How to Get Started and Use Instagram For Business Effectively

Instagram is more than cute photos and images of kittens. Instagram is perhaps the most popular social network at the moment, however, today we are not going to talk about Instagram as a personal social network, but about its Instagram tool for companies.

More than 200 million business accounts receive daily visits on Instagram, currently the social platform offers a multiplicity of functionalities designed exclusively for businesses that want to increase their online presence, which we will talk about later, for now we will only say that using Instagram for companies It is ideal for your business in this 2023.

Today we will talk about the following topics:

• Why your brand should use Instagram for Business
• How to open an Instagram business account
• How to create a strategy for my Instagram business account
• Recommendations for managing your Instagram account for companies

Why Your Brand Should Use Instagram For Business

Instagram accounts for companies offer advanced features designed to help businesses get to know their audience better, facilitate contact with the brand and sell their products by driving traffic directly to their website, here are 3 advantages that Instagram accounts offer you business Instagram accounts that you won’t find on a personal Instagram account.

• Statistics in real time
• Brand contact information
• Publication and sale of products

Statistics in Real Time

As a company you need to be aware of what is happening and how your audience is reacting to your content and the marketing actions that you are carrying out on Instagram. For this, the best way is to follow up on the statistics that only Instagram Business can offer you.

A personal Instagram account does not provide you with data beyond the likes and comments that your publications have, with Instagram for companies you will be able to know, among other indicators:

• The number of accounts you reached with your content
• Main cities, countries and age ranges that you reached with your publications, both followers and non-followers
• The type of content with the most reach, be it reels, posts, stories, videos and live videos, differentiated by reach to followers and non-followers
• Your top posts, stories, reels and live videos organized by those with the biggest reach
• Profile activity such as visits to your Instagram profile for companies such as clicks on the link that you have configured as a website
• Number of accounts that interacted with your content differentiated by publication formats

Brand Contact Information

Instagram business accounts give priority to your company’s contact details by displaying them in a contact tab (right next to the usual “Follow” and “Message” tabs) that doesn’t appear on personal profiles, in this tab, the phone number and contact email that the company has set up are displayed.

Instagram has understood that people want to establish meaningful relationships with brands and this starts by making it easy to make first contact with your business.

Publication and Sale of Products

As you may have already noticed, Instagram now has a small Shop tab in its lower menu bar, in this section, you will find products that may be interesting to buy, if you click on one of the products, you will be able to see commercial information such as:

• Product name
• Price of the product
• Button to see the product on the website that the brand has configured (thus allowing the purchase of the same)
• Product description as detailed as you like
• More details such as available sizes, brands, availability, etc.
• Information about shipping, returns and purchase cancellations
• Information about the brand that sells the product
• Button to see the entire store of the brand
• More products from the brand store

Namely, this functionality of posting their products and driving people to their website, can only be used by brands with Instagram business accounts set up.

Digital AD Campaigns

As you may have guessed, to create and manage digital ad campaigns on Instagram you need an Instagram business account. For this you must connect your Instagram account with a Facebook account .

Creating campaigns in Instagram Ads allows you to amplify the reach you have with your content, reach a target audience that is interested in your products or services and promote purchase actions, increase your number of followers more quickly and increase brand recognition, among other benefits.

How to Open an Instagram Business Account

Before you have a business Instagram account, you must have a personal account to later convert it to a business account. So, this is the step by step to create an Instagram account:

• Download the Instagram app
• Select the option “Create a new account”
• Enter your phone number or choose the email tab
• Instagram will send you a verification code to your phone or email, enter it and click next
• Add your name, define a password and your date of birth
• Click on register and that’s it, you already have an account

Next, you will have to choose a profile photo, follow the first accounts and voila, you already have a personal Instagram account. Now, this is the step by step to set up your Instagram business account:

• In the hamburger menu that you find in the upper right part, go to “Settings”, “Account”, Scroll to the end and click on “Switch to professional account”
• Instagram will tell you what are the benefits of switching to a professional account, basically you will be able to obtain information about your followers, reach more people through advertisements and obtain new contact options
• Select the category that best describes the sector of your company, you can choose whether or not to show that category publicly on your profile
• Instagram will ask you if you are a creator (person) or a company (great for business)
• Review and confirm your contact information, remember that this information will be public for your followers and clients, you can not use this contact information and continue with the creation of your business account
• Instagram will give you the option to share logins with account center
• Finally, you will have to configure 5 steps for your professional account on Instagram, these are: Complete your profile, get inspired, expand your audience, share content to see statistics and explore the tools and statistics

And voila, you already have a business account on Instagram with all the advantages that we have mentioned before.

How to Create a Strategy for my Instagram Business Account

Creating a strategy for your Instagram account for companies does not have to be a problem, we present you 5 steps to create yours easily, this so that you can start testing and learning about your audience as soon as possible.

