How to Use Instagram for Business?
đź“– Learning
With the advent of social media and the kind of popularity it holds today, it would be extremely beneficial for a business to create a strong social media presence. Instagram falls among the most widely-used websites and applications that help in creating a strong buyer base, especially if the target audience for the business is millennials or Gen Z buyers.
The Facebook-owned platform, Instagram boasts of having around 1 Billion (2022 reports), active users per month, and 500+ million daily users. While the young adults (between 18-24 years), and the adults (between 25-34 years) are found to be the most active on Instagram, the platform is also used by people below and above the margin.
Moreover, recent reports state that the brands have seen a 4% of average engagement from their followers on Instagram, which is much more than the followers' engagement rate on Facebook or Twitter, which happens to be around 0.1%. In fact, brands get 10x more engagement on Instagram from all around the platform than they get on the other social media platforms. In other words, Instagram is better for the visibility of the brands.
With an Instagram business profile, you can see real-time data on how your stories and promoted posts perform, get insights into how followers are interacting with your content and unlock features only available to businesses that make it easier to get noticed and drive sales. Creating a business profile on Instagram is free and can help you a lot to understand your audience.
So, let's talk about how you can use Instagram for your business, and all the aspects that you need to keep in mind for working out your plan that way. It will help you understand the features of Instagram for Business as well.
How to use Instagram for Business?
- Create an Instagram Business Account
- Make Your Feed Visually Appealing
- Marketing On Instagram
- Write An Interesting Bio
- Use Geotagging
Tools Provided By Instagram To Monitor Outreach
Benefits Of Using Instagram For Business
How to use Instagram for Business?
So, now that we are all aware of how big is Instagram and how important the platform is for businesses, it is obvious that you would also want to leverage the popular social media platform to grow your business. If you are interested, then let's dive into the primary steps that will help you use Instagram for your business here:
Create an Instagram Business Account
If you already have a personal account. Moreover, if the content of that profile is engaging and appropriate for your brand, then you can simply convert that into a business profile. After that, you will be able to access all the features and tools that are available only for Instagram business accounts.
You can easily convert your personal account into a business account by following the below steps:
- In the Instagram Mobile App, go to your Profile.
- Now go to "Settings"
- Go to "Account"
- Tap on "Switch to Business Account" or "Switch to Creator Account" as you like.
This will convert your profile into an Instagram Page. It is a really helpful feature of Instagram for startups and entrepreneurs, who are looking forward to using Instagram for their businesses.
Make Your Feed Visually Appealing
The users of Instagram are groups of people from the new generation. As Instagram is mainly an app to share photos, users need to see your product before they even visit your website. Thus, it is important to upload photos of your business and products in a way that is eye-catching and stands out from the plethora of content that is thrown at users today. Besides, it is also essential here, to maintain a proper colour scheme and aestheticism that makes the grid layout visually appealing.
When users find a post or image that is appealing, the key instinct is to open the profile and check out further products. A typical user views an image for about 3-4 seconds and on finding it interesting, takes 6-7 more seconds to skim through your profile. So, it is important to make these moments count.
One should market their products keeping in mind the current trends, i.e., the viral happenings around the globe because they bring viewers easily. People tend to be engaged more with the posts related to the latest trends in the world of marketing and beyond it, which in turn, helps brands get more shares from their followers. This is why it is essential to monitor these trends, which include technology trends, marketing or general trends. Though the videos can provide more information than the photos, they are mostly considered less engaging for the users when compared with the images. Putting up photos, especially of high quality, will increase your engagement. Typically, users view about 10-20 seconds of a video. So when uploading one, businesses should try to put more colourful content at the beginning of their videos, and try to keep the viewers engaged throughout.
Marketing On Instagram
Keep in mind, that your page is not isolated on Instagram. So, keep it up to date with the latest hashtags, trends, and content that may help sell your products/services, and gain mass approval for them. Some of the biggest worldwide trends were "Fidget Spinner" and "Mature Bag" and then the social media trend based on iPhone 11's design came, and it continues in much the same way. When users come across your page, catch their attention by producing content that is both relevant and contributes to your business.
- Write grabbing captions
The captions of your Instagram posts, stories and videos are really important because it is the caption that the readers read first to check if it is of any interest to them. So, you should not miss out on this opportunity to score. - Keep your posts formal and your stories casual
The stories come and go, so a more formal tone would only bore your potential customers. However, here if you pour some nice and grabbing casual content, then you might still have the opportunity to hit them! - Use hashtags
A major way of attracting users is by using hashtags that are widely used, and viewed by many users or those which are relevant to your business. This helps your page be visible to a greater number of viewers. Never forget the caption of your photos or don't take it lightly, describe your images and videos creatively, use hashtags or ask the viewers questions, and use the caption to keep viewers engaged. An inspirational quote or a pop culture reference helps you score extra points. - Stories
Use Instagram stories effectively to display new additions to your product line or promote your business. Be creative, original, and crisp with Instagram stories. - Story highlights
Maintain clearly defined important highlights as a part of your profile as they are the first to attract the audience's attention. Make them seem interesting and use these to especially highlight any offers or competitions that your brand is holding. - Add relevant CTAs
If you want the users to click on your website or the products and services that your brand offers, then you need to tweak your content in such a way that it drives the customers' attention, and leads them to click on the link you want to.
