If you want your business to stay relevant it is very important to learn from social media platforms. And knowing the best Instagram practices can really showcase your social media presence.
So, here are the best 15 Instagram practices for business.
1. Be consistent
Business needs to be active in order to increase engagements, followers, and sales. But the question is how much? Studies have shown that posting 1-2 posts a day keeps your feed fresh and grabs more attention. When to post is also crucial and critical with Instagram’s algorithmic timeline. Posting around 8 AM – 9 AM or 2 PM – 5 PM for your first post and around 5 AM for your second post, this inconsistency can create confusion for content planners.
2. Don’t educate – tell genuine stories
Social media is flooded with mediocre brand posts that forget Instagram is a platform to showcase visual inspiration. You should capture the audience’s attention with creative images, videos, and inspirational stories, and not with some lame messages. To get better engagement, be a storyteller that has captions, videos, Instagram stories, and profiles. People nowadays crave emotional connection, if your brand can provide that then it will surely get a good engagement.
3. Maintain the strong brand value
The three pillars that a business should aim for are creativity, consistency, and clarity. An unorganized, disoriented approach won’t work. Focus on key points such as profile presentation, style pattern creation, which keeps the image up-to-date, and owning the use of the hashtag. By maintaining all these you can present consistent and a positive brand to your Instagram users.
4. Ensure a visually consistent Instagram feed
Having visually-driven content can improve your engagement, as Instagram is all about visualization. Try using numerous types of filters, upload candid shots. Try to be consistent in your visual feed, stick with 2-3 editing styles.
5. Use relevant and trending hashtags
Using relevant hashtags makes your post appear on the top of the other people’s feed, who follow that hashtags, which will improve your engagement. Hashtags must not be generic – such as #christmas or #diwali; otherwise, your post will compete with numerous others. Instead, try mixing the latest trends and come up with brand-specific hashtags to come up with relevant hashtags for your Instagram users. Once your business is in the limelight, try to create your own brand’s hashtag which makes your business discoverable and creates a strong network of users.
6. Post-user-generated content
It involves users with the brand, user-generated content is key to any successful business. If the user-generated content is visually driven then the user involvement automatically increases on your Instagram page.
7. Stay up-to-date with Instagram updates and changes
In the past couple of years, Instagram has updated its interface and added many features such as IGTV and Instagram Stories. So, it is important to stay up-to-date with all the trends and features to be active on Instagram.
8. Be data-driven
Using Instagram analytics tools for identifying where you are among the competitors have its own benefits, you can:
– Track post-performance
– Monitor Instagram trends
– Track comments and hashtag usage
– Measure audience engagement
– Identify influencers
– Report across multiple profiles
These things tell you what is working and what’s outdated. Gradually, you can build your database to track and measure your performance.
9. Strategize to use Instagram traffic to increase traffic on your website
Instagram traffic helps boost your page visits. You can maximize traffic with promotional offers, giveaways that encourage followers to click on your website.
10. Collaborate with micro-influencers to create authentic branding
Influencer advertising has become very popular these days, allowing the business to work with the key thought influencers in their domain and push business to a wider range of audiences. The users who are following the influencers also get to know about your business.
11. Create Instagram contests
Contests are a powerful mechanism on Instagram. A contest can generate 3.5 times more likes and 64 times more comments on a specific post than on regular posts. So, create Instagram contests from time to time for better engagement.
12. Frequently use Instagram stories
Instagram stories are displayed on the top so they are a very popular feature, with 600 million users every day. There is a possibility of stories replacing feed as the main feature.
13. Use a lot of emojis
As per studies, emojis are used by 92% of the online population. The power of emoji also surpasses the image, they make a post’s caption more attractive, make the user read the whole caption.
14. Promote Instagram channel on other social media
You should share your Instagram page on your other social media as well as platforms such as FaceBook, Twitter, Youtube. Just ensure your social media have a click link to your page.
15. Add Call To Actions (CTAs) everywhere
Instagram followers love all the Instagram ads but ensure you have that likeliness converted into business growth by using a powerful Instagram call to action For your business to grow.
