After its introduction in 2010, Instagram quickly rose to prominence, rivalling Twitter as one of the most important social networking networks among business users. So, how might Instagram help your small to medium-sized enterprise?
With over 600 million users as of December 2016, Instagram provided small companies with access to a previously unreachable market. While many large companies have found success with Instagram, many small businesses have assumed that the platform is beyond their reach.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to use Instagram, one of the most popular and engaging social media sites, to expand your SME’s consumer base and boost brand recognition.
Concentrate Your Efforts
It’s time to start posting on Instagram after you’ve created an account, but what should you share first? Knowing what kind of material would interest your followers is crucial to your Instagram campaign’s success. If you’re a small business owner, you need to identify your ideal customers so you can cater to them with relevant information.
First, you should evaluate your present clientele and determine their demographics in terms of age, region, and gender. Knowing what hashtags are popular in a certain Instagram group is a great help when deciding what to post.
Many of Instagram’s hot topics and hashtags will be of interest to you. Taking advantage of them during peak times is a smart strategy for expanding your reach beyond your present fan base. The fresh material you publish will be more discoverable with the use of hashtags, and it will be more in tune with current trends if you publish it.
Sons of Sawdust is an American woodworking company headquartered in Georgia that uses salvaged wood in its creations. The firm has developed a well-known online portfolio by documenting their efforts through photographs and presenting them to the web.
Participation Is Vital
Keeping your SME’s Instagram account current and engaging with its audience is crucial to its success. No matter how much high-quality, engaging material you publish, it won’t do you any good if nobody knows you even exist.
Put a link to your Instagram account on your website and promote it on other mediums like Facebook and Twitter to let your current consumers know you have a social media presence. In addition, make sure your email signatures contain links to all of your social media profiles.
Instagram recommends publishing at certain times of day and sticking to a schedule for the best results. You may maximise your audience’s interaction with your social media posts by using either Social Insights or Iconosquare, both of which provide useful analytics tools to direct you.
Working with a partner who already has a sizable Instagram following is another option for expanding your business’s visibility online. Through mutual promotion, both of you may increase your fan bases.
Be Spectacularly Different!
Instagram accounts that fail to differentiate themselves from the masses quickly lose their appeal. If you want to stand out online, where do you begin? Your company probably provides some sort of product, service, or experience to its clientele, and this USP may be used to win over new clients.
The London Helicopter is the only way to get daily aerial views of the city. The company’s unique selling proposition is that it provides access to a rarely seen phenomenon. Instagram, as a visually focused medium, is ideal for the brand to offer these special perspectives of London with its followers.
Maintain Cohesion
Instagram, like every other social media platform, requires regular posting. Regularly posting fresh content is recommended since followers will come to anticipate it and will have expectations about what they can expect from you as a user.
One common method of achieving this is to stick to a certain colour scheme that represents your brand throughout your writing. Oreo achieves this goal well by maintaining a same tone and colour palette throughout all of their content.
Increasing Sales Isn’t Instagram’s Only Purpose
Social networking isn’t only a quick way to enhance your business and sell your items, however gaining new consumers is a major benefit. It’s equally as effective for making a good impression on customers.
Although Facebook and Twitter were initially more popular for promoting small businesses online, Instagram is quickly gaining popularity because to its emphasis on visual content.
Users can now message businesses right from their Instagram profile, one of several new features that have made it simpler than ever for Instagram users to interact with the companies they follow.
Businesses and brands may take advantage of this in a variety of ways:
Profit and sales may increase for companies who actively engage with their customers on social media. Aberdeen Group showed that companies with strong customer service practises had yearly earnings growth of 7.5%, while those with weaker practises saw earnings growth of just 2.9%.
Using social media to convert consumers into enthusiastic brand promoters is a powerful marketing tactic. Customers are more than three times as likely to suggest a business to friends and family if they had a positive experience with that brand on social media. Fifty percent of consumers have claimed they would never buy from a brand again if they had a negative social media customer care experience.