Instagram for business and how not to use? From the popularity growth of Instagram Stories to the most recent advertising expansion opportunities, it’s a good time to use Instagram commercially.
How can you make the most of Instagram advertising for business? I have covered everything from starting and creating a content strategy to developing your brand and driving results. But before we start, we want to make you clear. Why should we have an Instagram account for Companies?
If you are an SME or a large company having an Instagram account for companies opens the doors to the metrics of your audience. Who follows you? What demographic data do they share? How do they interact with your community? Anyway, this is not the only benefit that this type of account will allow you to have. One of the best benefits to project a reliable, business and uniform image to increase security in your followers. Anyway, this and much more we will talk in more detail below.
How To Set Up An Instagram Account For Business
- If you still do not have it, getting Instagram for business is very simple.
- Download the app on your mobile device from the Apple Store or on Google Play (it’s free).
- If you do not have an account you can create it from the app, or log in from your Facebook profile.
- Once you are in the application, you can switch to Business Mode in the settings menu.
- Once you have the business app you can include important information such as office hours, location and a phone number.
Here are some tips to optimize Instagram’s profile for business.
Your Username And Biography
For an easy search, your Instagram username must match the username of your other brand profiles on social networks. The only additional information that appears on your public profile is your website (a URL, which you can change to promote campaigns or new content) and a short biography.
Use your biography to explain what your company is about and what people can expect from your Instagram profile. You should also include branded Hashtags that you want your followers to use. Check our publication, including any advertising hashtag that you want your followers to use. Visit our publication Ideas for Instagram biographies for business and start your social strategy today.
Profile Picture
Instagram profile photo should be your company’s logo. Making your other profile photos coincide will help you to be recognized since the people who follow you on Twitter or Facebook will immediately recognize your brand.
Dominate Instagram and grow your online presence
Your Instagram profile photo will be cut in a circle in the app, so you should make sure that the image you select looks good in that way. Although the profile picture will be 110 pixels in diameter in the mobile application, select a larger image, as it will look larger on the Internet.
Connect With People
To boost the presence of your company on Instagram, you must follow many users. Find influencers in your industry, clients and other relevant people for your brand and follow them.
The demographic sectors of Instagram vary widely, so make sure you know who you’re addressing exactly. Search hashtags of the sector and make your presence known by commenting on photos and following people who participate in these conversations. You’d be surprised how quickly this can increase your number of followers on Instagram
Promoting Instagram Account For Business
Add your Instagram user for business to your web properties and other social profiles to promote the account. In addition, you can send a message or two in which you ask your followers of your other networks, who also follow you on Instagram.
Managing Your Social Media Presence Along
Hootsuite makes it easy to manage and grow your presence on Instagram. From the same board that you are already using for all your other networks, you can monitor comments and hashtags, interact with your audience, measure results, and schedule or publish photos directly to Instagram.
Setting Goals On Instagram Business Account
All your Instagram efforts should be based on strategic goals. What does your company hope to achieve when using Instagram? Establish goals that relate to the goals of departments or the company in general. For example:
- Increase product sales
- Generate traffic to your website
- Increase brand recognition
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Attract the best talent
- Identify and establish relationships with influencers
No matter what you try to achieve, your Instagram goals must be specific, measurable, feasible, relevant and timely (or SMART, if you prefer acronyms).
How To Create Content Marketing Strategy For Instagram
Surfing sporadically on Instagram, liking a few photos and posting a picture of your dog’s face for the fourth time in the week works well for a person using the platform. But you need to have a more conscious marketing plan on Instagram for business if you want to create a solid community and real results for your company. Your strategy must comply with 4 key aspects.
1. Frequency and schedules to publish
You should have a publication calendar, but do not fill your publications followers. The smartest way to find out what works best for your business is to test the publications at different intervals and schedules in order to track the results. Once you have deciphered the best pace, a shared content calendar is the best way to control what will be published and when.
2. Content topics
Varying the different content topics will allow things to remain interesting for your followers, and allow you to achieve different goals. For example, an institute of higher education, whose objective is to increase recognition and attract new students, could use competitions, stories of graduates and life within its facilities as its main content topics.
