Business owners and social media managers are quickly realising that social media is a ‘pay to play’ game, or more simply put, if you want to get your message out there you need to spend some money promoting your posts. Get started by using what the influencers rely on to grow their brands.
Tip #1: Make sure you have a business profile
A personal profile is great for sharing personal updates with friends and family, but if you want to grow your business you need a business account. You can either create a new one from scratch that is separate from your personal account, or make your personal account into a business one by updating the settings inside your Instagram app.
Plus make sure you enable locations so people can check in when they visit you. You can create your location inside of Facebook.
Tip #2: Include a call to action in your bio
You are allowed one link in your bio so use it wisely. Instead of putting a link to your website home page, promote something – a special of the month, a blog post that is promoting one of your treatments or even a link to your online booking system. You can, and should, change it often too depending on what you are promoting.
Tip #3: Add hashtags to your captions
Hashtags are the language of Instagram so you should be using them in your captions. They help you to be found in the different communities of Instagram.
Tip #4: Create stories
Stories are 15-second video clips that have built-in scarcity because they expire after 24 hours. By posting them you encourage more people to watch or they know they might miss out on something from you. The great news with stories is that you can be more candid in them and don’t need to worry about fancy editing. Why? They disappear and people expect them to be off the cuff.
Tip #5: Don’t forget to sell from your social posts
Do you sell products on your site? Create shoppable posts where you can link straight to your cart for products you show in posts. If you are promoting your services then mention that there is a link in your bio straight to that page. Do you have more than 10,000 followers? Then you are allowed to include a link inside a story to your website.
Tip #6: Share UGC (User Generated Content)
The Instagram algorithm rewards people who are social by suggesting their profile and showing their posts in the explore tab. One of the easiest ways to be social is by sharing other people’s content.
You can either share content from people who tag you in or use your hashtag in their posts or just choose content by influencers you think would make a nice addition to your grid.
Tip #7: Use apps and tools
From editing images and videos to planning your content, here are a few apps and tools you might want to ad into your toolkit:
Captiona: helps you come up with clever captions for your posts
Planoly: a tool that helps you visually plan, manage and schedule your posts
Clips: helps you add annotations to your videos for those who like to read what you say instead of listen
Continual: lets you take a long video and break it up into 15 sec clips to create multiple stories
Canva: create animated GIFS or short videos with text animation
The key for using Instagram to build your business overall is to be consistent, be engaging and engage with others, give great value and from time to time don’t forgot to ask people to buy or book an appointment. Best of luck to all you Insta-stars!
Your Instagram Daily Checklist for Success
To grow your business on Insta make these 5 steps a daily habit.
- Create 1-3 stories each day mixing video and image clips
- Post once a day on your grid and alternate your own content with user generated content
- Check the link in your bio – can you update it for a new promotion?
- Research and use new hashtags in your captions
- Try the “follow – like – comment” strategy where you search for a new hashtag, find three prominent users of that hashtag, follow their profile, like three of their posts and comment on one. You will see your engagement and followers grow.
- Heather Porter has run events for speakers such as Tony Robbins and is now the founder of a website development company, co-host of 2 podcasts, co-author of 4 business books and host of That Social Media Show on the Bizversity app. For details check out: www.heatherporter.com