The Use Of Instagram And Its Features For Business
Instagram is among a breed of smartphone apps which have tapped into the creative, image-based online life of young people. It’s likely that you have heard about it in passing, whether from your students, your child or in the media. So it’s about time you got up to speed on the app and what it’s all about. At its most basic, Instagram is a social networking app which allows its users to share pictures and videos with their friends. The app can be downloaded for free from the usual app stores and takes pride of place on many a young person’s (and older!) smartphone.
The company was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, both Stanford University graduates, in 2010 and now has around 200 million users. Facebook, the social networking giant, acquired the company in 2012. While its basic premise is the sharing of pictures, the site’s popularity comes from its picture-editing functionality.
Once a user snaps a picture, Instagram filters – of which there are dozens – can transform images in a manner reminiscent of old-fashioned Polaroid prints. The app allows for the creation of personal profiles but also can be connected to existing social networking profiles such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning users can share their pictures across platforms.
Features
Instagram Questions
Instagram Questions is a feature introduced in July 2018. It allows users to answer questions posed by their followers. This is slightly reminiscent of the controversial Ask. FM, although answers to questions are not anonymous! If you send a question to someone you follow they can post that question to their story and write a response but it will not tag you as the person who asked the question. It is a popular feature with influencers.
Instagram Direct
Instagram Direct allows you to share photos, videos, hashtag pages, profiles and locations with a single person or small group of people (up to 15 people) right from a users’ newsfeed. You can access Instagram Direct via the Inbox icon in the top right-hand corner of the app. Find out more about Instagram Direct here: blog. instagram. com
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories allows users to post a selection of photos/videos into one story. The new feature works in much the same way as Snapchat Stories, with stories disappearing after 24 hours. Instagram Stories are not posted to a users profile or on the Newsfeed. Instagram Stories follow the same privacy settings as a users’ Instagram profile. For example, if a user has a private account and posts a story, only the users’ friends will be able to view this story.
Instagram Features to Help Your Business
Instagram Live
Instagram Live allows businesses to broadcast video in real time. Instagram Live offers a huge opportunity for local businesses to boost their engagement and win the trust of their followers and customers. A couple of innovative ways you can use Instagram Live are to showcase how your services or products work and showcase live tutorials.
Instagram Live videos can be up to one hour long, which which means you can make engaging and lengthy videos to talk about your services and products. You can also host an interview or an interactive Q&A session with a live audience. Why not take questions from a live audience and answer them? It will increase the engagement rate! When you’re organizing a live Q&A session, make sure you inform your followers in advance that it’s coming up so that they can get their questions ready.
Once you are Live, ask your audience to send their questions via the comment section present at the bottom of the mobile screen. This will make your Live session much more interactive and engaging. Your followers can also react to your Live videos by clicking on ‘like’ or ‘love’.
IGTV (Instagram TV)
Very recently Instagram announced and launched IGTV, which is a long-form video that can last anywhere between 15 seconds to 60 minutes. Bear in mind that only verified accounts can make videos up to 60 minutes long. For unverified Instagram accounts, the maximum video length is 10 minutes.
You can use IGTV from within the main Instagram app or download the standalone app for free. The app is available for both iOS and Android. You can leverage IGTV to share some funny and engaging behind-the-scenes videos from an event, or you can simply give a tour of your workplace and introduce your hard-working team to your followers. Because verified accounts can record videos up to 60 minutes, you could also share a pre-recorded webinar or product demonstration with your followers. Or you could use the feature to record an event you’re holding or attending. You can also leverage this feature to create and share your brand’s story to build a connection with your followers and promote your business.
IGTV is still a brand new feature, and as they’re testing the waters a little, advertising isn’t yet available, but it has a lot of potential for advertising and marketing, so it’s very possible that one day businesses will be able to increase their reach and traffic through this channel. Similarly to YouTube, IGTV videos actually have their own URLs, which is a first for Instagram. This means that sharing and promoting videos after broadcast is much easier and more effective.
A good example of a business using IGTV to its fullest Everlane, an online clothing retailer headquartered in San Francisco, California that was already popular for their engaging Instagram Stories. One of their most recent IGTV videos was an analysis of a Canadian Tuxedo. But what was so clever about this is that the brand saved time by stitching together some of their related Instagram Stories in order to create a longer IGTV video.
Instagram Shopping
This new Instagram feature is a real game-changer for local businesses, as it allows businesses to tag products in their standard Instagram posts. Once prospects click on the tagged item, they are then directed to the product detail page, which can provide more information about the product and push prospects to make a purchase.
