The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Instagram For Your Business

Introduction

Are you a business looking to market your merchandise and services through Instagram?

This article will help you generate:

• More traffic

• More sales

• More buzz

This is the ultimate guide to mastering Instagram for your business.

A brief overview of the Importance of Instagram for Businesses 

In today’s world of online content, the importance of Instagram marketing is undeniable. According to research, Instagram currently has 2 billion active users. So if you don’t have Instagram for a business that you own, you are missing out on a big chunk of potential consumers.

This popular social media platform became a powerful marketing tool owing to its continuously upgraded features. 

I mean, you name it,

Stories

IGTV Videos and lives

Reels

Instagram continues to give sensational features which quickly catch up with the world. Now the current obsession is reels. These are quick videos with Instagram filters that engage an audience. I mean, how many times we went on a reel spree?

Integrating Instagram into your business strategy will help you -  

• Get more coverage.

• Build customer relationships

• Launch new exciting campaigns

• Boost your sales

• Keep up with the market trend

• Build your trusted base of followers

• Establish your brand in the digital space

In the simplest term, add Instagram to your marketing strategy and enjoy the rewards.

Step 1: Optimizing Your Profile

Your profile is your business front in the Instagram world. It lets your customers peek into your business and your story.

Imagine your physical store!

You design the store according to your merchandise. The décor, furniture, and walls align with the theme. So, when the customers enter the store, they feel the vibe. If you have a cupcake business, you will not decorate your interior with car parts (unless it has some link to your store).

That’s exactly what your Instagram profile is in the digital space. You need to optimize it to set the vibe.

How?

Here’s how.

Choosing the Right Profile Picture

Now on to the first page of curating the perfect profile.

Let’s choose a profile picture. It’s a critical decision. Your profile picture will be your business’s first contact point for potential customers.

Don’t just go with any generic or suspicious profile.

The best option is to go with your business logo. This way, people will easily identify you.

If you are a new business, you must put a lot of thought into your logo.

Just selecting the profile picture isn’t enough.

You need to upload it following the instructions. So, the logo doesn’t appear botched, sideways, or blurred.

There is no reason you can’t jazz up your profile picture occasionally or on special days. You may revamp the logo on special days.

It can be an illustration matching theme of the day.

Writing a Compelling Bio

Now to the next important part: the bio!

You need to unleash your creative side on this part. An interesting bio can generate the right buzz and engagement.

Instagram business accounts can go with their slogan in the bio. You can also add a brief description of what your brand does.

The bio should be precise and brief description of how can you solve your customer’s problems. It should be eye-catchy enough to make people want to click the link. When they do so and they will land on a page that has all the details.

As there is a 150-character limit, one can’t really go long. This is why people have started adding links in their bios containing blogs, promotional pages, etc. 

Don’t just add a link and expect wonder. Add a few words too.

Updating your contact information

You saw excellent reviews of a store online and want to visit it. There is no address. So you visit their Instagram. No address there as well. 

You try to find a contact number, but still nothing.

At this point, you are annoyed at their lack of transparency. You might try once more before you drop the plan. And a potential client is lost.

So, what have you learned?

Always include your point of contact in your Instagram account. Most users won’t make it to the second step. They will leave once they cannot find the relevant information at the top or in the first few seconds.

Keep your contact information updated in case you change for customer service matters. These are the most important basics, still many of us forget.

Creating a Cohesive Aesthetic

It’s all about aesthetics today!

The colors, the words, the layout—all coming together to create a unique tone for your business on Instagram.

No one likes sloppy, mismatched profiles. Modern consumers are picky and impatient. They will give your profile only seconds before moving to the next one.

You need to engage them in these mere seconds. But how?

Well, the right words echo with the colors and the layout. Your content should discuss your store, employees, and brand. Put proper planning and thought into each of them.

This way, each post will reflect your work. Don’t just go posting anything anytime. Connect them to your products.

Make sure you arrange your highlights coherently with the right labels. You might as well go creative with them. Know more about how to create highlights and make them stand out with awesome IG highlights covers.

Keep up with the color tones and adhere strictly to them. According to research, color patterns influence 85% of consumer buying behavior.

Planning will help you sustain yourself in the long run.

