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How to find a business on instagram


How to Use Instagram for Local Businesses

Using your Instagram Account to attract local business is pretty straight forward. You can use many of the same strategies that we went over How to Use Twitter for Local Businesses. It’s all about finding the right followers and using the right hashtags.

And, remember, this strategy isn’t just for small businesses, but for any business trying to segment and build a local presence.

Just a note for users new to Instagram, there is no great way to manage it from your Desktop. It can be done, but functionality is limited and cumbersome. I strongly recommend using your phone or tablet for all Instagram activity.

The first step, as always, is getting your profile right. You want the local crowd to be able to find you.

Step 1) Setting Up Your Profile

You may be aware that Instagram recently created a business account option. If you haven’t done so already, this is an extremely important first step as it will allow you to add your location and a contact link to your profile.

Here’s how to set that up:

First, click on the 3 dots in the upper left to get to Options where the red arrow is pointing in the screenshot below.

Then, scroll down to Switch to Business Profile

Just like Twitter, I can perform searches for Instagram posts by location or by the “Nearby Places” search (detailed later on). Unfortunately, you cannot also perform a keyword search to narrow down results, but you still want to be found in this way, so having your location listed correctly is paramount.

Once your business account is created you need to double check 3 things:

  • Location is entered. You’ll notice in the screenshot below that they don’t have one entered, which is because they are a worldwide distributor, not local. Instagram will geotarget your posts based on your phones location regardless of what information you enter here, but it’s still important to have your city name visible to potential followers in the area.
  • Your website address is entered correctly.
  • Your email and phone number are entered correctly. The phone won’t actually do anything as people cannot call you from Instagram, but you’ll need it to receive recovery text messages if you ever forget your password or get locked out. Your email is extremely important as this is the address all messages will go to when customers click on the Contact Me button on your business profile.

  

Changing your location information is actually found under Contact Options.

After clicking on Contact Options, you’ll be able to enter all information you’d like your customers to have access to. For a local business, all contact options are important, but be sure to only list ones that you actually use. Entering you location information will also help you show up in searches on Instagram for that location.

 

Step 2) Finding Local Users

Location Search

The easiest way to do this is to use the Search function, which is indicated by clicking on the little magnifying glass at the bottom of your phone screen. Then click on Nearby Places. Now, as you’re logging in from your phone, Nearby Places will populate based on your current geo-location assuming you have geolocation permissions on in your phone settings. So if you’re logging into your phone from another city, it’ll populate posts from that location instead.

Another way to do this is to just choose the city you’re in. When you click on Nearby Places, Instagram search will autopopulate cities nearest your location and you can choose one.

You’ll then see all posts near you in terms of how recently they’ve been posted. You can scroll through and click on the photo to then follow the user or comment on their pictures. Or you may just want to comment on photos you feel are relevant to your business. It’s up to you.

Don’t restrict yourself to city names either. Famous landmarks and other local businesses are great places to look as well. Instagram connects to Google Maps and will pull location information automatically. So if I’m at the Indianapolis Public Library, Instagram will pull that location information and prompt me to tag it in my post.

So you can find many users by doing location searches for these landmarks and local organizations. Ones that are closer to your business are even better.

One last thing, even if you haven’t been on Instagram before, your business location will still show up as a location when users post. So people may have already posted photos from your business even if you weren’t using Instagram before. So definitely don’t forget to search for yourself and see if you have fans already on the platform.

People Search

Another search feature is to look within People and then type in your city name. This will populate with all the users that have mentioned your city or have their location set to that city.

Just like with Twitter, if a user is local and only has a small number of other followers, you can pretty much assume they are mostly local friends as well. The frustrating thing with Instagram is that there is no way to know this unless the user puts their location in their profile. So it’s a little bit of a shot in the dark.

One more way to tell if a user you’ve clicked on is locate is to check which hashtags they are using in their photos or just see if they’ve posted any local landmarks. It can help you decide who to follow and who not to. You don’t just want to follow anyone because it can look bad if you are following too many people and a similar amount do not follow you back.

Let’s not forget competitors either. If you have a competitor in your area that already has an Instagram following, go into their profile and see who they are following and who follows them. Start interacting with these followers and try to steal them from your competition by engaging or even sending a targeted offer! Believe me, it works.

#Hashtag Search

Hashtag search is one of my preferred methods for finding local users and getting a feel for what users are interested in. Simply navigate to the Tags section of Search and type in the hashtag you’re looking for.

Always start with your city and its nicknames. For me, I’ll type in #Indianapolis and #Indy. You immediately notice that Instagram autopopulates with many of the most commonly used hashtags. Write these down as these are the hashtags you’ll want to use in your own postings.

Now start following through on the searches for those hashtags to interact and follow people posting within them.

Those are the easiest to find. However, there will also be local hashtags that don’t include the name of your city in them and these are a bit harder to find. You’ll come across many of them over time as you follow and interact with local users.

