Instagram Mastery

  The Best Practices for Building your Instagram Business You probably have wondered how short videos and images can be used to promote business awareness through Instagram in a bid to enhance customer experience. It is simple. Instagram can be used to promote your business online through a number of ingenious ways that have been developed over time. Here is a list of strategies, tools and practices that can assist you building your Instagram business. Page | 5

Fun and Entertainment Aside, Learn How To Use Instagram for Business You should note that Instagram has been used on a number of occasions for fun. 

People are gradually absorbing the idea of using Instagram for business and hence you should learn how to use Instagram for business other than fun. Since businesses are increasingly using this platform for the purpose of promoting their business, Instagram initiated the Instagram for Business Blog. The blog was initiated for the purpose of offering helpful tips and ideas on how to use the platform for business. If you are new on Instagram and intend to use it for business promotion, it is important to visit the Instagram for Business Blog. The platform is operated and managed by Instagram HQ and offers numerous tips on how to make use of it for business purposes. With this platform, a new Instagram user is able to learn basic tips and practices of its usage for business purposes. Therefore, the Instagram for Business Blog is the very first avenue to explore when you want to promote your business on Instagram. Page | 6 Know How to Balance Between Fun Images and Pictures Meant To Promote Your Business Instagram is widely recognized as a social media meant for fun. 

Drawing from this, not many people view the platform as an avenue for promoting business. Nonetheless, the enormous traffic drawn by this social media platform is ideal for business promotion. It is for this reason that entrepreneurs are increasingly using Instagram with the intention of promoting their businesses.

In the process of using Instagram as a platform for business promotion, it is important to balance between fun images and images meant to promote your business. While you ought to include fun images in order to attract and impress your audience on Instagram, be careful not to overuse fun images. In the event that your Instagram is flocked with fun images with only a few images and short vides that promote your business, you are at a risk of misinforming your audience. It is always important to clarify your intentions on your Instagram. Make it clear that your platform is meant for business promotion. By doing this, you will be notifying your audience on what to expect during your business promotion. Needless to say, it is imperative for a business personality, or an entity for that matter, to balance between fun images and images meant for business promotion. Page | 7 Nurture a Following on Your Instagram A key preamble to promoting a business online via Instagram is ensuring you have a sizable number of followers. The more followers you have on your Instagram the better your chances of succeeding in your promotional activities on social media. Thus, having an enormous following is one of the most significant tickets to succeeding in Instagram marketing of a business. 

It should be noted that there are a number of proven tactics of cultivating the desired following on Instagram. One of the widely used methods of cultivating the desired following on Instagram is connecting an Instagram account with a Facebook account. It should be noted that Instagram has a provision of connecting to a Facebook account. With this tool, you are able to synchronize your Instagram and Facebook accounts. When this is done, all your postings on Instagram will be shared on your Facebook account and hence appear on your Facebook timeline. By the way, Facebook and Instagram are associated entities with the same ownership and the possession of the two somehow leverages a business and individual’s online presence. This is an implication that your Facebook friends will be able to view, like, and share your Instagram images and short videos.

Therefore, when your Instagram account is linked to your Facebook account, you stand a chance of doubling your audience thereby enabling your promotional information on Instagram to reach far and wide. 

 You can also make use of your Facebook audience to communicate your presence on Instagram. This can be achieved by cross-posting selected images and short videos to your Facebook page and aligning them to your campaign on Instagram. With this provision, your Facebook audience Page | 8 can be made aware of your engagements on Instagram and follow your there. On most occasions, this practice comes in handy in the event that you are new on Instagram and want to have the same audience on your Facebook page to follow you on your new Instagram page. Therefore, cross-posting images on Facebook and aligning them with your Instagram campaigns is an important strategy of not only cultivating an audience on your Instagram page but also promoting your business effectively on this platform. The use of relevant popular hash tags is also another useful strategy of cultivating the desired following on your Instagram. Social media enthusiasts have a trend of identifying themselves with popular or trending hash tags. On most occasions, trending hash tags are used to disseminate current and highly persuasive information of any kind. You can therefore take advantage of the enormous traffic attracted by these hash tags to effectuate your promotional goals on Instagram. If this is done correctly, your promotional information on Instagram will reach a wide audience thereby assisting in meeting your marketing objectives. Building a strong business through Instagram can also be achieved by engaging other famous Instagram personnel and liking their images and short videos. It is important to note that Instagram users will feel free to like your content if you like theirs as well. You can take advantage of this trend and like images and short videos posted by other Instagram users with the intention of luring them to like yours as well. This has worked for many and will definitely work for you if done correctly. Page | 9

Make Good Use of Debut Videos Videos clips complement the image and photo postings on Instagram. Therefore, it is advocated that savvy promoters should make consideration in uploading video clips that are sizable enough for the followers to peek through and generate fun. Notably, the video support capability by Instagram has, in many ways, offered an alternative to and, in fact, become a direct competitor to twitter’s Vine. 

The most notable competitive edge that Video on Instagram has over Vine is the 15-second editable video and filter-enabled functionality. This is in comparison to the 6.5 seconds of twitter’s Vine. The fact that Instagram is doing well with video attachments is a direct implication that the use of videos can go a long way in helping users cultivate the much desired following needed to grow Instagram business promotion. Therefore, you should never hesitate to make use of video attachments on your Instagram. Page | 10 Attach Instagram Videos on Your Websites or Blogs For a long time this functionality was unavailable to Instagram users. Due to high demand, however, Instagram recently came up with a desktop browser version that included a new embed feature. With this new feature, Instagram users can now attach their short videos to their websites and blogs. The secret behind this provision is to increase the number of viewers of your posts. You can never be sure of the number of people who will view your postings on social media

platforms. It is for this reason that embedding your Instagram short videos will increase the chances of more audiences to your content. By attaching your Instagram videos to your website or blog, you are not only marketing your business to your blog or website community but also informing them of your presence on Instagram. As a consequence to this, you are highly likely to increase your following on Instagram thereby standing a chance of meeting your marketing objectives on the platform. Suffice it to say, it is imperative to take advantage of the newly launched Instagram embed feature that allows you to share your Instagram videos with your blog and website audience as a strategy of promoting your business on Instagram. 

 Page | 11 Following Back As Many of Your Followers As You Can This is perhaps one of the most credible strategies of succeeding in business promotion on

Instagram. On most occasions, quite a number of businesses on Instagram, especially those with large following, do not follow their followers back. In doing so, they fail to create long-lasting relationships with their followers. Thus, you need to have a competitive edge over such businesses on Instagram by coming up with a totally different strategy of creating strategic relationships with your followers. It is important to note that your followers will feel recognized and appreciated when you follow them back. The act of following back Instagram followers is a trusted strategy of gaining a large following thus leading to success in your promotions.