Step 2: Creating Engaging Content

Instagram has over 2 billion active users. Thus, only ads marketing here is a no-brainer. What you need to focus on is content. 

Let’s share the findings of a global study by OMD Worldwide, Yahoo and Amplified Intelligence. In case of videos of 30 seconds, active attention is as low as 1.2 seconds. It increases with shorter video lengths.

So while creating content, mix different types of content like reels, posts, and highlights to your strategy to take advantage of different attention spans.

Your content needs to engage users enough to click on the profile.

That’s tougher than it sounds, considering the attention span that modern consumers can spare on any digital content.

The above study says, irrespective of the product category, scrolled ads get 3.3 second active attention. This is 30% higher than the minimum 2.5 second active attention.

You can create engaging content once you get a hold of your audience, Instagram analytics, and other related features. I will talk about these in a short while.

It might take some time, but hey, all good things take time.

Understanding Your Audience

To create content, it is important to understand one’s audience.

How will you do that?

Look at the products you are selling, the services you offer, and the people responding to them.

Reports suggest Gen Z or Millennials are the majority of Instagrams users. A previously mentioned study found out that Gen Z has a lower active and passive attention span than the Boomers.

Apart from age, there is location and interest in understanding your audience. If you already have an offline customer base, and now working on your Instagram presence, then this might be a little easy for you. You already know your customers. This knowledge will come in handy while trying to understand your target audience of Instagram.

Once you understand your target audience, it becomes easier to create content.

You can integrate their preferences with your content. It is essential to create a buzz.

Using High-Quality Visuals

Over the years, visual content has taken the front-row seat in marketing.

I mean, with the reels, IGTV, aesthetic photographs, and memes, you can’t blame them.

Visual content can engage more audience than text-based posts.

Each has its magic. A mix of both will be perfect if you are struggling to decide. Consumers prefer visual content.

According to Twitter, Tweets that include visual content are three times more likely to generate more engagement than those without. LinkedIn posts with images generate 98% higher comment rate.

Articles with an image once every 75-100 words received double the social media shares as articles with fewer images - according to an analysis of over 1 million articles by Buzzsumo.

“The reason can be explained by John Medina’s Brain Rules. It mentions that we humans remember only 10% of an information after three days of hearing it. However, if an image is attached to that information you’ll remember 65% of it.”

So now that we have established the importance of visual contents, how can you create high-quality visuals?

• Stick to a color palette. This sets the tone for your profile.

• Ensure that you put up attractive thumbnails.

• In case of video, ensure the first few seconds are engaging to catch the user’s attention. If the rest of the content is good, they will. The trick is making them last the first few seconds.

Your content is not the only thing that matters. Every other thing surrounding that will make the ultimate mark.

Mastering the Art of Hashtags

Hashtags are Instagram’s most powerful features. They play a key role in establishing and expanding one’s reach.

The power of Instagram’s hashtags for Instagram business accounts is beyond words.

Do you remember the #Metoomovement, #FridaysForFuture, and #ShareYourEars? These became revolutionary, flooding social media with stories, memes, and videos.

I am not saying you must create something like that, but you must take advantage of these.

Hashtags help your audience with their search, giving you more potential to be found by them. So plan your hashtag strategy.

They are also important to establish context without having to write a big or lengthy write up.

• Create a branded hashtag and add them after every one of your posts.

• You can add a maximum of 30 hashtags to your posts. But it’s better to stay between 5 to 10. There are some differing opinions, though. Like Slice Communications says Instagram posts that use 11 or more hashtags receive the highest interactions. But staying relevant is the key.

• Add hashtags specific to your launching campaigns or related to your products and services. You also need to add some popular hashtags along with the industry-specific ones.

Sit and create a blend of hashtags that will include a bit of everything. You can repeat them after every post with slight tweaks.

Curate engaging Instagram captions

A good caption will always capture your audience.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need extraordinary writing skills. All you need to do is write things people can understand and relate to.

A good caption will seek out your brand personality. To write good captions, you need to set goals. You can’t just write and expect words to flow in.

Remember, you are not writing a novel; it’s a caption about your products. It needs to be realistic.

The first line needs to captivate the audience. The first one can be seen without expanding, and that’s likely what users will see first. If they don’t find it interesting, they will not expand.