To deliberately search them out, the best way is to go back to the local users you’ve already identified. Now go into their posts and see what hashtags they’re using. If you see certain hashtags commonly being used across local users, it’s a safe bet that hashtag is mainly used just in your area, so you can follow people using it as well.

An example of this may be a popular location or street name. For example, #MassAve & #FountainSquare are too popular ones in Indy.

Step 3) Start Posting

We’ll just cover the basics of posting related to local strategy here rather than an in-depth analysis of Instagram best practices.

Take Pictures from Around Your City

The main thing is to post local content your customers will enjoy. If you’re a pizza restaurant, don’t just take photos of your pizza in the store. Take pictures of staff or customers eating it at locations around the city.

Also, remember that not every photo needs to be a promotion. Maybe it’s just photos of you or other staff around the city. Customers these days want to see the people behind the company, so it’s important to humanize your profile in this way.

Involve Your Customers

Rather than have you or your staff take photos around the city, a fantastic idea is to encourage your customers to take pictures of themselves using your products around the city. You can incentivize them to do so by offering a discount when they come in a show you the picture. Even better, make sure you’re monitoring your profile daily and shoot them a thank you message with a special offer when you see them post.

Some customers will be social media savvy enough to tag you in any post about your organization by including your username preceded by the @ symbol like @mycompanyname. Many customers won’t though, but if you’re monitoring local postings by doing regular searches, you may come across them anyway.

Contests

Another great way to involve your customers is through contests. Give them a regular challenge each week where you encourage them to take some picture of themselves using your product or service. One winner can be chosen each week out of all who entered. Contests are fun because everyone loves to win prizes and it gets your customers promoting your business for you for free!

You could also do a like and share contest where followers are encouraged to tag a friend of theirs on Instagram that they think may like your business in order to be entered in a drawing to win a prize.

Contests where followers have to share with a friend or take their own pictures are much better than contests where followers are just asked to like your photo. Liking is easy and you probably get numerous likes per post anyway. There is no way to determine if someone liked your post because of the contest or just because they like the post. It’s just not as valuable of  method for your business.

Cross Promote with Other Businesses

Do you have other businesses around you that are already on Instagram? Do a cross promotion where you share one of their pictures and then they share one of yours. This is a wonderful method that I’ve used to grow followings quickly.

Just make sure the businesses you cross promote with are related to yours. Otherwise, followers may be more annoyed than interested.

#Hashtags

Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post (Update July 26th, 2017: Instagram has updated its algorithm and now frowns upon what they call “hashtag spamming”. Hashtags should now be limited to between 6-10 and must be relevant. Additionally, posting hashtags in the comments or using the “dot down” method now also incur algorithmic penalties). If you’re a pizza restaurant, you may be tempted to use hashtags like #pizza and #food. However, these are unlikely to do anything for you as users across the world will see them. It’s not bad to include them, but just realize that you may start gaining followers from around the world who will never order from your business.

Much more important are the local hashtags you’ve identified through your research above. Now don’t just include every local hashtag. If a local hashtag is #FountainSquareIndy and your business is all the way on the other side of town, people may get annoyed that you’re posting in that hashtag.

It’s ok to do once in a while to get your business name out to different places, but you definitely don’t want to be including irrelevant hashtags on a regular basis.

Include Offline Calls-to-Action

If you have a brick and mortar store, make sure you have information up highlighting that you have an Instagram account and ask customers to follow you. Offer an incentive for first time followers as well.

You definitely want a hashtag for your business as well. Don’t put a lot of thought into this. Usually #nameofbusiness is the best as it’s very straightforward and memorable. Let customers know that’s your hashtag by including it on signs around the store, in advertisements, and even on product packaging or receipts.

Get Started

That’s all you need to do to get started. Using the simple strategies above, I’ve grown accounts from 0 to over 500 followers in 2 months and with less than 1 hour per week spent on Instagram. If you’re posting good pictures, using hashtags appropriately, and engaging with other users, it’s easy to grow fast without a whole lot of time.

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Instagram Search & Explore: A Complete Guide

Instagram places a big emphasis on search and discovery of content. It’s one of the few social media platforms with a Search and Explore tab in its app.

Being featured in the search results or in Instagram’s Explore section can be a great way to boost your success on the network with added exposure and the chance to reach new users who may not have otherwise seen your content.

There are also several other ways you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore for your business — finding the best hashtags to use, engaging your fans, and finding influencers to collaborate with.

In this post, you’ll learn all the ways you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore to help your business success on Instagram.

Buffer for Instagram now comes with direct scheduling! Schedule single-image posts or set reminders to post videos and multi-image posts at your best times to grow your Instagram following. Learn more today.

What you’ll learn about Instagram Search for your business

To make reading easier, this guide has been broken down into five chapters, each detailing a way of using Instagram Search or Explore for your business.

