Instagram is an uncrowned king of connecting more than 1.2 billion audiences– as it is the best photo-sharing application globally. With more than a billion active monthly users, Instagram has put forward a solid reason for its growing popularity.

And now, when we already know the statistics of its audience and usage, it is pretty safe to say that using a business account is truly an intelligent approach. The platform’s latest features are super accessible and can help you grow your business like never before. That is why I have put together a complete guide on how to use Instagram for business. So, let’s dig in without any further ado.

How to Use Instagram for Business: 10 Steps

Instagram’s immense rise and popularity among Gen Z has made the platform pretty note-worthy. The platform heavily emphasizes photos, reels, IGTVs, and stories. And this is why businesses nowadays need to work on the marketing strategy revolving around Instagram’s trends.

Service-based brands and B2B businesses can benefit from this platform by creating marketing campaigns and running them timely. They can optimize the profile, create stellar content, and distribute it across the platform. As long as you follow this guide, you can grow your audience on the platform and engage with your followers. Check out the top 7 Instagram business categories below with their massive hits in the industry.

The above-posted infographic shows how these business categories have been performing on Instagram and how their sales shoot in the meanwhile. Your business can also make headlines the same way if you follow this guide step-by-step. So, let’s go ahead.

1. Create an Instagram Business Profile

   Instagram accounts are divided into three categories;

   • Personal (private) account
   • Creator account
   • Business account

   Creator and business accounts are the types of professional accounts offered by the platform.

   Influencers, bloggers, content creators, and social media managers can use these accounts to set up a business profile. To set up a business account on Instagram, you need to switch from your personal profile to Instagram for business, and here is how to do it.

   • Go to your profile and tap Menu in the top right-hand corner.
   • Tap Settings> Account> Switch to a professional account.
   • Tap Continue.
   • Select a category for your business and tap Done.
   • Tap OK to confirm> Tap Business> Next.
   • Add contact details and tap Next.
   • Tap X in the top-right corner to return to your profile.

   By creating an Instagram business profile, you will get access to some super-helpful features like;

   • Account insights and analytics.
   • Instagram advertising.
   • Ability to connect with a scheduling tool.
   • Access to branded content tools and sponsored posts.
   • Instagram shopping.

   Each feature can help your brand get the most out of its presence on Instagram.

2. Optimize Your Instagram Business Profile

   Professional accounts offer the users more sections in their profile than personal ones. You can provide your users with plenty of information and guide them using Instagram for business. It will help the potential followers to get an idea of your brand and why they should follow you. You can optimize your profile by using these fields.

   • Profile photo: The best idea is to use your company logo as your profile photo so people can quickly identify your brand.
   • Name: Keep your brand name on the business page so it can be identical to all the social media platforms.
   • Username: This should also be the brand name. Also, note username cannot have any spaces.
   • Pronouns: They are included on every profile, but you can hide this from your followers.
   • Website: This is the only clickable URL on the Instagram page. You can use your business website here or add a link to the latest promotional page.
   • Bio: Instagram bio is a super exciting and fun element of your profile. It captures visitors’ attention and gives them an idea of your business. You can easily describe your brand or excite your product by using Instagram bio for business.
   • Page: An option is to connect your Instagram profile to your Facebook Business Page and Twitter profile.
   • Category: Select the category that best describes your brand, industry, and products.
   • Contact options: Link all possible ways for customers to contact you. You can add email and phone.
   • Action buttons: Add a call to action button on your Instagram profile like book now, try out, get offers, etc.
   • Instagram story highlights: You can add story highlights to your profile and categorize them on the basis of the product and content your brand creates.

   Apart from these pointers, you can optimize your profile with keywords and hashtags. Use the keywords in your description while writing the bio and proper hashtags in your posts. This way, your account’s reach would also boost, and the audience will get to know about your brand. Here is an example of a fully optimized Social Champ’s Instagram account.

   

3. Develop a Strong Instagram Marketing Strategy

   A marketing campaign you have been running on Facebook may not work on Instagram because their algorithms and audiences differ. At this point, you need to figure out your end goal and what your brand needs from the platform. Now, this could be brand awareness, increased traffic, or more customers; in short, it could be anything!

