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Tips & Tricks: Building Your Instagram Business

As you are developing your business plan, Instagram probably comes at the top of your strategies list. With various opportunities, features for businesses, and e-shops, Instagram has become the number one place for all-size businesses. Although challenging at times, with the right set of tools and strategies, your Instagram business can go from okay to flourishing in a matter of days. If you’re just starting or would like to brush up your strategy, the following tips & tricks will help you navigate the exciting environment of Instagram for business. 

Be smart about your bio

Most often, businesses on Instagram get carried away with their corpo jargon in bios. And it’s not the smartest move. Unlike your company website or LinkedIn profile, your Instagram should have a more relaxed vibe to it.   And your Instagram bio is an excellent way to make the first impression.

Instead of being too formal with it, make sure to state your business’s mission. And make it clear, concise, and, most importantly – add an element of fun to it. Use puns, funny quotes, songs or movie lines. Anything that gives off a relaxed vibe and gets you closer to your audience.

Also, be smart about your link in bio. Switch it up from time to time to promote different campaigns, launches, and deals.  

Give to receive

Instagram is no exception when it comes to this golden rule for business, and well, for life in general. By giving products or services for free, you’re creating a positive association with your business. So the next time your audience is in search of a product or service, they’re more likely going to pick yours. 

Gifts in the form of giveaways are most common among Instagram audiences. Aside from creating positive associations towards your business, giveaways generate a ton of new followers and engagement on your IG profile.

If you’re looking into ways to grow your Instagram through giveaways, here’s a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to implement it https://flocksocial.com/how-to-run-an-instagram-giveaway/.

Create stunning visuals

As you’ve probably figured out, Instagram is all about the looks of things. You can have a fantastic product, ridiculously smart messaging, yet you don’t stand a chance on Instagram if killer visuals don’t follow all of that. No matter your business type, you can always make it eye-pleasing to meet the demanding Instagram audience’s expectations.

For example, if you’re an accounting firm and don’t have exciting product photos to display, you can still have super fun and catchy Instagram content. Create some behind-the-scenes or employer-spotlight videos. Feature your fun team building content or casual Zoom meetings. 

Use hashtags

Instagram hashtags provide a map to your Instagram profile. To get more audiences to discover and interact with your content, be sure to map out a path to it the right way.

The right way doesn’t involve overstuffing your captions with every possible popular Instagram hashtag. Being smart about your hashtag strategy means picking about 10 hashtags and placing them after the dotted lines in the caption or in the first comment. This creates a more sophisticated look, but still keeps all the benefits. As far as the ratio between general and specific goes, the most common rule of thumb is to do 1/3 of general ones, 1/3 of niche-specific ones, and 1/3 of rare or campaign-specific, branded hashtags. 

Keep the conversation going

As a business trying to make it on Instagram, you have to use every opportunity to keep top of your audience’s mind. Instagram and social media users, in general, are very much used to interacting with brands through social media. You can capitalize on this trend in several ways.  Respond to questions, involve witty banter in comments, and be the first to answer any customer service request you might receive in DM or comments. Monitor your tagged tab to look for opportunities to show your appreciation and care for your customers. Interact with similar brands to show up in front of their audience. Show up in their comments, or give shoutouts to your partner businesses. 

Always make sure to respond in time, give thoughtful comments, and be helpful. Your potential customers will appreciate your authenticity and effort.