  • How Instagram Search and Explore works
  • How to get featured on Instagram’s Search and Explore
  • How to use Instagram Search to find the best hashtags
  • How to use Instagram Search to engage your fans
  • How to use Instagram Search to find influencers

How Instagram Search and Explore works

Let’s first understand what you can search and explore on Instagram. Tap the magnifying glass icon to go to the Search and Explore tab.

Search

Simply tap on the search bar to start searching. You can search for the following:

  • Top (i.e. all of the below)
  • People (i.e. Other users on Instagram)
  • Tags (i.e. Hashtags)
  • Places (i.e. Location tags)

You can search using the Instagram website, too. The only difference is that you can’t search for keywords by categories (e.g. people or tags) on the website. A workaround is to add “@” or “#” before your keywords when you are searching for people or hashtags respectively.

Here’s how Instagram determines your search results:

The search results you see are based on a variety of factors, including the people you follow, who you’re connected to and what photos and videos you like on Instagram.

When you tap on a username in the search results, you’ll be brought to the user’s profile.

When you tap on a hashtag or a location tag, you’ll see photos with the hashtag or location tag. There’ll be nine top posts followed by all the photos starting from the most recent photo.

Explore

Below the search bar is the Explore section. This section helps you discover posts you might like based on your Instagram activities, according to Instagram.

Posts are selected automatically based on things like the people you follow or the posts you like. You may also see video channels, which can include posts from a mixture of hand-picked and automatically sourced accounts based on topics we think you’ll enjoy.

Now, let’s take an in-depth look at how you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore feature for your business.

How to get featured on Instagram’s Search and Explore

Being featured in the search results or in the Explore section of your target audience can help to expose your brand to people outside of your follower base. You could also get more engagement on your posts and gain more followers.

To get featured on Instagram’s Search and Explore, try these four ideas:

1. Add a location tag and (nine) hashtags

For your posts and stories to appear in a search result, you’ll need to add a location tag or hashtags to your post.

To add a location tag to a post, tap on any of the suggested locations while you are composing the post. If the location you want to tag isn’t suggested, tap on “Add Location” to search for your preferred location. If you can’t find your location, you can create one.

To add a location tag to a story, tap on the sticker option and then the location tag sticker.

To add a hashtag to a post, simply type “#” and the relevant keyword, such as #landscape, #ootd, or #igfood.

To add a location tag to a story, tap on the sticker option and then the hashtag sticker. Or tap on the text option and type a hashtag. Instagram would recommend relevant hashtags as you type.

You can add up to 30 hashtags per post but TrackMaven found that Instagram posts with nine hashtags perform the best in terms of engagement.

To find the best hashtags to use, you could try tools like Focalmark or Display Purposes. In the next section, you’ll also learn how to use Instagram Search to find the best hashtags to use.

2. Time your posts

When you tap into a search result, the latest post will appear first (apart from the top posts).

To optimize your posts for Instagram search, you’d want to publish when your target audience are most active (when they are scrolling through Instagram and searching for posts).

This way, there’s a greater chance of your post appearing near the top of the search result when your target audience is finding photos and videos on Instagram.

If you have an Instagram business profile, you can find the day and the hour of a typical day when your followers are the most active, in your Instagram Insights.

If you do not have a business profile on Instagram, you can use Union Metrics’ free Instagram account check up or WEBSTA to find your optimal posting time.

(We’re making an assumption that your followers’ activity is representative of your target audience’s activity, which I think is a safe assumption to make.)

3. Create great, relevant content

In a search result, the top nine posts take up the most prominent space.

According to Instagram, the top posts are selected based on its popularity (i. e. engagements such as Likes, comments, and shares). So the best way to have your posts in the Top Posts section is to create great, relevant content that your followers will engage with.

(I thought it might be worth mentioning again that you’ll need to include a location tag or hashtag in your post for it to appear in a search result.)

Here’re a couple of tips for creating content that could become a top post:

  • Use high-resolution photos: We noticed that high-resolution photos on Instagram tend to get more Likes and comments.
  • Use a niche hashtag that your target audience follows: As there is less competition for the hashtag, there’s a higher chance of your post making it to the Top Posts section.

4. Go live

Instagram features the top live videos in the Search and Explore tab.

Admittedly, having your live video featured on the Search and Explore tab might be much harder to achieve than the other tips above. But it’s definitely worth a try!

The featured live videos are the ones that are trending due to the number of viewers, engagement, and proximity to the user’s location.

Here’re some ideas on how you can use Instagram live video:

  • Office hours or Q&A sessions
  • Launches and announcements
  • Take people behind-the-scenes
  • Interviews, collaborations, and takeovers
  • Experimental content

How to use Instagram Search to find the best hashtags

Including hashtags in your post or story increases the engagement level.

Including the right hashtags ensures that your post or story appears in your target audience’s search results or Explore section.

Here’re two ways of using Instagram Search to find the best hashtags to use:

1. Instagram Search results

When you enter a word or a phrase in the search box and select “Tags”, Instagram will show a list of hashtags related to the word or phrase (i.e. search results).

