How Can Instagram Help My Business?

Everyone uses Social Media these days, it’s just a fact of the increasingly online world we live in. So with so many people checking their feeds every day, it only makes sense to try and insert your brand into that feed doesn’t it? Master the art of Social Media and you can start attracting customers from all over the digital world in just a few clicks. For today, let’s look at how Instagram can help your business.

Using Instagram As An Advertiser

An important detail to remember about Instagram is that they’re now owned by Facebook. This means if you’re dropping dollars on a paid advertising campaign, you’re using the Facebook Ads Manager, and have the ability to make your campaign multi-platform. Easy duplication of your Instagram campaign to also target Messenger and Facebook is a major tick in favour of this platform.

This also means the process is very similar to that used to advertise on Facebook. You select a primary goal, your target audience and then the form of those ads. Also like Facebook, the audience targeting system they offer is well detailed, allowing you to specify age, gender, interests, and locations. They also offer an automatic option that will select your audience based on what they think is the best match, useful if you’re still figuring out who to target. Once your ads are ready you will have to select a budget, which is set by daily spend, and how many days the campaign will run. Instagram recommends a minimum run of seven days, to allow their system to properly calibrate its targeting.

You can also pay to promote your posts, turning any of your Instagram posts into an ad in the feeds of non-followers. Of course to do that you need an account for your business, so let’s discuss that.

Creating An Account For Your Brand

Creating an Instagram Business Account is dead simple. First you create an account, then you go into your settings and use the “Switch to Professional Account” option. Choose between Creator or Business, then the field that best applies to you. That’s all it takes to get you ready to start promoting yourself on Instagram, with access to all of their business specific resources, like the advertising and promoting features mentioned above.

On top of that, you always have the option of good old fashioned community building. The best way to do this is to keep your content focused on people. Everyone on Instagram loves selfies, snap some cool candid pics of any aspects of your crew and production you think highlight why your business is so great. Nice photos of products are also a solid choice, whether they be fresh baked bread or a box of newly arrived shaving cream.

By far the best way to generate engagement on Instagram is to involve your audience. Keep an eagle eye out for customers enjoying your stuff, and share it when you see it. Not only do people love a shoutout from their favourite brands, but it's a great incentive for others to check out your stuff. People trust other people a lot more than they trust ads, no matter how flashy.

When it comes time to tag your posts, make one for your brand. This helps followers share your brand with others more easily, and also makes it easier for you to find people who are enjoying your stuff. Don’t forget to also experiment with different relevant hashtags, get people searching them to stumble over your business and love it.

But what kind of people are going to be finding you?

What Kind Of Audience Can You Reach?

Instagram is where the cool kids hang out, and you’ll find fashion, art, music, and anything else that’s trendy on here. It’s also obviously going to be highly image focused, and your posts will need to be as well. This isn’t the place to post your essays, keep your content short and sweet with slick visuals if you want to catch people’s eyes here.

Instagram won’t be for everyone, but if you’ve got a photogenic business that looks great in pictures and videos, there’s few places better to show it off.