How To Get Started With Instagram for Business

Instagram for business is a great way to promote products outside of your website/shop. Similarly to Facebook Business, Instagram supports advertisements and paid-for methods to show off your brand.

Although Facebook has many daily users, Instagram is a better tool for businesses to get their services out there. Not only does it have extra features tailored to digital marketing, but people are also more likely to view and see your products – providing you optimise your product promotions. We presume you already have an Instagram Business account, so we’ll skip that process.

Sounds interesting? Let’s walk you through how to fully utilise Instagram for your business to help kickstart your marketing campaign!

Creating the Perfect Strategy

Everything stems from an idea, and others will, too, as long as you believe in your product/service. If you don’t have a website or online store, using social media platforms like Instagram is a fantastic start.

The three key objectives to focus on are as follows:

  • Set goals to achieve by a certain date

This ensures you’re meeting deadlines and a way to monitor how well your campaign is going regarding advertisements and revenue.

  • Determine your current and target audience

If you already have some following or website, you should try and find out what type of people buy from you. Using Instagram’s insights tool will greatly help with this information. You can aim to target others who like the same things with similar traits and might be interested in what you offer.

  • Optimise your business page

This point may be the most obvious one, but there is a lot you can do to take full advantage of your profile. We’ll go into this point in more detail now.

Click That Profile Picture!

Your profile picture is essentially the backbone of someone’s profile. It has to stand out and be noticeable. Nobody will pay attention to text or a basic picture such as a building, as they are seen as very generic. With more people now using Instagram’s dark mode. Some profile pictures with black backgrounds will be lost when scrolling past.

Optimal profile pictures are bold, colourful, and simple. Depending on your brand, you might want to use up to 3 colours that stand out. Contrasting colours such as white+black, yellow+purple, blue+orange, etc., go well together and are more likely to be seen when scrolling on the timeline.

Writing a Great Bio

Now that you’ve secured that click on your page, you have to ensure people will stay for a while. Your bio will likely be the first thing people see, so make it count!

Trust us when we say hardly anyone wants to read a huge wall of text. So a couple of summary points about your business and what you have to offer is vital. Using separators to split up points is a fantastic idea. This can be done using the vertical bar symbol “ | ” or with fun, emojis to spice up your profile.

If you’re a smaller business account with under 10,000 followers, then using a link in your bio is the only direct way to link back to your website organically. If you’re trying to sell or promote a specific product at certain times, then updating this link regularly is a great idea.

Stories, IGTV and Reels

Stories

Instagram stories are one of the best ways to showcase your products to people directly. A story is found through your profile picture, which people can click on to view no matter what.

Users can press on your profile to view the active story, whether you’re commenting on something, showing up in recommended, or on a browse feature. However, these stories can only last for 15 seconds and only last on your profile for up to 24 hours. That is, unless you add it as a highlight. Highlights will stay on your profile until you remove them from their section and work the way stories do.

IGTV

Instagram TV (or IGTV) appears on the user’s home page and browse section. They are videos which are longer than a minute. These videos include insights and analytics such as percentage watched, engagement, likes/comments, and audience retention.

This can be very useful to see when users click off the video so that you can improve on that area next time. Insights can also tell you what type of content viewers enjoy and in what style – animation, motion graphics, interview, or informative. IGTV is also used as a way to save live videos after they’re finished, and they appear on your main profile feed.

Reels

In the 3 part series, reels are simply a shorter version of IGTV. So instead of videos being over a minute, they have to be under 15 seconds to be classed as a “Reel”. Reels are great because they appear in their section for the user to scroll in endlessly. So, if you utilise this to give a short but sweet video about your product, viewers will see it.

Reels are becoming increasingly popular, and their main purpose is Instagram’s answer to TikTok’s extremely similar main feature – an endless feed of short videos.

Using Instagram Shopping

Okay, so now you understand Instagram’s main selling points, let’s review some helpful tricks and how to use each properly. Instagram Shopping was released a few years ago to give businesses a mini storefront page with a list of products they offer. This helped small businesses thrive, as many new and potential customers could discover brands they might love.

For people to find your page, users will go to the very popular “browse” section and be immediately greeted with brands/products similar to things they’ve seen or interacted with in the past. So how high your business ranks depends on how optimised your storefront is. You can add product launch countdowns and reminders in the link with your Instagram stories to build up hype for an upcoming product.

Instagram shopping works the same way as the Google shopping tab, with many products to choose from and ad promotions near the top. In addition, there is a “suggested for you” tab with many different products the user might be interested in.

Check analytics to see what types of products are the most popular. This can help you decide which ones to promote and sell on your business page. In the US, there is a way to check out the app using Facebook Pay on certain enabled brands, which should be a feature coming worldwide soon.

Content Digitisation

If you’re still reading this, then by now, you’re well on your way to becoming an Instagram Business expert! Finally, we will touch on digitalising content and the lesser-known ways to advertise your business.

When we say content digitisation, you might not completely understand, so let me explain. This is where all your content (text, images, videos, etc.) is uploaded to your website in digital format – in this case, to your Instagram page. There are many ways to make that content suitable for this specific platform.

The first is what type of posts you make. A simple image and block of text probably isn’t the best thing for new visitors to see. Like your profile picture, each must be unique to stand out from your competition. Try experimenting with video, animation, and bright, vibrant camera shots to catch people’s attention.
With Reels and IGTV implemented, video is a great method to let people interact with your posts. But remember, over 85% of users don’t even use Instagram with audio, so captions are necessary for viewer retention!

Now, let’s say you have a food business; think of smart ways to promote your recipes/food without posting pictures. For example, they could have different colour schemes or quotes overlayed onto the image. Graphics also combine with transparent background images to create a 3D depth and feel.

Adverting On Instagram

Advertising on Instagram is pretty simple and surprisingly effective. We’ll go through some ways you can promote your products and profile page now.

  • First and the most basic – Instagram posts.

Photo/video ads show up on the user’s feed as they’re scrolling past and are usually labelled “Promoted”, “Learn More”, or “Shop Now”, depending on the type of business. These are great ways to show a picture or short video to express what your brand is about and why the person should check it out.

  • Carousel and Collection Ads

Similar to post ads, these advertisements will show up on the user’s home page and allow for multiple pictures in one space. For example, the carousel can be swiped to show different products one after the other, and the collection ad is like a mini collage.

  • Story ads

One of the more common ways to promote on Instagram is through the stories feature. This can be done on your account (which is free!) and on relevant audience stories. For the latter, the more a user scrolls through the stories of people they follow, they will see an ad at some point. However, this method is not very effective as the person will swipe past it most of the time.

  • Page promotions

Where you can submit products/services to promote, and they will either post on their story, by tagging and mentioning, or on their feed. Cost depends on the account’s choice, mainly on how many followers they have and how many estimated impressions. Meme and lifestyle pages are a good place to start, and always look at promoting on profiles with more followers than yourself.

In Summary…

Using Instagram for Business will be sure to help your services take off. Over 90% of users on the platform follow a business. Maybe yours could be next! Statistics also show that 50% of those people are more interested in a brand or product when shown ads for it.

So, what are you waiting for? Start using Instagram for business today and take advantage of these awesome features!

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