How To Use Instagram For Business

If you’re not using Instagram for your business or not using it at all, you may be leaving clients, and therefore money, on the table.

Maybe you feel that adding a new platform to your already very full social media plate is too much to deal with right now. Or maybe you’re indeed using Instagram but going crazy because you feel you need to have THAT PERFECT GRID that all the influencers have.

Well, let me break the news to you… You do NOT need a perfect grid!

However, you DO need to be on Instagram if you have the slightest suspicion that your potential customers are on it.

Remember — Instagram users are shoppers, so they’re kind of like a warm audience opening their wallets. The Facebook audience, on the other hand, is not really a shopping audience.

Ready, then?

Here are my best practices for using Instagram to raise awareness of your brand/product and create more sales.

1. Use Hashtags

I’m not going to go into how to find your ideal customer because I already went into it in this blog post: “How to define your ideal customer to increase engagement”.

But what I am going to tell you is that once you know who you want to have as a client, that ICA or niche, you are more likely to find her using hashtags. Use them wisely and make sure they make sense and correlate with your target audience and post. For example, don’t post a photo of you working out and add hashtags about traveling; Instagram can flag this and therefore flag or even close your account.

2. Engage with your audience

I can’t stress this enough. If you walked into a building and the doorman said, “Hello”, wouldn’t you reply, “Hello. How are you?” Well, if someone leaves you a comment, please do respond to that comment.

Now, you can go ahead and ignore them but then don’t come back and complain about lack of engagement. Social media is about being social; it’s about making connections. I can’t even begin to tell you how annoyed I get when I make a comment or ask someone a question, especially a small business owner, and they don’t respond. Please don’t do this.

3. Use the 80/20 rule

Have you heard about the Pareto rule? This is business 101: 20% of your activities

generate 80% of sales. This can be applied to pretty much anything. In this case it

means: share, entertain and educate in 80% of your posts and sell in 20% of them,

because pushing product all the time will drive potential customers away, and you don’t

want that, right?

4. Use the stories feature

There’s a reason people love The Kardashians and The Real Housewives of (insert city/town): People love to see what’s going on in other people’s lives. It’s always been like this and always will be. Use stories to your advantage. Show the behind-the-scenes of your business, your product (ie, how you use it or create it), or even your life. We all want to know about you because we all want to know that it’s not a robot but a real person behind the brand, so show us! The best thing, Instagram stories only last 24 hours, so if you don’t like it or suddenly become uncomfortable with what you’ve posted, it’s fine, it’ll be removed from public view within a day.

5. Have a PUBLIC account

I wasn’t going to add this because it seems like a “duh” thing to me, but it still blows my mind to see people trying to build a business with a private account. This is like opening the coolest coffee shop in town and keeping the doors closed and shades shut. What’s the point?

6. Use Images

I mentioned before that your grid doesn’t have to be “perfect” and I stick to that comment, but you need to make sure it’s at least cohesive and that you use good lighting and quality images.

You don’t need to invest in a DSLR to take photos; just use your phone, but make sure the images are clear and well lit, especially if you sell a product. You want your potential followers to stop the scroll and a good image will do that. It can also potentially do the selling for you. Remember that cute t-shirt you saw on your feed and stopped to check out? Did you need to be sold on it? You just stopped and wanted it because of the photo, right? That’s why images are so important and so powerful.

So there you have it: 6 easy ways to use Instagram for your business that you can start implementing right now. If you want to know more about Instagram and how it can help your business grow, or for other marketing tips, join our online community, The Dreamers Lounge. Can’t wait to see you there!

This post first appeared in Eva Simborg's blog at https://www.evasimborg.com/how-to-use-instagram-for-business/.