By Willona Sloan
The best way to use Instagram for business is to remember these three things: make your posts creative, visually appealing, and interactive.
Instagram is a fun and engaging social media tool with an enthusiastic following of users ages 18-29. According to the Pew Research Center, 28% of online adults use Instagram, which means the platform offers excellent opportunities to reach people where they are posting and sharing images with their networks.
Create Your Brand Presence
First, create your Instagram presence and determine what your objectives will be for the platform. Just like any other aspects of your communications and marketing work, this will require developing a strategy.
The goal is to build your presence in an authentic way. Create a warm and likable persona. Use photos of your products, staff, customers, and supporters to build your company’s persona. For example, if you have a coffee shop, you could share beautiful photos of your immaculately prepared cappuccinos, your hard-working and personable baristas, and your loyal customers. You would then encourage your followers to engage with your posts and share them.
For example, say your company produces organic candles. What’s your process? What type of people buy your product? What do they value? Use images that show the many facets of your business. Try not to behave like a brand intent on pushing a product. Think about what content your followers would enjoy seeing. On social media, your followers are people first; customers second.
Once you have built your presence, gained followers, and increased your engagement, you can then consider using the platform for advertising. With a community of 500 million users, Instagram offers great access to users with disposable income who want to buy from brands they engage with online.
You have the opportunity to create both photo and video ads and target the demographics that you wish to reach. Because this is a visual platform, you want to use your images to tell a story, even in your ads.
Brand Examples
For examples of how brands are using Instagram, check out L’Oréal, which offers professional quality model photos, makeup tips, videos, and product images. The Adidas Instagram account offers highly stylized photos of the world’s greatest athletes and offers a mix of inspirational quotes and conversational posts encouraging the athletes before their competitions. This strategy helps Adidas to court each featured athlete’s fans. And, sweetgreen shows images of their cafes, staff, fresh produce, farms, customers, and beautiful natural scenes to engage followers and help them to visualize the sweetgreen lifestyle.
Instagram for Business Resources
Here are some resources you should check out:
- Check out example of great Instagram for Business ad campaigns.
- These tips can help you maximize your Instagram presence.
- Forbes looks at how two woodworking pros used Instagram to gain followers and new business in this article.
Do you use Instagram for business? What tips would you offer?
