Five Ways To Grow Your Business With Instagram

With more than 700 million monthly active users (Source: TechCrunch) Instagram has established itself, not only as a social media staple but an essential business tool.

A resource that marketers and brands are flocking to more than ever, here’s five ways that Instagram can help grow your business too…

1. Sell the right way

It’s important to state that getting the balance right is key to your success. Business’ need to offer a mix of interesting content peppered with sales opportunities. Bombard customers with too many promotional messages and they’ll switch off, offer too few and you won’t make any conversions. Understanding your audience is key to your success. Knowing the right content to post at the right time, getting the frequency correct and ensuring you engage with your audience are all important factors.

Arguably, the most important of all of these is to provide high quality desirable images of your products. Think of it as your online shop.

Airbnb is a brand that understands how to harness the power of Instagram. It’s beautiful lifestyle images attract a 2.2 million strong audience, using a combination of rental properties (products) and destinations (content), to strike the perfect balance.

Useful to note – if you’re hosting a sale, put an overlay on the image stating ‘sale’, as more attention is paid to an image than the caption.

Another brand with a solid following is Goop. The lifestyle site owned by Gwyneth Paltrow, is said to receive 80% click through rates on Instagram (Source: Digiday)

2. Build your fan base

But, it’s not always about sales. Instagram provides a platform to show off your brand personality, and in doing so can help grow followers.

Building loyalty takes time and dedication, along with sharing regular posts and creating a theme for your brand. For instance, Ben and Jerry’s have a subtle yet strong identity that flows through all their images. Their engaging Instagram captions show off their sense of humour too.

An obvious point, but engaging and responding to followers can really help drive loyalty. The Instagram app allows you do to this on the go.

3. Use hashtags

In a similar way to using SEO terms, using the right hashtags will help drive and deliver more users. It’s also worth considering what hashtags you want to be associated with, and which your audience follows.

For instance, if your business is a surf company, the obvious tags to use are #bigwave and #surfsup. However, spend some time to research other tags used around these. A quick look on Instagram also brings up #bigwavesurfing, #surftrip and #tuberide. It’s a quick and clever way to tap into an existing audience.

4. Instagram stories

The new ‘stories’ feature is a great way of connecting with Instagram followers/customers on a personal level. Whether it’s a ‘day in the life’ piece to camera or a sneak preview of what’s in store, it will make your followers feel special to know that they have exclusive access.

It can also be a great way to directly impact on sales. If you have a verified account, you can use Instagram stories to post images and videos featuring a URL to your website. By ‘swiping up’ this instantly takes users to a point of purchase in two flicks. That’s powerful stuff!

5. Instagram stories

The new ‘stories’ feature is a great way of connecting with Instagram followers/customers on a personal level. Whether it’s a ‘day in the life’ piece to camera or a sneak preview of what’s in store, it will make your followers feel special to know that they have exclusive access.

It can also be a great way to directly impact on sales. If you have a verified account, you can use Instagram stories to post images and videos featuring a URL to your website. By ‘swiping up’ this instantly takes users to a point of purchase in two flicks. That’s powerful stuff!

6. Promotional tool

Try to think of Instagram holistically as part of your marketing story. Use your Instagram feed on your website, to keep a fresh flow of interesting content.

If you write blog posts, use Instagram to promote these. If you have a monthly newsletter, include the URL on your Instagram account. Want to gain more followers? Think about hosting a competition that invites new followers and likes.

Sharing content across multi platforms is a great way to maximise your exposure. Back to Ben and Jerry’s – they optimise Instagram posts to promote their other content. See this recent post for instance, which encourages users to link back to its site.

So there you have it, five great ways that Instagram can help build your business today.