Instagram Tips and Tricks for any Business (2023)

We're gonna get you some big clout on ig. I'm talking J Biebs, Apple, Will Smith level big. Let's get food, fashion, flowers. Some businesses are just made to market on Instagram, but almost any business can use IG as part of its inbound marketing strategy. What's up? I'm Jamal from HubSpot. I'm gonna show you how any company can maintain a strong presence on Instagram and even without a dedicated marketing team to handle it. First thing to consider, 83% of users use Instagram to search up new products or services, and 81% use it to look into things that they're already looking for. Now, to put that into perspective, that's literally 800 million people of Instagram's total user base. That is literally. That's a lot. I will not scoff at that number. You know what I'm saying? That's big. But I get it. You and your team have a lot to focus on. And it's unclear how Instagram is going to fit into the matrix of running your business. That's why I want to give you a couple tips on how to maximize your Instagram with the least amount of time and effort. The first thing you need to do is get your account set up. Now, the most important thing is picking a username that's going to obviously represent your business. The challenging part is that 75% of companies already use Instagram, which means that it might be a little bit hard to find a username for your business. But that's okay, because in addition to your business name, you can include something that kind of is an identifier for it. And after you've created your account, it's time to set up your profile. And most businesses use either their logo or some variation of that that will fit within the small round Instagram profile picture format. Just boop right here, something like that. Now if that's not possible, consider using an easy to recognize image of your product or service. Next, you'll want to write a description that uses keywords as well as maybe even a few hashtags to get people to find you even more easily. Now, you only have 150 characters to work with, so it's good to write that ahead of time, much unlike how I did my work in college, which was always the night before. Now, your profile is the only place that you're going to be able to put a clickable link. And a lot of businesses use something like linktree or somewhere that can aggregate a bunch of different links into a centralized page. Now we're almost done. Go to Settings account, scroll all the way to the bottom and, and make sure that you switch your account to a professional account. Having a professional account lets you have access to Insights, which lets you see how people are interacting with your posts and their level of engagement. It also gives you access to the ability to use Reach, which you can use for your promotional content. And finally, it allows you to add contact buttons to your profile, which people can use to contact you directly. Now, until recently, Instagram called these business accounts, and then they also had creator pages for a while until they were like, forget all that noise, we're just gonna marry the two, make them kiss just like that. And now it's just professional accounts. So that's what you'll be working with. Now, like all tech companies, Instagram's always messing around with their design, layout and stuff. And so what I've been describing may be slightly different, but the general principles hold the same and nice, you're done, you did it. But now the part that we've all been dreading, and I didn't want to bring you to this point, but you know what? We're here. What are you gonna post? Right. I feel like we've been avoiding it. We have the account now, what we need, content. Well, there are a couple of different things that you can do now. If you sell a physical product, you obviously want to have a lot of different photos of it, and that's something that you can show off on your Instagram. And product photography actually isn't too challenging these days because you can shoot stuff just on your smartphone, for example, or you can hire a local photographer and, you know, they'll, I'm sure, be very glad to have work now of all times. Just be sure to pay them because they deserve that money. Now, there are three different kinds of photography that you can post on Instagram. Product, product photos, lifestyle photos, and flat lays. And you'll have to experiment with what makes the most sense for your given brand. Product photos are just that, photos of your product. And you'll want to get creative here, right? Because I think we've all seen just, you know, certain product photos that look a certain way. So if you have a way to kind of differentiate yourself from other people in your market, that's great. Be sure to flex your creativity here. Maybe try different angles, different lighting, you know, maybe throw it. Lifestyle photos show people using your product, and this is a great way to kind of depict your ideal customer and what they might look like or what they might be doing with your product. Just remember to be thoughtful and diverse when selecting these models. And keep in mind you can still shoot lifestyle photography without people involved. Just try your best to avoid stuff that looks like stock photography. And there are free services out there that are really high quality that actually don't look like stock photos, like Unsplash or Pexel, for example. Finally, flat lay photos. They're a kind of still life photography that show off your product and related items in this very unique looking flat lay style. But what if you don't sell a product? What if you offer a service? Well, there are still a lot of different ways to go about this. Again, lifestyle photos are a good way of kind of implying what you do through your service. A life coach can post pictures of happy people. A financial service advisor maybe can post people like Gucci bags. I don't know. Whatever, whatever money gets you these days. Service businesses can also post text images with useful or