As you know, creating a website for your business is one of the most important steps to your business succeeding. But your work only starts here! The next step is bringing in traffic and targeting the right customers.
To reach out to your audience, you'll want to get in front of users where they're already spending a lot of their time - social media. Instagram today is one of the biggest, it has over a billion active monthly users.
According to Wix.com sharing content on social media platforms, including Instagram increased website traffic by over 2X. Instagram business accounts have tools to achieve brand awareness, promote products and services and drive sales.
Here is your 3 step plan.
1. Setup a business account on Instagram.
Sign up.
Go to Settings > Account > Switch to a professional account.
Connect to Facebook: You will be asked if you’d like to link your account to your Facebook business page. This is recommended because it will allow you to easily share posts on both channels and find relevant people to follow.
Update your settings:
Set your profile to public so that non-followers can see your posts and interact with your brand.
Allow for comments and messages from users in order to open more channels of communication.
Turn on notifications to stay up to date with activity on your account.
2. Strategy.
2.1. Goals -
Showcasing your products or services
Building brand awareness
Increasing sales
Sharing important news and updates
Brand loyalty and trust amongst users
Growing your community
2.2 Target Audience -
Age, gender, interests, location, motivation, used hashtags, who they follow etc.
A great place to locate a target audience is your competitors followers list. These users have already show an interest in your product or service category.
2.3 Competitor Analysis.
What are your competitors doing? - Follow your competitors, see what is working, whats trending and engaging.
Hashtags: Which hashtags are they using? Are they working? Are there repeating hashtags in your industry?
Captions: How they are communicating with your audience?
Content and visuals: Which images and type of content seems to be connecting most with your target market based on competition posts' likes and engagement?
Use these details and patterns observed to formulate your own strategy.
2.4 Profile & Bio
Your profile and bio should look both presentable and professional and represent your brand. It should be catchy and instantly capture the attention or your visitor.
- Name - your name is searchable, consider adding keywords that describe your service to increase your chances of being found by users
- Category - what industry are you in so visitors can quickly understand what you offer.
- Description - in just a few words, what does your business do.
- CTA (Call to action) - Add a CTA like, 'shop' or 'learn more'
- Contact Info - Add your tel, email and website details. Instagram allows you to add a clickable URL or a social bio link ie. LinkTree
- Profile picture - Pick your logo as your on brand bio picture so you can be easily identified. Instagram will crop it into a round shape.
Once you have completed your Profile and Bio you can start to think about the design of your feed.
Each row on an Instagram profile’s feed consists of three images. It’s popular to use a pattern layout and alternate between the types of images you publish. A consistent mixture of on brand posts using i.e 3 colours will yield a pretty professional feed that will catch the eye of users. Instagram tools like Feed Previewer can help you plan your posts.
The fonts you use are part of your brand's language, so make sure it represents your business. Fashion legend Chanel has created a signature font that has stayed the same for years, even on Instagram. If you also want similar branding success, be consistent with the fonts displayed in your stories, images and videos.
3. Use everything available on Instagram - All Formats.
Using Instagram features such as Stories, IGTV, Instagram Live, Shopping and its newer Instagram Reels format all helps your business get rewarded from the algorithm.
Also use features such as, Carousel, Story highlights, Live rooms, Stickers, Polls, GIFs, Countdowns, Clickable links and stickers.
Heres some details on just a few of these.
- Carousel - This type of post can include up to 10 images and videos, all of which are presented in a single post with a horizontal scrolling feature.
- Polls - let viewers vote between two customisable options. Use this feature in your Story to let users choose between their favourite product or image to engage in a fun way.
- Reels - is similar to the famous dance, comedy and education app called TikTok. Users record and edit up to 30 seconds of multi-clip videos with interactive filters and popular sounds and layer on special effects. If your page is public, these entertaining videos can be found in Explore and help your brand reach new followers.
Now show case your Instagram feed on your website by asking your web designer to add the feed to your site. This way, your website will automatically sync and show your most recent posts.
Get In touch with livxmedia.com if you need any help setting this up.
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