Instagram For Business

by Joshua Botello 

We continue videos on social media marketing and this time we are delving into Instagram. Instagram is the photo-sharing site that is owned by Facebook. Instagram offers creative filters effects, live video, stories, and its own Youtube-like video platform IGTV.

Businesses can take advantage of Instagram’s younger demographic to share photos, videos and engage with their audience. Instagram is primarily phone-based, so this entire how-to will be done through a smartphone. I'll show you how to set up an Instagram account, convert it to a business account and show you some business features.

So grab your phone and let's dive into Instagram for Business. 

Open Your Instagram Account

The first thing I need to do is to preface this guide with this: you need to have your Itunes account up and running to download the app. That’s it. Ok? Ok. So let's go to the app store and search Instagram and click get to download the app. Since I just need to update it, I can just click and get this process started.

When you create a new account you will see a screen similar to this. Now will need to choose how you will be able to sign up: phone or by email. I’ll choose email and I'll get a special code to confirm the signup. We’ll sign up as Sally’s skate shop for our example and then create a password. Now we will put a birth date and click Sign up.

At this point, if you have a Facebook business account or a Facebook page you can connect them here or later on, manually. I’ll skip it for now. I’ll also skip connecting my contacts. Instagram will also want you to start following people at the outset. We are going to skip that for now.

Now let’s start setting up the profile. Once in the profile, you can fill out your bio to give followers a sense of what your Instagram account is about. Let’s add a profile picture. I have a picture right here that I made for my Facebook account guide and I’ll use it here as well.

Now you can select a category for your account, this will help followers finding you. Then make it visible on your profile and then Done.

Now we choose how we are going to use this account. I’ll choose a business like many of you will. I’ll skip using the contact information for now since I'm not a real business, but you should use this if you want customers to contact you. Once we finish everything we need for the profile we get this screen. Let's make our first post. Again I’ll choose my photo, give it a little filter and a description. Then post it. 

Using Instagram 

So let me show you how Instagram works. You can add any content one of two ways: tap the plus button at the bottom or swipe right depending on which version you have. The default will come up as a story which is a picture or video 15 seconds in length and is only available for 24 hours. Most people use these as quick updates and previews before an event because of the high engagement for stories.

Swiping right will show you the post screen to either choose existing photos in your camera roll or take your own right then and there. When in the picture taking mode, you can tap for a single picture or hold the button for video.

You can all choose a gallery or create a layout of pictures for either stories or posts. You can create a boomerang video: an infinitely looping video. Instagram Reels are similar to TikTok videos to add videos and other elements for posting. Finally you can set up a live stream. If you want a little more on how to do that, check out my video on livestreaming in the card above.

Track Your Progress

So now that you know how to post your content. Let’s keep track of that content. Head back to your profile page and let’s see what business-related tools we get as business users. Instantly you get an overview of how many people you have reached and who has interacted with your content. You can see who are followers and even demographics similar to facebook which is pretty nice.

You can even keep track of the performance of your content types. So if certain content works better you know what works and can focus your time and energy on that. So, now that you know how to Set up your Instagram Business account and how to use it, here are some tips You can use to get the most traction for your content. 

Instagram Tips

Tip 1: Take Great Pictures

Tip one: you should strive to take great pictures. Taking great pictures isn’t all that hard. I take photos and videos all the time. All you need to do is make them not blurry aesthetically pleasing. If you want more information on how this is done, Instagram has some great articles on how to shoot simple but beautiful photos. https://business.instagram.com/blog/a-step-by-step-guide-planning-and-creating-content-consistently/

Tip 2: Plan Your Content Carefully

The next tip is to plan your content carefully. As you’re figuring out what to make should have a mix of content to reach your followers. You can take the content pillar approach to more targeted business posts or you can take the 60/30/10 ratio approach to share and posting on Instagram. Most brands post 6 times a week or 300 times a year. If that sounds like way too much. You can batch and schedule these posts ahead of time depending on your content calendar. Just remember, you don't need to schedule everything.

Tip 3: Shoot for high engagement

Since Instagram is a visual platform, making sure followers actually interact with you instead of just scrolling by, is your purpose. You can do this in a few different ways. You can create an Instagram story or an interesting post or video. The biggest detail is including a Call to action. What’s that? A Call to action is something your viewer will take after they view your content. This could be a call to reply to a question, double tap if you like the picture, or follow a link in your bio to download a resource or freebie.

Tip 4: Take advantage of Hashtags

Once you have planned out your strategy and created some high-engagement content, it’s time to figure out what hashtags to use before you start scheduling this stuff out. Hashtags are keywords that are relevant and inserted as part of your post to get found. The best way to use hashtags is to use 11 per post and don't use the same ones for every post. The other tip for hashtags is to focus on hashtags with no more than 500k posts to avoid getting lost. Just make sure you have all these hashtags planned out along with your posts before you actually schedule or publish.

So in this video, you found out how to set up your Instagram account for business. You also learned how to use Instagram and how to track your account performance. And finally, you got 4 great tips to help you plan and execute a strategy. Any business can use Instagram to reach the right demographic. Instagram is a great platform to create high engagement through posts, pictures, and video. The biggest consideration is the need to create a strategy when it comes to posting on this platform.

Have you thought of using Instagram for your business? Are you on it now? What questions can we help you with? Let us know in the comments below.

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Funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, conclusions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.