You can use this feature to promote and sell more of your services and products. Gone are the days of “link in bio”! Here are some simple ways you can use this new Instagram feature to promote your business and increase your sales. Firstly, make your content/product easy to discover for your followers. After all, you can’t increase your sales if no-one knows your product exists! To improve your presence on Instagram and make your products discoverable, use as many relevant hashtags as possible.
Using the right hashtag can boost your engagement rate and increase your product visibility. So invest time in researching the best and most relevant trending hashtags to use for your products. A good example of this is Magnolia Boutique, a store situated in Indianapolis. They witnessed an increase of 4% and 20% in traffic and Instagram revenue, respectively. They used relevant hashtags on their posts and made their products discoverable through Instagram Shopping.
Secondly, make sure to provide a seamless shopping and browsing experience to your prospects after they’ve clicked through to your website. Ideally, you want your potential customers to leave the app to complete the purchase (but there’s also no problem if they browse your site within the Instagram browser, as a sale is a sale).
A clever way of making the transition from Instagram post to website seamless is to create a similar look for your Instagram account and your website’s landing page. If your landing page is very different, then there are high chances that your prospects will leave your website assuming that they have visited the wrong website.
Banana Republic, for example, has the same kind of look for their Instagram page as well as their website. This won’t confuse their followers when they are switching from the app to the brand website. The first screenshot below is the brand’s Instagram page and the second screenshot is of their website.
Instagram Stories
Although this feature has been around for a while, it’s still worth mentioning here. The Instagram Stories feature allows you to share time-limited images and videos with your followers with stickers and text overlaid. Local businesses can leverage this Instagram feature to promote their business in a creative way that highlights personality in a way other formats struggle to. After all, as of June 2018, more than 400 million daily active Instagram users using Instagram Stories. 28 minutes is the average time that Instagram users spend on Instagram Stories. With the introduction of this new feature, Instagram opened up new opportunities for businesses. But how can a local business use Instagram Stories effectively?
You can use Instagram Stories to create buzz around your newly developed product or service just before the launch. This kind of a teaser will surely catch the attention of your loyal followers, and they will start spreading the word for you. You can also use Instagram Stories to demonstrate your products, showcasing how they work under different circumstances. Short, yet helpful guides on how to use your product will help you promote it more effectively.
For example, Gap uses the Instagram Stories feature to promote their products and encourage prospects to visit their website. You can also use Instagram Stories to give your followers a peek of what’s going on behind the scenes of your business. Dropping the curtain and sharing the working culture and traditions with your followers will help you to gain their trust. For instance, Nordstrom Rack used Instagram Stories to give people a glance of what’s happening behind the scenes during one of their fashion shoots. It gave their followers an honest and uncensored look at the brand. It also helped make their followers feel like part of the fashion show.
#hashtags
Use hashtags to expand your reach. These can be campaign specific or general - all that’s important is that they are relevant. Make sure to also set up your main company hashtag (#yourbrandname), and use it sparingly across Instagram (Twitter is good too). This makes it easier for people to find content related to you as well as your main account. It’s best practice to use between three to five hashtags, despite the fact that the maximum you can add is 30 per Instagram post. Use your own, campaign specific hashtags as well as the more popular hashtags to increase the discoverability of your content. For example, try adding hashtags like #instagood (used is 300 million posts), or #tbt (Throwback Thursday), and don’t forget about industry specific ones. If you are in IT, the hashtag #IT or #tech will do just fine. Also, consider how you add hashtags, these can be added at the end of the post, in a comment or worked into the actual post.
Instagram Post Ideas to Drive Engagement
Behind-the-Scenes Content
You are more than a brand—you’re a community. Advocate for your team and the people behind the business by showing off some unique behind-the-scenes content. Behind-the-scenes content is a great idea for your brand’s Instagram posts as it humanizes the business, showing the faces behind the brand. Your audience will have the opportunity to see what your brand is truly about and feel a personal connection to who you are and what you stand for.
Some Ideas for Behind-the-Scenes Instagram Posts Include:
- Employee profiles, including executives and even the CEO
- Workplace tours to showcase where and how your products are made
- Office pet features (If your office allows dogs, do a feature or “takeover” as we did with this Instagram post )
- Action shots of employees and team members hard at work
- Photos and videos from events that your brand organized or is involved in
Product features
It might seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes brands can get so carried away with sharing lifestyle-centric content that they forget to actually showcase their products or services on Instagram. Remember, your audience is interested in what you are offering and what sets your brand apart from your competitors.
