You might think of Instagram as a place for influencers and major brands. But in reality, companies of all sizes can benefit from an Instagram account. Depending on your business goals, using Instagram can drive brand awareness, boost sales, and allow you to build and track audience engagement.
Unsure of where to start? In this blog we’ll share how businesses can benefit significantly from an Instagram account and give tips to optimise your Instagram presence.
Find your visual aesthetic
Instagram is all about the visuals, so it’s important to think about what aesthetic you want to present on your business page. It’s a good idea to design templates, and decide on a specific colour palette to keep your content looking cohesive and professional. If you’ll be posting a lot of text, think about font size, style, even line spacing. You want it to look appealing while also being easy to read.
Experiment with different content types
Instagram is much more than just photos. There’s lots of different types of content you can create and share, including:
· Videos
· Reels
· Stories
They each have their advantages, and everyone has their preferences on Instagram. If you want to maximise your engagement, it’s a good idea to produce a variety of content types. It’s also up to you to decide what content you want to share with your audience, depending on your business goals.
Short-form content like Reels are currently the most popular with audiences, thanks to the influence of platforms like TikTok. Check out our blog on social media trends for 2024 here: Social media trends you need to know about in 2024 (petersenspr.com)
Post consistently and schedule in advance
Posting consistently will help your business show up in people’s feeds and give them more chances to interact with you.
Keeping on top of your scheduling is also much easier with content scheduling tools. These allow you to schedule weeks’ worth of content in advance so your account is always active, even if you get super busy. You’ll also be able to post at the best time for your audience, even if this means over the weekend or after office hours.
Build a community
While it’s important to produce promotional content, you also want to create content that builds community and inspires engagement.
Liking mentions and responding to comments, as well as producing user-generated content like testimonials, make your audience feel valued, creating a strong and engaged community around your brand.
You can also use your captions to ask questions and invite people to share their thoughts in the comments. Setting up polls on your Instagram stories is also a great way to encourage interaction. This kind of engagement from your audience will boost visibility and reach, helping attract new followers.
Make sure to regularly monitor your DMs (direct messages) for questions, comments, and requests. Top tip - create a reply template for commonly asked questions you can quickly send when needed.
Regularly check your analytics
If you want to gain more followers, keep your audience engaged, and promote your business on Instagram, you need to make sure you’re monitoring how your content is performing. You can do this by looking at Instagram’s built-in analytics tool, Instagram Insights.
Instagram Insights will give you access to information like:
· The number of accounts that have engaged with you
· Your total number of new followers
· Content that’s been shared
This can give you a great idea about which content is serving your business goals the best. If you want to dig a little deeper, you might want to use a third-party analytics platform too.
If that all sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry, Petersens PR can help. We create Instagram content for a range of businesses across a variety of sectors. So, if you want help to grow your online following, get in touch. Our award-winning social media team can help you chart a course to Instagram success.