13 ways to grow Instagram for small businesses in 2023
You've already witnessed Instagram's power. The platform provides several services for small businesses, leveling the proverbial digital playing field between small and large firms from customer complaints to a product going viral. However, there is a tonne of knowledge about how businesses may use it available to you because it has been around for a while. This tutorial explains how to utilize Instagram for your small business, covering everything from utilizing the features of the site to specific suggestions for growing your online presence.
Why should your small business utilize Instagram?
You've now experienced Instagram's power. The platform provides several advantages for small businesses, leveling the proverbial playing field in the digital marketplace between small and large firms. These features range from customer complaints to a product becoming viral. However, there is a wealth of knowledge on how brands may use it because it has been around for a while. In this article, we'll break down how to utilize Instagram for your small business, from maximising the functionality of the app to offering specific suggestions for growing your online presence.
1. Establish your profile.
You could scoff at this, but it's an important reminder. Go through your Instagram profile for a second once you've set up your account as a business. Changes to features and settings occur frequently, sometimes without warning. It doesn't hurt to see if there are any new features you can test out. Updating the business categories, hours, location(s), a contact method, and tying any service or product catalogues in are other fundamental essentials for business profiles to take into account. Check to see if your profile's elements, such as your bio and profile photo, are consistent with your overall social media branding while you're over here.
2. Improve the link in your bio
Social media managers have developed innovative strategies to fully utilise Instagram's single link box. Using your "link in bio" to put up a landing page with a combination of recent content and evergreen links to your most significant product and service sites has become typical practice in articles.
The landing page strategy is for you if your company offers many links, shares links, offers multiple links to clients, or does all of the above. You can develop a landing page for your link in bio using a number of tools. By providing a landing page that replicates your grid and offers clickable links for each post to emphasize and direct traffic to your most important content, Sprout Social's SproutLink makes setting one up simple. Additionally, you can schedule and optimise the remaining pieces of your content while still using Sprout's Instagram publishing approach. Small businesses should use the link in bio to provide clients with the most crucial information, just as you would want to fill out your profile with critical company information.
3. Geotag your posts.
Add the location name to posts made from your small business's physical location. You can navigate through older entries and edit them if you forgot to do it when you first posted.
What serves as a geotag? Instagram gathers all of the content that has been posted there and organises it into recent and top posts. Customer photos coexist with images of your brand. Information about the tagged business may be found by clicking "View Information" near the top of the page. All of this increases brand recognition and aids in customer research of your company. Not sure what to order while you're in a restaurant? Just look through the most recent pictures to discover what people are praising.
4. Use the functionality to store posts.
Although this technique is private, it might help you improve your small business' Instagram content strategy. You can "save" a post on Instagram and group related posts into collections to view them later. Although it is not required, it is good to build collections. There are various methods to investigate and get ideas using this tool. Ideas for collections include:
- What your rivals are talking about in terms of visual photography inspiration
- Wonderful captions you've found Ideas for upcoming posts
- customer feedback
- Both positive and negative customer reviews
- Candidates for influence
There are, as you can see, a lot of alternatives available to you. Hit the save button if you find yourself saying, "Oh, this is a terrific post."
5. Highlight key points to describe your company.
You have the opportunity to provide even more information about your organization with Instagram's Stories Highlights feature. Highlights let you gather those Stories into a convenient source of evergreen material by displaying them on your profile after they would typically expire, extending the life of your Stories. Start with the fundamentals to avoid confusion, such as:
- Just a few blogs on your principles, working hours, and brand
- Places or highlights for each place: If you have several places, discuss them all and provide pictures from each one.
- Reviews or posts by customers: Repost from customer feed posts or develop a graphic that emphasizes reviews from elsewhere
- FAQs: Share details that clients frequently ask for. You can then direct clients to this, which saves you time when replying to their inquiries. Highlight
- Product or service attributes: Create a Highlight for each product or service, or an overall one. You simply can't fit everything into one post. Here, you can delve further into the specifics.
And now that you understand the fundamentals, it's time to exercise even greater creativity. What content subjects you already produce in your feed is a fantastic place to start. Are you creating a series for each employee? Put everything here in a highlight. Perhaps you organise events. Explain your method from the inside out to show the client what you do for them. Enjoy creating your Highlights. Here, your brand voice may really flourish.
6. Make manuals
Similar to Instagram Highlights, Guides provide you the opportunity to collect your best posts into a single featured piece of content. But there are some significant variations. The format is more editorial; it almost feels like you're reading an article. You are able to integrate images and postings from both your own feeds and feeds from other people.
Each embed has a caption feature that lets you add more information about the thing or place you're showcasing. Guides are excellent for building a list of place recommendations in addition to the suggestions already stated in the Highlights section. They could be all of your locations or the nearby companies you suggest. You might broaden the subject to include an introduction to your city, an examination of the neighborhood you're in, or suggestions from influencers. And if you're wary of utilizing this function? Not to worry. You can store draughts of guides until you're ready to publish them.
