Instagram has helped a lot of start-ups and small businesses to launch their businesses in recent years. With 1 billion monthly active users Instagram has become a go-to platform for companies of all sizes across various industries and there’s no doubt it will be on the top of the ladder in 2020 as well.
If you’re thinking of taking your business to the next level, here are the first steps you need to take before starting your content creation journey.
1. Fill Out Your Instagram Bio
The famous Instagram bio is a section under your username where within 150 characters you can include important information about yourself – or in this case about your brand. An Instagram bio gives you the opportunity to show off your brand’s personality and convince customers to choose you over the competition. For the best use of your bio you should include call-to-actions, keywords, and hashtags.
2. Feature Your Branded Hashtag in Your Bio
Don’t have a brand hashtag yet? Well, you better create one! A strong call to action idea can be to encourage your followers to share relevant content using your branded hashtag. For example, @TravelAwesome encourages followers to share photos from their travels with the #TravelAwesome hashtag.
You don’t have to be a travel agency to get amazing pictures from your customers. Whether you’re selling goods or offering services, creating your own hashtag and encouraging your customers to feature it with your product on their profiles can help you to create amazing content for your profile.
Insider tip – photo competitions or giveaways are a great way of creating a buzz and introducing your new brand hashtag to the world. Now, you can start reposting content from your customers (with their approval) and enjoying your brand new feed with minimal effort. Besides that, sharing other customer’s experiences will take your online reputation and presence to the next level.
3. Switch to Business Profile
Let’s be honest – 150 characters in your bio is just not enough. Setting up a business profile is a great way to save valuable space in your bio. Business profiles allow you to feature your email, address, phone number, and industry without taking up characters you might want to use for your brand hashtag, CTA, or simply just expressing yourself.
Another great perk of having IG Business is that you’ll get access to free Instagram Analytics about your followers, posts, and you’ll be able to promote Instagram posts as ads and add links to Instagram Stories.
4. Confirm your email
This may sound like such an obvious thing but believe me, if ignored (or forgotten) it can cause a lot of trouble. Make sure you confirm your email in “edit your profile > private information”, otherwise, your profile can rank lower in organic search, and that is definitely not what you want.
5. Link In Bio
Speaking of limited space, Instagram only allows you to post one link in your bio. For the best results is highly recommended to build your own mobile landing page with multiple linked buttons that will allow you to capture leads using Facebook pixel. This landing page can serve you as an entrance hall and divert your traffic to different parts of your website based on what your visitors are looking for.
If you’re looking for a simpler option you can use a 3rd party tool called LinkTree. LinkTree creates something like a mobile landing page that allows brands to link to the specific promotion as well as all of the other potentially important information that customers need (i.e., services, new blog posts, limited offers, etc.). Instead of changing the link all the time, you can just edit the buttons in Linktree.
Unfortunately, LinkTree is capturing your leads and you will be able to only track those who continue to your website. This can be an okay option if you don’t plan on remarketing the visitors, otherwise, you’re facing a valuable lost.
6. Content Planning, Creation, Visual Strategy, and Consistency
If you’ve made it all the way here, now is the time for the fun part – content creation. One of the best social media practices is planning content ahead and creating social media calendars. This will help you to stay on top of what you are posting and will help you to stay consistent.
Instagram is a visual platform and therefore, you have to make sure all of the pictures you share work together as a whole. Why is visual consistency important? Whenever your new post pops up on the feed your followers will be able to recognize it immediately and you’ll much easier become the top of mind in your category. Pick a preset that you like and keep using it on all of your photos. Do you have brand colors? Make sure you’re using those as well! Learn how to use the Instagram layout (grid) to work for you not against, and it will work its wonders. And remember – consistency is key – both posting and visual.
