How you market your business has come a long way since traditional marketing. Social platforms are making it easier (and cheaper) for businesses to reach a larger and targeted audience to promote their business. Instagram is becoming one of the most popular online platforms and if you can do it right, you’ll maximize your results. Follow these 9 ways to optimize your business Instagram account for success.
1. Create a business account
If you haven’t done so already – do it now. If you are a business, whether you sell a product or service, create (or switch over) to a business account on Instagram. It offers so many tools at your fingertips to monitor and promote your business. You have access to analytics to help you understand your peak times of your followers, how your posts are doing, your level of engagement and so much more. Instagram for business accounts offers promotional tools like boosting a post and creating a campaign. It’s a central spot for followers (and potential customers) to contact you via email or phone, directly from your profile. 80% of users follow at least one brand/business account and it’s becoming increasingly popular for people to follow their favourite brands online.
2. Have a theme
One of the most important parts of having a business account is making sure that your profile represents your business and most importantly, your brand. More and more users are engaging and following brands that have an aesthetically appealing profile. Create a theme that represents what your business does and make it so engaging, that if someone stumbled on your profile, they would know exactly what you represented as a business. Edit your photos with the same presets/filters to make the colour theme flow throughout your profile. Ensure your photos have meaning and the captions have a call to action. Optimize your posts by uploading photos 1080px by 1080px to keep up with retina display and high-resolution devices.
3. Strategy, strategy, strategy…
We can’t say it enough. Take a step back and understand what your goals are with your Instagram account. Is it to create a campaign? Gain more followers? Create awareness? Whatever it may be – have a strategy to see your goals in larger scope and narrow down tactics as to how you will achieve those goals long term. Having a strategy will ensure you are managing your account in the best way possible and increasing your following.
4. Quality over quantity
Sure it’s great to have 10,000 followers – but how many of those are ‘true followers’. How many of those are following your business because they are loyal customers and followers? You want to ensure that you are following ‘real’ accounts; one’s that could benefit your business and the same goes for those following you. A good way to see this is to check the ratio of followers versus those liking your posts. If the number of people liking your posts are far lower than those actually following you – you aren’t getting noticed the way you should be.
5. Engage with your followers!
Aka, appreciate them and show them some love. Your true followers are those that follow your brand and value your business. Take time out of your day to engage with your followers by commenting on their posts, replying to DM’s and comments and liking their pictures. In return, you will continue to grow and be more relevant on their feeds and they will do the same for you. There’s nothing worse than following a business that doesn’t have time for their followers. After all, your success is dependent on them – so show them some love.
6. Create a content calendar
We don’t know about you, but running a business is a 24/7 job – so you don’t always have time to take a picture, edit it, post it, caption it, hashtag it… every day. Create a content calendar monthly and spend a day gathering all your content for that month. Take your pictures, write your captions and blogs, schedule what time you will post (etc…) all in a day or two. Yes, it will be a lot of work, but you’ll be thanking yourself for the rest of the month when you can post at ease and you have a strategy that flows throughout your content.
7. Work your bio
Unfortunately, (although it’s come a long way) Instagram doesn’t have a lot of room for personalization in your bio. So, you have to work with what you have. The first trick is to create your bio in your ‘Notepad’ on your phone so you have a bit more freedom with the formatting. Use hashtags and emojis to make your bio more fun and engaging. Always add a call to action for your followers and push them to a landing page, website or blog post in the URL section of the bio. You can track the progress of your call to action in the insights. Make sure your profile picture is accurately representing your brand – use your logo or a well-known (and high resolution) photo of your business. Take advantage of the location option to gain a local following and for people to easily find and follow you.
8. # Hashtags
First off, don’t over tag. No one likes an over tagger. Be strategic with your hashtags and customize them to the type of post you are posting. If you are posting about exercising for example, you could include hashtags relevant to exercising, like #fitness #workout #healthyliving. Others also interested in exercise can search these hashtags on Instagram and can be directed to your post. There’s no magic number of hashtags, but the maximum is 30. Add your hashtags to the comments section (after you’ve posted) – this keeps your caption clean.
9. Make your insights your best friend.
Seriously. The more you understand your insights on your account and your individual posts, the better you’ll be at engaging your followers and gaining more. Use the numbers to your advantage to optimize your posts and create a strategy that grabs their attention. You can also see what’s not working and rework your content to ensure you are only posting content that is working with your audience.
Instagram unfortunately has an algorithm we won’t ever fully understand so work with the tools and tricks you do have available to you to optimize your business account for success. Create an account that has a theme that represents your brand and engage with your followers to boost your online presence. Need help coming up with a strategy that works for your business? Email us at hello@mintandpoppy.com or send us a DM ;)
Comments