Every business is unique. Tell your story of how you came up with the brand, the behind-the-scenes. You can hire a copywriter to do the writing for you. Or does someone in your circle know how to write? But make sure they write your story.

• Don’t go with generalized clichés.

• Include hashtags and a call to action in them. They help generate higher traffic.

• Ask questions.

Think of yourself scrolling through Instagram. Then you might understand from the user’s perspective.

Step 3: Building Your Following

Do we need to focus on our following count?

Yes

What if we just focus on creating quality content and leave the following to them?

No

As I said before, imagine your Instagram as your physical store. You can’t just focus on one aspect and leave the rest to be.

Creating quality content will increase your followers. But you must ensure your posts are made to address users’ needs. So that they convert to customers. At the end of the day, you need paying customers. That’s the goal.

Also, you can’t just leave the posts to be. You need to collaborate, engage and follow a theme.

Following is a list of works to build your followers on Instagram for businesses.

Engaging with Your Audience

To get more followers, you must engage with your audience.

Whenever you post, respond to comments and related queries.

Creating a buzz with your posts is not enough; you need to participate in it yourself. A great way to do this is through comments and replies.

Encourage your audience to use the brand hashtags and connect with those. It will show your consumers that you care. Trust me, that does a lot.

Tips for engaging with your audience

Instagram has invested in enough interactive features. A business needs to invest in knowing and using them. Here are some tips for engaging with your audience.

• Use stickers in your Instagram stories to ask questions.

• Add polls in your stories to get opinions on various things. For instance, the color of a new product.

• Share reels of customers’ experiences.

• Posts behind-the-scenes videos or clips.

• Carousel posts have a high engagement rate. Research suggests they have the highest engagement rate.

• Post user-generated content and tutorials.

• Keep sharing memes. They attract users’ attention and engage them. But be relevant to your business and marketing strategy.

Step 4: Curate a powerful and secure marketing strategy

Planning is the key to building a successful Instagram for a business. You need to create a social media marketing strategy specific to your business needs.

Every business on Instagram is different, catering to a specific targeted audience.

The marketing strategy depends on the business’s niche, audience, and size.

You need to constantly monitor the posts, their reach, and the audience it attracts.

Seems tedious?

It absolutely can be. But persistence is the key. The real question is, does it work?

Yup!

Set your KPIs!

What are the main points you need to set goals too?

Everything.

I am talking about

• Traffic

• Sales

• Engagement

• Followers

• Partnerships

You need to adjust KPIs for all of them separately.

Let’s say you want to increase sales through your Instagram page. What do you do? You set up an Instagram shop and advertise them as your posts. Link up your website as much as possible to generate traffic. 

You might fall short of some of your goals. But it’s alright! Keep following them, and tweak them when necessary.

Track your performance regularly

Business accounts have built-in data and analytics. Thus, the owners can keep track of the metrics.

Track where you are with your KPIs and goals.

Instagram Analytics is very important to track your content performance. Use Meta Business Suite to its fullest capacity. They will rank your posts based on engagement, likes, and comments. Try to integrate the ideas into other posts.

Adhere to your content calendar

You can’t just wing your posts in a business account. You need to sit down and plan them according to set KPIs, audience, and niche.

This requires you to create a content calendar. Trust me, it helps!

You can schedule your posts according to special days, trends, and needs there. By scheduling, you remain more in control. Various scheduling apps can help you with this. You can schedule the posts with meta business suite as well.

A content calendar helps you keep up a schedule. You won’t gain followers if you post one day and go MIA.

Review content performance to see what is the best time to post and which posts work best for your audience base. 

Schedule your posts according to your findings. You need to maintain a constant posting schedule to be seen.

Collaborating with Other Brands and Influencers

Influencers play a very important role in digital marketing strategy.

Influencers influence consumers’ buying behavior so much that every brand today has integrated influencer marketing into their advertising campaigns.

According to research, 60% of consumers will follow a brand after seeing it in their trusted influencers list.

So, as an Instagram business account, you need to collaborate with them to promote your sales.

Apart from that, reach out to other brands for collaboration. Don’t view every other brand with competitive eyes.

