Top 10 Best Instagram Marketing Tips for Grow Your Business

Setting up an Instagram business account

Before you get started with Instagram marketing, you need an?Instagram Business account?or an?Instagram Creator account. If you already have one, skip ahead to the tips below. If you already have a personal account, you can skip to step no. 3 of these instructions.

If you’re brand new to Instagram or are creating a brand new account, here’s what to do:

Step 1: Download the Instagram app

·????????For?iOS

·????????For?Android

Step 2: Sign up

·????????Open the app.

·????????Tap?Create New Account?(on iOS) or?Sign Up With Email or Phone Number?(on Android).

·????????Enter your email or phone number and tap?Next.

·????????Create your username and password.

·????????Fill out your profile info (more on this in Tip 4) and tap?Next.

Step 3: Switch to a business account

·????????Go to your profile and tap the hamburger icon at the top right.

·????????Tap?Settings, then?Account.

·????????Tap?Switch to professional account.

·????????Tap Business and follow the prompts.

21 Instagram marketing tips for business that you can’t afford to ignore

1. Use a business account

Just in case you skipped over the section above and plan to dive into the rest of the Instagram marketing tips while using a personal account, here’s why you should reconsider.

A business account gives you access to features you can’t use with a personal account, including:

·????????Instagram Insights (see Tip 21)

·????????Instagram ads (see Tip 20)

·????????Instagram Shopping (see Tip 16)

·????????Primary and secondary messaging inboxes

·????????Contact information and a call-to-action button on your profile

A creator account has its own set of benefits for influencers and content creators. But for most marketers, a business account is where it’s at. Hop back up to the top of this post and convert your account if you haven’t already done so.

2. Clearly define your goals

All social platforms are tools. But you can’t use those tools effectively unless you know what it is you’re trying to build.

Instagram marketing can mean different things to different marketers. Are you looking to:

·????????Create an online presence for your business?

·????????Increase brand awareness?

·????????Get new leads?

·????????Establish your brand as an industry leader?

·????????Sell products directly from the app?

You might even want to combine several different outcomes. But unless you know where you want your Instagram strategy to take you, you’re unlikely to get there.

We’ve got a whole?blog post on goal setting?to help you decide what matters most to your business.

3. Know your audience

A little preliminary research can help you figure out who you can best reach when you’re thinking about how to market on Instagram. For example,?our post on Instagram demographics?shows that:

• The most active Instagrammers are between 18 and 29.
• The United States is the largest Instagram market.
• More urban residents use Instagram than their suburban peers.

But that doesn’t mean you should only use Instagram to try to reach urban Americans in their 20s. Instead, you need to define your?target market?so you can create content that speaks directly to that audience.

This will also become critical when it comes time to choose targeting options for your Instagram ads.

4. Optimize your profile

In just 150 characters, your Instagram bio needs to make a great first impression, convey your brand personality, and tell people why they should bother following your Instagram account.

That’s a lot to ask from a small space.

Fortunately, you also get a few other fields on your Instagram profile to showcase what your brand is all about and make it easier for people to find you. These include:

• Your name: 30 characters, included in search.
• Your username: AKA your handle. Up to 30 characters, included in search.
• Your website: A clickable URL you can change as often as you like.
• Category: A business feature that tells people what you’re all about without using up bio characters.
• Contact info: Tell people where to find you.
• Call-to-action buttons: Give Instagrammers a way to interact with you directly from your profile page.

5. Choose the right profile photo

For most brands, your Instagram profile photo should be your logo. This helps provide credibility and allows visitors to see at a glance who you are.

Your Instagram?profile photo displays?at 110 by 110 pixels, cropped to a circle with a 110 pixel diameter. However, it’s stored at 320 by 320 pixels, so you should upload a file that large to make sure it still looks good if Instagram changes how profile pics are displayed.

6. Create visually compelling content

Instagram is a visual medium, so your posts have simply got to look great. You don’t need professional photography equipment, but your?photos and videos do need to be sharp, well-lit, well-composed, and in focus, at a minimum.

If you’re using images other than photos, like infographics or animations, make sure they’re crisp, clear, easy-to read, and eye-catching.

Even more important, your visual content needs to be compelling. Great photos are nice, but if they don’t tell a story, or get viewers excited, they’re not going to engage followers.

Not sure what to post? Here are a few ideas:

• Behind-the-scenes posts:?Give followers a look at your office, your storefront, or your manufacturing process.
• Quotes and text-based images:?Play with text to create visually interesting content with no photos required.
• Regrams and UGC:?User-generated content?is by nature authentic and compelling.
• Instructional posts:?Teaching followers how to achieve a goal is about as compelling as it gets.
• Videos:?The maximum length of a video post on Instagram is 60 seconds, but you can go much longer with?IGTV.
• Reels:?See Tip 17 for more details on this multi-cut video format.

Beauty Brand Glow Recipe uses IGTV videos to showcase skincare routines for different skin types using their products. They post previews of the longer videos to news feed, so followers always know when a new tutorial is ready to watch.

7. Establish your brand’s “look” on Instagram

Once you decide what type of content to publish, you need to decide how it’s going to look. As we explain in our post on?creating an Instagram aesthetic, color influences buying decisions and brand recognition.

Your Instagram look should be consistent across your posts, helping followers easily recognize your content in their feeds.

An easy way to achieve this kind of consistency is to use Lightroom presets. We’ve got a set of?five free Instagram presets?you can download to get started.

8. Write great captions

True, we just said that Instagram is a visual medium. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect your captions. Your?brand voice?is just as important as your brand look. Like your visuals, it should be consistent across posts.

Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters long, so you can use them for everything from a quick quip to detailed storytelling. That said, only the first two lines of text appear in news feed without tapping?more.

Since people tend to scan captions rather than read them thoroughly, you want to get all the important information into those first two lines.

In our post on the?best caption length?for every social network, we recommend the following Instagram caption lengths:

• Organic posts: 138–150 characters
• Instagram ads: 125 characters

If you’ve got more to say, go ahead and say it. But make sure the extra text is worth it.

9. Use hashtags wisely

Hashtags are a key way to increase your visibility and discoverability.

You can use up to 30 hashtags in an Instagram post. But, realistically, you probably don’t want to do that.

We?recommend?using between five and nine hashtags per post. More than that can look like hashtag stuffing, a spammy tactic that turns followers off. Worse, if you use irrelevant or repetitive hashtags, users can choose not to see your content for that tag.

To get the most benefit, choose hashtags that:

• Are relevant
• Are specific to your niche
• Do not encourage follow- or like-swapping (think #like4like or #followme)

We’ve got a full guide with the?latest hashtag strategies for Instagram?if you want to do a deep dive on this topic

10. Engage

If you want?engagement on Instagram, you have to engage, too. Posting quality content is great, but if you ignore comments and never interact with any other profiles, you’ll have a lonely existence on the network.

At a minimum, respond to comments users post on your feed. But also seek out popular accounts in your niche, follow them, and like and comment on their posts. Make yourself visible in a non-promotional way.

If someone tags you in a post, check it out and look for opportunities to engage. Can you?re-share their post?in your feed or in your story?

Pinning comments from top fans, or simply comments that are likely to spark conversations, is a way to encourage more engagement on your posts.

This makes it more fun (and productive) for you to engage, too, since you’ll have a greater chance to respond to real people rather than bots or trolls.