Instagram: Get Your Small Business In the Picture

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much better is it than a 140 characters?

We live in a visual society, it’s one of the reasons TV beats radio, and has helped create the success of ‘FACE’book. It’s no secret that the most shared and clicked upon items on Facebook are pictures. What’s a big difference between Twitter and Facebook…images!

Instagram (Photo credit: Jon@th@nC)

If you have a small business that is image driven, or can find a way to drive engagement through images, then Instagram should be a social platform that should be a tools in your marketing bag.

Create your profile: Leave a good first impression.Create links to Facebook, Twitter, Business LinkedIn and your website.

Find your customers and potential customers by using hashtags: Search for people already talking about your business or your field. Find people in your city (#Medford) or people that share your interest (#FoodPorn) (Health). These are your potential customers. Find them, follow them, like their posts, and engage them.

Follow Back: You don’t have to follow ALL of your followers, but those whose ideas and interests align with your business are exactly the type of folks you should follow.  That way you can stay engaged with them and they, in turn, will engage with you and your content.

Be consistent with posts: Post consistently, but do not bombard your followers with thousands of pictures. Consistency keeps your followers engaged. Depending on the type of business you run, 1-2 posts a day would be a good rule of thumb.

Show off your products: People love to window shop. Use Instagram to show off your product and let us browse your products, much like a catalog. Think of how you can take pictures that would be a little different. Extreme close-ups, angles, think a little differently.

Introduce your employees: Humanize your brand by using Instagram to introduce your fans to the people behind your company. It’s a great way to show the personality of your brand, one of the biggest aspects of your ‘brand’ are your employees.

Encourage Instagram contests: Contests can be organizing with submissions using a custom hashtag. Come up with a unique hashtag, and encourage fans to share photos. Optimize these contests by integrating them into your other social media pages. Facebook has simplified their restrictions on contests/giveaways, so take advantage of this by running a multi-platform contest.

Take great photos: Using a cool filter cannot fix a bad photograph. Pictures should be in focus and balanced.  It won’t take you long to see Instagram is a platform to display some very good photography, don’t have this scare you off, but remember everything you do is an extension of your ‘brand’.

People love visual content, so that makes Instagram the ideal social media marketing platform for small businesses. It’s also currently a completely free way to market your business without algorithms limiting your organic reach or trying to achieve a pay-to-play model. So create your proud ‘brand’ profile, follow people, engage and you will have an impassioned following before you can say hashtag.

Want some help or have questions? You can always book a free 15 minute consultation with Paradux Media Group to make sure you’re snapping the right image for your brand.