Instagram is one of the biggest and most popular social media networks in the world.
If you’re a business owner, you have the potential to build your brand, generate interests, improve customer relationships, and convert users into customers.
To do this, you need to maximize its optimization potential. We got the tips below that will drive meaningful results to your Instagram account.
7 Optimization Tips For Instagram
1. Create Or Transfer To An Instagram Business Account
You get the option to create a normal Instagram account and a business one. Always, always opt for the latter, not the former. Why?
Because with the business account, you’ll get access to plenty of extra features and tools that you can use to grow your business’ presence online. You’ll get access to features like Shopping, Ads, and Insights; all three offering you more control on how to promote your business on Instagram.
There are also Call-To-Action Buttons, such as “call me”, “visit us,” or “make a booking” that you can add to your profile (which helps conversion rates) while allowing you to promote your business through business hours, location and services.
Significantly, you’ll get data that can be used to your advantage. You’ll learn about the demographics of your customers, tracking metrics for impressions and performance, and finding better ways to optimize your account for better engagement and results.
In conclusion, when creating an Instagram account, choose the business option; you’ll have more features and opportunities to make it better compared to the regular one. If you already have a normal account, don’t fret; you can convert it by accessing your settings and tapping “Switch to Business Profile”. It’s that easy.
2. Keep Your Username Optimized & Simple
Don’t overcomplicate matters by creating a @username that is over the top or too much. Keep it simple and relatable.
Always try to include your business name and, if possible, a keyword related to your business. If your business name is already taken by someone else, find an alternative that doesn’t deviate too far from yours.
But also try to include the main keyword for your website within the username. This helps users find you when searching for your service or goods. Your Instagram profile is more likely to come up if it has both your business name and keyword.
3. Optimize Your Bio
You only got a few words (150 characters) to describe who you are and what you do. So make the most of it. Keep it straight to the point, and once again, include a keyword (or two) within the bio.
But the trick here isn’t to make it entirely about your business or your customers. It’s about what you can do for your customers. How to benefit customers is more helpful than speaking about what you do. It creates an engaging connection to them, offering them insight into how you will make your life better.
Consider GrowME Marketing, a digital agency in Calgary, Canada. Its Instagram bio is simple, direct, and to the point:
“Better growth starts here. Custom Website Design | SEO / AdWords | Social Media Marketing & Online Marketing in #YYC.”
It highlights how they’re going to make your business better (by growing it) and the services they offer (all keywords, by the way) and the area they service (Calgary).
Simple, direct and effective. You can do the same.
4. Include A Compelling Call-To-Action
We touched on the advantages above of the business account option. One of them being the use of a Call-to-Action (CTA) button. If there is one way to hook in your audience and get them directly interacting with your website or page, this is it.
Your CTA should encourage users to take a specific action on your account, pushing them along the journey to become a buyer, follower, and hopefully, loyalist.
The CTA should be related to your clients’ needs and should make it clear from the start. For example, if you’re a massage therapist, your CTA would be “make a booking now”. If you’re selling food, it should be “place your order today”.
Make it clear, concise and related to your business. It will optimize your profile while building up more conversions.
5. Build A Thoughtful & Detailed Content Calendar
While many popular and famous Instagram accounts work on the “post-now” moment (and yeah, it does work from time to time), having a calendar laid out about what you’re going to post and when is helpful.
You don’t have to plan years, as the circumstances can change. But focusing a month on can prove valuable in promoting product launches, daily specials and special events. Significantly, it lets you build around popular holidays, like Halloween and national holidays (such as Canada Day or Christmas).
This will help create a focused branded narrative strategy that builds your business and ensures it relates to customers.
6. Get Interactive With Customers
You’ve heard this before, and we’ll say it again: responding to your users is crucial to developing a relationship with them while boosting your profile and enhancing SEO.
The more you interact with customers, the more search engines will pick up its engagement, resulting in better searches.
How to do it? Simple: enable your notifications so that you can always respond to users within a reasonable timeframe. It would be great to do it on the spot (that’s why marketing agencies get involved), but between 12 to 24 hours is ideal.
7. Share Visually Appealing High-Quality Content
Instagram is all about photos, images and videos, creating an oasis filled with colours and engaging content. Now, you have to do the same.
Remember, Instagram is based entirely on visual content. Therefore, you should be posting images, videos and photos that are not only visually appealing but represent your overall brand. That way, you can make a lasting impression on users.
Furthermore, the content must be catchy and relate to your users. That way, they stay on your profile for longer. Be detailed by explaining a solution to a problem (fitness trainers do this by highlighting specific exercises) or providing insight into a service (marketing gurus explain how you can save money).
And finally – make sure that you optimize your content by including keywords within it and the tags. It will help boost your post!