Vidhi Punamiya
Write An Interesting Bio
The first thing that users will view in your account when they visit your profile is the bio. Keep the bio crisp and to the point, describing your business, but do so in a creative manner, one that shall intrigue users to further explore your account and your website. Add a link in your bio, it could be the link to your website or one that features your latest or most popular product. This makes your business easily accessible to the community. Use points to give information about yourself and use attractive emojis. You can also go in the extreme opposite direction and give a one-line introduction if you’re daring to be pretentious and if it works with the aesthetics of your product and/or services.
Make the logo of your company your profile photo instead of changing it with each new product to give your brand space to become known and recognized by users. Often seeing the same logo, again and again, may instil a feeling of familiarity amongst the users.
Use Geotagging
Geotagging is a feature on Instagram. With geotagging, you can tag the location of each of your images. You can also tag your work address or the address where your business is headquartered. This further makes it easy for the followers and the customers of your brand to know the location of your business. To use geotagging, you can simply press the “add location” button, and then you can type an address or select one from the selected Instagram list of addresses.
Tools Provided By Instagram To Monitor Outreach
- Actions taken from the story: You can view the number of people who visits your profile through your stories by swiping up and checking insights. This helps you view the nature of content that attracts users, which would help you gain more insight into the factors that will help you gain more popularity. You can also promote the stories as your post so that a larger audience views your content.
- Post insights: You can check the number of people that view your page, know how many among them already follow you, and the number of people you have reached through the explore page or the tags you have used. This will help optimize your business, brand, and Instagram account to produce content that is mass-approved and will help you increase sales.
- People Visited your Page: Instagram also shows how many people have visited your profile in one week on your home page.
Benefits Of Using Instagram For Business
- Your audience is already there: In June 2018, Instagram reached one billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017. Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks in the world. So, if you have a proper Instagram strategy then there is no limit to success for your business. This is the best platform where any quality service or product can go viral within a short period.
- Build your brand reputation easily: No matter how big or small your business is, if you have confidence in your product or service, then you have the key to success. Instagram has allowed businesses to grow freely, with equal opportunities for every one of them. You just have to take advantage of the built-in features at the right time and you are well on your way to success. Interact with more and more people, try to post quality content regularly and make sure the images you are using are in HD. Instagram prefers quality more than quantity, so make sure your content is visually appealing.
- Generate revenue directly from Instagram: A few years back there was a limited opportunity for businesses to get success on Instagram. But now, Instagram has allowed businesses to earn money directly from the platform itself. There is a new feature Instagram has launched that is the shoppable post where you can add tags to the products in your photos with links and that will include product description, price, and the "shop now" button or link. Your audience can directly buy the products from your online store.
- Show your creativity on Instagram: Instagram is the best place where you can show your creativity and also how attractive your brand is. Show your enthusiasm while posting content, and make it as much appealing as possible. You can also organize some contests, giveaways, special offers, and many more. This will help you to attract more and more visitors to your profile and also to your online store.
- Promote through influencers: Influencers are the people who have a big following on social media and other online platforms. When you start a venture and you want to market it to a large audience, influencers are the people who can help you out with this. Many influencers promote brands and products to take them on the growth path. They have an audience who follows them from the heart and is also loyal to them. So here, you have the opportunity to build the reputation of your brand.
Conclusion
Keeping in mind all these points will help increase outreach and drive sales of the products and services you offer. Instagram is a crucial marketing tool for startups. Using Instagram for business will help gain your brand publicity and a larger market to establish itself. Many businesses are solely based on Instagram at this age, and are reaping all the benefits that the platform has to offer. Using a platform that is this popular will add to the marketing of your startup.
Parnas Ghosh
FAQs
What is Instagram for business?
Instagram is a popular social media platform that can serve as a valuable marketing tool for your business. You can create a business account on Instagram by first creating a personal account and converting it.
What are the benefits of Instagram for business?
Some of the Benefits of Using Instagram for Business are:-
- You can learn about your customers
- Presentation of products and services is easier
- Customer engagement can be maximised this way
- Instagram helps in building solid customer relationships
- It helps in driving website traffic
- Reaching new audiences is easier
- You can go for prominent influencers and make them brand ambassadors
What are the advantages of using Instagram?
The Advantages of Instagram are:-
- It is a popular media
- It has a wide scope for everyone
- Instagram offers spaces for each content creator
- Marketing opportunities galore on Instagram
- Instagram optimising, and marketing on Instagram is cost-effective
- Instagram prioritises security
- Instagram helps both celebrities and fans
- Instagram has numerous tools to make effective marketing possible
- Building engagement is easy
How to use Instagram for business?
If you want to use Instagram for business, then first you need to ensure that you have a proper profile, with a decent profile picture as your business logo. If you don't initially have a business account on Instagram, you need to make your existing account into an Instagram business account. Some more things that you need to follow to successfully start using Instagram for your business are:
- You need to chalk out a foolproof business strategy
- You should optimise your profile to the fullest
- You should keep in mind to share good quality content
- You should focus both on attracting new audiences and engaging the old audiences
How to create an Instagram company page or a company business account on Instagram?
If you are looking to create a company business account on Instagram, there here are a simple set of steps that you can follow:
- Visit your Instagram profile and click on the top-right corner
- Now, click on Settings
- Then, tap on Account
- Now, chose Switch to Professional Account
- Next, tap on the Continue option
- Now, choose the right category for your business, and click on Done
- Tap the OK option
- Click on Business
- Select Next
- Now, add your contact details, and go for Next
- At last, you need to tap on the X option to exit
Must have tools for startups - Recommended by StartupTalky
- Convert Visitors into Leads- SeizeLead
- Manage your business smoothly- Google Workspace
- International Money transfer- XE Money Transfer