3. Style guidelines
Do you use emojis in your captions? Are there grammar rules that your brand follows? What hashtags do you use? What kind of public photos? Are there visual indications to which each publication should stick? Your style guidelines should cover all the ways in which your brand differentiates and maintains consistency. We will see more in detail how you can define these aspects in the next section.
4. Rules of interaction
These rules should cover how and when your company should interact with other Instagram accounts, from liking and commenting on other people’s photos to managing incoming comments on your own account. Professional advice: Do not automate your interactions. We have tried it and it does not work well.
Creating a Brand Name for Instagram Account
The visual aspect of Instagram prevails, for the most part, so try to create a consistent and recognizable brand identity. These are some ways you can do it:
1. Generate visual consistency
A WebDam report on the visual aspect of social networks found that 60 per cent of the best brands on Instagram use the same filter for each publication. If you use the same filters, again and again, you will establish a style that will become recognizable to your followers. Because your goal is to make Instagram users stop scrolling once they see your image, (in order to interact with it by liking or commenting on it), the more you instantly recognize your photos, the better.
Mobile photo editing applications such as VSCOcam or Enhance can offer additional filters or editing options to help you discover your style. Even photos that have been edited or filtered in other applications can also be imported into Instagram.
2. Choose a specific theme
At a visual level, you must decide on what content your publications will focus on. In some cases, the content will be obvious: a clothesline will show clothes, a restaurant will post pictures of their dishes.
You do not need to have a lifestyle brand to publish content of that type. Hootsuite is a social media management solution, but our Instagram news section publishes photos and videos of our staff, our dogs and our offices.
3. Be honest with your audience
Your company will not succeed on Instagram just by mimicking the strategy of other brands. What works with Starbucks or Red Bull will not necessarily work with a financial institution or nonprofit organization. Focus on your audience and make sure you meet their interests and expectations. Analyze what works with your company on other social networks, the content that your audience shares on Instagram and how they interact with your competitors or similar brands.
4. Use creativity with your Instagram content for businesses
Take a photo, add a filter and publish it immediately. It is not like this? That could have worked when Instagram took its first steps, but the platform has matured and now gives many opportunities for companies to share different types of interactive and eye-catching content. These are some ways to blow your imagination and be creative with your Instagram content.
5. Do not neglect the comments
Instagram is all about visually appealing content, but do not neglect the comments that accompany each photo, these represent a great opportunity for your company to tell a story. Instagram comments allow you to explain an image, give context and even make your followers laugh (especially if you are a professional with emojis). You can also link an image back to your company. Check out these 12 tips to write the best comments on Instagram.
6. Use photo and video albums
You can add up to 10 photos and videos in a single Instagram post, which gives users the opportunity to browse and view each content individually. These albums offer companies a way to combine photos and videos to tell stories and convey information in a highly attractive way. Here are five ways you can use Instagram albums to create interactive publications for your company.
7. Take a chance with Instagram stories
Instagram Stories have quickly accumulated 250 million average users per day, and it seems that companies will not stop using them. Content removal features and live streams make Instagram Stories the perfect vehicle for companies to take creative risks and create photos as well as eye-catching videos. For more information, see our publication on how your company can use Instagram Stories.
8. Collaborate with influencers
Identify the influential people in Instagram that are relevant to your brand or industry and start creating a relationship. Give them control of your account for a day for a takeover, or ask if you can provide sponsored content on your own account. This could be a huge benefit as they will expose your brand to your huge Instagram community. While many influencers charge a lot of money for their services, even small and medium businesses can use this tactic when associating with local influencers. Learn more about this strategy in our guide for influential marketing in social networks.
Improving Business Results With INSTAGRAM Ads
Social media ads have proven to be an effective means of generating new business, and Instagram ads are no exception. It does not matter if your goal is to generate brand recognition, get more visits to the website or increase downloads of your mobile application, Instagram ads can help you access a huge and participatory audience. Learn how to make the most of them in our Instagram advertising guide.
Use Hootsuite to save time managing the presence of your Instagram and share Instagram videos, schedule posts and monitor your efforts. Try it for free today.