Best Practices for Your Instagram Business Profile

Currently, the Instagram platform has more than one billion users who are active every month, and even better, their audience is typically much more engaged than most of the other social media platforms. This means that businesses have a tremendous opportunity to get their products marketed to a more interested audience without having to spend a ton of money on paid advertising.Instagram's API allows account holders to publish their videos or photos directly to their Instagram Business Profile by using a third-party vendor such as Fanbooster. This increases the ease-of-use for brands who are looking to take advantage of all the features offered by Instagram. If you're not sure about some of the other outstanding features provided by Instagram to business users, continue reading below to find some of the best practices.

Establish a strong business profile

This is a crucial initial step, and it will provide the foundation for all your other efforts on the platform. If you set up a strong business profile, you will be able to project a powerful brand image, gain a large following, and create a sales funnel that will constantly provide you with a source of leads and new customers. If you already have a personal profile set up on Instagram, it can easily be converted to a professional account.

On your business account, you can include a number of call-to-action buttons, so that your followers or visitors can contact you at any time of day. You'll be able to earn a verification badge which Instagram will use to certify your authenticity as a legitimate business. Having this account will also allow you to discover how successful your organic content is. Lastly, you will be able to launch ad campaigns from your business profile and track their success, so you'll know whether you need to tweak them or come up with different campaigns.

Take your audience behind the scenes

Most consumers are extremely curious about where products originate and how they're developed. Instagram has made it very easy for you to show your entire lifecycle to consumers, and this might be extremely advantageous for your company. This is especially true if you wish to emphasize the fact that you're a green company which sells environmentally-friendly products.[caption id="attachment_15520" align="aligncenter" width="800"]

Images with permission from Village Cult | Instagram: @villagecult | Website: villagecult.com[/caption]Make sure to include plenty of photos which demonstrate exactly how certain products are manufactured, including any base materials, the production process itself, and the distribution process to retail outlets. This is an important step, so it would be to your advantage to brainstorm with company employees to come up with the best approach, and the best material to upload to your business profile. You may have to experiment a bit in order to hit the jackpot with any specific story.

Use hashtags to broaden your reach

The hashtags that you use might be specific to an individual campaign, or they could be generalized hashtags which are relevant to your business. You should also establish a hashtag for your company, but use it only sparingly so that you don't overwhelm consumers. This will help consumers find your main account, as well as much of the content which has to do with your company and its products.You will be allowed to add as many as 30 hashtags to your Instagram business profile, but it's best to use between five and fifteen. It's also a good idea to pay attention to exactly where you place your hashtags, because that will also impact their effectiveness. The most popular choices for specific locations for hashtags are in the actual post, in a related comment, or right at the end of a post.

Include a call-to-action

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Images with permission from Boxpalm | @boxpalm | boxpalm.com[/caption]You will be somewhat limited in where you can place links that will navigate your target audience to an external website such as a landing page you have set up. This is because Instagram prefers that users stay right there on the platform, and don't leave for any reason. However, Instagram does understand that it's important to drive traffic to your website and to measure the number of website clicks you get, because obviously it plays a part in all that.If you have more than 10,000 followers, you will be able to include a link in Stories so that you can drive traffic to your website from there. You can also drive traffic from your Instagram bio, and that may be your best opportunity, so this is a great place to include your call-to-action. You can also include a link to a website or to a blog post in your Instagram bio, and this may be just as useful. Just be advised that this is not the best place to promote weekly offers you might be running, in the hope that you can send users to pre-set product pages.

Make heavy use of Instagram Stories

Stories can be viewed by users for a period of 24 hours, and these Stories have the capability of containing text, links, and sometimes GIFs as well. Instagram has revamped its Stories Layout, so there are now five new options with different frames. The reason Stories is so effective for usage as a business tool is that it generates powerful engagement with users, and that's exactly what most brands are trying hard to achieve. Stories will also drive user traffic to a product page, or possibly to a new Instagram post you've just created.

Within Stories, there is a feature called Ask Me Anything which encourages users to ask questions, which you can respond to and create automatic engagement with members of your target audience. You'll also be able to conduct polls about new products, which will help to create buzz about them. To help users get to know your brand, you can use Story Highlights directly on your business profile page, and since these do not expire, you can leave them there for long period of time to catch as many users as possible.