In this blog post we’re going to give you some tips on how to use Instagram for business.

Instagram is a remarkably popular social media platform. Looking at the numbers shows how much the platform has grown over the past few years. It currently has 800M active monthly users, with 500M of them using the platform daily.

There is phenomenal scope for businesses to utilise the platform to showcase their offerings and win new business. According to Instagram’s own statistics, 80% of users follow a business online.

Use Hashtags on Instagram…. Wisely

According to SimplyMeasured, posts that have at least one hashtag get 12.6% more engagement than posts without. Other experiments suggest use of hashtags can increase likes by up to 70%.

Hashtags are also great for helping you getting discovered as IG users can follow Hashtags, as opposed to people. Use hashtags to pique the interest of your target audience. Put some effort into thinking about hashtags that related to your business, but also are likely to grab the attention of your target audience.

Don’t overdo it though. Although the platform allows up to 30 tags to be used per post, there is no need to use all 30 of them. Research has returned varying results when trying to determine what the optimum number of IG Hashtags is for engagement. However, broadly speaking, the number appears to lay between 2 and 12.

Play around with the number of hashtags that you insert in your posts and see what works best for you. Using hashtags effectively is a case of quality over quantity.

Instagram Advertising

Producing high quality visual content allows you to showcase your offerings in an extremely engaging way. This means that you can use every post that you produce as an advertisement for your products or services. To illustrate this, here is an example of the Instagram page for one of our clients. The content is clear, high quality and designed to be visually appealing.

This time last year, Instagram had 1 million advertisers. That number had doubled by September 2017. You can take your advertising one step further by utilising Instagram’s paid for advertising services. One of the ways to assess if this is for you is to use an analytics tool to assess how well your content is doing organically, and compare it with the performance of your paid for instagram ads.

Tell your story through Instagram

Instagram realised the Stories function just over a 18 months ago. The feature allows you to upload images, which expire in 24 hours, as well as a live video stream function. It’s been wildly successful. A year after its launch, it had more daily users than SnapChat.

You can use this to show off more in depth, unique sides of your business. If a customer compliments the service you provided, ask them to give a short testimonial on your story. If you’re setting up an event, post a video of the preparation of the venue. If your business is a bar or a restaurant, create videos of your staff making cocktails or show off your daily specials being prepared.

Moreover, stories are an effective way to gain useful information about your audience, including engagement, demographics and response to content. Try this, insert a call to action in your Instagram story and see how it performs when compared your normal instagram posts or paid advertising efforts.

Remember, ‘Mobile First’ Mindset

Instagram Is mainly designed to be used on mobile devices. With this in mind, it’s of paramount importance that if you want to use Instagram as a marketing tool, you need to have a mobile optimised site. Whether someone clicks the link to your website in your Instagram description, or is simply prompted to do a search for your company based on your profile, you want to ensure that you are offering them a smooth user experience.

In short, Instagram is a great platform for promoting your business and engaging with your customers. When used correctly, Instagram can be extremely powerful for your business. Utilising these tips can help ensure that Instgram becomes an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. To find out more about how Escalate can help improve your Digital Marketing Strategy, please feel free to contact us.