Tips to use Instagram for business

Instagram is one of the best ways to reach out to people for your business. After all, almost everyone nowadays spends active hours on this social media platform, making it a powerful marketing tool.

But put yourself in a situation: If you couldn’t find any value in a business account, would you still follow it?

Nope, right?

You should focus on providing value to your potential followers and hook them into following you. But why open an Instagram account for your business?

Why should you use Instagram for your small business?

It’s essential to keep objectives in mind while using any marketing medium. Instagram is no exception. Ask yourself, “What do we want to achieve?” before investing time and money in Instagram marketing.

Increasing brand awareness, building a community, showcasing corporate culture and values, tracking audience engagement and selling products and services are common Instagram business aims.

Using this method, you can reach out to customers who are already spending enormous time on Instagram. Additionally, it can provide valuable audience insights that you can use to optimise all of your marketing plans.

Sounds beneficial? Read on as we share tips on using Instagram for your business.

Tips on how to use Instagram for your small business

Here are ideas on using Instagram to find new clients and retain old ones for your business.

Basics: Set up your profile

Consider your Instagram profile to be your homepage if you’re utilising it for business. It’s like a game where you only have 150 characters, one link, and a ‘’few action buttons to entice potential buyers, so make the most of them.

First, ensure to switch your Instagram to a business profile and create a captivating bio. Switching to a business profile benefits extra features, including adding contact information, tracking content performance, selling, and promoting posts within the Instagram app.

Optimise your link in the bio

Instagram allows you to post clickable links only in your bio, so it’s incredibly valuable. You may either retain a static link to your homepage or alter it periodically to reflect new content.

However, optimising your bio is a good marketing strategy to keep up your sleeve. Nowadays, many apps offer a landing page that duplicates your grid and gives clickable links for each section to emphasise and drive visitors to your most meaningful content.

SproutLink and ShopGrid are examples, but numerous options are available depending on your region, budget, etc. 

Geotag your posts

Taking your business online on Instagram means you can reach people worldwide, and this amount of reach is great. However, when it comes to entertaining and spreading awareness of your brand in a particular area, Instagram geotags come into the picture.

First, you will have to allow Instagram to publicise your location as Instagram fetches geolocations from the physical location of your mobile device.

If you want to make sure that your brand voice reaches the right audience, start geotagging all the posts.

Use the save post feature

This technique isn’t meant for the public, but it might help your small business’s Instagram content strategy. 

Instagram allows you to “save” a post and organise it into a collection for later viewing. This feature may be used in various ways for research and inspiration.

Also, the new Instagram algorithm boosts those posts more which are saved, not liked. So, the save feature is the new like for today’s Instagram. 

Use Highlights to showcase what your business is all about

Hypothetical Example:

You are an Online Bakery Business. Your highlights would include:

• An About Us collection of posts and stories behind the brand
• Menu and Rates collection of stories in the highlights
• Customer reviews collection of posts and stories
• Behind the scenes collection of posts, stories and reels of cakes and bakes in making 
• An optional Recipes, Tips and Advice or Courses highlight 
• An FAQs highlight that consists of stories and posts

A bonus tip: All your highlight covers will be your logo or a simplified version for uniformity.

Instagram’s Stories Highlights feature lets you post even more information about your business. In addition, highlights let you aggregate those Stories into an accessible source of evergreen content by displaying them on your profile after they would otherwise disappear.

Create guides

Like Instagram Highlights, Guides lets you collect your favourite posts into a single featured piece of content. However, there are some significant variances. It’s written in an editorial style, almost as if you’re reading an essay. You may store photographs and posts from your feed and other people’s feeds. 

Each embed has a caption field where you can provide extra information about the product or venue you’re promoting.

Let’s recall the Online Bakery business example. 

Your guides could be a collection of recipes you have jotted down or even a full behind the scenes of a large order. 

Pay attention to captions

The opening line of your caption is what draws people’s attention and determines whether they continue reading. Therefore, it would be best to pay attention to the initial sentence. 

Moreover, Instagram has added keyword search, meaning what you write in your caption is more crucial than ever. You can be cutesy with your words, and while you do so, ensure you include phrases that you want others to connect your business with. 

The phrases may include your brand and product names and broad terms linked to your company sector.

