How can small businesses use Instagram effectively?

Instagram, without a doubt, is the most popular social media platform today. With Instagram, businesses can advertise and promote themselves, publish announcements, expand their target audiences, and increase the value of their brands. As an application used by billions of people in almost all countries of the world, Instagram is very important for businesses.

The intensive use of Instagram by businesses of all sizes has increased the competition on this platform. As a result, using Instagram with the right techniques is becoming more and more important. Businesses that use Instagram effectively enjoy more interaction than their competitors, and this is reflected in their sales figures. That makes it even more important for small businesses to use Instagram more effectively and purposefully. Let’s take a closer look at what the effective use of Instagram entails for small businesses.

Although it may seem like a simple detail, the bios of small businesses are very important in terms of being the first point of contact with Instagram users. Here you can give general information about your business and talk about your goals. You can also provide your business name, address, telephone, other contact information, and your website, if any. However, don’t let your bio get too long and make sure you only share the most necessary information; try to write only what Instagram users want to see here in the first step.

Post sharing is one of the most important applications in the use of Instagram. People and businesses can reach, influence, and attract others with the posts that they share. Small businesses should post regularly after starting to use Instagram with a business account. However, the timing is very important here. Posting too often or rarely posting will reduce the interest in your business.

Stories are another indispensable application of Instagram. Stories are used to share images, articles, or videos, which are published for 24 hours; they are located at the top of the Instagram home page and are also displayed with your profile photo. After your followers see this, they can click on your profile photo to see what you have shared as a story. Once again, you can use this tool to share content that your followers are interested in or to direct them to new posts that you have shared. This will help your business account receive more traffic.

Today, almost all businesses use Instagram, one of the most popular and powerful tools among digital marketing applications. For this reason, you need to create differences in your overall usage of Instagram to be better than your competitors on this platform. You should constantly analyze your competitors: review their profiles, bios, posts, stories, and comments regularly. By doing what they don’t do or can’t do, and fixing what they’re doing wrong or are missing, you will be using Instagram more effectively.

DMs, or “direct messages,” are messages that Instagram users send to each other, which arrive directly in the recipient’s inbox. Even if you are using a business account, you shouldn’t hesitate to exchange DMs with your followers. You should make it a rule to reply to their messages as quickly as possible. Furthermore, you can communicate faster and more sincerely by sending your followers DMs. DMs are one of the most effective ways to contact users who have made negative comments on your posts and keep a close eye on the issue. In addition, using DMs to send promotions, coupons, or passwords that offer discount opportunities to your followers will strengthen the image of your business.

All customers want to feel that the businesses they patronize care about them, and this is precisely the case on Instagram. People who have purchased a product or service from your business will want to comment on the posts you share with positive or negative input about it, and they will want to receive a response in return. Therefore, if you want to strengthen your bond with your customers, you should reserve special time for this if necessary, and you should reply to all comments, or at least the ones that you consider important.

Even though you have a business account on Instagram and the first priorities for that account are your commercial goals, sharing posts only to make sales will actually affect your business profile negatively. When we look at world-famous big brands today, we can see that they successfully take this into account.

They want their brands to be perceived as if they are people with minds and thoughts, not mere commercial items. They know that they will affect people more this way. You should plan the posts that you will share from your business account with this in mind. Make sure that only a certain part of your total posts are shared with sales directly in mind; share the rest of your posts as if they are being published from a personal account.