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Instagram for Business – How to Win

Instagram for Business – let’s start from statistics to understand why Instagram is a great way to get followers, customers, and sales.

Instagram for business has become an essential venue for Fashion & Lifestyle Social Media marketing with 650 million users posting more than 95 million posts per day.

There are interesting Instagram statistics:

– Instagram is super skilled and powerful at deleting fake or spam accounts.

96% of marketers use Facebook, while 36% use Instagram (on Instagram you only have to compete with about a third of the marketers online).

– The average Instagram account grows in followers by 16% per month (nearly 200% per year).

– People spend almost 80% of Social Media time on a mobile device.

Growing Instagram is one of the most important Social Media Marketing Tips

10 Steps To Grow Your Instagram and Make Profit

1. Profile & bio

Make sure your bio is clear, precise and bullet-pointed so your potential customers can easily understand the nature of your business and products.
The first line is what your business is about, second is who is it for, and the third one is your call to action.

Make sure that there is a link to your site or the product you want to push the most. If your URL is too long, you should use bit.ly service to shorten it. However, make sure that your link does not look like bit.ly/3dh7rk, but like bit.ly/whitetop

2. Planning

You have to be consistent, post at the same times and deliver quality content on a regular basis. It requires lots of planning and dedication, but it will pay off! Please, remember, that it will take months of dedicated work, so don’t expect fast results. 

Your followers and customers should wait for each piece of content that can improve their lives and help to learn something new. They should look for your guidance and advice and the next best thing you need to provide for them. Your every post should be about HOW YOUR  CUSTOMERS CAN BENEFIT FROM YOUR BUSINESS. If you don’t offer it for them, someone else will.

If you don’t post for a while, your engagement will drop, people will forget about you, and your followers will not associate your brand with value and benefits. The competition in fashion and lifestyle business is tremendous, and you have to stay on the top of the game.
You should plan for topics, consistency, branding voice and color palette.

Planning will take time in the beginning, but you should not skip it because the strategy is everything. Every successful Instagrammer who makes money has a well-thought plan behind her!

3. Topics & content

You have to speak to your audience and post not what you like but what your customers do. The goal of your topics is to inform what you sell, educate (how to use your products), entertain your customers (simply make them smile and put them in a great mood) and interact with them.

  • Informational – products, promotions.
  • Educational – lifestyle photos and videos, styled product, flat lays & collages, testimonials, your marketing materials, statistics and blog posts.
  • Entertainment – everything that your customers would like to see for fun
  • Interaction – every kind of post that will make your customers talk to you – polls, surveys, challenges, giveaways, contests and everything else that will secure a quality feedback

4. Best posting times

If you already have lots of posts, then you need to see your analytics and figure out which days and hours have the most engagement rates.

If you are new to Instagram, I recommend starting posting two or three times a day Monday through Saturday and once on Sunday.

From my own experience, the best times are 12 pm to 2 pm PST (lunch time) and 5-8 pm PST (after work). Saturdays are great between 10 am to 2 pm for retail businesses because your customers have more chances to browse through Social Networks and do their online shopping.

Don’t post more than one photo at a time because several pictures in a row will decrease your engagement rates.

You have to post, test and track to find out which days or times perform the best for you (what works for you might not work for someone else).

5. Hashtags & Geotags

You can use up to 30 hashtags to the picture, but it does not mean that you should. While you will get lots of followers and likes, you might not get more engagement, and you need it in the first place. Some hashtags attract bots and some people that are just interested in your niche.
I look at hashtags the same ways as at long tail keywords. You have to choose your hashtags strategically.

There are several tips:

– Don’t use generic or spam hashtags (spam is anything with number “4” in it)

 Well-known gurus suggest using hashtags in the comments rather than in captions. I still do use in my caption, but I’m testing both as we speak.

– Have a different set of hashtags for each topic. I recommend spending time on your  hashtag research. I use searching feature in Instagram to see amount and quality of              hashtags.

I try to use between 3 to 12 hashtags including branded.

– Geotag your photos – it’s great for your local customers to find you.

6. Grow & Engage your following

Most popular ways to grow your following are:

– Use appropriate hashtags so your potential target customers can follow you.

– Follow and like your competitors’ followers. About 30% of them will follow you back. Instagram allows you to follow only up to 7500 people so unfollow those who won’t interact with you in several days.

– Connect with Instagram Influencers on your niche (for example, fashion bloggers), pay them to post a screenshot of your page or share a post with your product in along with personal endorsement. Branding is everything in Instagram so make sure that Influencer’s following is your target market and you alight your branding with right influencers.

7. Use Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories is a great marketing business tool because Instagram story is easy to create. If you don’t know how to do it you can read about it here – I found this fantastic comprehensive FREE Instagram story guide.

8. Use good Tools

1) Free tool SocialBlade.com allows you to plug in an Instagram account and look for REAL statistics of Influencers, competitors and anyone else. If you go to “Detailed Stats” you can see the day-by-day for the last 30 days of their follower growth. Also, this tool let you to compare up to three competitors. Check it out, it’s incredible; you can use it for other Social media channels as well.

2) There are several reliable Instagram scheduling tools. Personally, I’ve been using OnlyPult for over a year for my three accounts and several clients, and I’m pleased with it. It’s just $15 per month for starter plan. If you click this link, you will receive 10% off credit for OnlyPult>>>

3) If you want to learn HOW TO GROW YOUR INSTAGRAM FOLLOWING FAST, I suggest you listen to this FREE Instagram Training that will teach you how:

– Grow your Instagram following fast
– Collect 100s of emails each week
– Make huge profit on Instagram

For FREE Instagram Training Click Here>>>

If you are interested in fantastic, step by step Instagram Pro Academy Online Video Training System that will includes everything you need to get your brand, content and money-making strategy up and running in record time, CLICK HERE>>>

9. Photography/Imagery Tips

Instagram is a super visual platform so your images should be high quality, crisp, high-definition.
For videos of the products I use app GIFMaker, it creates a video in seconds.
If you need quality stock photography in addition to your pictures, there are

– FREE stock images unsplash.com, or

– paid hautestock.co – I love them, they are super chic, stylish and one of a kind. I’ve been using them for a while now.

Pictures of your product should take no more than two thirds of the image.

When you take your photos, you have to think about two main things – composition and lighting. When you showcase your products, make sure that your customers can see it clearly, so it should not fade near the same color background. Also, don’t hide it under the gorgeous hair of the model. Pictures sell your product, so images should show as many products’ benefits as possible.

Lighting is everything so make sure that there is enough light. Always try to utilize “magic hour” of sunrise or before sunset. Become a best friend with the cloudy weather because it can save you tons of money for lifestyle photography. Light spreads out everywhere so you will be able to do much more with your images during the post-production.

10. Captions

Your captions are the text that goes below your image, and this is the space for you to sell. Tips for great captions

– List product benefits – not features. Explain your customers, what’s in for them?

– Keep it short, but sweet, write it as a personal message, not a sales copy.

– Include “call to action”, specify where they should click.

– Total four to five sentences.

Read More:

How To Get Traffic To Your Website >>>

Wholesale Suppliers for Boutiques – Who and How to Choose>>>

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