With over 1 billion monthly active users and around 90% of users following one or more businesses, it goes without saying that Instagram is among the most significant and indispensable platforms for your business. From celebrities to politicians, royal personalities to activists, and corporate leaders to college students, almost everyone is on Instagram today. The average daily time spent on Instagram is 53 minutes, so this platform is an excellent way to promote your business and build a customer base. In fact, Instagram marketing has become so vital that there are an estimated 25 million active business accounts on the platform.
If you have never used a business account on Instagram before, establishing your presence on this fourth most popular social media site can be slightly daunting. Therefore, this guide will cover the basics of an Instagram business account, how to successfully set one up, and how to market on Instagram.
Why Do You Need an Instagram Business Account?
This type of Instagram account is meant for a business. Even if it is not a conventional business account, it is primarily used for marketing purposes. It is completely free to use and does not come with any specific followers or content requirements.
Major Differences Between Business and Regular Accounts
Business accounts on Instagram:
Have two key features: audience insights and lead generation tools. These analytics help a business better understand its audience, reach, sales, and other useful metrics.
Can include swipe-up links in their stories to redirect their audience to a website or ecommerce store.
Can effectively engage in Instagram marketing by running advertisements as well as promoting their posts (called sponsored posts), whereas private profiles do not have this option.
Come with contact buttons to get in touch with a representative from the business. They also include address and location information.
- Are strictly public, whereas personal accounts can be kept public or private.
These differences mean that using Instagram for business is a completely different experience than using this platform for personal reasons. Hence, a regular account just cannot offer all these advantages.
Creating a Business Account on Instagram
There are two main steps to create a business account on Instagram. It is recommended to use the Instagram application from Play Store or App Store to use all the features offered.
Creating a New Business Account
With these steps, you can create a personal or regular Instagram account.
- Launch the application and choose Sign Up.
- Enter your email address, preferably the one associated with your business.
- Enter a username that is representative of your business and select a strong password.
- Tap Next.
Converting a personal profile to a business account
Now you just have to change this personal profile into a business account.
- Go to your profile and tap the three horizontal lines at the top right of the screen.
- Next, choose Settings from the menu displayed.
- At this point, you may see the option to Switch to Professional Account. If so, choose this option.
- Otherwise, go to Account.
- Then, choose Business.
- Next, you will be prompted to select a category and enter your business details.
- Tap Done after confirming all your details.
Now that you have a business account, you are all set to leverage Instagram for business. It is recommended to explore the various features that come with a business account at this point to get well-versed in them.
Marketing Your Business on Instagram: Promotion and Content
No matter how dedicated your customer base is, it is essential to use the right strategies and tools to promote your business. These strategies will vary; an Instagram marketing strategy that converts interested followers to customers might work well for one business but might not even be applicable to a different niche.
Strategies to Promote Your Business on Instagram
A few general ideas are given below to help you start.
- Promotional Offers
These include discounts, promo codes, and special offers that can attract customers. When giving out promotional offers, make sure there is a call to action included as well as a time limit to prompt your audience to quickly get the benefit.
- Competitions
This is arguably the favorite among the audience when discussing how to market on Instagram because who doesn’t love freebies? This is also a very effective way to increase your reach and gain more followers. Simply ask your followers to follow a few clear instructions, such as following a few accounts, tagging their friends, or using a certain hashtag, in order to get a chance to win your product(s).
- Cross-Promotion
Even if your business marketing is primarily centered around Instagram, only marketing on Instagram will not suffice. You need to, at the very least, use platforms such as emails, your business website, and other social media to bring attention to your Instagram business. Add the Instagram logo to the footer of your emails and web pages to allow potential customers to easily find your business account. There are free plugins and tools you can use to enable this, even if you’re not very tech-savvy.
- Influencers
The influence of certain popular Instagram users on their follower base is undeniably large. Commonly referred to as influencers, they can expose your business to an altogether new and substantial audience. To do this, you can send a free package of your products to a few influencers.
However, make sure you clearly discuss all contractual details with them beforehand and not assume anything; each influencer has their own set of expectations and responsibilities when it comes to receiving free products. You can also engage in paid promotional campaigns with influencers for marketing on Instagram.
- Charity
While this might be slightly difficult to achieve for small businesses, helping those in need can make your followers personally connect to your business. In fact, most major organizations are expected to contribute to the community in this age and time.
- Professional Marketing Services
If you can afford it, you can consider using the services of professionals such as Develux to create a customized and precisely targeted marketing strategy for your business.
After having employed these strategies for some time, you should be able to determine which of them are working the best for your business. Ideally, your business insights and analytics tools should be closely and regularly monitored to identify the best or a group of best promotion practices.
These strategies will tell you exactly how to market on Instagram. Once selected, focus most of your resources on them.
Tips for Creating Instagram Content for Your Business
Carefully designing your content and sharing it in an effective manner can not only promote your business faster but also save your time and resources. There is a large array of businesses that have exceptional products and equally engaging content, but they lack the knowledge of how to create content for Instagram.
A few tips that can help drive your engagement and follower count are given below.
- Post attention-grabbing and high-quality photos on your feed. And no, you’re not required to own expensive equipment or possess excellent photography skills for this. You can find numerous free photo-editing software to utilize for this purpose.
- Select the best time to post. This is when you expect your followers to be the most active and engage well with your posts. You will have to, again, consult your business insights to understand your audience to determine this time. For instance, if your audience primarily consists of college students, evening or night might be the best time to post since they will be free from classes and most likely to use their phones at that time.
- Design the kind of posts that’ll prompt your audience to engage. Ask them questions, or suggest they tag others. However, make sure you avoid anything too controversial simply in hopes of audience engagement, as it could hurt your brand.
- Instagram marketing also heavily relies on the use of hashtags, stories, and highlights. All of these ensure that your brand is easy to find and stays relevant, as well as that followers can quickly access information about your products. Although it is not recommended to over-post since spamming your audience is not a suggested marketing strategy, being consistent with posting is necessary.
Conclusion
Previously, marketing was driven by businesses, but today, marketing drives businesses. Therefore, marketers need to leverage any and all options available to them. Instagram is among the most effective and most commonly used platforms to market your business online.
Although it takes time, resources, and, at times, money, the most important aspect is to recognize the right set of strategies and practices that best convert your followers into customers. And to get guaranteed results, you can utilize established services such as Develux Marketing Services.