   Since Instagram is a visual platform, your marketing strategy must involve finding and creating aesthetically pleasing content. This could be an infographic, carousel, banner, announcement offer, discounted package, or even a quote or meme that goes with your brand. You can go with the brand colors and decide on your typography. This way, you can craft a robust Instagram marketing strategy by focusing entirely on your content type and make the most of Instagram for business.

   Social Champ can help you here to run effective and result-driven marketing campaigns. You can run them by connecting your Instagram profile for automation. You can repurpose the content via our recycle feature, and with the hashtag manager, you can use different hashtag sets for your marketing campaigns. Amazing right? Check the example of Starbucks below; their platform marketing is supreme.

   

4. Learn About Your Target Audience

   Since the competition on the platform is super high, you need to create extremely engaging content in which your target audience will be interested. But to do that, you first need to define that target audience. For this purpose, you can look to your existing customer persona and then research on Instagram to find profiles that align with it.

   This way, you would be able to categorize your audience and could learn about their choice. To keep your strategy right on track, make sure to keep following your audience and analyze the content they share. It will give you an insight into what your customers want from you. Also, pay attention to which of your posts and stories are getting the most traffic so you can start creating more content similar to them.

   Check Instagram’s most followed brand, among which Nike takes the first spot with more than 235 million followers, and Starbucks follows up with the second place. These brands learned about their audience, posted entertaining stories, and gave them unique products. In return, the audience now follows these brands for future purchases.

   

5. Set Your Business Objectives & KPIs

   Your Instagram for business strategy must be super strong to help you achieve what you want from the platform. And for this purpose, you need to set some business objectives and KPIs. Identify your goals, and then start crafting the framework that could help you accomplish them without missing any proper detail. I will always recommend applying the SMART framework, so your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

   For instance, you have launched an e-commerce store on Instagram. Now, your primary goal from the platform would be to drive more and more sales. Right? That’s where you need to set all your objectives effectively so they are achievable and could bring profit. Here, you can leverage influencer marketing and pitch micro-influencers on the platform. You can send them your products and ask them to promote your business. Once your mark is set, you can shoot for more significant objectives. I am blown away by the case study of Baskin-Robbins and how perfectly they crafted their marketing goals and missions!

   

6. Post-High-Quality Instagram Content

   Now let’s just briefly talk about just content. Instagram is my personal favorite, and seriously, I find this platform super helpful. In terms of content, shopping, products, connections, and community, Instagram has proven to be one of the most valuable platforms. Use it for marketing, or either way, go with content creation – Instagram has been a place with various colors and vibes, isn’t it?

   And when the entire platform is super diverse, why should your content be the same? Instagram provides plenty of opportunities to content creators with its multiple features like branded content tools and sponsorship. Using different growth tips, you can take advantage of Instagram for business.

   Check out the profile of Kylie Cosmetics on Instagram; she is super active on social media and posts content that her audience loves to see. Her followers are immediately directed to her business profile, where her team posts aesthetic product pictures and visuals over which many of us usually drool!

   And that’s how her content marketing on this platform is undoubtedly a big win!

   

   Try out different Instagram tools to create aesthetic content and reels. Dig in deep into the hashtags and go for the promotion. Use the right keywords and phrases to rank better on Instagram’s search bar. And lastly, create hooking content!

   Yes, that’s the key. Stick with your brand niche and post relevant content to your industry. This way, you will attract the audience’s attention and probably get more likes, shares, and followers. Here are some tools to help you create fantastic content on Instagram.

   • Canva
   • Visme
   • Snapseed
   • InShot

   All of these tools are super easy to use. You can create posts, resize pictures, add filters, make videos, transition, and more!

   Once you get hold of Instagram tools, the sky’s the limit!

7. Track Your Performance & Metrics

   Just posting content on Instagram and not tracking the performance? Probably, you are missing out on a massive chunk of your business marketing strategy. At least 90% of Instagram users at least follow one business on the platform. So, seize the opportunity by putting forward fantastic content, you can make them your potential buyers. So why not make the most of this golden opportunity?

   While using a professional business account, one has the entire hold of tracking the insights and performance of content. You can quickly check Instagram analytics of your published posts and look for the reach of your content. Take advantage of this data and view how the audience perceived your content. Here, you can take the help of Social Champ’s comprehensive Instagram analytics dashboard to get insights into your performance.

