Unlock the secrets, achieve success: 10 Instagram tips to grow your business in 2024
Just having a business account on Instagram isn’t enough to achieve greater success than your competitors; most businesses have an Instagram account. It’s how you use your account that helps you achieve paid social success.
Instagram has over 2 billion monthly active users; understanding the best ways you can use your Instagram account is essential in increasing your reach and ultimately generating more sales.
Over 70% of online shoppers are using Instagram to make their next purchase; the demand for businesses to be on Instagram is high. As demand increases the market gets crowded so let’s make sure you stand out.
We have outlined 10 simple tips and tricks that will give your business a competitive advantage on Instagram. Let’s get going.
10 Instagram tips and tricks to grow your business
1. Optimise your Instagram bio
Your Instagram bio is a short (150-character limit or less) description of your business / your Instagram page. It is the first part of your profile your audience will see. It takes users 50 milliseconds to form an impression online, so you need to make sure you make a good first impression with your bio.
A top-class Instagram bio should:
- Be informative
- Be easy to read
- Show off your personality
- Give your audience a clear call to action.
Tagging another relevant Instagram account in your bio is a great way to direct users to profiles associated with your business. This could be a partner business or another one of your profiles. Doing this not only shows your audience you are a credible, trustworthy brand but also helps you direct traffic towards the profiles you are associated with.
Ultimately, this improves the user experience and will allow users to explore your brand in more detail.
2. Make the most of Instagram broadcast channels
In 2023, Instagram introduced a new business tool called broadcast channels. This feature allows one to many messaging for businesses and verified accounts. Broadcast channels are good for engaging directly with your audience as well as building community and trust.
They are also a great way to reward loyal customers by giving them exclusive offers and behind-the-scenes content. You can also use them to maintain engagement and build brand awareness.
With all those benefits, what’s not to love?
3. Create a monthly content calendar
With any successful paid social media strategy, consistency is key. Posting whenever you want is never going to drive results.
Managing the creation of great content, engaging your audience, analysing data (and also having time for other work priorities and your daily life) can seem almost impossible; that is why a content strategy is a life-saver.
Content strategies help you maintain a balance with posting frequency, content types and themes. Planning will also help you align content with events or announcements.
Having a scheduling tool is something you should consider. It can help you streamline the content management process and save you time in the long run. Some also provide you with analytics that you can use to monitor your Instagram success.
Top tip: make sure you constantly monitor your data and make changes to your content strategy where needed. If content is not performing well, look at why that may be and make changes accordingly. Be flexible, learn and adapt!
4. Activate Instagram shopping
Do you want to generate sales? Instagram allows you to use its platform as an online shop, where users can browse your products and purchase directly from your page. This feature is known as Instagram shopping.
With Instagram shopping, you can tag products in your posts and watch your conversions grow!
You must advertise your products with eye-catching, visually appealing images; 75% of e-commerce shoppers say product photos influence their buying decisions. Enabling the Instagram shopping feature isn’t enough, your content needs to be high-quality for this feature to be effective for you.
5. Sneak hashtags into your stories
When advertising on Instagram stories you need to make sure your content is aesthetically pleasing. Stories are a great way to increase reach as they will automatically play in between user stories and blend in with user-generated content.
Because stories come and go so quickly (story length max is 15 seconds), you need to make sure your story is clear and engaging. One way to do this is to remove any extra content that doesn’t appeal to your target audience e.g. hashtags.
You might be thinking ‘But I thought hashtags were good on Instagram?’ and you are right. They are. Hashtags increase reach for a business but for a user, they aren’t the most interesting thing to look at. You should use hashtags in your ads but it’s best if users can’t see them; Instagram stories let you do this.
When creating stories, you can type out a hashtag and either shrink it down till it is no longer visible or slide it out of the frame (trust us, it is still there).
Doing this will increase the reach of your story while making sure the content is visually pleasing to the user. Win-win.
6. Monitor the order of your Instagram highlights
Instagram highlights are a brilliant way to organise and save your previous stories, so your audience can still view them. Every time you add a new story to a ‘highlight’, that particular ‘highlight’ will move up the ranks and become to first ‘highlight’ on your profile.
For example, Adidas has used Instagram highlights, not only to organise stories but to also promote their new campaign ‘You Got This’.
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If they were to add a story to the highlight labelled ‘this’, that highlight would then move to the front of the profile, so it would read ‘this you got’ – doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Being aware of this is crucial if you choose to use Instagram highlights. This reorder function also has its benefits. Say you had a Valentine’s campaign, you could make sure this highlight was first on your profile in February.
Using Instagram stories to not only organise your stories but also promote campaigns is a very effective digital marketing strategy.
7. Images aren’t everything, your Instagram copy needs to be high-quality too.
Before writing copy for a post, you need to understand who you are writing to, what you want them to feel from your copy and what you want them to do because of it.
Researching the needs, interests and behaviours of your target audience is essential for writing a cracking Instagram caption. You should always be writing with a human in mind. This might sound obvious but a human will be reading your copy, so make it relatable and accessible to them.
Instagram has a character limit of 2,200 but that doesn’t mean you need to fill out all that space. The most important thing is keeping your reader engaged with your copy. 138-150 characters is an optimal length.
Instagram also visually cuts off your captions at around 125 characters, so getting to the point quickly is a good idea.
8. Be ‘social’ and engage with other accounts
The most successful brands on Instagram communicate and engage not only with their audience but within their industry too.
By being social with your business account, you can build relationships with potential partners, expand your audience reach and stay updated with the latest trends or updates in your industry. Instagram also favours interactive accounts, so engaging with others can also increase your online visibility.
9. Make use of Instagram reel templates
Instagram reels have become a popular content type for many Instagram advertisers. Reel popularity amongst brands has led to an increased need to make reel ads stand out. They need to entertain, inform and engage users all at once. Using reel templates can help you with this.
You can use reel templates from reels you like. For example, if you see a reel that you want to take inspiration from, you can click the three dots, tap ‘Use as template’ and then customise the reel to make it your own.
To note: not all reels have this option, so this may not always be available.
Another option is using Instagram’s reel templates. These are built into the platform and are a great first step at creating your reel. Using templates can save you time and also make sure your reels are of a professional standard.
10. Be inclusive and enable captions on your Instagram posts
Instagram captions will automatically assign captions to your reels, videos or stories.
Having captions increases engagement and reach. For those people who are in public spaces and can’t listen to the sound or for those who have hearing deficiencies, captions give them context to your ad without having to hear the sound.
Instagram captions also make sure your message is clear. Audio can sometimes be subjective and if a user mishears a word or sound, they may not understand your ad. Having captions makes sure everyone can clearly understand your ad, despite the audio quality.
Now you know the secrets, it’s time to start your journey to success.
If you are feeling intrigued and would like to learn more about how Instagram can help grow your business, our team of experts are here to help. Get in touch with our paid social team and let’s get your social media journey started today!