In addition to your lifestyle-focused Instagram posts, share the occasional post showing off your product and brand. Set a schedule to ensure that you aren’t posting too much promotional content. One or two posts per week—depending on the amount of other content you’re regularly sharing—is a good number to go with.
For example, if you are a donut company, share a photo of some of your creations in their most flattering light. Or if there is a holiday or popular cultural event, you could also connect your product to it in a fun and creative way, like Vancouver donut shop Cartem’s did for International Bacon Day.
Lifestyle Shots
As mentioned above, lifestyle content is a great way to showcase how your product or service lives in the real world. Instead of always sharing a picture of your brand’s backpacks sitting in a showroom or store, share a photo of adventurous hikers scaling a mountain—wearing your backpack. Think about your target audience and the personas you’ve established, and what they would be interested in. What does their best life look like? Once you figure this out, you can then share images that encompass these aspirations and allow them to feel as if your brand is aligned with their wants, needs, and pain points.
Quotes and Text-Based Content
You know those days when you just need a little pick-me-up or inspiration? Offer that to your followers with your Instagram posts. Quotes and text-based images are a simple but effective way to boost engagement quickly with your Instagram posts.
Some Ideas for Text-Based Content Can Include:
- Quotes from experts and leaders in your industry (this could include your company’s CEO or other executives)
- Positive reviews or feedback from customers
- Event information or announcements
- Information about promotions and sales
- Notes regarding shop closures or hours
- Useful information such as recipes, product-related tips, or how-tos
- Industry-related statistics and facts
American DIY and lifestyle brand Brit + Co does text-based Instagram posts well. With an established brand voice, they inspire and delight their design-savvy audience with words that support Instagram’s visual platform in a natural way.
Daily Hashtags
Have you ever been scrambling for an Instagram post idea when you suddenly realize it’s Thursday? With the mega-popular #tbt (Throwback Thursday) hashtag , you instantly have a post idea. Dig around for those old photos of your business’ humble beginnings, or some of your CEO’s baby pictures. For Instagram post ideas that you can go back to every week, check out our guide Daily Hashtags Explained: What They Mean and How to Use Them. No matter what day it is, if you’re stuck for an idea for your Instagram posts you now have a great jumping-off point.
User-Generated Content
You would be nothing without your audience and customers, so make sure they feel appreciated. By sharing user-generated content (UGC), you not only make your valuable followers the stars, but you also get unique content for your Instagram posts.
The easiest way to share UGC is to regram post a photo from someone else’s account to your brand’s own. As our post, How to Regram: Best Practices for Reposting Instagram Content, explains, “Regramming content from other users gives brands fresh material to share with their audience. And the practice can encourage increased engagement by motivating followers to post content worthy of being reshared. ”
the Above-Mentioned Guide Shares the Following Five Ways to Get User-Generated Content on Instagram:
- Create a branded hashtag for user-generated content submissions.
- Monitor photos your brand is tagged in.
- Run an Instagram photo contest.
- Invite followers to submit photos.
- Encourage Instagram engagement during live events.
The quest for fresh and engaging Instagram posts can seem like a never-ending challenge. However, with the above guide on-hand you can easily get inspired, get creative—and get Likes.
Instagram ad Campaign Objectives
When advertising on Instagram, you can choose from several campaign objectives. These are potential goals for your Instagram ad campaign that you select from a list. Don’t neglect this choice; it will influence how your Instagram ads are optimized and how you pay for them. For example, if your goal is to get people to watch your video, you probably don’t care how many users click on your link.
Brand awareness
This objective is for when you want to drive awareness of your business, product, app, or service when advertising on Instagram. The objective formerly called Awareness falls under this objective. The Brand Awareness objective supports Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Slideshow Ads, and Stories Ads.
Reach
With a Reach objective, you can also drive awareness of your business, product, app, or service. The objectives formerly called Local Awareness and Reach & Frequency now fall under this objective. The Reach objective supports all Instagram ad types. Reach is different from Brand Awareness in that it allows you to reach a larger audience, whereas Brand Awareness is a bit more targeted to users who are more likely to recall your ad or brand.
Traffic
You can use the Traffic objective to drive visitors to your website. If you have a mobile app, this is also effective for driving app engagement. The objective formerly called Website Clicks now falls under Traffic. You can also use this objective to create an offer for your audience. The Traffic objective supports all Instagram ad types. The Mountain Collective, which sells ski passes and packages, has used the Photo Ad type to drive users directly to their online store.
