How to use Instagram for business
You have been a member of Instagram for some time and yet you never thought of the photographic social network as a business tool. By documenting yourself online and participating in some training courses, however, you have had to change your mind and now you would like to know how to use the popular photo and video sharing platform for your professional activity.
Well, if that’s the case, let me tell you: you’ve come to the right place at the right time! In this guide, in fact, you can find some useful information to understand how to use Instagram for business. Even if, from what I understand, you are not very familiar with this social network, you have no reason to fear, I will try to give you effective but at the same time very simple tips to follow.
So, are you ready to get started? Yup? Great! Make yourself comfortable, take all the time you need to concentrate on reading the next paragraphs and, more importantly, try to follow the instructions I will give you carefully and scrupulously. There is nothing left for me to do, except wish you good reading and wish you good luck with everything!
Preliminary information
Before actually seeing how to use Instagram for business, allow me to briefly illustrate which are the work activities that it is actually possible to undertake on this platform so that you can have an overall picture of how to make the most of it.
- Becoming an influencer – the role of the influencer is to act as an intermediary between the users who follow him and famous companies and brands that want to reach a large audience to promote their products and services. Those who decide to undertake this activity have a serious responsibility: to recommend to their public only products/services that actually work and are useful, not giving in to the temptation to look only at their own economic interests. More info here.
- Promote your business – anyone who has a business in the “real world”, such as a store or a physical business, can take advantage of Instagram to gain visibility and reach a greater number of potential customers, as I explained to you in this other guide.
- Advertise your blog/website – to try to increase inbound traffic to your blog or website, you can try to take advantage of the photo social network and, in this way, become an Instagram blogger.
- Giving more visibility to their works – those who intend to give visibility to their works, for example, manual ones, can use Instagram as a “showcase” in which to publish them, trying to attract the attention of new potential customers interested in their purchase.
Create a business account on Instagram
When using Instagram for business purposes, it is practically essential to use some ad hoc functions of the photographic social network, such as those that allow you to access the statistics of your account, sponsor the contents created, insert links with “swipe up” in the Stories (function available only if you have at least 10,000 followers) and so on. To use them, however, you must necessarily create a business account on Instagram: now I’ll explain how to proceed.
The first thing you need to do, of course, is to start the Instagram app on your Android or iOS device, access your account, press the symbol (≡) located at the top right and tap on the Settings item from the opened menu. Subsequently, in the screen that opens, presses on the items Account> Switch to a professional account, select the type of professional account you want to switch to (eg Creator or Business) and follow the instructions that are proposed to you.
To get more into the merits, if you have opted to switch to a Creator account, press the Next and Continue buttons, choose one of the professional categories from those proposed and indicate whether or not to show the label of the chosen category by tapping ON. Now, click on the Finish button and, if the account was set as private, make it public, by clicking on the item Make the profile public, using the opened box.
If you have opted to switch to a Business account, instead, press the Continue button four times in a row, tap one of the available categories, press the Next button and confirm the operation by pressing OK. Then, give the company’s public commercial information, such as email, company telephone number and address, using the appropriate form. If you had set the account as private, then, move the switch located next to the Private account item to OFF, confirming the operation using the OK button in the opened box.
Now, tap on the blue Next button, located at the bottom, select the Facebook page to connect (I remind you that, if you wish, you can also skip this step by pressing on the item Do not connect to Facebook for now) or create it at the moment, by tapping on the specific wording relating to the creation of the same. In conclusion, press on the End item and that’s it.
From this moment on, you will be able to take advantage of Instagram’s analysis, statistics and sponsorship tools
Increase followers
Increasing followers on Instagram is of fundamental importance to be able to take advantage of the social network for work. If your account is not very popular, in fact, you will hardly be able to bring home significant results, whether you want to promote your website, your company or collaborate with famous brands. Try to implement the suggestions listed below and you will see that, if you are constant and patient in following them, you will be able to obtain some positive results.
Create your own style
Instagram is used by billions of users and, for this reason, the risk of creating content similar to those of other profiles is very high. Therefore, try to create your own personal style, so as to produce original and captivating contents, which are able to positively affect users who see them, to the point of pushing them to start following you on the social network.
How can you create your own style? Maybe you could try to apply the same crop to all the photos, use a particular filter, use the same shooting technique, make photo montages perhaps using apps or programs for photomontages and so on. In short, try to give vent to your creativity and create, at the same time, a work routine that is efficient for you and effective for the public.
Analyze your profile stats
If you want to increase followers on Instagram, you must regularly analyze the statistics of your profile, so as to be able to understand which contents are appreciated the most and by which groups of users. To access the statistics of your profile, access Instagram through its app for Android or iOS, tap the button (≡) at the top right and select the item Statistical data from the menu that opens.
In the Contents section, you can check which contents have been most successful (to expand the menu and see them all, select the Show all item). Therefore, try to understand which contents are appreciated most by users by checking those that have obtained the most interactions and views and take this data into account to choose the contents to publish in the future.
Use hashtags correctly
Using hashtags correctly is not a negligible detail, since these words and phrases, all preceded by the # symbol, have the important function of cataloguing the content posted on the photographic social network, making it easier for users to find them.
By choosing the most popular and relevant hashtags for your posts, you will increase the chances of showing them to a wider audience and gaining new followers. How can you find the most popular hashtags? You can use online tools that are free and easy to use (eg Top Hashtag and All Hashtag), or applications for mobile devices (eg HashTags for Instagram for Android and Top Tags for iOS).
