purpose. Even though the tendency to use Instagram may be to “grow your company and get more sales”, this is too general of an objective – you need a specific reason. Let me share with you the purpose BoldGrid is on Instagram:

• Inform customers of specials that we run
• Inform visitors of a solution to a problem or struggle they are facing
• Educate viewers of the WordPress page builder options so they are best informed
• Highlight and celebrate our customer’s creations and successes
• Motivate our viewers to do bigger and better things
• Connect with our users and customers to better learn how we can assist them

If the purpose of being on Instagram is solely for you or your company, your focus is entirely off. You need to redefine your purpose to serve customers and viewers. Not to be overly blunt, but Instagram users aren’t interested in everything being about you; instead, they want it to be about them. As soon as you point the focus to serving them, you’ll find that you’re audience engagement will often begin to increase. There is nothing wrong with wanting to promote a product or service, but just make sure you do so with the purpose of serving your audience and what they need or want.

Knowing the purpose of having your Instagram account will also help you clearly craft content. It’ll be a lot more likely that your content will stand out and you’ll be able to easily reach your target audience.

Your Profile

Okay, once you’ve defined your purpose, it’s time to grab your device and open up the Instagram app. Head into your account profile. Is your account a personal account or a business account? You can easily find out by checking for a business description below your company name.

If you don’t see a company description below your business name, it means that you are using a personal Instagram account. To upgrade, it’s very simple and easy. Watch the video below from Instagram on how to upgrade your personal account to a business account.

Once you have upgraded your Instagram account to a business account, first make sure to include your website URL in the profile. This is easiest method of getting your Instagram followers to learn more about your products or services, and it helps drive traffic to your website. Another way to push traffic to your website is making a specialized landing page just for your Instagram followers. Anytime you have a video or other type of content you want to share, still say “link in bio”, but build a page on your website specifically for your Instagram followers. This page can be the main hub for videos, articles and news. You can also add call to actions to your products or services. This helps your Instagram audience to learn about your services or products. You’ll also want to make sure that you give a clear description of what your company provides within your profile. This alone will allow potential followers to easily understand what you do. Below we have included several popular Instagram accounts who have been successful with creating solid profile descriptions.

As you can see, they don’t have to be very complex or long. In some cases, the shorter the better.

Your Images

Some companies believe that their company name or product has to be displayed in every single photo they post. This is not the case. In fact, sometimes posting photos that don’t have your company name or product can drive more ‘likes’ to that particular image as users feel that it is more authentic and real to life.

Before you push out a post, ask yourself this question, “what is the purpose of this post”? This question can really help sometimes with finding the purpose and whether it will be successful.

In every image you post, work to make it the highest quality possible. The overall image quality on Instagram has skyrocketed meaning that your images should be stunning and attractive.

Another common misunderstanding is that you must post photos that you take. There is nothing wrong with posting all photos that you take, but for some, this isn’t possible. Instead, use a service like Adobe Stock where you can select a photo. Add a quote to it and you have a motivational post that can inspire your followers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnj5DSdnJ4q/?taken-by=boldgrid

Your Hashtags

Choosing the right hashtags can be a bit of a question as there are literally millions of options. How do you choose the right ones? There are several tools which can help you find the latest trending hashtags. Display Purposes has a really handy tool where you type in the key words of your post and it will pull the most popular trending hashtags. If the keyword doesn’t have anything trending close to it, nothing will appear. We recommend using this free tool to start making purposeful hashtags which will help bring additional likes and followers to your posts.

Instagram allows you to post up to thirty hashtags per post. According to HootSuite, posts that have around nine hashtags perform the best. Take and plan the specific hashtags which are performing well and relate to your posts.

Stay tuned for Using Instagram To Empower Your Business – Part 2 to learn how to keep your account secured.