App Installs
Unsurprisingly, the App Installs objective is ideal if you’re trying to get users to download your app. You can use any Instagram ad type with the App Installs objective. Here’s a Carousel Ad example from Poshmark that drives users directly to their respective app store to download the mobile app:
Engagement
Engagement is another objective you can use to promote offers. It’s also effective at promoting your Instagram account and posts. Image Ads, Video Ads, and Slideshow Ads are your options under the Engagement objective.
Video Views
If you’re running a Video Ad, Carousel Ad, Slideshow Ad, or Stories Ad, you can use the Video Views objective to promote the video. This is an effective objective to drive awareness for your brand and products.
Lead Generation
Instagram ads with a Lead Generation objective are great for collecting information from users, like their email addresses, so you can market to them in the future. This objective supports all Instagram ad types.
Conversions
The Conversions objective is a great choice for ecommerce businesses that want to drive sales. The objectives formerly called Website Conversions and Dynamic Ads both fall under the current Conversions objective. If you want to optimize for people completing a specific action in your app and you have the Facebook SDK installed, you should use conversions as your objective.
💡 Note: In order to use this objective, you need to have a the Facebook pixel installed on your website. If you don’t have one installed yet, you’ll get a message letting you know.
Targeting Options When Advertising on Instagram
Instagram ads have all the same targeting options as Facebook ads. These include targeting based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, lookalike audiences, and automated targeting (let Facebook decide). Even better, if you have Custom Audiences, you can target them on Instagram. Custom Audiences are groups of people who have already connected with your brand in some way. This could be by visiting your website, engaging with your posts on Facebook, using your app, or sharing their contact info with you.
How to Create a Photo Ads on Instagram
A Photo Ad is one simple photo in landscape or square format. These are the simplest in terms of visual asset needs, since you just need a single image. Here’s an example of a Photo Ad from outdoor ecommerce brand Fimbulvetr Snowshoes, which takes users to the product page of the snowshoe featured in the ad creative. Let's dive into exactly how you can create your first ad on Instagram.
Step 1: Link Your Instagram Account to Your Facebook Page
The first step to creating an Instagram ad is to link your Instagram account to your Facebook page. You only need to this once. Visit the Settings for your Facebook page and click on “Instagram Ads. ” Next, click “Log In” and fill in your Instagram login credentials. If you don’t already have an Instagram account, you can also create one now.
Step 2: Create an Instagram ad Campaign
After you’ve linked your Instagram account to your Facebook page, it’s time to head over to the Ads Manager and create your first campaign. If you’re more comfortable using Power Editor, you can also create Instagram ads there. If you already create Facebook ads, much of this process will be familiar to you. In the Ads Manager, click on the “Campaigns” tab and then “+ Create” near the top left corner of the screen. Next, choose your campaign objective. Remember, not all objectives are compatible with Instagram Stories Ads. Resource: The Beginner’s Guide to the Facebook Pixel.
Step 3: Create Your Instagram Ad Set
On the Ad Set page, you’ll be able to choose “Purchase” as the type of conversion you want to optimize for. You can also choose to add an Offer, which will help drive even more conversions on your ad. Next, define who you want to see your ads and how much money you want to spend. All the same targeting options are available for Instagram ads as for Facebook ads. If you have any Custom Audiences already created, you can select them for targeting with your Instagram ad at this point.
Resource: The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Custom Audiences
Next, select your ad Placements. You’ll see the option to run your campaign on Instagram, as well as Facebook and Messenger. When figuring out how much you want to spend when you advertise on Instagram, start low. You can always increase the budget later if your ad is performing well. When you’re finished choosing who to target and how much to spend, click “Continue” in the bottom right. On the next screen you’ll see an option to choose your Instagram ad format. Note that the Canvas format is not compatible with Instagram. Once you’ve decided, scroll down to upload your images or videos. After you’ve uploaded your visuals, scroll down further, and you’ll see an option on the left to add text to your ad.
Finally, to the right of the text editor, you’ll be able to preview how your ad will look on Instagram. Here’s how an example ad would look. You can also see how your ad would look in any other formats selected. Once everything looks good, click “Place Order. ” Otherwise, go back and make changes.
Step 4: Analyze and Optimize Your Instagram Ads
Your work isn’t complete after you’ve launched your first Instagram ad campaign. Once it’s running, you’ll want to monitor its performance and test ideas to find the most effective messaging, creative, and targeting. Within Ads Manager, you can edit your Instagram ad to incorporate split testing, change the targeting parameters, and view analytics for the performance of your ads. The first Instagram ad is always the hardest. Once you’ve conquered your first one, it’ll be much easier the second time around.