For example, a Korean restaurant owner could search for “korean food” and find the relevant hashtags in the search results:

Instagram will also show the number of posts for each hashtag. That tells you how popular that hashtag is.

Allen Harper, a photographer who wrote about Instagram hashtag use, suggested avoiding vastly popular hashtags.

Some hashtags are vastly more popular than others; however, popularity doesn’t always translate to effectiveness. For example, you’ll notice that #photooftheday, #like4like, #instagood, #iphoneonly, etc. are extremely popular. Unfortunately, since so many users throw these similar tags on their images, it means that their photos are buried in the pool within seconds and become virtually undiscoverable.

They are also tags that are nonspecific to any field or niche. In other words, what few people may be browsing these pools could likely overlook your photo because it’s not necessarily what interests them. In addition, the popular tags usually have a lot of bots/spammers that use this tag on images—you’ll earn yourself a lot of spam comments on whatever photo you posted with said tags.

I’d also avoid using hashtags that are infrequently used as it likely means that few people are interested in the hashtags. You can check the frequency of use by searching for a hashtag and seeing how often there’s a post with the hashtag.

That said, a hashtag could have few posts also because it is used only by a niche community. This makes it a great choice if that’s the community you want to reach. So it’s best to check out the posts with the hashtag before deciding if it’s suitable for your post.

When you tap on a hashtag search result, Instagram would suggest related hashtags near the top of the app.

For example, a running shoes shop owner could search for “runner”, tap on “#runner”, and see these suggestions:

From there, she could explore the related hashtags and check out how popular the hashtag is and how frequent it is being used. Sometimes, Instagram suggests related hashtags that don’t show up in the search results (method one above). So if you can’t find a hashtag you’d like to use with method one, try this method.

How to use Instagram Search to engage your fans

Your fans could be posting about your business on Instagram without tagging your account. Because they didn’t tag your account, you might not find out.

But, if they are using your branded hashtag or your location tag, you can still find those posts and comment on them.

1. Engage fans who use your branded hashtags

If you have created hashtags for your brand and encouraged fans to use them, it’ll be great to follow up and interact with their posts or stories.

The common ways of interacting with such user-generated content are:

  • Liking it
  • Commenting on it
  • Re-posting it
  • Featuring it on a website

For instance, Alpenglow suggests its users include #alpenglowapp in their posts and it’d repost their photos.

Taking it one step further…

You can also check out and engage with posts and stories with hashtags relevant to your brand.

For example, a cafe could check out hashtags such as #coffeeoftheday, #coffeetime, and #instacoffee.

If you want to leave comments, I believe it’s important to leave thoughtful comments. Leaving short, generic comments (e.g. Awesome!) and emoji comments (e.g. ?) can come off as being insincere since it’s common for Instagram bots to leave such comments.

Now that you can search for stories with hashtags, I think it’d be great to surprise fans with thoughtful comments on stories with hashtags relevant to your brand and especially hashtags you created for your brand. While the Instagram story search feature is new and people rarely receive comments on their stories, it feels great to seize the opportunity before this becomes a common practice.

2. Engage fans at your location

This tip is more suited for local businesses such as cafes, restaurants, and hotels than online businesses.

If you have location tag for your businesses, I’d recommend checking it regularly to see if your customers have posted photos or stories at your place. If they had, you can follow up and thank them or ask them if they have enjoyed the food, stay, or experience.

If you don’t have a location tag for your businesses, here’re the steps for creating one:

Step 1: Open the Facebook mobile app and tap “Check In”.

Step 2: Type your business name in the “Where are you?” field.

Step 3: Scroll down to the bottom of the list and tap “Add (your business name) in (your location)”.

Step 4: Select the most appropriate category for your business

Step 5: Fill in your exact address and a photo that represents your place.

(Be careful when you are creating a place as you can’t edit it once you have created it.)

Step 6: Hit “Create”!

Taking it one step further…

You could even engage with people who are near your place.

Go to “Places” in the Search section and tap on “Near Current Location”.

Or you could search for nearby locations such as points of interest where your target audience might be hanging out (and taking photos for Instagram).

When you find relevant posts or stories, you could leave a thoughtful comment.

For example, when I was in Madrid for our 8th Buffer retreat, I posted the following photo and tagged the plaza outside of the hotel. The hotel found my photo (through the location tag, I believe) and left a nice comment on it:

How to use Instagram Search to find influencers

The last way to use Instagram Search for your business is to find Instagram influencers you’d love to collaborate with.

A study by Dr. Jonah Berger from the Wharton School, and the Keller Fay Group, the leading authority on word of mouth marketing research, found that influencers can effectively sway consumer behavior.

82% of consumers are “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro–influencer, compared to 73% who are highly likely to act on a recommendation from an average person.

Here’re five ways you could find such influencers on Instagram:

1. People search

The first way is to select the “People” category and search for profiles using relevant keywords.

