Instagram is probably one of the most straight-forward ways your business can start making a splash on social media. It’s very user-friendly and if you’ve got your own personal account, it won’t take you long to start pivoting and using it to boost your own business.
It’s a community of users that can be very beneficial to tap into, especially considering 87% of users have at some point interacted with a product that they’ve seen on Instagram – this could be a straight-up advert or a product being used by an influencer.
Here’s some quick tips for getting Instagram to work for your business.
Build Community
When you sell products or services, it’s worth inviting and encouraging your users to follow you onto other platforms and carry on your ‘relationship’. Incentivise customers to take photos or videos using your products with discounts and deals – you’ll start to build up a community of users, who in turn are showing your product to their own followers.
If you find that certain customers are posting a lot, create connections with them and think of them as micro-influencers. Users with large followings can be contacted for brand campaigns aswell where they can do a sponsored post about a product – make sure they’re a good fit for your business though and it makes sense.
Start growing a community of followers with interesting, vibrant visual content – full of competitions, challenges and valuable product info. Focus on hashtags that are relevant to your brand and use them on your posts to optimize them and put your images in front of a bigger audience.
Show Personality
Instagram isn’t the platform for boring, stuffy content, so it’s the perfect place for showing off your brand’s personality. You can introduce followers to the people behind your business, behind-the-scenes content and generally get a bit creative with your content and let your hair down.
The content that does well on Instagram is bitesize, meme-able and gets people talking. Instagram Stories is a good feature for fun, bubbly content too and there’s lots of playing around with gifs and filters to be done. There are loads of tools to use, so focus on the fun side.
Not all of your content has to be strictly related to your business, as long as you’re building awareness and creating a positive impression, it’s all good.
Customer Service
A lot of customers, especially younger demographics, are using social platforms as a customer service. This means that it’s important to monitor who’s talking about your business, as they could be posting concerns or criticism. See if you can address problems and offer any solutions through the platform. Direct messages can also be used to get in private contact with individuals and offer advice or product info.
When your business is just starting out, social platforms can act as a cheap, simple customer service tool. If you signpost customers towards it when they have a problem then you can manage queries and feedback from one place. As you scale up, you’ll probably want a more sophisticated CMS but it’s a good starting point.
For more information about marketing your business, contact DOWO today.