Instagram is a huge advertising platform. Yes, Wikipedia writes differently, and it positions itself as a social network, but businesses are primarily interested in the marketing potential of the tool. We have compiled a basic guide on how to promote an Instagram account – must-have techniques for a beginner and common mistakes in promotion.
Why Grow Your Business on Instagram?
According to the Global Digital Report, Instagram is used by more than 1800 million people every month. 49% of the network’s users are millennials, who, according to research by Markswebb Rank & Report, make up the majority of e-commerce buyers. So Instagram will be useful for retailers targeting a younger audience.
The social network itself presented the official account @shop in May . Here, Instagram representatives collect offers from designers and stores with the ability to make a purchase directly from the application. The description of the store quite clearly outlines which niches are successfully arranged in the network.
In Ukraine, Kazakhstan and most countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it is not yet possible to make purchases on Instagram. Sellers have to either redirect traffic to the main site or negotiate each purchase with customers personally and process applications from the social network manually. In both cases, the functionality of an Instagram business account will be required. Let’s consider step by step how to create a business page.
How to Create and Grow an Instagram Business Account from Scratch
A business account provides its user with functionality that is not available to users with personal accounts.
- Statistics collection . In addition to the number of likes and comments, business accounts can track the number of impressions of posts and stories, as well as adding them to bookmarks. After a week of using a business account, the user will have access to audience statistics, its distribution by gender and age.
- External contact . Companies get a “contact” button with a clickable phone number or clickable email. You can add an offline point address and working hours.
- Stories archive. Stories from personal accounts are hidden but not deleted 24 hours after publication. They are saved in the archive, which becomes available after switching to a professional account. Some stories can be pinned to the account “header” – many use this to publish additional information, such as reviews or a price list.
- Advertising. Users with personal accounts cannot promote their posts; this functionality is only available in business accounts and author accounts. Although you can promote posts on Instagram without an account if you create a campaign through the advertising account on Facebook and lead subscribers directly to your website.
To understand how effective your social media campaigns are, use end-to-end analytics. It will automatically pull in data on expenses from Instagram and compare it with income from your CRM. Thanks to integrations, end-to-end analytics users receive clear reports with data on advertising ROI and the cost of calls from it.
End-to-end analytics also allows you to manually upload expenses from virtually any system. For example, you can analyze the payback of SEO, banner advertising, etc.
To create a business account, you don’t need to scan documents or correspond with technical support — just press a few keys in the app. First, you need to create a regular Instagram account. Download the app from Google Play or Apple Store and register. When registering, you will need to enter a phone number — it’s better to immediately allocate a separate business number for the company. This will allow you to separately record calls coming from this source, similar to static call tracking .
Then you need to go to the account settings – open your profile and click “menu” in the upper right corner of the screen. The sider will open, at the very bottom of which click “Settings” . Select “Account” .
Another menu will open, at the very bottom of which you need to select “Convert to a business account”.
IMPORTANT: the social network will offer to link your account to your Facebook account – you can skip this step at first, but in the future the link will be necessary to promote publications on Instagram.
Instagram offers a choice between a business account and a creator account. They are similar, but there are a number of key differences.
- The author can hide their contacts and area of activity, but for companies they are displayed constantly.
- The company can add business hours that are not available in the author’s account.
- Authors divide their personal messages into two groups: “main”, for communicating with friends, and “general”, where subscribers’ messages end up. Companies do not have such a division.
If you are a private entrepreneur and are going to work on your personal brand, build an image of an expert – use the author account. Otherwise, choose a business account.
How to Promote a Product via Instagram?
Instagram is designed for visual content, and for successful promotion you will need to produce it constantly. The social network itself recommends using the following publications in its courses:
- the product itself;
- behind the scenes reports, production processes;
- confirmation of experience and qualifications – photos of awards, reviews;
- events and promotions;
- interesting facts about the company.
These stories have already become a kind of “gold standard”, the basis for unique promotion strategies.
Promotion of a business profile usually begins with the use of popular hashtags and communication in the comments. A classic technique is to combine popular, niche and highly specialized hashtags under posts. There are even special tools for checking their popularity and effectiveness.
But over time, free tools exhaust themselves and the time for targeted advertising comes. Let’s look at the main advertising mechanisms available on Instagram.
Advertising posts and stories
Targeted Instagram advertising is a quick way to gather subscribers, promote an Instagram account to sell products and services to readers. An important distinguishing feature of the social network is that popular blocking applications have not yet learned to hide its advertising. Paid publications differ from posts in the feed only by a small addition “advertisement”, which eliminates even the possibility of banner blindness.
To show a post not to your subscribers, but to a wider audience, you need to click on the blue “Promote” button, which is displayed on the right under each post.
Instagram will prompt you to create a Facebook account or contact an existing one, if you did not link them when transforming your account from personal to business. This is necessary to connect the advertising account, which is common to the platforms. First, you need to select a “destination” – the goal of the campaign. Users are offered to attract people to their account, to their website or in private messages.
