How your small business can take advantage of Instagram

April 26, 2019

Instagram is a social media platform geared towards photos. It's the adult version of a picture book, but the pictures are from a variety of sources and are catered to you. Instagram was acquired by facebook back in 2012 when it was already a popular app and has continued growing to become one of the most popular social media platforms of today. It’s widely used by celebrities, photographers, creators, regular people, and now many businesses are taking advantage of the platform in order to broaden their reach.

 
Today, looking for a business or service is as easy as searching it up on Google. You’re left with thousands of results to choose from where you can determine the right fit for you. Compared to what it used to be, this makes it a lot easier for your customers to find you. It also increases the need for businesses to be mindful of their online presence in order to appeal to potential customers.  And Instagram is a perfect platform for any company looking to have a social media presence but doesn’t necessarily  know where to start. The features are easy to use, and the idea is simple enough. You take good pictures about things that relate to your business, come up with an interesting caption, and use hashtags in order to target the people who’d be interested in your content/businsess.

One of the best examples of how well instagram can work with your business is looking at Apple’s account. Apple uses their instagram to showcase their products,  give previews to features, and feature photographers. Their page is mostly made up of unique photographs all taken from an iPhone by a variety of different people. Professional and amateur photographers have a chance of being featured by using the #ShotoniPhone hashtag. Then the social media manager for Apple selects photos to feature and posts them to their official page where it will be seen by more than 14.5 million people. They caption the photos to give a little background about the piece as well as credit the person who took the photo. It’s an excellent way to promote the use of their product while also interacting with their consumers. Their photos get thousands of likes and comments on a daily basis, which shows high engagement. Having good engagement and using the right hashtags helps the algorithm know to share your content with people interested in similar stuff.

Using instagram effectively for marketing comes down to a few things

• Take a good picture

• Make sure that it makes sense for your business

• Have a clever or informative caption

• Post on the right day/time

• Be consistent

It may seem like a lot of work, but there are programs out there allowing you to schedule posts and instagram allows you to have several drafts of posts that are ready to post when you are. And if you’re consistent with your posting and marketing you can create a community for your customers that can help you reach more potential customers.