Every business is somehow related to another. It can be a local business or a high-end brand. Don’t be afraid to show it. Show your support by featuring their products or coming up with giveaways together.

You can also host live collaborations. This way, you can engage with your audience directly.

Running Instagram Ads

Want to grow your following with Instagram ads?

You probably have seen questions like these in blogs, videos, and posts.

This section will answer this question.

But before we go on, let us tell you why ads help you gain followers.

They give you a chance to cast your net to a wider audience. It helps you measure how much you will be spending on them.

When creating the ads -

• Use high-quality images with catchy captions to capture the audience’s attention.

• Include images of people with movement or video ads.

• Be straightforward. Don’t go beating around the bush with your offer. State clearly what you are offering.

• Boost the ad with email subscriptions, call-to-action links, Facebook ads, etc.

Ads are the surest way to gain new followers, provided you offer something worthwhile to the audience. But I would suggest that you go into Ads a little after you have set up your profile and other campaigns. This will help you create ads that reach your customers better.

Try a simple ad campaign and see what it does for you. You can scale it up depending on how it works for you.

Some More Essential Tips

Advertise your business = Advertise your Instagram account

Let’s say you opened up a store for sneakers. You will advertise those sneakers, right?

But where will they find it?

At the store which you will advertise too. As much as you promote the sneakers, you will do the store, too, because that’s where they are.

This is the same as the Instagram account. You need to promote your business account to let people know about your business. That’s where all the information is.

Promote your Instagram account everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean everywhere!

Attach a social media page with all the links to your business website.

You could add feature images of your business Instagram feed as product images or homepages.

Integrate the app with other social media apps. For instance, you could reshare the Instagram content in your Pinterest account.

Content that the audience can connect with

A lot of times, we mistake good content for over-the-top shoots and scenarios.

Sometimes good content just means words and situations people can relate to. If they can relate to your real-life product, they will buy it.

Moreover, it depends on your targeted audience. What might work for a specific business may not work for another.

Some brands post carousels as it increases their sales and engagement. But it might not be for you. Your audience might like long captions or reels. It is important to know what your audience wants.

Oh, and another thing!

Don’t just stick to one pattern. If you find promising results with reels, go with it, but don’t make it a habit. It will get tedious. Mix it up and create a balanced feed for your audience.

Be unique to your brand

Every business is unique; it has its own story and its own struggles. As a business owner, you need to bring out that uniqueness to the people.

Don’t suppress it owing to other brands or trends. Consumers will always follow your uniqueness. If not today, then tomorrow. Don’t lose your edge for blending in.

Study your competitors. Analyze their strategy to keep up.

Next, Trends!

Keep up with the Instagram trends.

Trends create opportunities to connect to a wider audience. As a business owner, your goal is to introduce your products to new consumers, and trends help you with that.

These affect consumer preference too.

For instance, consumers prefer video posts currently.

Always tag your products in posts

Tagging your products makes it easier for consumers to know about them.

Let’s say you posted a picture advertising a new merchandise. There you can tag all the other merchandise of yours present in the post.

This opens up opportunities for other products, along with advertising the new one.

It doesn’t mean you should only tag products from your business. You can also promote other products. Cross-promotions are beneficial for both parties.

Update the Instagram stories and highlights regularly

How can we forget about Instagram Stories and Highlights?

They are a great way to generate leads.

You can update stories any way you want, a little sneak Peek of shoot or upcoming content. The best part?

 It doesn’t take much time; you don’t have to match it with the feed theme or aesthetic.

You can update your products repeatedly, which is not possible in posts. You update.

• Timelines

• Reminders

• Countdowns

Anything you want!

People always check their stories daily. So, it gives businesses a chance to remain connected with their followers. And find out more about your followers from there.

You can post questions, ask for opinions, or answer queries there. Instagram offers many features for their stories, like boomerangs, rewind videos, short videos, etc.

You can update your product list or inventory there. For more important information, you can create highlights. Sometimes you may want to create highlights without any additional stories for promoting a particular product or campaign.

Conclusion

Instagram is an ever-growing platform. It has become an indispensable marketing tool nowadays.

Follow the guide and start today. With the right knowledge about its features, analytics, and hard work, you can master Instagram for your business.