• Define your goals
• Create your target audience
• Create a content calendar
• Create content for each stage of the Funnel
• Define indicators and metrics
• additional resources

Define Your Goals

What do you want to achieve in your Instagram account for companies? The obvious answer may seem like “I want more sales or more leads”, so how can you get there? For example, first building a solid community of followers, validating the purchase intention through the publication of your products in the Instagram store, creating digital ad campaigns, among other hypotheses. Define what you hope to achieve on the platform as a company. Everything else you want to achieve on Instagram for companies starts from this definition of objectives.

Create your Target Audience

Who or who do you hope to reach? What interests do these people have? What do you hope to find on Instagram? How can you get them to take buying actions? How are my competitors doing? These and many other questions must be answered to define your target audience. Targeting everyone in your marketing actions only shows that it is not clear to whom, your products or services, truly add value in solving their needs. One idea may be to create a Buyer Person from the information of your best current customers in other sales channels of your company.

Create a Content Calendar

Avoid going through the creative blank sheet syndrome, sit down with your team and plan what content you are going to publish for the next month (even 3 months) and what objectives each publication supports, in this way you can anticipate the resources you need to create Said content, such as photos, images, description texts, calls to action and even Landing Pages to convert your users, also schedule live broadcasts, contests, raffles and consider the special dates that there will be during that month that you are anticipating. , you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to sell more because you didn’t plan ahead.

Create Content for Each Stage of the Funnel

All the contents respond to an objective, to a specific audience, to a specific need and, additionally, to a stage of the funnel. Create content for your attraction, interaction and conversion stages. Define a balance for the management of these publications, you can start with 70%, 20% and 10% respectively. In this way, your content on Instagram will support your business objectives and you will be able to measure how functional they were and what lessons they left you to improve your next publications.

Define Indicators and Metrics

What is not measured can not be improved. In order to answer strategic business questions such as:

• What type of content works best for my business goals?
• What messages does my audience connect with the most?
• What actions generated more followers, interactions and sales?
• What impact did this campaign have?

Among others, you must be clear about the KPIs that you are going to measure and monitor them, always based on your actions and their impact on your business objectives. This will allow you to get to know your target audience better and better and how to reach them with better marketing and sales actions through your Instagram account for companies.

Additional recommendations for managing your Instagram account for companies

Although many of the features that we will mention below are not exclusive to Instagram accounts for companies, they will help you to be more strategic with the use of your account as a company, it is about becoming more effective by understanding what your business responds best to. audience and for this, you start by doing experiments like the ones we are going to present to you:

• Optimize your bio information
• Set up your profile properly
• Geolocation of your publications
• Use featured stories
• live streams

Optimize your Bio Information

Yes, it may seem like an obvious recommendation, but you might be surprised how many businesses underestimate the power of a good bio on your Instagram business account. Include in your bio who you help, what you help them with, and how you help them. This is not the time to prioritize the “I”. 

Set up your Profile Properly

Instagram is an application that is changing all the time. They add and omit new features that you may not know about and are missing out on, for that reason, set up your account by carefully reading each feature and use it strategically for your business account. Setting a link in your bio, for example, can help your users go to one of your Landing Pages more easily.

Create, Publish and Schedule Quality Content

Given that you will have planned the content that you will publish well in advance, and also anticipate the design and quality of your publications, this starts from the definition of your visual identity as a company, making your content represent a visual coherence from the colors of your brand to the messages you post. Try all the available formats and see what works best for you, be consistent in your posts to build brand recall. And not everything has to be manual, remember that you can rely on content programming tools on social networks to optimize the time spent on strategy and not so much on operations.

Hashtags and Geolocation of your Publications

If you are a local business targeting one or more specific geographic locations, set the location on your posts, this way Instagram will prioritize that post in the tag for that location, the algorithm sorts these posts into top (featured) or recent . This geolocation is an opportunity to reach more people interested in your products and services in the target locations of your Instagram business account.

The same for the use of Hashtags, remember that these are a way in which Instagram classifies the content on its platform, use them strategically in your publications. Use thematic hashtags, geolocation, trends, etc. Always be inspired by how your competition does it.

Use Featured Stories

As you know, Instagram stories only have a public duration of 24 hours, once that time has elapsed, you as the owner of the account can continue to see them in your stories archive but your followers cannot. However, Instagram offers a functionality so that you can leave your stories for as long as you want as featured stories, uses that you can give to featured stories:

• Promotions valid for a specific period
• Success stories of your clients
• Testimonials and reviews from your customers
• Answers to frequently asked questions from your potential clients
• Information about your featured products and services

Among other ideas, be creative, be inspired by how your competitors do it and do not miss this great opportunity that the featured stories offer you.

Live Streams

People love to interact with the brands we like, create live broadcasts to interact with your audience, some ideas that you can use are:

• product demo
• Interviews with industry experts
• questions and answers session
• Tell your audience more about the day to day of your company

Take advantage of these sessions to make yourself more real to your audience. Other ideas that you can give to your live broadcasts are offering promotions only for followers, running contests, challenges and challenges that you can announce in advance in your stories and carry out through a live broadcast, your followers will love it.