14 Advanced Instagram Strategies to Grow Your Small Business
When it comes to small businesses using social media to grow and drive sales, Instagram always tends to be the most misunderstood and least utilized. Not only do many small businesses go about using Instagram the wrong way, most simply choose to ignore it completely.
I feel like a big reason for this is that no one has really spelled out exactly how to use Instagram to drive sales and growth. And since we’re specifically interested in helping small businesses in New Jersey with their social media marketing, I figured I’d go and give you a cheat sheet on how to use Instagram to its fullest potential.
So enough with the flowery introduction. Let’s get into it!
1. Optimize your Instagram username with keywords
Take a look at the official Hershey’s Instagram account. You’ll see that in their username, they don’t just call themselves Hershey’s. They have their username optimized with the #1 keyword for their brand: chocolate.
This way, when anyone searches for the keyword “chocolate” on Instagram, Hershey’s profile will be among the top results.
If the #1 chocolate company in the world is optimizing their Instagram username with a keyword, you better believe you need to follow suit as well.
2. Use Emojis in your description
Strange as it may seem, Emojis are one of the most universally recognized forms of communicating in the world. They convey emotion and ideas and while you could theoretically write exclusively in Emojis and probably be understood by some people, they’re best used as a means of emphasizing certain words and phrases.
Because your Instagram description needs to be brief, you can use Emojis to draw attention to certain words or phrases you want people to pay particular attention too. Plus, the bright colors help to break up the monotony of black text on white background that takes up most of your profile’s header space.
3. Use the text above your bio link to push your offer or call-to-action
On your Instagram profile, you get the option of putting in your own link. A lot of people just put in their website name, but if you’re going to be pushing an offer or promotion – think ALL GIFT CARDS 25% OFF! – make sure you take the time to actually outline what exactly people are going to get when they click your bio link.
4. Publish 3-4 times every day
A lot of small businesses who start out on Instagram say, “Okay we’re going to post once a week.” If they’re feeling especially ambitious they’ll say, “We’re going to post once a day!”
The truth of the matter is that social media takes place in real time. That means you’re not going to be able to reach everyone with your posts, especially if you’re only posting once a day or once a week. While it would be nice if we could “set it and forget it” – post and be assured that all our followers see it, that’s just not how Instagram’s algorithm works anymore.
When you publish 3-4 Instagram posts a day, that gives you more opportunities to reach your followers with your content. I’ve also found that the more you publish on Instagram. the more engagement you get, so it’s a win-win. But don’t start posting crap just to reach that 3-4 post per day threshold. Your content has to be consistently good or you’re going to lose your audience.
5. Max out your hashtags and put them in the first comment
There’s a lot of debate about hashtags and people hem and haw about whether or not it looks spammy to use the maximum number of hashtags allowed (which is 30, in case you’re wondering). The truth is, when you use the maximum number of hashtags and you’re using good hashtags, you’re going to see a lot of success in reaching more people.
I should clarify that by “good” hashtags, I mean hashtags that don’t have over a million posts or less than 1,000. Good hashtags fall somewhere in the middle (under 500,000 posts). And when you post using good hashtags, you’re going to remain in the “top posts” section of Instagram’s explore page and connect with more people.
Now, most people throw their hashtag in the caption of their post which looks awful and comes across as spammy. You want to post your photo with a good caption and then leave a comment on that post right away with your hashtags. This hides those hashtags from view unless someone clicks “view comments” on each post.
6. Post videos as much as possible
Use videos. Lots of videos!
I’m blown away at how sparse video content is on Instagram. And that’s even after the recent uptick in video content across social media as a whole. There’s still a lack of video on Instagram, so incorporating it into your feed will help you stick out among the noise.
The appeal of video in an Instagram feed is that they move (duh). But that movement is appealing to our brains, especially when we’re shown still image after still image.
Instagram limits video to 60 seconds, so you want to keep it under a minute if possible. I recommend using Boomerang, which loops your video and brings it back to the beginning by reversing it. There are plenty of other great video apps you can use to spice up your Instagram feed as well.
7. Put text ON your videos
I see so many brands and businesses forgo this extra step when they post videos. Instead, they just put up their videos with no text and hope for the best. But going that extra step makes all the difference in the world.
Including text titles and subtitles on your videos helps to inform your followers what the video they’re seeing is about. Why do you need to do this? Because almost everyone has their sound muted by default. You only have a split second to capture someone’s attention, so you need to give people a reason to watch your video!
