Beginner's Guide to Instagram Business Basics.
With so much product diversity and availability in today’s business market, creating a stand out brand and sense of community is more important than ever.
Making people feel included and engaged needs to be top priority. With its upbeat vibe and strong visual presence, Instagram is one of the most effective social media platforms for connecting you to clients on a more personal level.
Building a successful Instagram account takes a lot of strategic planning and continuous maintenance, but the reward for doing so is well worth it.
Setting Goals and objectives
It’s important to have clear goals. Without them you’ll have no way of measuring the success of your Instagram marketing techniques. An article by Hootsuite recommends setting “SMART Goals.”
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
Start with at least three goals and write them down.
Align your social media goals with your overall business goals to keep a fluid strategy. Map out how they support one another. Here’s an example by Hootsuite.
Get to know your audience.
Figure out who your product is for. What’s their age range, average income, lifestyle, etc. ? Create personas for these types of people.
Imagine your ideal customer and spend time brainstorming how they might interact with your Instagram account. What content would they like, comment on, share, respond to, and what could turn them into a customer.
Also consider what content would turn them off.
Get to know your competitors.
Follow your competitors on social media. See what they are doing. Draw inspiration from them. Figure out what you do and do not like about their social media strategies.
Examine what opportunities they are taking advantage of and what they might be missing.
Getting started.
Instagram offers different account options. Make sure you select a business account. This will allow you to easily monitor and track your user analytics, allowing you to pinpoint what kind of content and engagement is most effective.
Business account also makes it easy for you to link your website and other social media platforms. It offers you the option to use paid advertising and makes it easy for users to connect with you.
Nail the first impression.
Your profile picture and bio need to be effective. When deciding on a photo first figure out if you are selling “you” or your product brand. For instance, if you offer a personal service such as life coaching, personal training, or photography you should choose a head-shot. People connect emotionally with a face.
If your focus is your product, then use your brand logo. Something that people will recognize right away as your specific brand. Either way, make sure the picture is clear and high quality.
Make an effective bio.
You only get 150 characters here and each one needs to count. Let people know the exact purpose of your business.
Single word descriptions can be useful as well as personalized hashtags. If you are looking to drive local business be sure to include your location. Also include a link to your website.
The bio is the only place on Instagram where you can link a website, so you may need to update this regularly if you are linking to various, changing content. Also take advantage of emojis. You can convey a lot with one small image.
Content creating.
Since visual aesthetics is such a big part of the Instagram platform you’ll want to keep your posts looking cohesive. Choose a consistent color scheme, same font styles and use similar imagery.
People associate consistency with trust. They will know what to expect from you. Canva is a great and free site to design posts and templates.
Think of your content as a balanced meal, including all the necessary “nutrition.” Refer to this list below for various kinds of content you’ll want to feed your followers:
- Use quotes or short text that give value to your followers. Provide useful tips, advice and/or motivational messages that align with your company’s goals and values.
- Ask questions to spark engagement and conversation. Do your best to respond to people when they answer, it’s a great way to create a personalized connection.
- Be relevant. Have fun with holiday themes and trending social topics. Be a part of big conversations that are affecting large groups of people.
- Do promote your services or product, but do so sparingly, think of this as the salt. Followers will lose interest in your page quickly if your feed is filled with constant advertisement. Make sure you are building a community rather than a client list.
- Curated work is a quick and easy way to share content. These are posts that you can re-share from other accounts. Make sure you are tagging the account to give them proper credit. As a bonus, it’s a great way to build online allies as it’s likely the other account will appreciate your sharing of their content.
Post regularly.
You want to be publishing new content on a daily basis if possible. Planning your posts out at least a week at a time is helpful. But be flexible with current issues. It’s important to address any real-time trends that align with your values.
Creating a social media calendar is key.
This video explains how to effectively create and maintain your calendar. It also includes a free Google Sheet template for you to use.
Be interactive and encourage engagement.
To fully engage people you’re going to need to go beyond posting images. Make sure you’re fully taking advantage of all the ways to reach your audience and keep them coming back for more. Be sure to check off this list:
Create savable content.
Instagram offers users the ability to archive posts they want to re-visit at a later time. Offer your followers something they will want to come back and read.
Include a good mix of video content.
Videos are a great way to entertain your followers. Take time to conceptualize what type of videos would work well to promote your business in a fun, clever way.
Post stories with stickers.
This is a quick, easy way to stay connected to your followers on a daily basis. Simple things, like sharing a post, or giving them a look into a part of your daily routine is an easy way to start using stories.
This is a great way to express your or your company’s personality. Adding the use of stickers makes your posts more fun, and you can use question or rating stickers to encourage a response.
Utilize story highlights.
You can save stories on your account permanently. Think of your highlights as a file cabinet for followers to easily navigate. Each one containing their own theme and purpose.
Write longer captions.
One way Instagram tracks algorithms is by time spent on one post. So an easy way to keep someone one one post is to write a longer caption. You can use up to 2,200 characters here. Just be sure to break it up with spacing and emojis so it’s easy on the eyes.
Have a call to action.
Let your followers know what you want. Ask them to share your stories or posts. Let them know to click the link in your bio. Ask them to DM you for more information. It’s important to have a plan of action and know how to effectively implement it.
Go Live.
Take the opportunity to connect with your followers in real-time. You can use this time for Q&A or to promote an event. Just be sure to have a plan of what you want to accomplish and what points you want to hit. There’s no room for editing here so be prepared.
How to track your success.
Once you start to roll out content it’s important to audit your output to see what’s working and what isn’t. Entering the world of data and analytics can seem intimidating if you’re new to it, so here are some helpful tips to get started.
First you need to know which important metrics of Instagram to track. According to Jill Waren, successful social media author, these are the top eight.
- Reach — This tracks the number of unique accounts that have seen your post. It’s a good metric to track whether you’re building brand awareness.
2. Saves — We touched on this earlier. This is the content people are saving to their account so that they may revisit later. This is currently one of the biggest trending metrics.
3. Sales — Although other platforms like TIkTok are gaining a lot of engagement success, Instagram is still a better platform to track sales. This being one of the ultimate goals, it’s important to know which posts are driving sales.
4. Engagement rate — This is a measure of how much people are liking, commenting on, and sharing your posts. This is a great way to track whether or not your content is resonating with people.
5. Story views — How many people are viewing your stories and are they going all the way through your story slides? If not, where do you lose them?
6. Optimal post time — What time you publish content matters. You need to make sure you’re posting at the optimal time when people are most likely to engage with your content. * Pro-tip: It’s probably not 3 a.m.
7. Growth — Simply how many followers are you gaining or losing. And how rapidly.
8. Traffic — How successful is Instagram in directing traffic to your website?
Each of these metrics must be carefully analyzed in order to optimize your Instagram effectiveness. If you want to dive further into each of these metrics read Later’s article and see if their analytic tracker platform is right for your business. To compare other apps and prices click the link below.
There’s never been a better time to connect fully and personally with your customers. Remember to remain transparent and true. Share your successes and your hardships with your followers.
Focus on creating a growing community first, and the business will follow.
