Instagram Marketing: How to Use Instagram For Business
By Contributing Author
Instagram has a great potential to be a marketplace. It is already being used as a marketplace by big brands and influencers to generate some revenue by using the platform. If you are looking to promote your business on Instagram then you need to follow certain strategies to help you organically grow on the platform and help grow your business by helping you gain new customers.
We have decided to select some of the most important tips that you need to follow if you are looking to get into Instagram marketing. You can supplement these strategies by getting services from social media sites who provide services to buy Instagram likes etc. only if your strategy needs to use it as a sort of tool.
Create a Business Account
We suggest you create an Instagram business account if you are looking to use Instagram as a platform to promote your products, brand or business. This will enable you to use various features that are provided by Instagram for business accounts.
It is good if you already have a personal Instagram account which is centred around your business as you can convert it into a business account without much trouble and your followers won’t notice any big change. If you only have a personal Instagram account which does not have many posts about your product or business and you don’t have lots of followers that you can bank on you should create a separate business account.
Let’s understand the steps to create a business account on Instagram. Firstly, if you don’t have an Instagram account you will need to create a personal Instagram account. Go to Instagram and click on sign up and enter the relevant details. Once you have created your personal account, you can start on steps to convert it to a business account. For this, go to the profile section and click on the menu icon which is three horizontal bars in the corner.
There you can click on the settings option. Now tap on the switch to business profile and then click on continue. You will be prompted to connect the account with your Facebook business page and if you have one you can connect it now. After this, you have to add contact info like email, phone number and physical address of your business and click done.
This will convert your personal Instagram account to a business account.
Know Your Audience
One of the biggest hurdles to cross when it comes to promoting any product, brand or business on Instagram is understanding who your target audience is who can become potential leads and finally get converted to your customers.
Knowing your audience will help you tremendously while creating content for your Instagram account. But this will require extensive research on your part to figure out the key demographics of your audience. If you are a painter then you have to figure out the target audience for your style of painting.
Generally, for a digital painter who paints original characters the age demographic generally falls within the 15 to 30 range. For other styles of paintings, the age demographic might be different. Similarly, you have to figure out which gender would want to watch your content more and would likely buy your products.
You have to figure out other specifics like geographical location, likes and dislikes of your potential audience. If you are able to do a good and solid research about the type of people you will be looking to attract, half of the work is done. Now, you can focus on creating content in such a way that it gets the attention of your target audience and pulls them to your account.
Set a Goal
Before you start promoting intensively on Instagram you have to set a goal. You need to understand and remember what it is that you are looking to achieve by using Instagram as a marketing platform for your business, brand or product.
Having a set goal will ensure that the strategy you formulate for the promotion of your business, brand, product or service is aligned with your goals. Every action you take should help you move closer to your goal. So, you won’t be wasting your time trying to do stuff which does not directly correlate to the goal you have set for the Instagram marketing.
So, what are some goals you need to set? Well, the goals obviously need to be profitable for your business. Ask yourself why you want to use Instagram as a marketing platform for your business. Is it because you want to get potential leads? Or is it because you want to directly sell your products via Instagram? Do you want more traffic on your website? Are you looking to gain more students for your online course?
Let’s say you are a baker who specialises in cakes for special events like weddings, anniversaries etc. So, you would want users from Instagram to contact you to bake a cake for their wedding or any other event. This means you are looking for potential customers who would buy your products. Set a goal and make sure your actions bring you closer to it.
Research Your Competitors
Now, you have an Instagram business account, you have a set goal in place and you have researched your audience. Next, we suggest you look at the competitors in your field and do a competitive analysis of the market you are looking to be a part of. You need to focus on other similar brands which are popular and are promoting on Instagram. Look at what they are posting and what their schedule is.
Analyze how well their posts are performing and which posts are working better. Read the comments on these posts to understand the sentiments of the followers. This kind of research will give you an idea of what you need to post and the type of content you need to create to attract people to your posts and make them your followers. The posts should also be made in such a way that it has the potential to convey your followers into your customers.
Understanding what your competitors are already doing can provide you with a starting ground where you can use what is already working and then add your own strategy to improve upon it and head towards your goals. How can you find your competitors? Well, you can search relevant terms related to your field or check if other brands or businesses in your niche have an Instagram account. Once you are able to find the accounts or posts you will start gaining some idea about how to approach the whole thing.
Post Regularly and On a Schedule
Consistency is something which matters a lot when it comes to gaining social media fame. Of course, if you are already a celebrity like a pop star or an actor you will always have tonnes of followers even if you don’t post consistently. But if you are trying to be an influencer or are looking to use Instagram to promote your business, brand, product or service then you need to be consistent and post regularly on Instagram.
The more you post the more you grow. Of course, the quality of your content matters and you should never compromise quality for the quantity which means you have to work extra hard to create quality content for each day.
We suggest you create a schedule and stick to it. Plan your schedule for a month and research when it is the best time to post in your niche. You can get a good idea about the timing of your competitor analysis and by researching your target audience.
Once you know the time which is most profitable for your posts you can go ahead and schedule your posts for a couple of weeks. You can use social media service providers which help in providing auto-post features wherein you just have to create and schedule your posts and the application will automatically post your content on the stipulated time.
These are some of the basic steps you need to follow with the utmost discipline to gain some positive results from your Instagram marketing. You can boost your strategy by using various social media services. Many of these service providers provide services like buy real Instagram followers but there are others who can help you plan your strategy and help you grow organically on Instagram.
