About a decade ago, when Instagram broke into the social media scene in 2010, it was ready to provide a unique experience to social media users because it was an exclusive photo-sharing app. No one did envisage that someday it will emerge as one of the most favorite social media channels for promoting businesses of all sizes. Today, Instagram is the most sought after social media channels for businesses. It is evident from 25 million global companiesare already using the platform, and new business accounts keep adding everyday. The business-friendly features of Instagram are indeed a primary reason for businesses preferring the channel. Perhaps the bigger reason is that every day 25 million Instagram viewers view at least one business profile.
What makes Instagram attractive to businesses?
Businesses keep calculating the return on investment at every step as it forms the basis of any commercial decision. Since Instagram ensures high ROI, it is natural for businesses to flock to the platform. Moreover, most Instagram users, almost 80%, are inclined to follow companies, and another 60% use the platform to discover new products and services. Instagram keeps increasing its business-friendly features regularly to make it more attractive for businesses. Many features like shopping on Instagram, advertising, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Reels are just too much attractive for firms to generate engagement.
Why Instagram scores high over other social media channels
One of the reasons businesses prefer Instagram over other social media channels is the opportunity to gain quick popularity by buying likes. Likes offered by companies like Stormlikes are from real accounts and not bots, which create meaningful engagement. Since Instagram assures a higher engagement rate even if the follower count is not much high, knowing how to use the features to the advantage of businesses will make your business grow faster. Instagram helps to gain the most comprehensive outreach and extremely high engagement, making it most attractive for businesses to achieve faster growth.
To get the most from Instagram for your business, follow the steps described in this article.
Start with a business account on Instagram
To engage with your followers closely on Instagram, you must create a business account even though you might have already been in touch with them from your personal Instagram account. Keeping personal and business accounts separate on Instagram will help to focus exclusively on your business without any distraction. Suppose you do not want to have separate accounts on Instagram. In that case, you can convert your personal account into a business account, provided you are already publishing business related content on your personal Instagram account. It will help users maintain continuity in brand interactions as they are already familiar with the brand. Otherwise, creating a new business account is always advisable.
Create Instagram strategies
After defining the audience you want to target in a specific market niche and has created a brand promotion strategy, you must implement it on Instagram by developing suitable Instagram strategies for branding and marketing. In addition to your existing customer base, identify other potential customers that you want to target. Use the analytics of your other social media accounts to identify potential customers. Do some competitor research and create a value statement for your brand.
Define the marketing goals and monitor your performance on Instagram by looking at the various metrics like awareness, engagement, conversion, and customer, which are the stages during the customer journey. Ensure that the goals have a relation to the performance metrics.
Profile optimization is a must
Your Instagram profile for business should contain enough but crisp information outlining your business that gives hints about what viewers can expect from it. Create a distinct brand voice that echoes the brand personality within the small space of 150 characters. Insert hashtags in the bio that helps to display user-generated content. Use emojis for concise display of information. Make the bio easy to read by using spacing and line breaks, and leave a link to your website in the bio to complete the process. You can use your brand’s logo as the profile picture provided you use it consistently across all other platforms. It helps consumers to associate with the brand whenever and wherever they see the logo.
Create great content
For people to recognize your brand quickly, create a visual identity for your brand. Decide the type of content to post, which should usually be some business offerings like foods if it is a restaurant business or clothing if it is a clothing line. Showcasing customer stories is a way to create visuals related to services. Decide on a theme for the content and maintain consistency when creating visuals by choosing colors and filters that enhance the aesthetics to instantly catch the eye when your followers go through their Instagram feeds.
Use incredible photos
To make Instagram work for your business, post striking photos that look incredible. You can click pictures on your phone to upload on Instagram and create the best images. Use natural light as much as possible to create the best photos by softening the effects of colors and shadows to make pictures look cool and cozy. Avoid shooting photos under harsh lights and be creative with the photo angles. Focus correctly using the gridlines of your phone, which helps o create the proper balance that makes the photos interesting.
Tell your stories
To reach out to most of the 400 million daily users who watch Instagram Stories, you can gain mileage for your business by tapping at a significant audience section that starts following some brand or product on Instagram. A third of Instagram Stories emanate from business accounts. Although Stories are on display for 24 hours, you can save them for future use. Tell brand stories that have a beginning, middle, and end and include a strong call to action at the end to facilitate a conversion.
Instagram is the best place to take advantage of influencer marketing, which propels your business to new heights.