Use Instagram Live constantly

Instagram Live can be used to connect with your followers in real time. Using Instagram Live has various advantages. The followers are notified when an account they follow goes live. This real-time communication is critical, especially when attempting to stand out on the internet. A few suggestions to get you started on Live:

• Conduct a Q&A session
• Organise an interview
• Showcase a service or product

Let’s retake the Online bakery example. Your Instagram Lives would be something like this:

• A behind the scenes tour of your pantry or fridge
• An entire order preparing to pack session live with interactions
• An ask me anything session wherein some followers even get to go live with you
• A Q&A session where you answer questions from the sticker of the same name (it’s an Instagram Story feature)
• Interviews with other bakers, businesses, and people shedding light on baking, recipes, inspirational journeys, etc. 
• A short life of a finished eatable that is unique or extra pretty

Offer “followers-only” promotions

Everyone enjoys a good bargain. But a one-time sale? That’s employing the FOMO and urgency marketing strategy. If you conduct a limited-time followers-only promotion, it gives your followers the incentive to stay engaged and return for the next one. Use the countdown Stories sticker to increase anticipation for a flash sale or make promotions more surprising.

Host a giveaway

Hosting a giveaway is one of the best strategies to expand your Instagram account naturally. Free things are something that people enjoy even more than a good deal. Depending on how you organise the gift, you might be able to get more post engagement. 

Add criteria such as bookmarking a post, commenting on it, or forwarding it to a friend and encouraging people to follow your account. For small companies, Instagram contests are low-hanging fruit. 

You may also collaborate with other small businesses with a similar target demographic to increase brand exposure. But, of course, this technique should not be your exclusive social media strategy. 

Beyond organising prizes, give your new followers further reasons to hang around. For example, if you’re an online bakery business, you could give away baking implements, some rare ingredients and even a secret recipe!

Host a takeover

Hosting a takeover or taking over another company’s account is a strategy to improve brand awareness for your small business. Typically, a social media takeover involves a series of scheduled postings spread out over time. 

These posts can be feed-only, stories-only, Live, or all of Instagram’s publishing options. Consider sponsoring a takeover in the same way you would a narrative. Introduce the individual, discuss the topics they’ll be covering, publish the takeover content, and conclude with a last goodbye. 

Fellow industry experts, representatives from other small firms, and expected staff members can be your takeover guests.

Increase your DM usage

Creating a connection between you and your consumer is one component of community development, which takes time. Personal texting is an excellent method to achieve this. 

Increasing your DM usage and interacting with the consumer on their feed is the best way to build a connection.

Track your analytics

Keep an eye on your Instagram stats. Your tactics won’t stand out without facts to back up your intuitive feeling of success. You may use the Instagram app or Facebook to get your native insights if you’re just getting started. However, you should also be aware of the distinctions between impressions, reach, and other network-specific metrics.

Interact with your followers

Using Instagram for business doesn’t mean you have to transform your social media presence into a constant sales pitch. Instead, Instagram is a social networking site, so get used to interacting with others.

It’s critical to reply to someone who takes the time to express their opinions with you and demonstrates that you’re paying attention. Responding to comments on Instagram is a terrific approach to developing a solid community. 

Engagement prompts are also an excellent technique to get people talking. Experiment with interactive stickers like polls, quizzes, and sliding scale rankings available in the Instagram stories.

Experiment with different content types

Instagram is much more than just pictures. The platform now supports a wide range of content categories, including:

• Videos
• Reels
• Stories
• IGTV
• Guides

It’s also crucial to offer a variety of content kinds if you want to expand your reach and interaction on the network.

Analyse your results

Digging daily into your Instagram statistics is important. You must track how your content performs to attract more followers, keep your audience engaged, and promote your brand.

Instagram Insights, Instagram’s built-in analytics tool, is a good start, but it’s only available on mobile.

Key Takeaways

Instagram is an excellent platform to boost your company’s visibility worldwide. Utilising Story highlights and using Instagram Live regularly, checking analytics reports, and your Instagram strategy can help you engage with your consumers and help in branding.

Although creating a corporate account is more complex, we’re willing to bet that you still follow a lot of companies from your account — 90 per cent of Instagram users do.

 Be one of those companies you follow. We’re not suggesting that you copy your favourite businesses, but you should consider what makes such accounts worth following and use that as inspiration. Then, take that idea and mix it with our tips to develop an Instagram marketing plan tailored to your business.

Instagram is a robust platform that can link you with millions of prospective clients, regardless of your company goals.