Instagram can be a great place if you are a small business. Why? Because you can reach your target audience without having to invest in extra infrastructure ā or in some cases, any infrastructure at all. But, navigating and succeeding on Instagram can be difficult, particularly when the platform is over-saturated and there is a high level of competition.
Any small business owner knows that today, it is essential to have a presence on the platform in order to succeed, but not every small business owner may have the capacity to immediately hire a host of social experts. Donāt worry! Thatās where we can help. Today, weāre going to take you through the essential things you should consider when reaching your customers on Instagram.
Structure your page strategically āļø
There are a number of easy tricks you can use to make your Instagram profile work for you as a small business. One of these is how you structure your page.
Once you have defined your tone of voice and branding, you can start to build out your profile. As a small business, you want to make it really clear what it is youāre selling so try to avoid using too much jargon in your bio. The first few words of your bio should describe exactly what your business is all about because when people go to search for this, your profile is much more likely to appear. So, if you are a custom surfboard brand based in Australia, the first few words of your bio might be:
Custom Surfboards, handmade in Australia.
Whenever someone searches for ācustom surfboardsā on Instagram, youāve just given yourself a much larger chance of appearing as one of the results.
Hereās how we have set up our page, as an example!
Next, make sure to add your website and any contact details you have. By putting in a bio link with a platform like Linktree, you can then include multiple links for your followers to explore, such as a blog article, your e-commerce website, or any other initiatives you might be supporting. Give your customers every opportunity to get exactly what they need, and make sure to create tracked links that you can later analyze, to measure exactly how many people are visiting your website or making purchases after visiting your Instagram page. This will help inform your strategy later when you need to tweak any content or campaigns you have rolled out.
Create and share content that resonates š„°
One of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make, is by posting content on Instagram that has been created for another medium. For example, posting an e-commerce shot from your website, directly on your Instagram page is unlikely to translate to your audience, and is also less likely to convince someone to follow you. Instagram is a creative platform, where users go to view and consume entertaining content that stands out. So, the content you publish really has to be thumb-stopping.
Donāt worry if you donāt have a plethora of resources to create social content ā Instagram is an organic platform, so not everything has to look āperfectā, it just has to resonate. There are a number of different content ideas you can utilize on Instagram as a small business, which will help grow your platform and create genuine connections with potential customers:
Show your followers the people behind the business. One of the best things about small businesses is the people behind them, and this is something that is a completely unique selling point. A great way to humanize your brand on Instagram is by using features like Instagram Lives, where you can directly speak to your followers, and allow them to ask questions, live. You can also create Live Rooms with other small businesses in order to extend your network and reach some of your peersā existing followers. Another great reason to use Instagram Lives is that they live on, so you can repurpose the content by saving it as an IGTV video, or adding it to your Story.
Speaking of Stories, itās important that you use them! Again, Stories are a great opportunity for you to communicate with your audience, by using interactive question stickers, running polls, and creating countdowns for campaign launches. Currently, Instagram has a āsupport small businessesā sticker, which you can also utilize to your advantage in order to get discovered!
Make your content go further. A great strategy on Instagram if you have limited resources, is
repurposing content. If you want to learn the best techniques to do this, you can check out our blog article,
here. Contextualize product-based content. What we mean by this, is donāt just post pictures of your products. If you want to share products, integrate them with influencer marketing campaigns, or aesthetically pleasing flat lays that allow consumers to visualize your product in their day-to-day lifestyle.
Use content creation platforms like
Canva, in case you run out of ideas. You can create templates on Canva that are branded, with your colors, logo, fonts, etc. easily and quickly ā and you donāt have to be a design pro. If you pre-design a few assets that you can use as a series on your Instagram,
you can quickly refer to them when you have gaps in your schedule. Create value-adding content. If you have something to teach ā teach it! This will make users much more likely to follow you if they feel that they can gain some personal value from your feed. If you are a florist, for example, you could post online tutorials, tips, and tricks on Instagram Reels or even full āclassesā on IGTV.
Hereās an example of an easy content format you can easily replicate and adjust for your audience or niche.