Hey, are you running a business and looking for how to use Instagram for your business? Or you are already using Instagram, but you are not employing an exact strategy that works well for your business.
Whatever the situation is in your case, I will discuss aneffective Instagram business strategy with ideas that experts are using for their business on Instagram that will definitely help you.
As you know, Instagram is one of the most popular and successful social media platforms in the world. According to Statista, Instagram has more than 2 billion monthly active users in 2023. And it is easy for you to grow your business on Instagram if you apply the right strategies.
So, without wasting your time, let’s start.
Why Use Instagram For Your Business?
Instagram is one of the 4th most popular social media platforms in 2023. In 2021 the ad revenue on Instagram was 42.1 billion dollars which increase to 43.2 billion dollars in 2022. From this, we can estimate how much using Instagram for your business is necessary.
Moreover, Instagram is a visual platform that provides a wide range of content in the form of photos, videos, reels, live video stories, etc. In this way, you have a wide variety of opportunities to create attractive content for your audience that is aligned with your brand voice.
Benefits of Using Instagram For Your Business:
Your business on Instagram gives you more advantages than you expect as compared to the other social media platforms.
In 2017, more than 25 million businesses were running on Instagram. Now in 2023, this number is probably double.
As the most active social media platform where users find their targeted products and services. It would be beneficial for you if you useInstagram for your business.
1. Popular Social Media Platform:
Instagram is considered one of the most popular platforms among females as they mostly do their online shopping on Instagram.
Female users are 47.8%, and male users are 52.2% on Instagram across the globe.
Instagram is connected to Facebook, which is why it has more active users compared to other social media platforms.
Moreover, India is considered one of the top countries that has more than 230.25 million Instagram users in 2022. While the US comes next to India in terms of number of users.
2. Easily Find The Target Audience:
Business success is related to the target audience. And finding the target audience is the main focus of the business.
Business only grows when you find your target audience and apply marketing strategy to them and engage with them.
Like your business is related to the fine arts, then search your target audience related to the fine arts. In this way, whenever you promote goods or products on Instagram, they will take an interest, even many of them will instantly buy it.
Billions of users are present on Instagram, and each has a different taste in different content. And it won’t be difficult for you to find your target audience on Instagram.
3. Offers Business Tools:
Instagram offers a business tool that is called Instagram Analytics. This tool helps to analyze your audience’s reach and engagement with each post. In this way, you will know which content is performing well and getting a high engagement rate. So you can further create your content on this.
Moreover, Instagram analytics also give insight into audience demographics that help you to know which age, gender, or region of an audience is taking an interest. So you can focus on them and find out the weak ends in your content strategy.
With the help of Instagram analytics, you can analyze
- Audience demographics
- Engagement rate of the content
- Interaction of the audience with your content
- Growth of the followers.
- Suitable time for sharing posts on Instagram
4. Best Platform For Online Shopping:
Many online business owners started their business on Instagram because they know Instagram provides different features that are best for customer experience and help them in running an online store successfully.
A survey says that 81 percent of users use Instagram to look for products, and 80% of them make a decision of buying.
Moreover, presenting and promoting your business on Instagram brings a good impact on your business and makes your business more reliable.
How To Run Instagram For Your Business? 7 Steps Strategy:
If you want to open an online store or increase awareness of your products to the audience on Instagram, you need to learn strategy.
Now I will discuss each step of how to use Instagram for your business, so stick with me.
1. Define Your Goals:
First, figure out why you are using Instagram. What do you want the Instagram audience to do when they see your business profile?
Your business goals would determine why you want to use your Instagram, whether you want to increase brand awareness or you want to generate leads, or both.
Usually, business owners use Instagram for
- Increasing awareness of the brand
- High engagement and interaction on their posts
- High conversion i.e., when the audience reaches your profile, they visit your physical or online store or website.
- And converting those leads to loyal customers.
2. Profile Optimization:
It is the main step to setting up your Instagram account. Because when the audience lands on your account, then the first thing they notice would be your profile. And this profile tells users what your business is about.
Your profile picture and your bio should be aligned with your business. Like, add your business logo or icon in your profile picture.
Even if your profile is set up, better to check your bio description and make sure necessary elements are present like
- Your brand slogan or tagline
- Business category
- Working hours
- Location
- Contact method
- Website or online store link
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Optimize The Link In The Bio Description:
Instagram permits users to add only one link in their bio description, and you cannot add links to every post. Mostly this is considered a limitation for business owners who want to direct their audiences to different links.
So many social media experts use the link in bio tactics in which they add a particular link in the Instagram profile and direct their audience to go to the landing page where the audience will find multiple links to different website pages like the homepage, blog post page, about page, etc.
