Instagram has become one of the leading platforms for marketing your business. More than ever, people are searching online for a business – first step is to see if they have a website and second step is to see which social platforms they are on and what their following looks like.
It sounds terrible, but it’s just become the new way of doing things. People want to relate to other people and understand why someone else is buying your service or product. Another aspect to Instagram, is that it gives a personalized and relatable feel to it – versus just browsing a website. People like to see the BTS, the face behind the brand and the day to day life of that business owner.
It’s important to market your Instagram in the most optimal – once someone gets to your account, you want to keep them there.
Here are 6 tips you can do to up your Instagram game as a business owner:
1. Stay on brand
It’s important to stay on brand when it comes to your Instagram. Whether it’s your colours or the message you are trying to put out – it needs to align with your overall brand strategy. If your brand colours are purple and grey, then your Instagram pictures should have pops of purple and grey throughout it. If you sell a product, you should primarily feature that product. Don’t mix in a picture of your kids or a picture of your pumpkin spice latte. Stick to your brand and keep your feed cohesive.
2. Engage, and then engage some more
One of the best ways to increase your visibility to your page is to ENGAGE. Business owners often get frustrated when they put a lot of money and time into creating a beautiful feed with vibrant pictures but aren’t seeing the traffic that follows. The one element that is usually missing is the engagement. To have your feed show up on someone’s homepage or the top of their page, you need to give Instagram a reason to put you there. If they can’t see a lot of people engaging with your page, why would they show it. And with that, how can they see if there’s any engagement on your page – if you aren’t creating any? Take the time to create relationships with your followers. Engage on their posts with thoughtful comments to create conversation and share their content. The more others can see you on different accounts, the more visibility it will bring to yours.
3. Optimize your bio
This is your small window to share what you do and be specific. It’s great to know that you love long walks on the beach, but it doesn’t tell your audience what you do. Be specific about your page and what you are selling and how you with benefit the customer. Keep it short. When people get to your page, they want to know exactly what they are there for and why within seconds. If you lose them in a misaligned bio, you’ll lose them to your competitor.
4. Include your email in your bio
This might seem silly because as a business you can optimize your profile to have the email/contact button. However, the button is only optimized for people who have a mail app synched to their phone (so that it auto-populates an email). Add your email directly into your bio – it may not be clickable but if someone is trying to get a hold of you, it’s right there in front of them without having them search for it.
5. Story time
Stories are a great way to show off your business and your brand. Sharing the behind the scenes of making a product, a day in your life or even sharing other posts in your stories is a great way to increase your visibility. Another way to optimize your Instagram as a business is to talk into the camera on stories – yes it can be scary and intimidating, but once you get a few under your belt it will come naturally. People enjoy seeing the face behind the business and the brand – it helps them relate to what you are trying to do, and it personalizes the ‘shopping’ experience for them.
6. Micro-blog your captions
A great way to show Instagram you’re worth being at the top of someone’s feed, is to get people to stay on your posts as well as engage with them. The more you can get people reading your captions and engaging with it – the more Instagram will see that that post brings value and therefore bumping it up. To do that, optimize your caption to create a micro-blog. Share something of value to your followers and have them engaged and reading your post. Create an informative post that they can relate to and will gain knowledge from. Not only will it take them longer to read but they might even save your post for later. As much as we all love a good “Sunday mood” caption – it’s safe to say, we scroll pretty fast past those ones.
Instagram is constantly evolving and there are more and more ways a business can optimize this platform for their business. It takes a bit of getting use to and creating a strategy that works for you, but once you’ve streamlined your process it will be a no brainer.
Are you having a hard time putting together a social strategy that works and that sticks? We’re always happy to help – send us a DM or email us at hello@mintandpoppy.com jjhh
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