For example, an eatery could search for “food” and see the following search results:

This method can be great for local businesses as Instagram seems to personalize your search results based on your location and the profiles you follow. The three profiles mentioned above are all food bloggers in Singapore (where I’m based).

2. Followers search

The second way is to look through your follower list as you might have fans who are influencers.

If you have a small following, you could look at each of your followers. If you have too many followers to do that (yay!), Shane Barker recommends looking at the profiles with the keyword in their username or name.

Using Shane’s example, a clean food eatery like Righteous Food could look out for usernames with “food” or “foodie”, in its follower list.

3. Location tag and hashtag search

The third way is to search for relevant location tags and hashtags and check out the top posts’ profiles.

Searching for influencers through location tags is effective for local businesses while searching for influencers through hashtags is better for finding niche influencers such as fitness or food bloggers.

For example, a small business owner that sells running gears could search for “#instarunners” and see the following posts:

Then, she could check out the top posts as those posts are more likely to be from users with a sizeable following. She could also look through the most recent posts if she’s looking at a niche hashtag.

4. Explore section

The fourth way is to use the Explore section which curates the most relevant Instagram posts for your account based on factors such as the people you follow and the posts you like.

This can be the most efficient method if you have been following people relevant to your business and interacting with posts relevant to your niche. Instagram has essentially done the search for you!

I use my Instagram account mainly for my hobby, triathlon, and this is an example of what I see in my Explore section (you could assume this is what a triathlon apparel retailer would see, too):

These are posts that are similar to posts I’ve Liked or from accounts similar to accounts I’ve interacted with. I could check out these profiles and see if any of them is suitable for a collaboration.

5. Similar accounts

The fifth way is to use Instagram’s recommendations for similar accounts.

When you have found a potential influencer partner and followed her, Instagram would suggest similar accounts for you to follow. If the suggestions don’t appear, you can tap on the downward arrow beside “Follow” or “Following” to see the suggestions.

For example, a fitness apparel retailer could follow a fitness blogger and see the following suggestions:

This method is great if you have already found a suitable influencer partner and wish to find more influencers like her.

To learn more about what to look for in influencers and how to work with them, check out Shane Barker’s go-to guide to Instagram micro-influencers.

How do you use Instagram Search?

These are the different ways you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore for your businesses:

  • Boost your brand awareness by getting featured
  • Find the best hashtags for your brand
  • Discover posts to engage with
  • Search for influencers to collaborate with

Are there other ways that I’ve missed? It’ll be great to hear from you if you know of other cool ways of using Instagram’s Search and Explore.

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How to start a business on Instagram from scratch and get real results - Marketing on vc.ru

Writing about the promotion of social networks is a thankless task. And not because there are now more experts than customers - just the speed with which the platforms roll out updates kills all romance.

126707 views

And everything would be fine, I would work quietly further, but somewhere between the analysis of the next account and communication with a marketer on Facebook (by the way, were you also offered such a unique opportunity?) I realized one important thing. The problem of most entrepreneurs is in a fragmented picture.

They read bloggers, brand articles, watch free webinars, save posts with snippets of information, and test everything they see. Pieces, without understanding the basics, without a system.

And yes, tests are good. But strategies need to be tested - concepts and tools within the framework of these strategies, and not just the next "finds" of information gypsies.

Therefore, here I share a step-by-step launch and promotion system. Everything is as it is.

Developments went through fire, water and a couple of dozens of trials in real businesses. They will come in handy for entrepreneurs who are just entering Instagram, and for those who have already managed to screw up with bots, cheats and masslooking.

In general, I will write briefly and to the point. Get comfortable. And if anyone needs it later, extended information can be taken in PDF.

Strategy

Everything always starts with a strategy, even shopping. What can we say about business?!

But!

Before the strategy, you should have a clear understanding of the audience (oh my bastard, I wrote this) and defined promotion goals. With goals, I'm sure everything is clear, but with people it's harder. Businesses need to find those who will willingly leave their money with them. But is the one who pays always the initiator of the purchase?

Does a big and busy politician himself choose gifts for his ladies? Or is he looking for a place for dinner? And does mommy overwhelmed with duties look out for handmade gliders herself?

No.

Wives, girlfriends or even helpers come to the politician with their requests; to mom - the daughter comes and points her finger at the account in which you need to order something.

Therefore, before defining your audience, ask yourself a couple of questions:

  • Who pays for your product or service.
  • Who makes the purchase decision.
  • Who influences the choice and to what extent.

And now the strategy

It should grow on the overall marketing strategy and be tightly tied to the sales plan.

There are three basic scenarios that you can promote on Instagram today, adjusting any of them to fit your reality.

Development of a full-fledged blog, a community of people with the same interests

These are always accounts with a useful component. Regular posting and high-quality content are important here - tons of unique photos and engaging texts - to keep the interest of the existing audience and attract new subscribers. Focus on organic reach and all the perks that go with it.