inspiring information. Ask yourself, are there things about your brand or business that you repeatedly tell to colleagues or customers? Are these important things for the world to know? Whatever your business is, you know a lot about it. And so finding a way to put that into an Instagrammable digestible format is going to be the key to your success on the platform. You might even consider offering simple do it yourself style content. This will pay off when they remember your expertise and they hire you for the bigger jobs. Of course, planning and creating social media content in this way does take time. And the biggest thing is honestly, consistency. You don't need to post every day, but having a regular cadence of content is really important. Lots of brands start off really strong on the platform and then kind of fall off the face of the earth. And keeping that momentum is, well, key to keeping momentum and building momentum on the platform, gaining followers and sustaining engagement. So by the time you've been doing it to the point where you're absolutely sick of it, that's probably the point at which you're going to see the dividends, right? So you'll want to really just keep up with it. One way to keep up momentum is to come up with a simple theme or concept that is easily repeatable. So you don't have to start from absolute zero whenever you're trying to post on Instagram. Employee of the month, fact of the day, I don't know, like favorite HubSpot YouTube video presenter guy. I don't know. Just off the top of my head, I'm making it up. You know what I'm saying we've seen electricians take before and after photos and that creates endlessly interesting content that isn't super hard to do for them. So think about stuff like that. And you can also use HubSpot's free Instagram design templates, which will make sure that you're coming out with good looking, polished content, even if you're not a graphic designer. You can check that out in the link in the description below. I literally put it there personally for you. This is my gift to you. Happy Holidays. A good rule of thumb is about 60% original content, 30% shared posts, and 10% promotional posts. Now, about shared posts, Instagram doesn't have a way for you to directly reshare someone's content to your friends feed. But if you just go to the App Store on whatever platform you have and just look up Regram or Repost Instagram or Reshare Instagram, any of those variations of words, you'll find an app that lets you do that. Then start following brands, businesses, people who create content that your audience will likely also enjoy and start sharing it. And one more thing about sharing, even though Instagram doesn't let you post directly to your feed, it does let you repost other people's content to your Instagram story. Aha. Loophole. What are Instagram stories? Well, they're basically Snapchat stories, and that means that after 24 hours, that post is going to disappear. Keep in mind, this is one of Instagram's most popular and engaging features, and we're going to do a whole lesson on Instagram stories a little bit later on. But suffice to say, this is something that you should be using. So now that you know what you're going to post on Instagram, it's good to start thinking about how you're going to do that. How are you gonna do that? First things first. Start by setting goals that you can control. Now, you're not gonna be able to control whether or not people like or follow you, but you can control how frequently you post, how engaging in and of itself the content is. So think about those kinds of variables when you're creating your content. And by the way, engaging with other content on the platform is almost as important as posting your own stuff. Instagram is a social media platform, so be social. Follow brands and businesses you admire. Use hashtags to find your ideal customers. Like posts, leave comments, maybe even slide into someone's DMs. And I'm not going to say that you should slide into someone's DMs necessarily, but just know that mine are open and I will be very disappointed if I do not hear from you. Commit to doing these things even just for a few minutes every day, even if you don't post every day. And since we're talking about time management, consider signing up for a social media management platform that lets you schedule out your content. Big platforms like hootsuite and Buffer can control all your social media platforms while also offering you really interesting analytics and also other enterprise grade features for a fee. Not sponsored Sponsor us please. But if you want to keep things simple, apps like AppFi will let you schedule out your content and also see what is the best time to post and even see what your grid would look like with that upcoming content. Pretty nifty. This is really important if your brand has a consistent look that it's trying to convey across posts. And I will say this is very important. And the more consistent your feed looks, the more engaged people will be with your content. Consider using one set of filters or one color palette and this will save you time when you're creating content because you know exactly what your content ought to look like. And finally, take some time every week or month to check your Instagram insights. This will give you an idea of what's working and what's not, what you should do more of and maybe what you should try to iterate on. What you don't want to do is drive yourself crazy chasing metrics. And more than that, you never ever, ever, no matter how telling it is, no matter what hits your spam folder, never buy likes or followers because they're not organic. They're not going to engage with your content. So yeah, social media management is a marathon, not a sprint. We're talking not Usain Bolt, but like whoever runs for more time than Usain Bolt. That's what we're looking for. So manage your efforts accordingly and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Big platforms like hootsuite and Hoot Hoot. Words are hard. Words are hard.