For a technology designed to draw people together, social media has not just served as a communication route but also serves as a marketing tool for many businesses. Being the second most popular social media forum after Facebook, Instagram records more than 500 million users every month.
What does this mean? If you’re seeking a trendy platform to help promote your business, Instagram is the social media platform to use. However, with millions of users seeking for interesting and catchy content to stay connected, and the multitudes of businesses making waves through the social media network, it becomes necessary to learn how to successfully promote your business on Instagram.
Top tips on the increasing following, encouraging engagement, and building brand awareness include a range of recommended efforts from account optimization and styling to a thorough marketing strategy, including services such as FollowersID. In this post, we will dive into the top tips that will help business owners keep their business afloat and also show them how to connect with users on Instagram and organized feeds. Read on to learn more!
Top 10 Tips to Promote Your Instagram Business Account
When considering Instagram for business, there are two questions to keep in mind as they determine the active participation of users.
- What do users want from a business page?
- Why should users keep coming back for more?
The trick to gaining active followers and grabbing their attention does not just lie in curating IG feeds on personal photos or brand pictures. It boils down to developing personalized feeds from unique videos to memorable IG stories. Here are some tips to help promote a marketing campaign for your IG business account.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
The first thing every business owner should consider when considering a brand awareness strategy for their Instagram account is the target audience. Why? It sets the tone for a successful social media campaign as existing customers to feel heard and potential customers feel the value business owners place on them. But, how do you identify your target audience?
- Start by identifying your current customer base (are they young, middle-aged, or elderly?)
- Survey existing business pages the target audience follow
- Know your competitor’s and the user’s demographics
2. Optimize Your Profile
A business profile acts as a homepage of a website. The difference is that, unlike a website, IG business account profiles can only accommodate a link, 150 characters, and some action buttons.
What does this mean? In just 150 characters, your profile needs to leave a lasting first impression, convey tour brand’s personality, and tell people why to bother following your account. That’s a lot to ask from a small space but an achievable request. A memorable bio would include:
- Your name, which takes up 30 characters
- Business handle or username, which also takes up to 30 characters
- Category describing features and services to users
- Contact info, which will include the business address, phone number, and email.
- Business URL, which holds a clickable link to your website.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the grid matters. It is the only place to share visuals of sellable items your business offers. When users go through the grid, they want to view posts that would draw their attention to want to buy. So, avoid sharing closely related and visually alike posts to hold the user’s attention.
Bonus Tip: Use a Unique Profile Photo
The business’s profile image matters. Use an image that users will immediately recognize once they visit your IG business page. Consider using a Logo, Logomark (a logo with no written text), or a mascot.
3. Determine the Perfect Visual Screening Content for Your Business Type
On Instagram, visual feeds get you the engagement you desire. However, not all visuals work the same. Why? Business services differ, and what works for business A may not be suitable for your services. For this reason, it’s always best to determine the type of visually captivating content that the audience wants or content that will sell your services exceptionally to them.
For this step, either include captivating video content, graphics, and picture content or simply texts. However, this technique might be a delicate one to complete as you’ll need to work on the sound, video quality, color blending, and even text uniqueness.
That said, if your business services revolve around filmography, videography, or studio, then video content might just be the perfect visual screening content for the audience. And while image contents work exceptionally, video contents get more engagement than images. But, there’s a catch! Your video or any other content has to communicate legitimacy and professionalism. Nothing communicates legitimacy and professionalism like a good video and unique text.
Bonus Tips: Focus on Color-Grading and Font Style
The color palette used in creating videos also matters. Most business favors vibrant and striking colors. So, choose a color that would match your business, and in turn, grab the user’s attention. Considering text-integrated feeds? Then focus on the font style and size to create a distinct style from other IG business accounts.
4. Post Consistently and on a Schedule
Instagram ensures to present each user contents they’re likely to love viewing through the Instagram Algorithm. It simply means that people can’t like or view your content when they don’t appear in their feeds. Invariably they get no chance to engage with your business.
Posting consistently and on schedule will most likely help your contents appear on their timeline, and the more they view your post, the more they’re likely to want your services and become potential customers. To stay on top of your posting frequency,
- Schedule posts in batches to ensure your account stays active throughout the day, even when you get busy
- Determine the best time to post content as people usually frequent their IG pages at different times of the day. Make sure to find a time your target audience often visits their page. This way, you get to get to the majority of your target audience.
- After determining your posting time, schedule content by setting your preferred time slot on your page.
5. Run a Fun Giveaway or Contest
A fun and engaging strategy you can gift your business is holding a giveaway or context program. They are cost-effective, and with attractive prizes, will significantly greatly extend your social outreach.