The option, you understand, is not simple and definitely not cheap.

Creating a showcase - posting if necessary

When there is something to say, something to show and something to share. In this version, the focus is not on the community, but on a quick result.

We put ads on each post and control the volume of traffic, coverage, recognition, interactions, responses to invitations, sales, and so on.

The strategy is suitable for businesses that simply have nothing to write blogs about - developers, sales of special equipment, transportation - or those who do not have a budget for a constant flow of content.

Combined version

Keep a blog, gather an interested audience around it, and advertise some of your publications to enhance the effect. Here are the results of content boosting we received in a travel blog about Italy:

RK for involvement even for a couple of bucks gives excellent results Marina Velitchenko

OK, we have chosen a strategy, created a business account, let's move on to the settings.

Preparing page

In Instagram, the system is important.

The system is the parts that work together in a large mechanism.

Therefore, everything influences the process and the final result of promotion.

Normal design, competent filling of information, use of all the tools that Instagram offers - pinned stories, TV, marks, branded content, and more.

All page elements should match in style with adjacent objects and send readers a magical vibe, just kidding - should clearly present the business. Be understandable and pleasing to the eye for a specific audience.

We all like to watch beautiful accounts, and even more so to buy from a business that has not stinted on a normal brand packaging. Personally, I just love the @petroglyph_water page.

Conciseness, naturalness and "wild" atmosphere permeate every element - from a brief description of the page to the style of photo processing and truly live content.

Two short sentences in a header, but how catchy

When not just pink and blue presets from the network, but normal author's processing of photos in the same style

I will not describe how to correctly fill in the account description or set tags here - everything is in the document. But let's talk about content and its design.

Content

Promotion does not happen without a thoughtful content plan. Even if you or your copywriter are truly brilliant, there will come a time—in a month or three—when the ideas run out, the showcase products run out, and you still need to go on air regularly.

For these purposes, they are working on a strategic content plan. Not just a set of ideas from the Internet, but a sales system through text. Make a plan at least a month in advance. Ideally, three to six months. How to do it correctly, I already wrote on vc.ru.

What to publish

Many things. Who needs ideas - a lot of ideas - for content, write to me, I'll give you huge collections. But the main thing is that all these posts should be positive. As Anketologist reports in one of the latest studies, Russians have already formed their own feed and are accustomed to its appearance and effect. They see and want to see more positive things.

I would venture to suggest that people have enough problems and "pains" that someone is already pressing on in everyday life. In social networks, they want to relax. Give them that opportunity.

How often to post

It is not so important with what frequency, the main thing is with the same frequency. Every day, every three days... if once a week, then strictly once a week, on the same day. It is important. Failures in posting are fixed by algorithms and reduce organic reach.

Y - uniqueness of posts

And their naturalness. Real product photos sell better than polished stock photos. Galleries get less coverage, videos, on the contrary, get more coverage and charge live emotions, which is always good for business.

And unpacking videos from customers show the result even cooler, because they combine both social proof and motion, which our attention clings to more readily.

But all this must be unique, like the content on the sites, in order to be properly indexed and get more impressions.

Visually

In brand style. Filters, of course, can be used, but this is already out of date. Endless tapes also sunk into ... somewhere very far away.

Now the trend is block design - publication of 9-12 photos from one photoset or location. I found the most beautiful example of this concept from @brunellocucinelli_brand.

You can play with color and shape, you can shoot your product on one - preferably inactive - background, as here:

You can get confused with the design, take multi-layered photos, alternate near, far and macro shots, or you can just make a neat look of a classic checkerboard. And you can never go wrong with light colors:

If this is very difficult, long, unbearable, order a set of neutral templates from the designer. It's not expensive, but it helps out when there are not enough product photos.

Optimization

In social networks, these are hashtags. The same search queries and keywords by which new subscribers will find you. Instagram is one of two social networks where these tags work to their full potential.

Would you like to see how it works? I give screenshots of the current project with a statue of literally a couple of previous weeks.

Want to be even tougher? The same 500-600 subscribers, and this is the buzz:

Geotagging

Here, too, everything is extremely simple - they work, and not bad. It is important to mark not cities or countries, but specific locations: maternity hospitals, art schools for children's goods; cigar clubs, expensive restaurants and country resorts for a luxury shoe manufacturer.

Aim consciously and you will be happy.

But Instagram notifies restaurant owners about marks. Vasya tagged the men's club in his Stories, a notification about Vasya arrived on the club's account.

Good way to track your audience, collect user generated content and even find advertising partners.

Stories

Instagram Stories. Why do you need them if you sell pizza ovens? Not everything is so simple here - Stories have ceased to be a toy for children and lifestyle bloggers, they are constantly turning into ... turning ... into a powerful marketing tool - Stories are viewed by more than 500 million users a day.

In the summer of 2018 it was 400 million, and in the fall of 2017 it was about 300 million, in 2016 it was 250 million. The pace is reactive, right?!

