Instagram Marketing for Small Businesses
As a marketing platform with a lot of potential, Instagram has the ability to bring together plenty of businesses and consumers. In fact, it’s consistently ranked as one of the most popular social media platforms, with over a billion users around the world who enjoy the visual focus of the app.
There are several ways that companies can successfully employ Instagram marketing. These are strategies that can position businesses as a part of the global digital community and help them reach a large number of consumers.
Business Instagram Account
The first step in utilizing Instagram as a marketing platform for companies is to create a business account. This type of account is preferred for companies because it allows them to keep track of analytics, run paid ads, and connect it with a Facebook page for the business.
Instagram Bio
The platform allows all its users to create a short bio for their profile, consisting of 150 characters or fewer. Although it’s not a lot of space to tell an entire story, it’s still enough to share relevant information with potential consumers. This space should also include any branded hashtags from the company to make it easier for consumers to find the profile. Underneath that space, users receive a spot for a link to a website, which can be used for the company’s own website or a promotional campaign, when necessary.
Some companies have taken to creating entirely separate websites, or separate tools, that allow visitors to click on any link they want that has recently been shared on the Instagram profile. That way, potential consumers don’t have to wander around the company’s website to find exactly what they were looking for, as they can simply click on the same image that was shared on the profile, which will take them to the desired website.
Business Identity
Instagram is a very visual platform, which means users can either share photos or videos with their followers. This also means that companies have to create a business identity both on and off the platform, and that identity should match up. Essentially, if the business website uses certain colors and fonts, those things should be used on the company’s Instagram profile as well. This way, consumers will have an easier time finding that profile and understanding that it belongs to the company, even if the account isn’t verified.
Competitors and Content
Although companies have plenty of tools and resources to learn and understand what their market competitors are doing, Instagram can also be utilized in this way. That’s because plenty of other similar small businesses also have accounts on Instagram, and it’s quite easy to see what type of content they’re sharing and how they’re attracting consumers.
Other businesses also use hashtags to make finding their posts easier for a bigger audience, and their posts contain certain types of language that any company can learn from. Through research, businesses can easily inform, update, or even create their own content strategies for the platform, and stay on top of the latest industry trends.
