Why use Instagram for business? Instagram is s great way to expand the audience for your business. Instagram has over 500 million daily active users. Since the past two years the amount of users has doubled. About 51% are male, 49% are females. The number of monthly active users in the US in 2016 was 78 million. Let’s talk 9 Tips Using Instagram for Business.
“Over a third of Instagram users have used their mobile to purchase a product online– making them 70% more likely to do so than non-users” and 50% of users follow brands.
How does Instagram Work? Learn the Lingo.
On Instagram, you will want a short bio pointing visitors to your website so they know where to buy your products. Where are your products made? Are they Made in the USA?
Track your website traffic from Instagram by using a discount code “Instagram” so you can see how many people buy using the code.
Instagram is good for advertising. Create a community and have contests. Allow visitors to post photos of how they use your products. They can tag your Instagram page and you can repost that photo, showing that people use the product and the ideas that other people have when they use the product. This gives the brand even more exposure. This works especially well if the person that originally posted the photo already has a big following, redirecting them to your companies page and increasing sales.
People can like the photo, comment, save it so they can see it later, and send it to their friends via private message.
A Content Marketing strategy is about 25% of a successful marketing plan. You need to drive traffic to your engaging content. Learn more about our program to your success in Best Way to Spend $1000 Marketing Your Business.
How to Get Your Instagram Posts Noticed
Hashtags # on photos have been known to increase the number of views by 50%. Post daily and use images to show your products. The more active you are on your Instagram page, the more interest you create. There are certain times of the day that will help get the photos more exposure. Use hashtags that are commonly used in searches. Tagging your photo will help gain exposure. This kind of exposure is why using Instagram for a business is really a good idea especially if you want to expand your audience of who is looking to buy.
How Frequently Should You Post?
Post on Instagram consistently. Once or twice a day is the best. More specifically, according to Hubspot, post all day every day, Sunday through Saturday, except between 3 pm and 4 pm on Instagram.
What Time to Post on Instagram?
They say posting any time of day is best. It depends on when your biggest fans are online. We find that posting images at 5 pm gets the most attention and likes or hearts. This increases the chances for a sale.
What to Post on Instagram?
- Tips
- Behind-the-Scenes photos
- Your product photos and links
- Questions and posts
- Good content from others
- Your blog post likes
- Offers and discounts
- Competition announcements
- Events
- Testimonials and success stories
- Funny snippets from your life
- Videos
- fill-in-the-blanks
- Interesting facts
- Sneak peek photos
- Old popular content
- Recommendations
- Have Fun, be fun.
Before posting, ask yourself “Is what I’m sharing useful, interesting, informative, and entertaining? Will it help my audience to connect with me and my brand?
Top Tips for Using Instagram for Business
- Don’t forget to be social. Interact with your followers by liking and commenting on their posts too.
- Where you can, include an attractive visual element such as photo, graphics or video to your posts to increase engagement.
- People aren’t on social media to be sold to but people generally buy people. So, take a ‘soft sell’ approach and mix promotional posts with more personal and informative content.
- When you want your followers to take action, include one clear ‘call-to-action’ to tell them what to do next. Otherwise, they will just carry on scrolling.
- Check your social media analytics to see what is working well for you then do more of that!
Carol is the founder of Hit-the-Web Marketing since 2009. She's been building websites and marketing campaigns from scratch into something scalable and successful for over 20 years.
We build websites around lead generating strategies. Then, we go to work driving traffic to your website, converting visitors into customers, and nurturing and retaining your customers. Our main service is Google Ads. Because 92.07% of people searching on the web use Google as their search engine of choice.