3. Find And Understand Your Target Audience:
If you are running a business on Instagram from the start, you might not have enough knowledge about your target audience’s interests.
So find your competitors who are running the same business as you on Instagram and analyze their followers’ interests. reviews etc. And start following them.
Learn your audience demographics by going to Instagram analytics then click on the Audience option under the Insight heading. Here you will see the stats of your followers and their demographic.
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Use The Instagram Polling Feature:
Poll features will help you to get insight into the audience, and you can ask them about their likes and dislikes or what kind of content they are interested in.
4. Content Strategy:
After knowing your goals and target audience interest, now next step is making content,
Try out different formats to post content like
- Regular Instagram posts are evergreen and show in the user’s Instagram feed.
- Instagram stories remain for 24 hours. The duration is 15 seconds long.
- Instagram Live is a real-time recorded video in which the audience joins and writes live comments.
- Instagram reels, a 1-minute duration video in which different clips are edited together with background music or sound effects.
- IGTV is just like Youtube, where you can upload videos for up to 1-hour duration for a business account (more than 10k followers) in which you upload product demos, product or service guides or tutorials, etc.
- Instagram carousel which is a regular post comprises multiple photos and videos in the same post.
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Get An Inspiration:
Getting inspiration and making content according to it makes your content-making strategy easier. Use a save post option on Instagram and make a collection.
You can even take screenshots of the following content,
- Collect ideas that your competitors are posting.
- Attractive Visual of posts that get high engagement.
- Save compelling captions and posts for future use.
- Happy and unsatisfied customers’ reviews or posts, so you know how to please them in the future.
Whatever content you like and find highly engaging, and the audience is also showing interest in it, just hit the save button.
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Use Highlights Stories To Showcase Your Business Products Or Services:
Instagram stories help you to share about your company’s products and services. Start with the basics and tell the highlights and stories of your business. Collect them and make them evergreen content.
You can make highlight about
- Tell a few posts about your brands and your products and business features and values.
- If you are running a business in different locations, then share photos of them.
- Also, add frequently asked question highlights, so it will help you to save time when you respond to future clients.
- Add customer reviews so new audiences know how much your brand is reliable.
In short, tell your audience what your business is about.
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Add Value To Your Content:
Delivering an aesthetic pleasing content to your audience is the main step to attracting your audience.
Create valuable content that compels your audience and encourages them to follow and engage with your business.
Try out different content while keeping your business goals in mind and find out what works best for your audience. Don’t try to make your content an ad. Even if you want to promote your business, try to mix it with non-sale valuable content.
Like your business is about a makeup salon, share valuable tips with your audience along with the products or services you are giving.
If your business is boring and technical, try to add some humor, like memes or funny quotes to make it look engaging. Share relevant trending memes.
But remember to post content that is related to your business.
Share your staff members’ behind the scene and tell your audience what you do for them. Share expertise and tips with the relevant field.
Use compelling captions because the captain’s first line captures the audience’s attention and urges them to expand to read more. Also, add relevant keywords in your caption.
5. Posting Strategy:
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Post Regularly:
Regular posting makes your followers habitual of waiting for your content. And they will expect to learn something valuable and interesting from you.
Instagram algorithms only rank the content in the followers’ feeds who get the high interaction. So make a schedule by using a content calendar and posting at least once or two times per week, and make sure to schedule posts at that time when your followers are active on Instagram.
In short, it is the story of out of sight, out of mind, if you don’t keep appearing before your audience, they will gradually forget about you.
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Use Relevant Hashtags:
Using relevant hashtags before posting helps users to find your account conveniently. When users write a hashtag on the search bar, they will see a variety of content related to that hashtag. In this way, you will also get a high reach.
You can also make your branded hashtag that is relevant to your business and promote it. And in this way, you can get recognition through that hashtag.
6. Engage With Your Followers:
Running a business on Instagram is not limited to posting content but also engaging with your followers, especially those who are showing interest in your business.
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Go Live:
When you go live, your followers get a notification that you are live. In this way, you can directly engage and interact with your audience which makes your brand authentic.
You can do a variety of stuff while going live like
- Ask me Anything
- Behind The Scene
- Case studies of successful clients
- Display your products or services to the online audience
- Interview of the staff members
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Interact With Your Followers:
Interacting with your followers is important to grow your Instagram followers as you initially need to like and comment on their posts so they take attention to your account as well.
You can also mention them in your captions, like @name. In this way, they will get notified and interact with your posts.
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Direct Message:
Directly engaging and interacting with your customers and audience make a good impression.
According to the research, direct messages have a 38% role in marketing strategy. And most customers want an instant reply to their messages. So remain active on your Instagram for 24 hours.
