Strategically Build Your Presence On Instagram to Explode Your Business

Instagram is a hugely popular marketing platform. With over 1 billion active users, the social platform’s reach is larger than most countries. 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day.

Instagram’s parent company is Facebook and back in 2013 Instagram opened for advertising business which now has more than 4 million monthly advertisers on the platform.

300 million Instagram users visit a business profile daily and one-third of the most viewed stories are from businesses.

So, if you’re not on Instagram, you are seriously missing out on an opportunity to connect with your target audience.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through what I’ve learned and what you need to know about Instagram to launch and grow your own business account, and how to leverage it.

How does Instagram work

Instagram runs off of an algorithm that shows users specific posts and accounts based on how they interact with the platform.

Here’s how that works:

1. Interest: The more Instagram thinks you’ll “like” a post, the higher it will appear. This is based on past behavior on similar content.
2. Timeliness: Recent posts are going to have prioritization, so it’s necessary to be aware of when your audience is active on the app.
3. Relationship: If users engage with your content, they’ll see more of it. Stay top-of-mind by creating engaging content.
4. Frequency: The feed looks different depending on how often someone opens the app. A frequent scroller’s feed will look more chronological and someone who doesn’t open the app frequently will see posts from the people they follow that Instagram thinks they’ll like (in un-chronological order).
5. Following: Someone following a lot of accounts isn’t going to see posts from every account they follow, only the ones they interact with.
6. Usage: Users who spend a lot of time on Instagram will see more posts and those that don’t will just get the highlights from the algorithm.

Developing your Instagram strategy

Without a strong visual presence on Instagram, your business and brand will be easily ignored by the short-attention-span of its demographic.

To start, try using Instagram yourself to get accustomed to the platform.

Also, look at other businesses in your niche to see how they are positioning themselves on Instagram, and to see what sort of images they post.

Once you create an account for your business, you’ll need to choose a username, update your bio and start participating.  Follow influencers in your industry and follow engaging users and past clients.

Let’s look at ways you can strategically build your presence on Instagram and grow your business.

Optimize your Instagram bio

Start by optimizing your bio to attract more followers.

Focus on using your copywriting skills to fill this valuable space, you get 150 characters so create a brief benefit-driven description of what followers can expect from you, followed by a call to action.

Your URL, which is the only clickable link you’ll get on Instagram.  Unfortunately, links are not enabled on comments so use this to your advantage and direct people to your homepage, or an email capture form.

Tip:  It’s worth switching to an Instagram business profile to gain access to additional features.

Grow your community

To grow your community be attentive and genuine. Use a real profile photo, leave sincere comments on people’s pictures, and respond to your followers fast, and engage with them.

One way to use Instagram is to create visually appealing quotes.

One thing to note is that hashtags are used extensively on Instagram. To really stand out on Instagram and grow awareness of your brand, create a branded hashtag.

You don’t just want to use your company name as the hashtag. Instead, be creative. Think of using a hashtag that embodies your presence on Instagram. It should be something that encourages your followers to get involved and share.

Build your Brand

To build the brand you’ll need strong images. It’s actually better if they’re not professional images however they do need to relate to your brand and your audience.

To maintain brand consistency, if you’re going to use an Instagram filter, pick one and stick with it. The Normal filter (no filter) is the most popular, but if you want to enhance your images try a few of the top choices to see if your style of photos benefits from a filter.

You can also use Canva to help you create an Instagram post with their Instagram template.

Copy

Your tone of voice should also come across as an extension of your brand. Whatever voice you’re using in your newsletters and blog posts is the same tone you should use when writing your captions.

Tip:  Keep things short, sweet, and to the point.

Connections

A good reason to start using Instagram is to reach influencers that have a large Instagram presence. Create a list of 10-15 influencers in your space. Pick 10 you want to prioritize and start working with. Follow their feed. Leave comments. Check out what hashtags they’re using and integrate them into your own.

How Often to Post

You’ll want to post about 1-2 times per day. Track when posts are getting the most views and coordinate your posting around the natural times people visit your handle. Get consistent about it.

Don’t post four images in a row and don’t treat this like Twitter and post 7 times per day. You’ll annoy your audience.

Track your metrics

Instagram has built-in metrics called Insights. You can also see your metrics in Facebook’s Creator Studio or third-party metric tools.

Third-party tools currently have the most in-depth overviews and filtering capabilities like graphs and charts for a summary, audience growth, publishing behavior, top posts, engagement, etc.

The metrics you should focus on include

• Comments
• Saves
• Shares
• Likes

These metrics will help you understand how your engagement is going

• Website Clicks
• Clicks from a link shortener

These 2 metrics are helpful to see how many people are converting on Instagram

With Clubhouse being the latest and most popular new social platform it’s more important than ever to have your Instagram account set up.  You can connect your Instagram account to your Clubhouse bio and many Clubhouse users are seeing large bumps in traffic from this social platform.

Action step: Go and set up your Instagram account, and if you’re already on Instagram be sure to connect your Clubhouse account.

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