Knowing what Instagram can do for business will provide enough reasons to embrace it

Social media opens new gateways for businesses to reach out to the largest section of the audience and is the most compelling reason why businesses must take to social media for brand promotion and marketing.  The social media platforms, too, have realized this aspect and are giving opportunities for creating business profiles, as evident from 25 million business profiles on Instagram. The numbers bear testimony to the fact that to stay competitive in the market, you must take your business to Instagram.  Although it might not be possible to make any distinction between a personal profile and business profile, the latter has more business orientation and gives more opportunities for engaging with customers by accessing analytics that show the statistics and demographics on likes and followers. 

Likes are crucial for social media as it helps to understand your target audience better by knowing their likes and dislikes.  Although it is the custom to garner likes organically, there is also the opportunity to buy Instagram likes, which gives more impetus to the marketing campaign. Since Instagram recognizes the business needs and makes provisions for businesses to make the best use of the platform, it is the most prolific social media platform that can bring out the best of your ability to connect the brand with the audience.

Although Instagram made its appearance as an exclusive visual platform which it remains even today, it has evolved with time and made provisions for accommodating businesses to use the platform for fulfilling their marketing and promotional needs. This is evident from the way it allows companies to showcase their vision, mission, and goals alongside the business profile.  The powerful tool that Instagram is should make it a mandatory choice for businesses to use it to advance their business goals. 

Having understood why businesses must use Instagram, we will now discuss how to use the platform effectively.

Images and visuals

Online content is usually a mixture of text and photos with images used sparingly as and when needed for making the content look more attractive and even lending more clarity to it in some cases. In other words, the text is the mainstay of online content but not for Instagram, where only images or visuals are the content.   As compared to any other social media, Instagram focuses exclusively on images and visuals.  Since photos are central to Instagram, the photos must be not only clear and sharp but also provocative. Besides being of very high quality, the images must provoke users to think and even elicit some response that engages them with the brand.

The photos must be so much appealing that it will not only draw the attention of viewers but also stop them on their tracks so that they get the time to engage with the post, take special note of the caption and even go ahead to click on the link that takes them to your website.

Captions

Photos are compelling in that a picture can speak a thousand words. Still, despite photos being self-revealing and telling a full story, it must have a suitable caption without which it can lose its relevance and unable to hit the bull’s eye. Giving an exciting caption to photos is a must because it provides enough hints about the way you want the audience to engage with it. Captions can also motivate viewers to take some action just in the way CTAs do it for text-based content. Photos without caption could confuse viewers and even mislead them as they would not how you want them to engage with the brand. Captions must be captivating that catch-all attention of viewers and have a subtle call to action embedded in it. It could be as simple as asking them to respond through a like or a comment. 

Mobile usage

The purpose of using Instagram or any social media platform for business is to start an interactive relationship with customers so that they can post their responses on the platform. Instagram is a mobile-based platform, and even though users can view Instagram as a web page, it does not allow uploading content from computers and laptops but only from mobile devices. Creating an Instagram business profile acquires more importance because it expands the reach greatly as almost 80% of browsing of social media happens on mobile devices.  Keeping in mind that 80% of shoppers use mobile phones to look at product reviews and compare prices online, being on Instagram multiplies business visibility many more times. Taking your business to Instagram is thus a need of the times that you cannot ignore it.

Exploit Instagram’s link with Facebook

Facebook owns Instagram, yet these two are distinctly different platforms, and there is enough reason to create business profiles on both platforms. There is the feature of linking the two platforms, and it widens your reach instantly as you can reach the audience across both platforms. For example, if you post an ad on Facebook, you can upload it on Instagram too. Similarly, content posted on Instagram can find a place on Facebook automatically. The linking facility of Facebook and Instagram saves immense time that you had to spend otherwise if it required separate posting and helps to maintain consistency of the account across the platforms. 

Collaborate with influencers

Influencers are considered heavyweights in marketing, and you can use your Instagram account to collaborate with influencers.  When you tie-up with any influencer, you get instant access to his or her followers, and even if you belong to the same industry, there are high chances that those followers were not known to you before. Building relationships with influencers who have a strong following and are well respected in the industry will give you a competitive edge as your business would find mention in their posts, which is an excellent advertisement for your business.

It is an excellent opportunity to make your brand more recognizable and even reliable by association. Do not be surprised if you see that some of the followers review your product and turn into your brand ambassador that spreads brand awareness.