How to Humanize Your Instagram Business Account

All Internet users relate much better to other humans than they do to companies. That's why it's important that your company have a human face, rather than to be perceived as a cold, unfeeling corporate presence. There are some things you can do to make your Instagram business account much more human-like, and therefore much more relatable to other users on the platform. Here are some tips on how you can go about that.

Set up guidelines for comment moderators

Assuming that you've established a specific brand persona, you should do everything possible to stay on brand when responding to comments from your followers. It would be worth your while to assemble an FAQ sheet, so that you can anticipate potential comments, and how they should be responded to. Don't let this get to be robotic responses though, because it's much better that you really listen to what your user is asking before making an appropriate response.

Keep in mind at all times that people prefer to connect with other people, rather than with big corporations. One simple thing you can do to show your humanity is to include your initials at the end of each response to followers. Responding in the first person is another good way of demonstrating humanity and personal involvement, but make sure not to use business jargon in your commentary.It also wouldn't hurt to include some emojis and other examples of personality, so as to banish the idea of the company response. Anyone in your company who is involved with responding to followers comments, should be able to follow these guidelines you set up, and successfully stay on brand while also sounding very human.

Use direct messages

Most companies make legitimate efforts to respond to followers' comments quickly, especially when there are issues which need to be resolved. This is fine up to a point, but it's still only a reactive strategy. To get ahead of the game, it would be better if you can be more proactive in your approach. Instead of spending most of your time being obsessed on how many times your story gets viewed, it would be a good idea to explore the world of Stories on your own, and see just what kind of material is out there.It's more than likely that you will find people who follow you and whom you follow, are already using products and services that your company produces. While exploring the world of Stories, you have to be careful not to intrude on the presence of people whom you follow, because that could have a fairly negative effect, rather than what you're trying to achieve.

Instead, in a non-intrusive way, you should attempt to provide value to all those individuals, and help them legitimately in any way that you can. When you have the opportunity, that's when you should reach out with a helping hand, and show that you're ready to roll up your sleeves and help a friend. By using direct messages, you can make these kinds of connections and be more proactive in connecting with followers and people whom you follow.

Include your company's personality in Instagram copy

When you're developing a business profile for your Instagram account, you should inject your brand's personality into all copy and posts. It should be fairly easy for anyone reading your posts to instantly recognize your brand in that copy, and know who you are right away. Most companies tend to focus more on the visual aspects associated with their brand, which is understandable given that Instagram is primarily a visual network.However, you need to reinforce the image of your company brand, by including elements of personality into written material as well. This will help your followers come to recognize your brand more readily, and it will also increase the level of humanity which your company displays. That will probably lead to greater engagement with your followers, and they'll be more likely to share comments and likes with others.This concept is important enough that you should establish company guidelines on how to include your brand persona in all Instagram copy. With everyone in your company following the same directives, you should present a uniform brand persona to all followers on the platform.

Opt for presence rather than perfection

It's much more important that you have a consistent presence on Instagram, rather than striving for perfection with all your copy and all your visual presentations. In the first place, being less-than-perfect will reinforce the notion that your company has a human side to it, and is not seeking robotic perfection. It's a fairly common misconception in social media that video productions and other content must be produced to extremely exacting standards, and have a completely professional feel to them.The truth is, it's much better to simply have a great idea for your content than it is to craft a perfect reflection of it. Yes, a few followers will probably be impressed by a really slick production, but a great many more will be impressed by a less-than-perfect production which demonstrates your humanity. Small businesses with limited marketing budgets should therefore take heart, because simple content with a really meaningful message is all you need to connect with followers.It's even better if you can include behind the scenes content in your video which will capture the effort and enthusiasm that went into its creation. Any imperfections which get included in that production will only make it more appealing and more authentic-looking to followers. The point of all this is to emphasize that you should never let the pursuit of perfection intrude on content you prepare for your Instagram business account.If you can stay focused on the main set of ideas behind the production, you'll probably be much more successful in connecting with your audience. In fact, it's a good rule of thumb to adopt for any content you create on Instagram – emphasize the human side of your business, rather than the actual business itself.