7. Analyze Your Performance:
Instagram business accounts offer audience insight that will assist you to analyze your performance and which content is resonating with your audience on Instagram.
- For this, go to the menu
- Click on the insight option
- Now tap on any post and click on the insight option
- And analyze the metrics
In this way, you will know which post is getting a high impression, views, and engagement, and what is working best for your business.
How To Use Instagram For Business? 7 Experts’ Ideas:
1. Make Your Brand Voice:
Every business comes with a unique idea and style. Use specific style in your theme, posts, hashtags, caption, etc. Use the same font style and color theme.
If you are running a website, then use the color themes, and font style that is used in your website. In this way, you will make your own recognition through your unique style.
Many well-known reputable business brands like Mcdonald, Dior, and Louis Vuitton use consistent themes that make their business stand out.
2. Collaborate With Instagram Influencers:
Find influencers who are working in the same industry as you. They don’t need to have high followers, instead, micro-influencers bring more positive impact on business.
Find influencers who are authentic and have a few, but loyal followers. And they are ready to promote your products and services to their followers.
That helps you in increasing brand awareness and drive high sales.
3. Start An Ad Campaign:
Running an ad campaign also helps you to get a high reach and increase sales. Use Facebook ad manager and set your ad objective, audience demographic, ad budget and time duration of ad running, and formats of the ad.
You can run ads in three different formats like
- Photo ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
In these basic ads, there are sponsors labeled above the photo along with a (CTA) call to action.
There are also other advertising formats like
- Explore ads that appear on the Explore page of Instagram. This page mostly displays the content that users mostly take an interest in.
- Instagram stories ads in which visually attractive images or videos are used, and these ads cover the entire screen.
- Collection ads in which the main product presents above while the remaining product catalog is located at the bottom.
Before running an ad, figure out why you want to run an ad. After this, create highly aesthetic visual ads that generate leads.
For this, try out A/B testing on different ad formats and find out your ideal ad format.
4. Run Giveaways And Promotions:
Hosting a giveaway is the best tactic to grow your followers on Instagram because people love free stuff.
Nowadays, many influencers are encouraging their followers to follow a particular business account and share and comment on their posts regularly, and they will host a giveaway for those who will follow their requirements.
Run frequently exclusive promotions like a followers-only promotion where you offer exclusive sales for followers for a limited time.
In this way, they engage with you on Instagram, and in turn, your popularity will rise.
5. Run Contests:
Run a contest that encourages your followers to use your branded hashtag or tag their friends.
The winning contestant will get a gift and post or mention the winner contestant on your Instagram and encourage other followers to engage with your brand and win more contests in the future.
In this way, you will get genuine followers who are willing to engage with you.
6. Learn From Your Competitors:
Before starting to post on Instagram, first, learn how your competitors are using Instagram for business.
Go to your competitors’ profiles by searching them through relevant hashtags. Then analyze their content and see which content is getting high engagement. How many people like it, and how fast their business is growing on Instagram?
In this way, you will get a clear idea of how to start your online business.
7. Grow Your Followers Manually:
Grow your Instagram followers organically instead of buying them, because organic followers will become your loyal customers while bought followers do not.
When you follow people organically, they will follow you back if they are interested in your field, while bought followers are not the least bit interested in your business.
Although you get high followers, they will not be helpful in generating business revenue which is the ultimate goal of businesses.
Moreover, if people find out your followers are fake, then it can also harm your business reputation.
Final Takeaway:
Instagram is the perfect platform for small business owners who have limited budgets and cannot bear expensive marketing campaigns. For this, you just need one business account and a smartphone to get started.
So, start using Instagram right away and take your business to the peak. Although it takes a few months to increase your followers, and even if you get a low engagement rate, don’t be discouraged; it is normal. You just keep tracking your performance and make sure you are following the above strategies.
You can modify these strategies and try out different tactics according to your business requirements along with tracking your performance and keep bringing content that the audience really wants to see.
I hope now you know how to use Instagram for your business. If you have any queries related to this article, ask me any time.
Good Luck!
Frequently Asked Questions:
Are Instagram Business Accounts Free?
Yes, it is completely free. But you only need to pay for running an ad campaign.
Can Small Businesses Work Well On Instagram?
All businesses can run well on Instagram as long as your target audience is present. If you don’t know where your target audience is for this, use a polling system.
How To Boost My Small Business On Instagram?
You can boost your small business on Instagram by following the underlying steps
- Figure out your business goals
- Optimize your Instagram business profile
- Find and understand your target audience
- Make attractive and valuable content
- Post regularly
- Engage with your followers
- Analyze your performance