When it comes to video editing, I personally use Adobe Premier which is admittedly a higher-end tool in both price and learning how to use it. There are unfortunately no decent mobile apps that allow you to add text to video just yet, but I’m sure one is bound to make its way to the app store.
8. Use the multiple image upload feature
The general rule when selling products, services, or even a lifestyle is that you want to show as many photos of your product as possible. Instagram’s relatively new multiple image upload feature is perfect for this because now you can show up to 10 images within a single post.
I really believe you should be using new features as much as possible, whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, or whatever social media platform you’re using. These companies put a lot of money into developing these features and therefore push the hell out of them once they go live. That means if you’re one of the first accounts to use these new features on a regular and consistent basis, you’re going to be rewarded by the latest algorithm updates.
Additionally, adopting new features as fast as possible signals to your followers that you’re cool and understand the platform.
9. Update your Instagram story 5-10 times a day
As you know, Instagram stories are just like Snapchat, but better. I recommend small businesses use their Instagram story between 5-10 times a day. The reason for that is you want to always be visible in the stream of what’s been published to Instagram stories recently. If you only post a couple times a day, you’re missing a huge chunk of the day where people are checking the app.
Like I said earlier, people aren’t always going to be able to consume everything you post. But you can hack that, in a way, by posting to your Instagram story every couple hours just to stay in front of people’s eyes.
10. Add existing content to your Instagram story
You don’t have to be Instagramming yourself in order to put content into Instagram stories. You can produce content outside of Instagram and upload it. This is a huge plus because it means you can take all the videos, photos, and whatever else you’ve already made for your brand, and upload it right to your Instagram story. It’s a great way to repurpose your content in a new channel to reach brand new people.
In addition to using existing content in your Instagram story, you can also make two version of each Instagram post – one for your Instagram feed and one for your Instagram story. Be sure to size your regular feed image at 1080×1080 px and your Instagram post image at 1080px by 1920 px.
11. Use the @ mention feature in your Instagram story
If you don’t know this, it’s a great way to get exposure. You simply go to add text on your Instagram story and instead of writing a message or caption, you use the @ mention symbol and type out someone’s Instagram username. This notifies them that you’ve mentioned them which will increase engagements.
This is great for reaching out to influencers, giving shoutouts to people in your space, or just tagging someone you want to see your Instagram story. You can add between 10-12 people in a single Instagram story post.
Another cool feature about using the @ mention is you can add text on your story that says “Click link in bio” and the @ mention yourself. This provides a large, clickable link that takes people to your bio and hopefully they’ll click your link if you have a good call to action.
12. Shoutout to your followers in your Instagram story
One of the things that a lot of small businesses either forget or don’t understand at all is that social media is all about community. If you have fans and followers commenting and messaging you or liking your Instagram posts, why not give them a shoutout? Say, “Thank you” in your @ mentions and they’ll appreciate it big time.
It takes no time at all and doing it truly creates a sense of community rather than you just being a faceless, soulless business. In fact, you can just take a black background and throw text on it saysing “Thank you @username for being awesome!”
13. Add your own username in the caption of your posts
Similar to @ mentioning yourself in your Instagram story, you can also use this tactic in your Instagram posts. If you @ mention yourself in the caption of your Instagram post, that means people can click your name and it’ll take them right to your Instagram profile where they can click the link in your bio that hopefully takes them to a sales page or optimized landing page.
Why this is important is because people don’t normally see the content you post by going directly to your profile. They see it in their Instagram feed. So they have to either click on your avatar to go to your profile or click your username. But when you @ mention yourself in the caption of your photo, you’re giving them yet another way to visit your feed and be dazzled by your call to action and bio link.
14. Pay for influencer shoutouts
The secret to making this work is finding key influencers in your space and saying, “Hey! I’ll give you $15 if you shout me out.” You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but you do need to monitor your success rate when utilizing paid influencer shoutouts.
There’s a lot of backlash against this tactic which has more to do with the influencer market being flooded with fake influencers than it does with the tactic itself not being effective. It’s extremely effective, but you need to do your homework on who you reach out to and how you go about organizing the shoutouts.
For instance, paying someone for a single shoutout is going to be completely worthless. Do not do this. Instead, ask someone to should you our 4-5 times over the course of two weeks or a month. You want to have your business or brand mentioned several times, as naturally as possible, in the influencers feed and Instagram story so that people start to recognize you.
