How to Successfully Use Instagram for Social Media Marketing

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Instagram is a great escape for browsing through photos and seeing what’s going on in the world around you. What are friends doing? What are some great inspiration photos for my next shopping spree? But one thing a lot of people actually use Instagram for is to see the work a business has done to get a sense of who they are. Think of an Instagram account as a business portfolio. If people don’t like what they see, they don’t want anything to do with your company. Instagram is also a great way to show off your brand personality and connect with the audience. So how do you successfully create an account on Instagram for social media marketing? Well, let me walk you down the lane of social media influencers and creepy DMs. I’ll give you all the tips on how to grow a successful business account. Better grab your goggles because we’re about to take a deep dive into the world of Instagram!

Tip 1: Create a Business Account

If you want to use Instagram for social media marketing, you’ll want to use a business account. When you create an account for Instagram, there’s an option for a personal account or a business account. Obviously, if you’re creating this account for your company, then you should select the business account option. A business account is very beneficial when it comes to insights. You have access to all types of information revolving around your account such as:

How many people are sharing, liking, saving, or commenting on your posts
How many people are visiting your account
Whether your account is gaining popularity or not
The option of promoting your posts to gain views

These insights can help you keep track of what’s working and what isn’t.

Tip 2: Create Your Own Shop

An Instagram shop is only available for established business accounts. This shop allows users to browse through the items you’re selling and make purchases. There’s an option on the Instagram explore page where a user can scroll through all the different shops and come across one of your products. Your shop will also be available on your account for users to interact with. Don’t forget to tag your shop product on your posts!

Tip 3: Develop a Consistent Aesthetic

Having a visually appealing account is a great way to draw attention and encourage people to follow your account. Just as you do for your branding, lay down the colour scheme, fonts, tone of voice, and types of imagery that you’ll be using. This allows for a clear outline of what each post will look like. Eventually as you post more, your account will start to come together and all your posts will give off an overall personality.

Tip 4: Make Use of Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are short videos that you can post on your account for 24 hours and then disappear. It sits where your profile picture is and when people go on their feed, it appears with all the other stories at the top of the page. These are great for showing off a variety of material that you want to share and post one after another. This can be a useful tool for storytelling such as showing how a product works or as a type of advertisement.

You can even use the stories to be more real and honest with your audience and allow them to connect with you. For example, a story can allow for you to do all types of polls or to do a Q&A with your followers. These types of stories provide useful information for what your audience wants to see and show you what you can improve on.

Tip 5: Turn Your Stories Into Highlights

If you want your stories to last longer than 24 hours, you can add them as a highlight. A highlight is when your story transforms into a circular icon on the bottom of your bio. From here your audience can click on and view as a story but it sticks to your account until you decide to delete it. If your account has multiple highlights, you can add your new stories into whichever highlight you wish to add it to so that each highlight is categorized.

In case I’m confusing you, let me give an example. You can have three highlights on your account: one labeled Products, one labeled Previous Orders, and one labeled Our Team. If you decide to post a story of some behind the scenes of your employees in the office and want to save it as a highlight, you can choose to save it into the Our Team highlight. These categorized highlights allow for a more thorough understanding of your company for your audience. You can even add a cute cover photo for each highlight to create a consistent look and add to the visual appeal.

Tip 6: Post Instagram Reels

Ever heard of TikTok? Instagram has its own section that resembles TikTok videos. You can post long videos of whatever type of content you wish as a way to promote your business and let you stand out. Instagram has even decided to focus more on their reels and their algorithm prioritizes original reels.This can be a great way to bring in more followers. For these reels, make sure to have fun with them! You can be as creative as you want with these. Add some music, some filters, and just edit them however you like. These can be found along with your other posts or, to display only the reels on your account, they can be found in the center folder where your posts are located.

Tip 7: Go Live

Instagram Live is as real as you can get on this app. Instagram Live is when you, well you know, are live on camera. Pretty self-explanatory. Followers can join and leave comments and ask questions while you interact with them however you choose to. This can either be an intimate discussion with followers or have them watch you while you do a demonstration or some activity. The opportunities are endless.

Tip 8: Know What Type of Posts You’ll Release

Depending on what type of business you’re running, you’ll want to consider what type of posts you’ll release. Maybe you’ll show your product or service, maybe show inspirational posts. Will you post behind-the-scenes posts? Will you show instructional videos? This is where you’ll really need to know what your business is all about. Know what makes you stand out and how you can portray that on your account.

Tip 9: Post Instagram Advertisements

If you’re going to use Instagram for social media marketing, you might as well use all that it has to offer. If you want to post an ad on Instagram, you can pay to advertise any of your posts. The advertised posts will appear not just on the explore page, but on the feeds of people that don’t follow you. This can allow anyone to easily purchase your product or service, and can help you gain more followers and attraction. You just set up how much you’re willing to spend on the ad and let Instagram do the rest.

Tip 10: Create Visually Attractive Posts

Instagram is all about the visuals. People scroll through Instagram posts really quickly and only stop for something that has caught their eye. It’s like a fish with bait. You need to give them something they want to get their attention and reel them in. You need to post content that is so well designed that they’ll stop scrolling and take a second to analyse.

Well there you have it. That is how you successfully use Instagram for social media marketing. Felt like a long blog didn’t it? That’s not even everything you can consider doing on this platform. Instagram is a heavy social media platform but can be extremely useful to your brand. It can also get really hectic and overwhelming. Have no fear, Siva Creative is here! Siva Creative can help you develop your social media accounts and keep you on top of your game. Just contact us today and let’s talk business!