Let's see how they help you:

What to do with it all

  • Play . Now it is in trend. Screenshots of predictions, rebuses with emoticons, mazes, chains of questions with stickers - all this appeals to the audience and algorithms.
  • Telling stories . Literally. Stories are used for multi-page storytelling - such a consistent story on several spreads. You can write about anything in the storytelling format.
  • Put active links to products or other social networks. The feature is also available for accounts with less than 10,000 followers. If you confirm your page with documents - get a blue checkmark - you can put links even with 20 subscribers. This works for brands as well as people.
  • Run long advertisements . You can now start targeting from the Facebook account for Instagram Stories on videos 60-120 seconds long, instead of 15, as it was before.

Promotion

Promotion methods directly depend on the business goals. What do you want from social networks - recognition, subscribers, traffic to other resources, sales? What? Decided? Then choose from the list.

  • Paid and effective methods: targeting (works especially well by geo), bloggers, advertising in public, mailings in direct (a mini analogue of email marketing), native advertising on websites, in articles, in videos - everywhere, where the hands and imagination will reach.
  • Free , but slow options: optimized profile header, beautifully designed page, normal content, tags - hashtags, geotags, name tags - post relinking, external links to an Instagram account, cross-posting, guerrilla marketing, commenting, liking and following (preferably in manual mode), networking, contests, mutual PR and joint promotions.
  • Gray and frankly toxic methods of developing a subscription base: giveaways - they are also star contests with expensive gifts and a bunch of sponsors - activity chats, like-times, etc. d.

Useful resources

I left the full list of services in the document, here I will quickly go through the most useful ones. I’ll tell you about the little-known ones in more detail, so that you understand what to expect from them.

Microlendings

To group contacts and business cards if there is no site: Mssg.me, Taplink, Linkin.bio. Or a direct link to WhatsApp: https://wa.me/[your number].

In addition, a whole WhatsApp ecosystem is now developing, where you can assemble a convenient landing page, connect a bot and completely forget about other sites.

Official delayed posting

Facebook Creator Studio or Boompublic - Content can be purchased from creators. Business sets the price. There is a convenient editor, a calendar for planning, cross-posting to all social networks and, most importantly, safe posting on Instagram.

Crossposting

Content reposts from Instagram to other social networks are limited, so onemorepost.ru helps a lot. It knows how to distribute even old posts in auto mode to VKontakte groups, to most popular social networks and instant messengers.

Moderation

This is a pain for every SMM manager, and even more so for a businessman who manages social networks himself and often misses important questions in the comments. It is advisable to use the official Pages mobile app from Facebook, but it also often loses comments. There is a legal alternative.

Morecom.ru - collects and does not lose comments, sends them to VKontakte or Telegram. Works officially, approved by Facebook to use the Graph API.

The bot helps answer questions directly from Telegram, the answers fall exactly into the original comment thread, and do not fly apart. You can work with a team and multiple accounts.

There are extended statistics on the page and search by comments - by phrase, nickname, tags. Soon they promise push notifications and binding to Slack. Our sales team is very helpful.

Analytics

Livedune is the only Russian-speaking Instagram partner in the niche, and the most adequate in terms of price and features.

For target

Deep links or spacers to open ads directly in the Instagram app - as much as some colleagues may protest against these assistants, I recommend using urlgeni.us. Why am I there - Facebook marketers recommend!

Audience parsers

There is no way without them now. Pepper.ninja or InstaParserPro are good but expensive.

SERM - online reputation management

YouScan, Brand Analytics will show what was said about you, even if it has been removed.

Marketing base

Without the basics of doing business, no promotion will be successful, so here is a link to a free business development program. Joint project of Google and Sberbank.

I have everything.

Use, upgrade Instagram, get more sales.

#instagram

how to do it (4 steps + instructions)

To make selling on Instagram more convenient and efficient, the social network has introduced a special profile format for companies — a business account. The transition to it is available to absolutely all users. I'll walk you through how to connect and set it up step by step - as well as what features it provides and how they help sales.

Business account is a type of Instagram profile created for business promotion and analytics on the social network.

How to connect

If you logged in through a PC, then you need to make just a few clicks to connect a business account. In the settings, find the "Switch to a professional account" item, then select the "Company" sub-item. Follow the prompts: specify the category of your business and set up its display in the profile.

Connecting a business account in a PC browser

How to switch to another category? Easy peasy! To do this, go to your Instagram profile page and click "Edit Profile". In the “Profile Information” section, select “Category” and change it to any other that is relevant to you.

Change the category at any time

Switching to a business account from a smartphone is also easy: select "Account" from the settings menu, scroll to the end of the list that opens and click "Change account type". The further algorithm is the same as on a PC: read the tips, find the appropriate category and confirm your choice.

Setting from a smartphone

You will also be offered to integrate your Facebook. This can be done immediately, or at any other time. The condition is now optional, but the integration will greatly expand your opportunities for positioning your business on social networks. By the way, on Facebook it should also be not just a personal, but a corporate page.

