Instagram business – how to start?

Today, Instagram is not just a social network, but a whole platform for implementing your own business. How to run a business on Instagram, and where to start – we will tell in this article.

Opportunities Instagram for business

This social network provides its users with the following features:

• Increasing personal brand awareness.
• Increase in conversion.
• Preservation of reputation and promotion of business atmosphere.
• Increased engagement through likes, reposts, comments.
• Informing about company news.
• Advertising your brand: a story about the product or service provided and its benefits.
• Increase in client base.

Instagram has a clear division into personal and commercial profiles. The last option offers a businessman not only to promote posts, but also to view free statistics and run ads.

Instagram for business: where to start?

We propose to consider the basic algorithm for doing business on Instagram.

1. First of all, you need to decide on a niche based on your own interests. Here it is important to reveal your professionalism in any field of activity. To do this, you should think about possible directions and paint them on a piece of paper.
2. When the first step is completed, it is necessary to move on to market analysis. In this case, it is recommended to find successful people in certain areas, study accounts and learn from their experience.
3. Once a niche is defined, you need to make sure that it is in demand. To understand whether this field of activity is in demand, you need to drive its name into the search line. If there is a lot of information and advertising for this request, then it makes sense to continue.
4. One of the important criteria for the success of a business on Instagram is the right target audience. Therefore, it is worth thinking about who you will offer your products and services to. In this matter, it is important to determine the main parameters: age, gender, interests, and more.
5. We focus on the direction of future activities. It is important to choose the “golden mean” here. In the future, you can expand the scope of activities and add new product lines, but for a start it is recommended to start with one thing.
6. The frequency of publications is important for the rapid growth of the brand, which is why it is necessary to take the time and draw up a preliminary schedule and plan for posts.

About the target audience and where to find it

There are several options for attracting the target audience:

• Using popular hashtags under photos.
• You can attract the attention of users by following famous people and interesting comments on their posts.
• Distribution of your profile link in other social networks and forums.
• Using special services to cheat subscribers.
• Use of targeted advertising.

Types of business promoted on Instagram

Today, Instagram is a powerful platform for business, where anyone can offer their audience any product or service. As practice shows, you can sell anything on the Internet, but some of the most popular topics are:

• cooking;
• sport;
• food and proper nutrition;
• children;
• beauty and health;
• clothes and accessories;
• travels.

In some areas of activity, competition is quite high. Therefore, it is important not only to provide your customers with a quality product, but to be able to present it beautifully and vividly.

How does Instagram for business work?

The main task of a blogger is interesting content. Simply put, to promote a business on Instagram, you need to actively maintain a profile: upload beautiful photos, tell interesting stories not only about the product, but also touch on some moments from your life. Trust is one of the key criteria in business development, so it is important for a businessman to find an integrated approach to interact with his virtual audience and content.

How much should you invest?

Investing in business development on Instagram implies the presence of advertising. This social network provides services such as cheating (increasing) subscribers, serving both targeted advertising and through popular groups. Of course, all this is available only for a fee. As for the specific cost, here it is worth considering how much the blogger himself is willing to invest in his development. For example, to advertise through a page with thousands of subscriptions, you will need at least a thousand rubles. But it is worth noting that each group provides its own requirements and prices for services. Most importantly, you need to find a suitable platform to promote your account, which will bring significant results in the future.

31 Instagram business ideas

To “revive” the audience, it is necessary to implement interesting and outstanding ideas. You can invent them yourself, if your imagination allows, or use ready-made options. Here is a list of ready-made ideas that will serve as an example for a novice blogger.

1. Reach out to your audience as often as possible, ask questions, and seek their opinion. This action will encourage active communication with subscribers, which will help increase brand awareness.
2. Identify the most popular questions that are asked in this field of activity. This will become a guideline in content creation: touch on topics that are of interest to the target audience, talk about the nuances of your business.
3. One of the marketing moves is a positive review from a famous person. So, if possible, post photos of popular people with your product, this will help to gain trust from the audience.
4. Share stories about outstanding employees who work in your team.
5. Turn your account into a shop window, where photos become a quick way to find out the product and price. And thanks to the text, the client will be able to find out about the timing, delivery and other nuances.
6. Conducting brand workshops.
7. It is worth noting that publications should be relevant, so it is important to follow the news and research in this area.
8. Keep an eye on your competitors, but don’t copy their material. It is necessary to write on topics that have not been touched upon by other specialists.
9. Use the posting plan. For example, experts advise the following: publish sales posts on Tuesday and Wednesday, and post pictures of an entertaining nature on weekends. The rest of the time, it is necessary to dilute publications on the main topic with interesting thoughts, quotes, etc.
10. Pay attention to your subscribers: what they discuss in the comments, what hypotheses they put forward. The most interesting comments can be touched upon in your future publications.
11. Sometimes give your subscribers the opportunity to get your product or service absolutely free. For example, you can come up with a certain condition: the one who answers correctly to a certain question will receive a gift.
12. As a rule, a popular brand has a rapidly growing audience. Therefore, it is important to periodically talk about your activities, to open the curtain of working moments. This will help new readers get to know you better.
13. Study your analytics. Share with the public not only positive moments, but also possible falls.
14. Play various games. It can be puzzles, quests, question-answers and much more.
15. When communicating with subscribers in Direct, you can take a screenshot of the joint dialogue and, with their permission, publish it as a separate post. It can be wishes for the future, words of gratitude, frequently asked questions.
16. Change the format. It is not necessary that the selling text be clear, dry and concise. You can surprise the audience and, for example, talk about your product in a poetic form.
17. Post positive pictures and photos that can make readers feel good. You can deviate from the main theme, but it is important to maintain the style of the page.
18. Create a rubric of the most popular posts of the week.
19. Come up with your own branded hashtag.
20. Express gratitude to your followers as often as possible: for opinion, inspiration, growth and support.
21. Share interesting books and articles on your subject with subscribers, help them find useful sources, and then they will remember you.
22. Conduct live broadcasts with subscribers: discuss interesting topics, answer questions and ask their opinion.
23. Sometimes users should show not only the final result, but also fragments of the work process. These can be photos or short videos where the subscriber can see how this or that product is created.
24. Stories is a feature that allows you to post short stories. They can talk about new products, discounts, contests, etc.
25. Share with readers about your plans: what do you want to achieve in this area, what successes have you already achieved.
26. Create a section where customers can leave reviews. Encourage them and post the best ones.
27. Come up with a flash mob for the audience with a unique hashtag.
28. With the permission of customers, post their photos with your product.
29. Share not only working moments, but also joint pastime with the team. It can be a hike, a corporate event or a trip to another city or country.
30. Another option to start a discussion is to post a photo and ask them to come up with a title for it. For the most original – a small present.
31. Follow audience comments. This will help to find out the general opinion about your brand and give you new ideas.
32. Get into the habit of jotting down articles in a notebook a few days in advance. This will help you if you do not have the time or desire to publish at your usual frequency.

