Virtually everyone is on at least one social media platform. Instagram is among the most popular ones, averaging over 2 billion monthly active users. While the platform initially majored in sharing images, it has evolved, offering businesses excellent features to reach out, engage, and amass a significant following.
Innovative Instagram features continue to pop up by the day, especially as the platform strives to keep up with other channels like TikTok and retain its user base. As a business, leveraging the new features and ensuring you are on trend is critical for your success.
While Instagram continues to roll out outstanding features, not all are worth a try for marketers, especially considering your business size and target audience. Moreover, you don’t want to be caught up in a mess, such as if you fail to follow community guidelines and get blocked.
Following the proper procedures can’t be overstated, especially since getting a hold of Instagram customer service can prove challenging. Check out reviews websites like PissedConsumer.com for a feel of how frustrating Instagram customer service can get.
You can also find more from the online reviews, including alternative ways to reach customer service. The Instagram reviews will show you the common issues users face, making it easier to avoid them and enjoy a smoother experience.
How To Set Up Your Instagram Business Account?
Are you ready to dive into Instagram and market your brand? Here are a few pointers that can set you on the right track:
- Create an Instagram business account. A personal one doesn’t come out as a professional brand as a business option can.
- Include more business information in the bio. Contact details link to your catalog or website, story highlights, and action buttons, among others.
- Research and understand your target audience. This is among the most overlooked yet critical business Instagram tips since it determines how well you craft the content to facilitate more engagements.
- Create practical content The plan, especially with automation tools available, ensures you don’t feel pressured to post, forcing you to deliver sub-standard content. You’ll have everything mapped out for a set period, making it easier to deliver valuable content that consistently entertains and informs your followers.
- Turn Instagram shopping on. Users can buy directly from Instagram today, a convenience that can translate to more sales once you turn it on.
- Use the platform for customer service. Users don’t just use social media for entertainment, they can use Instagram as a communication channel. Using it as a customer service tool ensures you are where the audience is and when it needs you.
- Track the progress and results for continuous improvements.
How To Use Instagram For Business: Best Features For Great Results
While striving to understand how to use Instagram for business and realize its benefits, leveraging the extensive features can’t take the backseat. Nonetheless, trying each that pops up can turn out to not pay off as much as you expect.
This emphasizes the need to have a practical strategy and invest more in features that can help reach out and attract more Instagram users to your business. Among the features that continue to help businesses grow on Instagram include the following:
1. Videos
Videos continue to prove to be an evergreen social media engagement model. While looking to spice up your Instagram marketing strategies, you should use both short and long-form videos. The primary trick is to ensure you make the videos catchy to attract more eyeballs and keep them hooked long enough to engage with the content.
2. Reels
Instagram reels are incredibly appealing to users, especially with creative additions like soundtracks, music, voiceovers, and other effects. The best part is that creators, whether brands or influencers, can work together through the collab feature. This means your business can collaborate with an influencer over a single post to extend its reach, making it among the most profitable business Instagram tips.
3. Instagram Stories
The short-lived stories attract a massive engagement, partly considering the impact of fear of missing out. It forces them to view the stories before they disappear. This is an excellent opportunity to string up stories with a great blend of marketing and entertaining content.
Following your main objective, you can opt for a link, location, questions and poll stickers, hashtags, and mentions or shoppable tags. Each has its pros. For instance, polls and question stickers are great at striking conversations, which is a go-to if you are looking to expand your Instagram reach.
Link stickers are great at cross-promoting since you can include your business’ website, blog, and online store, among other URLs outside Instagram. Shoppable tags allow users to buy directly from the stories, which is great if you’ve amassed a huge following with quality leads.
4. Instagram Stories Highlights
Stories disappear after 24 hours, but you can extend this through the highlights. This is a chance to showcase the most engaging content longer, helping your brand reach out to a broader audience. Story highlights are readily available on top of your business’s profile page, making it easier for visitors to find and interact with them.
5. Carousels
A photo or video post delivers considerable engagement on social media. How about doing it even much better with a combination of more media? Photo dump – you’ve probably interacted with such posts. With Instagram carousels, you can creatively include a range of media promoting your brand offerings and keep the users entertained and glued.
You can use close-ups and different angles to showcase more about a product, provide step-by-step tutorials and how-tos, or go with before-and-after transformations. You can even include user-generated content, which doubles as consumer reviews, further propelling the carousels’ effectiveness. Such content delivers better value. Even better, you improve your ranking as Instagram algorithms are likely to pick on your brand more.
6. Instagram Live
Live sessions have stood the test of time. They initially targeted brand humanization. Today, live sessions deliver much more than putting a human face to your brand. You can include measures like behind-the-scenes live content.
This can help your brand gain more credibility as users get a feel of how you run your operations. You could also turn to live rooms which encourage more collaborations, easing your brand’s quest to extend its reach.
Instagram is a great social media platform brands can leverage as they manage to generate quality leads. With the right Instagram marketing strategies, which include using the best features highlighted above, you can quickly gain a vast and loyal following loaded with ready-to-convert leads.
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