Now it’s time to set up targeting. In the audience settings, the “Automatic” option is checked by default, but you can also choose those to whom the social network will show the post. The audience location, 4-10 interests, age and gender are set up through the application.
The next step is to set up the budget and duration of the campaign. Based on these characteristics, Instagram predicts how many people the post will be shown to. The minimum duration of the promotion is 1 day, and the minimum price per day is $ 1.
Click Next in the top left corner, after which a summary of the campaign settings will open. Check them and click Promote, after which the post will start appearing in the feed and the Explore section for the selected audience, as well as among friends’ stories.
The Instagram advertising account can be integrated with analytics services to obtain more accurate results. Thus, thanks to integration with the Instagram advertising account, can display the CPPC (Cost Per Proper Call) metric in the End-to-End Analytics section . This allows you to link sales with customer advertising sources and analyze the effectiveness of promotion channels.
Advertising from bloggers
Interaction with bloggers, influencers and opinion leaders is one of the popular ways of promotion in social networks. Instagram does not have automated tools for searching and coordinating work with bloggers, so you need to look for future ambassadors and agree on publication personally.
The terms of such agreements – frequency and cost of publications, KPI and other technical details are usually not disclosed; everyone works based on their experience and budget.
Common mistakes when promoting a profile on Instagram
In an effort to gain more followers, bloggers and companies may unknowingly violate Instagram rules and get banned. Moreover, rumors about the so-called “shadow ban” are widespread in the professional community.
A shadow ban is a term used to describe a sudden drop in views on Instagram, without any apparent reason. Those who claim to have been shadowbanned say that their posts stop appearing in their followers’ feeds and when searching for hashtags, although the profile does not receive any comments or warnings from the administration. Instagram itself neither confirms nor denies rumors about the existence of such a method of influencing users.
Algorithms are especially attentive to young accounts, so at first it is most important to behave in accordance with the rules of the social network and avoid risky methods of promotion. Let’s take a closer look at the actions for which you can get not only a shadow ban, but also a completely ordinary one.
Mass liking and mass following
One of the obvious ways to promote on Instagram is to like and follow potential customers. The logic here is simple:
- the user sees a new subscriber;
- goes to profile;
- is interested in the account and signs up himself.
Then this person can be “warmed up” with content in the hope that he will become a lead, and later a client.
Some services offer to automate this process — to entrust the robot with finding and liking relevant audiences. And although most of them position themselves as a safe and reliable way of promotion, this is not always the case. Instagram has been fighting mass liking and mass following since 2017, explaining this with the recommendation: “Maintain meaningful, genuine interaction.” Excessive activity can attract attention and become the reason for sanctions.
Incorrect hashtags
Instagram does not prohibit using dozens of hashtags under a post and duplicating the same tags on all posts. But this is precisely what those who have fallen under the “shadow ban” attribute their plight to.
Moreover, according to experts, a list of banned hashtags has existed and is constantly updated since 2013. It includes English-language swear words, hints at pornography, calls to like, and other words that do not fit into the community norms.
We haven’t found any official information from Instagram about banned hashtags, but a number of services claim to compile such lists using Instagram’s API.
Provocative posts
Instagram positions itself as a socially responsible brand and reserves the right to remove content that moderators deem unacceptable. Numerous complaints about posts can lead to a ban — and you’ll be lucky if it’s a “shadow” one.
So the idea that black PR is also PR is best left for other promotion channels. Focus on the product, its useful properties and the new lifestyle that the product will bring to buyers. If there is the slightest suspicion that the post may offend some group of people, it is better not to post it. Be especially careful with mentioning the following topics:
- races;
- ethnicity;
- national origin;
- gender;
- gender identity;
- sexual orientation;
- religious beliefs;
- disability;
- diseases.
Instagram also reserves the right to remove posts that contain:
- full or partial nudity, unless it is a work of art;
- full and partial nudity of children – children’s pool passes will have to be advertised with drawings;
- aggressive materials, including jokes about violence;
- slander, persecution, condemnation, insulting other people – only criticism of celebrities is allowed;
- foreign, non-unique content
Conclusion
- Instagram for business is an extensive channel for lead generation and increasing brand awareness.
- A business account on Instagram allows you to collect statistics on how users interact with your account. Companies and bloggers also have the ability to pin stories to the top of the page, which is not available in personal accounts. In addition, companies can add business hours, address, and contacts.
- To promote posts on Instagram, you need to have a Facebook advertising account. You can set up a campaign both in it and in the Instagram application on your phone. Brands also use advertising from bloggers for promotion. Leveraging social media marketing services can enhance your Instagram strategy by providing expertise in managing campaigns, optimizing ad spend, and maximizing engagement.
- Instagram can ban an account for violating community standards. Also, a number of bloggers and SMM managers insist on the existence of a shadow ban – a limitation on the display in subscribers’ feeds and hashtags. Study the official community rules for a general understanding of the situation on the social network.