5 Simple Bits of Advice to Get the Hang of Instagram for Business

Roughly one billion people use Instagram, and approximately 90% of them follow at least one business. As a result, it has become an increasingly important medium for businesses. As the platform continuously introduces new business-specific features, there may be no better time than now to build or strengthen your company's Instagram presence.

Naturally, with so many updates of new tools, features, and tips in the app, it can be a lot to keep track of everything. Still, we can assure you that you can follow our five simple bits of advice to master your presence on the platform and build an audience that falls in love with your content.

#1 Optimize Your Profile

While there is no perfect way to build your profile, there are a few principles, based on Instagram's best practices, that you need to adopt:

• Your account name should be your business name, same as your brand's other social profiles.
• The username should also be your business name.
• Your profile photo should be your company logo and not some Shrugging Emoji so people can quickly identify your brand.
• The only clickable link on your Instagram page should be your website.
• Your bio is the place where you capture the attention of other users. Here you can describe your business, link your website, and put your brand's tagline.

There is plenty of room to get creative about how you craft your Instagram profile. However, keep in mind that your profile should go hand in hand with your branding.

#2 Be Active and Prioritize Organic Growth

Make sure you share alluring content with your followers daily and reply to their comments. If you stop posting regularly, your followers will not get the value they need from you and unfollow your profile, as a result. More importantly, prioritize quality engagement. To achieve that, follow accounts from collaborators or competitors that have interests or clientele similar to yours, leave a few comments where appropriate, and repost customer success stories. Then monitor your campaign by using a media monitoring tool to see if your engagement is growing.

Above all, you need to unfollow anybody who is not enriching your Instagram experience and community in any way. However, be strategic with your follow unfollow decisions, as the platform offers plenty of features to help you optimize its functionality, improve your user experience, and boost organic growth.

#3 Use Niche Hashtags for Better Reach

Hashtags are paramount on Instagram as they act as a search function to find relevant followers and brands. They help make a post searchable and are a pretty helpful element of your social media marketing strategy. So, to drive results for your business page, you need to use a variety of hashtags from different popular categories and specific hashtags where your audience is spending time.

Similarly, if you want to attract an audience in your area, you should consider using location-specific hashtags. Some of the already proven hashtag best practices include:

• Use two or three hashtags at most;
  
• Invent your own hashtag;
• Keep using trending hashtags;
• Take part in hashtag memes; and
  
• Hashtags work best with public accounts.