A young man looking up at a cloud of Instagram pictures.

How to Market Your Business on Instagram

Posted by Rudy Labordus in Marketing Tools Leave a Comment

Check Out If Instagram is a Good Fit for your Business

If you know any teenagers, or even anyone under thirty, you know that Instagram has taken over the world. Not only that, but Facebook recently recognized this as well, and acquired the company. And even though this may seem like a ripe opportunity for marketers, (it is) there are a few major differences you need to be aware of before attempting to market on Instagram.

First begin with digesting two important facts: Instagram's younger audience profile and your own market. The demographic facing you when marketing with it is decidedly younger, and might not be a good fit for your business if your target market is over 30. Plain and simple. If you are marketing to the 15-28 group you're golden — if the products you market are found in images on Instagram. If you're selling gear for an SLR camera, you may have to get a bit creative to find any traction there.

Ways to effectively market on Instagram

Check out these 5 tips for marketing your business on Instagram.

  1. Use Video – This newish feature in Instagram is similar to Vine, but their videos are a monstrous 15 seconds as opposed to 6. Significantly more canvas to paint on.
  2. Use lots of hashtags – While engagement drops significantly on Twitter if you use more than 2 hashtags, the opposite appears to be the norm for Instagram. Load them up!
  3. Don't post incessantly – Unlike many other social networks less is often more here. You don't want to fill up your follower's feeds and be less special. Shoot for a few times a week and post great content.
  4. Optimize your Profile – Like other social networks, you'll want to make sure your business profile is complete and utterly devoted to finding you and doing business with you.
  5. Follow other brands – Finding and following related brands on Instagram is very important. Fortunately there are some good tools that help with this, like Statigram.

Instagram is a social media monster with a few specific caveats. Follow these and you may find a rabid audience eager to do business with you.

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