When Instagram launched in 2010, no one thought that it could be used for e-commerce or to promote businesses. It was purely to share photos among a circle of friends. They didn’t even optimize it for analytics because it was done for fun and not for business. However, times have changed, and now that almost every medium that existed can be used for business, the same goes for Instagram. Here are some ways on how you can make the platform work to your business advantage.
Strive to recruit followers. Whether or not your Instagram business will work depends largely on your reach, or in this case, your Instagram followers. Make sure people see your posts, and for this to happen, you must first get them to follow you. There are many ways to do this: you can run a promotion that requires them to follow you, or you can make your posts interactive so that they appear in the network activity feed of people who follow you. Once you get a good foundation, you can now attract more people with good content.
Use the features of the app and other apps that Instagram can host to increase awareness of your page. First of all, there are several apps that allow you to repost posts from your followers and vice versa. Using new and creative business ideas, in addition to your compelling content, you can get people to repost your posts and this way your followers can get to know about your Page. Similarly, if you get a good response about your products from one of your bosses, you can republish this. Using hashtags in your posts also allows you to keep track of posts made by users you are not following.
Extend the reach of your Instagram posts and videos by publishing them on other platforms. If you also have an official account on other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, this could help you get more followers due to the increased exposure of your page. On the other hand, if Instagram is the only platform you have a presence on, you can make deals with bloggers or other online influencers to embed your content on their blog or Twitter for their fans and followers to see.
With over a hundred million users and an almost endless supply of business ideas online, one glaring fact is that Instagram is a platform that has a lot of potential for your business. Turn this potential into a real advantage by creating an official account for your company as soon as possible. Don’t forget the guidelines we just mentioned!