Instagram tools for business

When doing business on Instagram, you need to use some tools that will help improve the quality of your content. We offer to consider the main services and programs aimed at attracting customers.

1. Instagram Direct is a free built-in service that allows you to communicate using private messages.
2. Free statistics. Thanks to this feature, a businessman can find out which publications are most attractive to his audience.
3. Instagram Stories – suitable for informing about competitions, promotions, discounts and other company news. History is stored for only a day, after which it is deleted.

How to grow your business on Instagram through other tools

In addition to free and built-in features, a novice blogger will need other tools. Let’s consider them in more detail.

1. Aviary is a photo editor that is essential for photo editing. In addition, it contains a variety of stickers and stickers.
2. PicFlow – will help you create a video that shows images after a certain period of time. At the moment, such slideshows are very popular among users. To create such a video in the program, you must: select the appropriate photos, their duration and audio file. The app has both free and paid versions. The latter option can remove watermarks and provides access to transitions between shots.
3. Crowdfire is a program that shows all the analytics of subscribers. Thanks to this tool, you can find out who unsubscribed and subscribed. It is also possible to create black and white lists, as well as analyze subscribers by interests.
4. Adobe Spark – contains various templates for filling profile content. The program is available in a mobile application.
5. Interacts with several social networks and is able to publish publications simultaneously in different ones. It is worth noting that the service of this application is free only for 30 days, after which you can purchase any tariff of your choice.
6. Canva is a photo editor. With it, you can crop or align the image, as well as specify the necessary text. You can also change the image parameters: work with brightness, saturation and contrast.

How to transfer to a business account?

To change your profile on Instagram, there is a certain algorithm of actions.

1. In the application settings, select “Switch to company profile”.
2. Log in with Facebook.
3. Fill in the information how to contact the company.

The above steps will convert the profile to commercial, allowing the user to take advantage of the new features:

• Account traffic statistics.
• Ability to launch ads from the mobile interface.
• Additional contact buttons.
• Shopping Tags functionality.
• Publication analytics.

How to get an account right

Proper and beautiful profile design is another important element for creating a successful business. Consider the necessary components for designing a profile.

• Image – this will be the face of your brand, so it is important to choose a high-quality and bright photo.
• Profile header. Only the most important should be specified here, as there are character restrictions.
• Create pinned stories with useful information.

Make a content plan

The essence of the content plan is a consistent scheme for creating new publications in the form of a table. Inside it: various ideas, goals, genres, descriptions of future records, formats and more. As you know, any business needs a more specific plan, so it is advisable to enter interesting ideas and ideas into this table at least twice a week.

Set up content production

Instagram is a visual network, so the external qualities of content for potential customers come first. A businessman needs to learn how to process photos with high quality, combine them with each other. In addition to images, the attributes for a successful business profile are: stories, live streams, and videos.

Add Smart Automations

There are a number of services that increase the effectiveness of Instagram for business. Among them are:

• Zeus.
• Zengram
• Bosslike
• cashbox
• Doinsta and more.

The main functions of such services are:

• Attracting a new audience.
• Sending scripts to subscribers (for example, active).
• Starting a dialogue with new subscribers.
• Formation of the base for direct mailing.

Bring an audience

Today, you can significantly increase the number of your subscribers with the help of various programs. But the real people who subscribed solely because of their own interests will bring the greatest result. There are certain ways to attract the target audience:

• Good selection of hashtags.
• Mass following services.
• Mutual PR.
• Targeted advertising.
• Advertising through bloggers and other well-known people in a certain field.

Stimulate the audience

To successfully run a business on Instagram, simply increasing the number of followers is not enough, you also need to be able to keep them. For this you need:

• Ask audience questions and get feedback.
• Make small promotions, give nice gifts.
• Create long-term engaging projects.
• Launch live broadcasts.

Analyze the situation and implement new

To develop a business on Instagram, it is worth monthly analyzing the volume of comments, engagement rates, sales, and drawing appropriate conclusions. You can analyze the profile development dynamics using the LiveDune service. In addition, you need to follow trends and introduce various innovations into your account, this will help you retain and increase your audience, as well as be one step ahead of your competitors.