As the world knows it, Instagram is a powerful tool; it is where many celebrities and famous personalities chose to dwell. Even the retail industry perceives it in that way thinking that prominent brands can only survive and thrive in that place where as small businesses have no chance. The size of the company isn’t exactly the basis of whether it can get value from it because even small business can benefit from the opportunities that it offers.
Here we’ll discuss some of the strategies on how small businesses can get the most out of making their own Instagram account:
One good benefit having an Instagram account for small businesses is that they can reach and engage with their followers on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other sites here altogether as Instagram allows you to link your other profiles to it so your new posts can also get published to those accounts automatically.
Instagram also have a Stories feature where you can compile multiple pictures and videos into a “story” that disappears after 24 hours, similar to Snapchat stories and Facebook’s MyDay. This component has a lot of potential but small businesses needs to be creative and do experimenting to see how can they can use it better.
Instagram is also generous with reporting tools which you can use to see all of this information from a single dashboard and track it over time. Data presented by these tools can give a company an idea of what type of content is attractive to their audience. It also specifies the style of photo or filter as well as the hashtag. This will guide small businesses to improve their social media posts and lean towards using strategies that are enticing to their target market.
Instagram engagement through comments can also bring in valuable information about customer feedback on a particular post, product or the brand in general. It requires time and attention but its byproduct can be used to strengthen the business’ relationship with the consumers and improve their operations and management.
Have you heard of Influencer Marketing? It’s something that has gone increasingly popular in Instagram. It is being widely used to connect with people through an established personality (not necessarily a celebrity) because there are now non-celebs who were able to garner a fan-base consisting of thousands to millions of engaged followers. Employing them to endorse products which is cheaper is now being considered and done by many small businesses. Investing on them is equivalent to investing on advertising your product to the number of people who follows them.
Aside from that, small businesses should also be aware of the use of hashtags which are being used in replacement for keywords as it is also being used to increase the visibility of brands to people who are still unaware of them.
If you want a more straightforward strategy, you just can look for Instagram ads and see how they will work for you. It’s something that you can invest into and works online just like how traditional advertising works in the real world.
Instagram may be a big world. But we have to remember that everyone and everything is somehow a small part of something big but our size doesn’t always matter because sometimes what matters is the size of what we do and its effect to the people around us.