How to Use Instagram for Business

It seems like there are changes to social media platforms almost daily, but we’re here to help you navigate all of the changes and make sure you’re making the biggest impact for your business. Let’s focus on using Instagram for business.

Your business may currently be on Instagram, but we have a few tips for how to maximize your efforts.

Create visual consistency

It’s easy to be so focused on making sure that you have enough content going out on Instagram, that you might forget to take a step back and look at your overall visual strategy to ensure that your Instagram feed is in line. One of the ways that we encourage clients to ensure that they are doing so is to create a visual strategy specifically for social and often reference it when creating social content.

drunkelephant-feed gopro-feed

Utilize Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are a great way to showcase your brands personality and capture the attention of your audience. The attention span of the average social media user is basically the same as that of a goldfish. So, think about how you can capture your audiences’ attention in a way that makes them want to engage with your brand. What type of content can you create that makes a user want to know more?

@wearecisco does a great job of utilizing Stories to tell their brand story, engage employees and recruit new employees to join their organization. This team has consistent messaging, has implemented Story Highlights and publishes content that is authentic.

cisco

Make it shoppable

If you’re a retail brand looking to drive clicks to your website and ultimately sales, implement product tagging. We also know how difficult it is to capture the attention of your audience on social, but if you want them to take the secondary action to shop your product, make it easy for them to do so on social.

Here’s an example from #client Altar’d State. Fans can easily explore more about this look by clicking on the product tags.

tagging

Develop a hashtag strategy

A couple of the common questions we get is, “how many hashtags should my brand use?” and “what hashtags should we be using?” Great questions! The biggest advice that is to research the hashtags that you want to use. I’ve seen too many brands fail to do this simple step and ultimately associate their brand with a hashtag that they didn’t intend. Always research hashtags to make sure they’re brand appropriate.

A recent example that I came across for a client is hashtag #boatlife. You’d think it would just be gorgeous pictures of boats, but it can quickly go in another direction. Before accidently tying your brand to explicit content, make sure to do your homework.

Aim to use around 10 to 12 hashtags per post. The magic formula, according to Social Media Examiner is:

  • 5-7 extremely popular hashtags: Ones that have around 100,000-500,000 posts
  • 5-7 moderately popular hashtags: Usually have around 10,000-100,000 posts
  • 3-5 niche-specific hashtags: Ones that your target audience would search for
  • 1-3 branded hashtags: These are exclusively for your brand

Have questions about social media for your business? Contact us. We’ll be glad to help.

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