Are you looking for ways to promote your business on Instagram? Small businesses are always looking for ways to promote their business and grow their online business revenue. The best way you can promote your business as a small business owner is through social media. Social media is a great platform with lots of benefits. With the right channel, you can excel in whatever business you are looking to start up.
Social media has lots of platforms like Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. However, we will be looking at Instagram in this post.
Using Instagram for Business
Instagram is an effective platform for small business owners to promote their brands. This platform comes with lots of benefits. For one, you get to interact with your customers or followers which is important for deepening customer relationships and fostering loyalty. You can also get feedback from products purchased to help you improve your product and deliver value consistently.
As a small business owner looking to expand, here are a few questions you should keep in mind:
- What do I stand to gain by promoting my small business on Instagram?
- Who is my target audience?
- How can I improve the quality of my products, so I can get more audience and followers?
Answering those questions gives you a better understanding of what to do as regards promoting your small business on Instagram.
How to Promote Your Business on Instagram
This article will reveal different ways you can plan, create good content, optimize and promote your small business on Instagram. With that being said, let’s get right into it.
- Create an Instagram business account.
- Develop a relationship with your audience
- Create relevant content
- Use the right hashtags
- Use high-quality images
- Leverage influencer marketing
Create an Instagram business account
This is the very first step you need to take to promote your business on Instagram. You need to create an Instagram business account for your business and it should be strictly for business.
Oftentimes, some business owners may make the mistake of using their personal accounts to run their businesses which might not be ideal.
Using a business account makes it more professional, and gives your followers a clear scope of the product you’re offering.
Develop a relationship with your audience
It’s bad practice to run your Instagram profile like one-way traffic. Many business people engage in the unhealthy habit of just posting and posting. More times than not, these posts are all made up of salsey content. This is the wrong approach.
It is important to treat your audience like a friend. Remember that Instagram is a social platform and you should keep it social, interactive, and engaging.
From time to time engage on other people’s posts, whether individuals or other business accounts. This will not only tell your audience that you care about them, but it will also open you up to a new audience entirely.
You are able to leverage other people’s audiences by engaging with their content.
You should make it a point of duty to respond to comments on your posts. This will tell your audience you’re listening and will encourage people who want to make inquiries.
Create relevant content
As a small business owner, you need to create relevant content that will attract more followers to your page and increase engagement.
Your content must be as good and unique as your business, each post should always trigger your followers to want to know more about your business and brand. You need to post something eye-catching like images or videos that are relevant to your audience.
Use the right hashtags
This is very important if you want to grow your business. You need to use the right hashtags that help your target audience find you. Think of hashtags as relevant keywords that your audience could be searching for.
You can include up to 20-30 hashtags per post and also up to 10 for Instagram stories.
Just make sure you are not using the same hashtags all the time but that each post should be tagged with relevant hashtags. This enables your customers to use the tags to post user-generated content and allows users to search through all the posts that are related to your brand.
Use high-quality images
Some people actually get this wrong. They post images of products that have very bad quality and poor lighting.
Use high-quality images that make your products look appealing. This will help increase engagements on your page and attract potential customers. Use a quality camera and take product pictures that are visually appealing. Remember to use photos that fit into Instagram’s photo and video size.
Leverage influencer marketing
Partnering with influencers will help to grow and expand your small business.
Partnering with influencers who already have an online presence and have large followers can help you reach your potential customers faster. This is because people would most likely purchase products and services endorsed by their favorite influencers.
The first thing to do is to look for a few influencers that have an audience that is relevant to your business or brand then you can get your brand or business out in front of those customers.
Conclusion
Looking forward to promoting your business on Instagram is a great step towards becoming a successful business owner. You can interact with your customers, build a community of loyal customers and increase brand visibility.
Do you have questions or comments on SMEs in Africa? Kindly drop them in the comments section below.