Completing settings

Interesting. You can quickly and safely promote your social network by boosting likes, reposts and views on publications. So you can increase coverage and get a hot target audience. Click and use -> TapLike

Related:
Instagram Design (25 Cool Profiles + Examples) Instagram Photo Editing: Top Applications + Examples

Features

So, you have switched to a commercial profile. And you will definitely want to immediately try out all the new features and chips. Then I will give a brief overview of the settings and advantages that distinguish an Instagram business account.

1. Profile category

The instagram business profile allows you to display the subject of your page. In addition to the inscriptions “brand” and “personal blog”, which are now quite common, you can put any other profession or topic, for example: musician, politician, clothing store, cafe, bar, etc. This is important because it attracts the attention of your target audience.

Categories

As advertising

2. Communication buttons

For this setting, please fill in the contact details first. Add them to the fields: email, phone, address. Then the action buttons will become available, and they are implemented through integration with third-party applications for business. You will be able to place, for example, an online registration form or online payment. It will look like "Call", "Register", "Order delivery", etc.

A business account makes it easier for users to contact you. For example, when you click on the "Call" button, the phone number automatically appears on the mobile dialing screen, that is, you do not need to copy it to the phone's memory, open the desired section, paste it - everything is done in one click.

Communication buttons

By the way. In order for Instagram algorithms to work for you, I recommend cleaning your account from garbage through the Instahero service. Use the promo code "INSCALE" to get a 30% discount on a full analysis. Click and test -> Instahero.

3. Statistics

Various statistics can be viewed for a business profile. So you get the opportunity to track the reaction of subscribers to a particular content, analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, contests, etc.

Statistics exist both for the profile in general and for individual publications and stories. This feature is useful not only for selling accounts, but also for personal brands.

Statistics
Profile statistics

On a business account on Instagram, you need to click on the “Menu” section on the profile page. Then select "Statistics". Switching between tabs here you can see:

  1. Number of profile visits, site clicks, reach rates;
  2. Information about publications for the week;
  3. Subscriber information: number of subscribers/unsubscribers, subscriber locations, gender, age.
Profile statistics

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Publication statistics

In addition to general statistics, track reactions to individual publications. To do this, on the profile page, select any photo or video and click "View statistics" under the publication.

The window will display the number of likes, comments, shares and saves of the selected publication. In addition, the total number of actions performed with this post and the number of transitions to the profile are calculated here.

Publication statistics

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Stories statistics

You can get access to view statistics of stories from the already familiar section “Menu” -> “Statistics” -> “Content”. Next, you need to find the “History” section. From here, the coverage of each story is available. Clicking on any post will open more detailed statistics, where you can even find out exactly who viewed your story.

History statistics

Related:
Business on Instagram: from scratch in 13 stepsInstagram engagement: what it is + how to increase

4. Promotion and targeting

Instagram has its own functionality to promote your publications. It works in such a way that it allows you to show your posts to the target audience, advertise your profile or drive traffic from Instagram to some external resource. This is more effective than simple cheats, although you will need cash investments for this tool.

Promotion

Lifehack. When replenishing your account, use a special service that returns up to 20% back to the balance of the promotion amount. For example, you threw in 10,000, and you can run an ad for 12,000. Click and learn more -> GetUniq.

Related:
Advertising in Instagram stories: step by step instructions How to make a mask on Instagram: simple instructions

5.

Shopping Tags

Shopping Tags allow the audience to view your product cards, read the description, find out the price, go directly to the desired section of the online store. This feature has a positive effect on the growth of sales.

Shopping Tags

Interesting. I also recommend using multilink. It will help to create a full-fledged online store, as well as contact you via instant messengers.

6. Physical address

If you sell goods not only online, but also offline, you are probably often asked how to find you in order to buy a service or product. Business accounts allow you to post exact addresses and hours of operation with access to view the address on a map.

Physical address

7. Additional lead magnet

Posting an address may not be relevant to you if, for example, you do not offer your services offline. Then this place can be used to place an additional lead magnet. The address bar allows you to place a fairly large amount of information, which is very useful in cases where a profile description and biography is not enough.

Lead magnet

Briefly about the main thing

A business profile is relevant not only for selling pages or instagram landings: its wide range of features will find its use even if you do not sell anything.

One of the most compelling reasons to switch to a business profile is free access to statistics that will show, for example, which posts turned out to be the most interesting. And finally, I will briefly list the main advantages:

  • Ability to categorize accounts;
  • Access to profile statistics;
  • Convenient communication with users;
  • Ability to run a full-fledged online store;
  • Ability to promote a profile without third-party services.

And one more thing to help you. Do you want to make a bomb out of your account, get hundreds of subscribers a day and a flurry of enthusiastic direct messages? Then watch the courses below:

  1. Involving stories on the phone ;
  2. Promotion on Instagram.

    Learn more