   Monitor Your Instagram Performance On the Go!

   Keep an eye on your published Instagram content by downloading the application and tracking them effectively!

   Get Started FREE
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   Why Use Social Champ to Track Instagram Analytics

   

   

   I always recommend using Social Champ to track analytics specially when it comes to Instagram for business. The powerful tool helps you connect multiple social media platforms in a super affordable pricing package. Along with their pricing plans, a freemium plan is also available where you can add up to 3 social profiles and use all the features for absolutely free. You can automate your social media scheduling and posting from a single dashboard and monitor their performance.

   You can connect your Instagram profile and track your published posts in the future. This way, you would be able to keep an eye on your published content and can check it for engagement, reach, likes, comments, and share. To learn more about the platform’s metrics, you can review our guide about Instagram Metrics here.

8. Stick to a Content Calendar & Publishing Schedule

   Using Instagram for business is undoubtedly a tiring and tedious job. No one is always that free to post the content at the eleventh hour, and that’s fine. For this purpose, I believe one should have an automation tool to schedule and publish the content on time. Social Champ offers a compelling social media content calendar where you can organize all your activities and go ahead with the scheduling option for up to 3 years!

   To keep your audience hooked with your brand posts, you must stick with your content calendar and ensure to post something on your profile. And no one can do this job better than an automation tool. For each day, you can schedule some informative carousel, or a super fun work-related meme, so that your audience could notice your presence. Be careful about your postings and don’t miss any important dates.

   Trust me, once your content is scheduled for a month, you can pay attention to other important tasks without any trouble. Look at Social Champ’s wall, it is completely organized with pinned posts, and all important dates are covered.

9. Engage With Followers & Grow Your Audience

   Another component you should take care of while using Instagram for business is engaging with followers. Your audience is the only key to success; your account will never grow without their support. Make sure your business customer support is super cooperative with the visitor or customer asking about your business in direct messages and comments. Ask the representatives to be supportive and clear about the brand so the person’s query is cleared.

   Always remember, a happy customer will tell about you to his friends, but an unsatisfied one will explain it on social media – and it may ruin your reputation. None of the brands would like to face it. So, to avoid this social media heat, you can become super friendly and cooperative with your customers and let them feel heard.

   Make sure to reply to all the comments and DMs within 24 hours. Ask for your customer’s/visitors feedback without annoying them. And to deal with this situation, Social Champ offers a powerful Social Inbox. With this maintained inbox, you can manage to respond to your customers within time and without messing up anything else. So why don’t you try out Social Champ today?

10. Promote Your Business & Collaborate for Sponsorships

    Instagram is huge, and definitely, there’s no denial. But how will a business stand out among 200 million brands that are already on the platform? The answer is to promote, promote, and promote – and not only on Instagram but also on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. After Instagram, I guess Facebook would be the best choice. Also, you can connect both accounts so that it would work for two different audiences’ demographics. Always remember, it’s better to market on multiple platforms rather than sticking to one, because you never know from where your audience will slide in!

    Apart from marketing on multiple channels, I would suggest you go for collaborations and sponsorships. You can try out collaborating with numerous micro influencers or micro brands who have developed a bit of a following. This way, you can also promote your products to the audience. Taking the help of influencers is also a great way to get started with brand building and follower development on the platform. Check the example of Cristiano Ronaldo’s paid partnership below with CLEAR.

    

Featured Article: 5 Tips To Boost Your Instagram Engagement In 2022

Using Instagram for Business – Is It Worth It?

The shortest answer to this question is Yes!

Using social media platforms for your business is always fruitful because almost more than half of the world uses social media. 1.2 billion people are using Instagram, and this colossal number depicts that you may reach a milestone, slowly and gradually!

Consistency is a big must, so don’t rush for the results. You can see multiple brands as an example; they all started slow, but with time, they developed a solid follower base, and now their success is convincing evidence!

What’s Your Take?

Instagram is growing rapidly, and without taking a break, that’s how your marketing for the business should be on the platform. This guide about Instagram for business can develop a significant following and boost your sales. Follow the points, and let me know if this guide helped you get started!

Ready to take the chance?🚀Good luck! 😄

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