10 top tips on how to use Instagram for your business

It is fascinating how much business is now being transacted through photo-sharing sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

We have seen in the past few weeks one of the largest agencies in the world, Omnicom, announce it is doing a major deal with Instagram to serve ads and really harness the power of the medium.

Social media has always been a level playing field and you don’t have to be an Omnicom to drive business through your Instagram or Pinterest account.

I came across a brilliant visual how-to graphic and list on how to optimise your Instagram business opportunity.

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The whole article can be found here by Gerry Moran.

The main thing to remember is that image and video sells more than anything else these days. Visual interpretation is more engaging and also an easier representation of what you do and sell.

Here are 10 top tips to maximize your Instagram business opportunity:  

1. A strong call to action, ensuring you lead the audience to a page/landing page that they can transact through.

2. Brand, or your personal brand, is very important, as increasingly consumers and business want to know the story behind the person, as opposed to the marketing message behind the brand.

3. Regular updates that create a balance between personality and business.

4. Follow and follow back to build your community.

5. Competitions and socially link to your other accounts like a Facebook. Photo competitions work well across both these social networks.

6. Go app crazy! Using various apps to enable followers to print, tag, search, download, email, archive your content and more. Here is a great list of useful apps from Hongkait.com that’s doing the rounds.

7. Don’t forget to use Instagram’s own resources help.instagram.com; they are actually really useful at directing you to integrate your Instagram account with other social media services.

8. Instagram also has a nifty blog for business and it will really help with your efforts.

9. Use hashtags # that you use on your other social accounts and/or common trending hashtags to optimise your content.

10. Follow other brands like yours, leverage off the exposure of larger brands to build your own cult following as a niche, cool player in the same space.

And if all that fails, here’s how to be an Instagram Sensation – or not!

Share your tips here.

Fi Bendall is the managing director of Bendalls Group, a team of highly trained digital specialists, i-media subject matter experts and developers.