Statistics reveal that an average of 34% of new customers is acquired through Instagram contests and giveaways. Plus, Instagram accounts that hold contests grow their followers 70% faster than accounts that don’t. Likewise, active promotion gets up to 15 to 1769 clicks.
Giveaways and contests help you generate leads, engage customers and increase audience reaction all at the same time.
6. Use Hashtags to Gain Larger Audience
Hashtags are responsible for 60% of the engagement gotten on any IG business page. They are strategic in expanding your followers and organic outreach. Recent statistics even show that posts with over ten hashtags tend to gain more views as it allows users to discover more contents they like, which also encourages them to follow.
Bonus Pro Tip: Research Trendy Hashtags to Gain More Followers
Organization hashtags can be challenging. To use hashtags, it’s always best to research your audience. Posting random hashtags at the end of your content won’t make your services known. Instead, it remains redundant as your target audience does not favor those kinds of content. Try to find out which hashtags your audience is using and determine which best fit the video, graphic, or text content you decide on publishing.
7. Socialize with Your Followers
Although your business feeds should showcase content for your sales pitch, remember that Instagram is still a social media forum. Hence, communication needs to take place. So, try engaging with your audience and community.
But, here comes the big question; how do you socialize with your viewers? There are different ways to do this. First, engage the audience by replying to their remarks and comments. When viewers take their time to comment and share their thoughts on your post, responding to them goes a long way to show you are listening. Plus, it builds loyal customers.
Another way to engage with customers is through engagement prompts using polls stickers. Get interactive, upload a poll sticker on your Instagram story to get customers talking. Engaging with fans by asking questions through captions also works wonders for your business page.
When creating content to engage fans, remember that your users and unique, and their interests are a part of them. So, make sure to create engaging, interactive sections that would interest your fans.
Bonus Tip: Employ Users Generated Contents to Engage Followers
While you take credits for your IG business page, it does not mean every content has to be uniquely yours. You’ve got access to Users Generated Content (UGC) – contents created by users. Using this kind of content shows your interest in every fan’s opinions, supports their talents, and also gives room for users to socialize freely with you.
8. Experiment with Different Content Types
Instagram is so much more than photos. With other content types like videos, reals, stories, and IGTV, promoting your business will never seem impossible. You simply have to practice maximizing every content type by mixing different content to reach and engage your followers.
However, it’s important to know that each content type has its pros and cons. This is why it is best to decide on which works best for you. If one person prefers using comments on IG reels than another content type, it doesn’t mean you have to do the same. Try using Instagram reels, stories, videos, or IGTV before deciding on which to use. It’s always best to go for a content idea that attracts more traffic to your page.
Bonus Tip: Learn to Write Unique Captions
Captions are the gate pass to attracting new customers as they increase the uniqueness of your content. While some brands use captions as a micro-blogging tool to share events, stories, and experiences, others use them to add short, catchy headlines to their post. Likewise, some also use captions as a call to action to engage the community. The downside, Instagram captions are restricted to 2,200 characters, and after writing a three-lined text, captions are shortened using an ellipsis. Nevertheless, using captions presents unlimited possibilities for your business. So, make sure to write great captions.
9. Use Instagram Analytics to Monitor Content Performance
One of the best and most functional ways to create awareness for your business on IG is to track your metrics. The question now boils down to; what kind of metrics should you track? Evaluate important metrics such as:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Saves
Most business owners do not consider Instagram’s built-in analytics tool, Instagram Insights, as important because it sometimes compares their posts to other businesses before selecting which viewers would love best. However, metrics matter because they give you valuable insights into your business’s performance.
Instagram likes are more passive and serve to swell your ego. On the flip side, metrics share knowledge on what interests, motivate the audience to keep them wanting more of your services.
If you’re considering running a marketing campaign for your IG business page or simply want to boost your followers, then make sure to use Instagram Insights to track the performance of your posts and help you achieve your goal. Carrying out regular analysis on content gives you an idea of how followers react to your posts.
10. Connect with Influencers
Ever heard of the term “influencer marketing?” It is a marketing strategy that helps you gain more customers on Instagram faster. How? You enter a collaboration with an Instagramer who has built a profile with a larger following.
However, the first step to building brand awareness is identifying influencers with an audience that needs your product and services.
Creating awareness for your business on IG means taking time to engage customers, post unique content, and find attractive methods to keep fans coming back for more. Yet, achieving this will only become possible when you first identify your target audience. If you want to get more free Instagram followers to promote your business or your brand, you can try to use GetInsita, the best tool to get free Instagram followers & likes.