Instagram is one of the best social marketing platforms for small businesses. With over 25 million business accounts and 200 million visits to business profile views per day, it's clear why so many businesses are focusing on Instagram as their primary social media profile.
This intuitive and user-friendly platform provides opportunities for businesses to market their offerings, network and project themselves as powerful brands.
In this article, we will share some important tips for small businesses to help you grow your influence on Instagram.
1. Create interesting Instagram stories and posts
Create stories related to the brand, product/service, and anything related that entices users and helps to build trust, engagement, and credibility. Always try to add value to your audience and create content that will help them in some way.
Here are some ideas that will help you increase your audience:
- Use video - Quinty analysed over 9 million posts on Instagram and found that video receives up to 21% more interactions than images. However, photos are still the most popular post type. You can enhance your videos using an online video editor tool to make them more captivating and professional.
- Add emojis, texts and highlights to make your posts more friendly.
- Curate your content properly with keywords, hashtags, and linking the post to your main website.
- Use polls and ratings on Instagram stories to increase user engagement.
- Use Instagram ads to grow followers.
2. Check the Insta insights
On Instagram, all business profiles have access to analytical insights. These include the number of users looking at your posts, profile visits, and any actions taken.
Check these insights regularly and use them to understand how your business is doing on Instagram, which posts work and who do not. Continually evolve and adapt your social strategy based on these insights.
3. Enhance User Engagement
Increasing user engagement through Instagram posts is one of the key objectives of Instagram marketing. But how can you achieve this?
Here are a few tips that small businesses find make the most difference:
- Schedule regular posts on Instagram so that the interest of the users is maintained.
- Make multiple posts for holidays and weekends because these days see a maximum number of active users.
- Always include the option for 'DM' or Direct Messages, which will allow the users to converse with you directly, maintaining privacy.
4. Go for influencer marketing
Instagram is famous for influencer marketing. According to Instagram, about 87% of people buy based on influencers’ suggestions or reviews. 70% of shoppers use Instagram to find new products worth buying.
These statistics clearly explain why businesses are using influencer marketing. You can associate with one or many influencers to have the maximum number of followers and exposure on Instagram. When influencers promote a product or brand on their profiles, it will indirectly pave the way for more organic traffic to your business.
5. Optimize your hashtags wisely
Spend some time focusing on the hashtags for your Instagram stories and posts, as well as optimizing your company bio and having a user-friendly username.
Hashtags serve as keywords specifically for Instagram and link users to relevant content when they search for those terms. So, for example, if your business deals with ladies fashion, including top fashion-related hashtags like #SummerCollection2021 or #Fashiondiscount on your posts will help more users view your content.
Make sure that no irrelevant hashtags are used which will target the wrong audience. You can also create your own hashtags focusing on your business and brand.
Conclusion
Due to its reach and popularity, many small businesses are now using Instagram as their primary marketing channel. Following these top 5 Instagram tips for small businesses, you'll take some great steps forward in increasing your brand awareness and customer engagement. Good luck!