7. Take note of captions
The opening line of your caption is what draws readers in and determines whether they will scroll down to read more. You should review the remainder of your caption in addition to the initial sentence. What you write in your Instagram caption is more crucial than ever now that Instagram has included keyword searching. While it's not to say that you can't still use cutesy or stylized language, you should make sure that you include phrases that you want other people to associate you with. This could include your brand and product names, as well as broad terms associated with your business sector, similar to completing basic keyword research.
8. Constantly use Instagram Live
When marketing managers and business owners found themselves working from home but still wanted to connect with customers on a human level, going live for brands experienced a meteoric rise in popularity in 2020.
Utilizing Instagram Live has many advantages. The most important one is that when a follower's account goes live, they are notified. In particular, when you're attempting to stand out on the network, this rapid communication is essential. A few suggestions to get you started on Live:
- Showcase a creative process or give a tour of your workspace to go behind the scenes. You should start with anything that the customer does not have access to in the open.
- Run a Q&A: Instagram includes a Q&A function where the story post changes to match the sticker you are using if you are using the tool. Ask me anything (AMA) live Q&As and product-focused Q&As are also options.
- Conduct a conversation: Give another account access to the live broadcast. Having a guest on the Live provides you the opportunity to do an in-person interview with them or gives them the opportunity to highlight their passions.
- Display a good or service: Is it simpler to demonstrate than to describe your good or service? Describe this using Live. If comments are enabled, your visitors will also suggest topics for future episodes.
9. Provide promos for "following exclusively"
Everybody enjoys a good deal. But a restricted sale? That is utilising the urgency and FOMO marketing strategies. Your followers will be more motivated to stay interested and wait for the next promotion if you run a followers-only promotion for a brief period of time. If you want to create anticipation or hold a flash sale to make the promotions unpredictable, use the countdown Stories sticker.
10. Hold a contest
Hosting a giveaway is one of the best methods to expand your Instagram following naturally. Free things is something that people enjoy more than a great sale. Depending on how you set up the giveaway, you can get more post-interaction as a result. In addition to requesting followers, add conditions like saving a post, leaving a remark on a post, or forwarding it to a friend.
Instagram competitions are easy pickings for startups. To increase brand exposure, you might collaborate with other small businesses that serve a comparable clientele. It goes without saying that you shouldn't use this approach as your only social media strategy. Don't only hold giveaways; give your new followers more reasons to stick around.
11. Organize a takeover
Hosting a takeover or taking control of another company's account is another technique to get more people to know about your small business. Social media takeovers often consist of a number of postings that are scheduled over time. While some take the entire day, others publish every day for a week. These can be feed-only posts, stories-only posts, Live posts, or a combination of all the Instagram posting options. Consider organizing a takeover as you would a story. Introduce the person, discuss the topics they will be covering, post the takeover's contents, and finally say farewell in a conclusive manner. Industry peers, representatives from other small businesses with which you are friendly, and staff members are typical takeover guests.
12. Use DM more frequently
The process of community creation is gradual, and one of its components is developing a relationship with your customers. Personal messaging is the best method for achieving this.
Private or direct messaging makes up 38% of a brand's social media strategy, according to our Sprout Social IndexTM: Social Media Trends for 2022 & Beyond. Add that to the roughly 75% of customers who anticipate a social media reaction within 24 hours. Increasing your use of direct messages doesn't mean only replying. Additionally, you ought to interact with the client on their own feed and stories.
You'll need a strategy to organise all the messages as your Instagram DM usage increases. The Smart Inbox function of Sprout is useful in this situation. Utilize a system to manage your Instagram DMs so you can devote more time to customer support.
13. Follow your analytics
Track those Instagram stats, which is advice that can be obtained in other sources. Your strategies are ineffective if there is no data to support your intuition about success. You may access your native insights through Facebook or the Instagram app if you're just getting started. Additionally, you should be certain that you comprehend how impressions, reach, and other network-specific data differ from one another.
The success of the top posts, hashtag performance, and interaction are all tracked by Sprout's Instagram Business Profiles Report. The Profile Performance Report in Sprout also allows you to evaluate how well Instagram performed in comparison to your other networks. Analyze your Instagram statistics to learn more about what's effective or where your strategy may be strengthened.
Improving your Instagram strategy for small businesses
For small businesses looking to increase their presence on Instagram, this list of strategies is a terrific place to start. You can strengthen your Instagram approach and build a relationship with your audience by consistently using Instagram Live and Stories Highlights. Do you have to build your Instagram brand strategy from scratch? Utilize our comprehensive resources to develop a unique Instagram marketing plan. Discover how to make a content plan, define goals, and more.
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