How to Maximize "Instagram Business" to Increase Sales

You can use Instagram business as a medium for promoting your online business because many business Instagram features are not found on personal Instagram accounts. If you already have a website platform, you can use business Instagram as a supporting platform to increase traffic and leads.

How to create a business Instagram account is almost similar to creating a personal Instagram account, the difference is in changing the status of a business account in Settings with the following steps:

Login to your registered Instagram account
Go to the Settings page
Define Business Category
Fill in contact data and business location
Connecting to Facebook Page
Complete the profile data

About 60% of users often find new products through the Instagram network. That means Instagram is worthy of being the platform of choice for promoting business online.

7 Basic Steps to Maximize Your Instagram Business

After having an Instagram Business account, you may still be confused about what to do first. Well, we have some tips to maximize your business Instagram account below:

1. Define Your Target Audience

Determining who your target audience is before posting content is a mandatory step that should not be missed. Maybe you are very skilled at creating eye-catching content, but what do you do if you don’t know who you are targeting?

Use as much of your time as possible to do proper audience research. Usually, this step is done by adjusting the product/business field that you have. For example, you sell make-up products for teenagers. So, your target audience can be women aged 15-20 years, students, who have an interest in simple or not heavy make-up products, and so on.

Another way that can be done is to check your competitors who have similar businesses. Please pay attention to how they present content, engage in engagement, and what concepts they present to strengthen branding.

2. Business Instagram Profile Optimization

You probably already know that the Instagram bio can only be filled with a maximum of 150 characters. That’s a sign, you have to be smart to use the available space to introduce your business to the audience.

This step is quite tricky to do. However, try to create an impression that makes your audience want to find out more about you. You can write a description of the business product, advantages, value, or quote about the promos that you currently have. Or you can create a branding hashtag and put it in the bio. Hashtags make it easy for you to find user-generated content and track how well your brand is recognized by your audience.

3. Make a Posting Schedule

There is a study that states that the ideal time to post content on Instagram is between 9-11 am. This research is not necessarily true. Because not all types of content will have a target audience with the same treatment. Therefore, to know when is the right time to post content is to experiment many times. Then, you can analyze the results from Instagram’s Insights feature.

From there you can know when your audience is online, crowded with visitors, and vice versa.

Now, when you understand the setting of the right hours for posting, then you can make a posting schedule. You can use the help of tools to make it easier to schedule arrangements and let the tools publish your content. Some of the popular tools that can be used are Hootsuite, ScheduGram, Later, ViralTag and others.

4. Create Interesting Content

Instagram is all about visuals. So, you need to prepare as interesting content as possible to attract the audience. Create an impression that represents your business persona.

5. Create Instagram Stories

According to research, 39% of Instagram users say they are interested in a product after seeing it on Instagram Stories. That’s why the Instagram Stories service can be the right place to promote your business. You can use it to share content with your audience lives within a 24-hour time limit. And that’s when your creativity is needed.

With Instagram Stories, there are many types of content that you can present to attract viewers. For example, content about product testimonials, new product promotions, discounts, behind-the-scenes videos, tutorials, Questions and Answers, and even creating CTA (Call To Action) content.

Call To Action can be done by adding a link to your Story with the swipe-up command. From the swipe up command, your audience will be directed to the page of the link that has been inserted (such as a website, or YouTube) by swiping up on the screen. That way, this feature will be very useful for you to get more leads or traffic quickly. However, please note that the swipe-up feature has certain conditions, namely that you must have a minimum of 10,000 followers.

6. Instagram Ads

Instagram Ads are included as Instagram features that are in great demand by business people. This feature does provide an alternative for you to market your product to a specific audience. More or less, its use is the same as Facebook Ads. You can target audiences based on demographics, interests, age, gender, and behaviour.

There are two ways to run ads on Instagram. The first is to use the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. And the second is to access directly on Instagram. You can also create content in various formats such as using single images, carousels, videos, slideshows, and stories.

7. Perform Analysis

The last step that must be done is to analyze the overall Instagram Business account performance. Do this regularly to see how much impact each content and campaign is getting. You can analyze by directly accessing the Insights feature in your account. And if you want to get more specific results, use the help of analytics tools such as Hootsuite Analytics, Iconosquare, Sprout Social, Bitly, Keyhole, and many more.

Ready to Use Instagram Business? need help? contact us!