Instagram Is The Hot New Thing, How Do I Promote My Business On There?
Ah yes, the age old question. Since the dawn of Instagram, everyone and their mother ages 15-35 has taken to the famed mobile app to upload their selfies and what they had for lunch. And since that time, every business owner has realized, “Hey this thing is really popular, how can I promote my business on this thing?” Well here are our 5 tips for getting the most out of Instagram for your business!
Tip #1 Get Targeted Instagram Followers
This tip is similar to our tip on how to get targeted Twitter followers. After you set up your profile, you should look around for areas your target market frequent. If you are a sports bar, follow fans of the local sports teams. Then over time these same people will begin to follow you. If you are a B2B company, you can do this one of two ways. If you want local business owners to follow you, then follow the fans of your local chambers. If you want to branch out, then start following prospective companies that you hope to reach with your message. Also, don’t forget to do a search on relevant hashtags and like all of the posts that you find to be interesting. The people receiving the likes will be delighted that you showed them some attention and may return the favor or even follow you!
Don’t worry if people don’t start to follow you back at first, because people will begin to follow when you move on to tip #2!
Tip #2 Post Interesting Content
The second tip to promote your business on Instagram is to post interesting content. Instagram is great because even if you don’t have any followers, people can still like and engage with your content. This is through the use of hashtags. A hashtag, if you are unfamiliar with them is a pound sign followed by a trending term. You can tag your photos and posts with popular tags, the more the merrier for maximum exposure.
Instagram is a fun, social app so keep it light hearted. Every post does not have to be utterly serious, you can show a little bit of your companies personality with each post. For instance, if you have an employee that brings her dog into work you can take pictures of the dog at play in the office. Is your company making moves? Take pictures of your employees on the set of the next big thing. Don’t forget to also pepper in some Instagram Promotions as well as event promotions.
Tip #3 Come Up With Instagram Promotions
Instagram Promotions are a great way to stir up buzz about your company. Come up with a contest giveaway and come up with some rules that will get your company some exposure. The most common rules are to:
- To enter you must be a follower of the account.
- Applicants must share the promotion on their own page.
- Along with the share, they must also tag the promotion holders account and include the hashtag associated with the promotion.
Instagram promotions get people talking about your brand and sharing your picture. It is a great way to not only stir up buzz but also gain a following.
Tip #4 Promote Upcoming Events
Instagram is great for getting the word out about upcoming events. Grand openings, customer appreciation days or just general company promotions are all great things to share on Instagram.
To the right you’ll see an Instagram promotion that we made for a local glass boutique. They are having their grand opening on July 10th and this is a great way to attract attention to the event and assure there will be a great deal of people there!
Tip #5 Track, Schedule & Optimize
Instagram is great for ORM (online reputation management) because you can do searches for your brand name and see what people are saying. It’s a great strategy for applauding your fans or for addressing your critics.
Many people use Hootsuite to manage their posting on social media. As of right now Hootsuite allows you to add an Instagram feed to your dashboard. However, you are not able to schedule Instagram posts as of yet. I have heard word of a website called Latergram that allows you to schedule posts. I have not used it yet so if anyone has please let us know how you like it in the comment section!