How does Instagram benefit your business?
Instagram is a popular photo sharing social channel that drives traffic to your website and encourages followers to interact with you. Instagram enlivens your brand visually and helps to tell your brand’s story. It starts conversations and, if done correctly and consistently, will engage and delight your followers who may become loyal, life-long fans.
That’s the why. Here’s the how:
- Start by taking a look through Instagram’s business blog. It’s chock full of great tips all geared towards marketing your business using Instagram. There are seeds of great ideas adaptable for your brand sprinkled throughout.
- Have a balanced mix between business and personal images. Not all personal, but it’s okay to show a little bit of the magic behind-the-curtain. Make it real. Maybe share a piece of your process. Or, a fun selfie of you working outside on a beautiful day. Fifty images of you dog or kids is not advisable, unless daycare and pet grooming are your fields of expertise. Keep it light and interesting.
- Get more followers. Here are three ways to do this:
- Capitalize your reach by posting your Instagram images and share them on Facebook (which purchased Instagram in 2012) and on Twitter to reach a much larger audience.
- Use relevant hashtags. Hashtags are key. Why? Hashtags allows you to research what people are saying and about which topics. For example, we use the Instagram hashtags #elementsdesign and #mixitup2014 on our posts. What that means is anyone searching for either of those hashtags, up we will appear. But also consider adding popular – or trending – hashtags to help new audiences find their way to you if they like your content. For example, here are the top 10 hashtags as of today:
- #love
- #instagood
- #me
- #like
- #follow
- #cute
- #photooftheday
- Engage with other Instagram users by liking their images, leaving a comment and following them back. Start conversations. This is easy to do if you are using hashtags (see tip #3).
- Reward your followers with discounts, promotions, backstage glances, inside scoops, contests – some type of payoff for wanting to follow YOU on Instagram. What will that be? Look to others for ideas, but find what makes sense for your brand. For example, American Express promises their followers “exclusive experiences, news and rewards” via their Instagram feed and has given away backstage passes to events and other treats to their fans.
- Create awesome images. This may be the most critical point, because great images get noticed, talked about and shared. Instagram is a photo-driven platform, but words are important too. You must be wondering how you create awesomeness visually. Well, first, read these five tips for awesome Instagram images and then please note that your pictures should be interesting to people other than your Mom (sorry, Mom!) and beautiful. But, most importantly, above all else, they must be relevant to your brand and be a source of inspiration to your would be customers. A few quick examples of those businesses who get it and are doing it successfully – take a peek and consider following these Instagram pros: Ben & Jerry’s, Vogue; Nike and Bergdorf’s.
One final thought, in the words of Russ Meyer of Fast Company, “The best brands using Instagram have learned what’s true of success on any social network: It’s about being interesting, not about pushing products.”
You can follow us on Instagram (and we promise to follow you back!) here.