Clearly, don’t just pay attention to the popularity of the hashtags you intend to use: rather, try to also pay attention to their relevance to the content they describe. If you want to have some other information on how to get more followers on Instagram, I invite you to read the in-depth study that I have entirely dedicated to this topic.
Advertise your site or business
If you want to use Instagram to advertise your site or business, you can do it by creating Posts and Stories that can strike the interest of the public: let me give you some advice on this, also explaining how to sponsor your content. to increase their visibility.
Post
If you intend to create posts to promote your website or business, try making photos or videos dedicated to the latest articles you have published online or the latest products/services you have created.
To publish a post, log in to your Instagram account from the Android / iOS app, tap on the (+) symbol at the bottom (in the centre of the screen), select the content you want to publish, by tapping on its preview, and press on the Next item located at the top right.
In the screen that opens, apply, if you want, one of the filters available to your content, press the Next item (top right) and, in the text field Write a caption …, enter the description of the content you are about to publish, trying to write captivating content and remembering to insert hashtags that allow you to increase its visibility.
If you want, you can also tag other people and add a place using the Tag People and Add Place buttons. As soon as you are ready to do so, then, press the Share button to publish the post on your account.
After publishing a post, you can sponsor it by creating a paid ad, so as to increase its visibility: to do so, press the Promote / Highlight button that appears below the content, indicate the destination to which to refer the people who will view it ( eg. Your website, your showcase, etc.) and follow the guided procedure to choose the call to action, the audience, the budget, the duration and the payment method with which to finance the campaign. Finally, tap on the blue Create promotion button and that’s it.
Stories
Since Stories are a type of content that is increasingly in vogue on Instagram, I recommend that you make them regularly to advertise the contents of your website, your business and the same posts published in the Instagram feed. If you want some ideas, you could create Stories in which you show photos and videos of the “behind the scenes” of your work or content aimed at advertising new articles (if you want to promote your website) or new products and services (if you want to promote a “physical” company).
To create a new Story on Instagram, log into your account from Android or iOS, tap the blue (+) button on your profile photo (in the Your Story section on the main screen of the app) and select, from the Gallery of your smartphone, the photo or video of your interest, by tapping on its preview (if you want, you can also create content at the moment by selecting one of the available modes and pressing the shutter/recording button at the bottom centre of the screen).
Then, to make your content appealing, put some text and decorations on it. Then tap on the smiling sticker symbol to add stickers (some of which are interactive and allow you to insert GIFs, surveys and questions), press the pen icon to draw “by hand” on the Story or press the Aa symbol to add some text.
If you have an account with at least 10,000 followers, you can also insert “swipe up” links that refer directly to your website, your e-commerce or any other online content. To add this type of link, all you have to do is press on the chain symbol at the top, press on the text field located under the URL entry (in the screen that has opened), enter the link you want to include in the History in the field of the appropriate text, tap on the Preview link option (to verify its operation) and press on the End item, at the top right.
In the absence of the aforementioned function, you can publish a link in your biography (to do so you simply need to tap the Edit button on the main page of your profile and paste it in the Web Site text field) and advertise it in the Story with an arrow indicating the photo of your profile and maybe a writing or an animated sticker “Link in bio“.In any case, to publish the Story, then remember to tap on the item Your story, at the bottom left.
If you want to increase the visibility of your Story, please sponsor it. To do this, press the More … button located at the bottom right and, in the menu that opens, select the item Highlight. Then follow the instructions that appear on the screen to choose the budget, the duration, the destination (eg your website, your profile, etc.) and the payment method with which to finance the campaign and, to confirm the operation, tap the Create promotion button.
Offer collaborations to famous companies and brands
If you have managed to build a good following, perhaps because you had already implemented the suggestions reported in one of the previous chapters of this tutorial, you can propose collaborations with famous companies and brands and get paid to promote their products and/or services on yours. account.
To contact a company you intend to collaborate with, go to its Instagram account and send a direct message in which you express your will to start a commercial collaboration. Alternatively, go to the company’s website, in this case, the contact page, and send a message to the email address dedicated to commercial collaborations. In any case, remember to include in the message your name and surname, the Instagram account you own, the number of followers you currently have and your contact details.
If one of the companies you contacted has decided to work with you, strictly follow the instructions they will give you regarding the promotion of their products or services. Be that as it may, be honest with your followers by not advertising things that you haven’t actually tested just because you can get an economic advantage and, another thing not to be underestimated, warn them when a content is sponsored by marking it with hashtags like #ad, #adv, #advertise, #sp or #sponsored.
Using Instagram to find a job
I conclude this guide by giving you some advice on how to use Instagram to find a job. Yes, because the famous photographic social network can also be used for this purpose. Clearly, it does not integrate ad hoc functions for participation in job interviews (it is not LinkedIn, so to speak), but it is possible to take advantage of the popularity of this platform and the potential visibility offered by it to advertise your projects.
Just to give you an example, you could create another Instagram account in which you regularly post photos and videos concerning your projects, especially if they are manual works (eg sewing, paintings, wooden objects, etc.), which on this social networks could certainly be highly appreciated by users.
As for how to promote content, you can refer to the advice I have already given you in the previous lines. I am sure that, if you commit yourself to put them into practice, over time, you will be able to significantly broaden your range of action and reach many new potential customers. Good luck!
