Instagram is one of the most powerful platforms for businesses today, with more than 2 billion active users. An Instagram business account provides unmatched chances to display products, create and maintain a loyal customer base, and boost sales. No matter whether you’re beginning afresh or just wishing to extend your footprint, creating an business account on Instagram can prove to be a turning point.

Here is a comparison of the most popular social platforms in terms of their active usage quotient.

Source: Sprout Social

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll cover every single aspect: from creating an Instagram business account to optimizing it for conversions with relevant content, understanding the audience via Instagram Insights, running ads, interacting with followers, utilizing the power of influencers, and much more.

Further, we will present some conclusions upon the businesses using Instagram to the full range that posted their presence on the platform and the industries where their strategies can be utilized.

Step 1: Creating an Instagram Business Account

Let us take a look at the reasons why you will need an Instagram business account and how to set up one.

Why You Need an Instagram Business Account

Instagram offers three types of accounts – personal, creator, and business. An Instagram business account is useful in several ways – it allows you to grow your brand using key features like analytics, advertising, and contact buttons for customers. Quick and easy as this is, getting the business account on the platform is an initial move to building professional credibility.

How to Set Up an Instagram Business Account

Creating an Instagram business account does not involve much effort. Below is a step-by-step guide:

  1. Download the Instagram app from the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android) if you haven’t already.
  2. Create a new account by signing up with your business email, or if you have a personal account, log in.
  3. Switch to a Business Account:
  • Go to your profile and tap the three lines in the top-right corner.
  • Tap “Settings,” then “Account.”
  • Scroll down and tap “Switch to Professional Account.”
  • Choose “Business.”
  1. Complete Your Business Profile:
  • Add your business category (e.g., retail, beauty, food) and contact information such as email, phone number, or address.

With the account up and running, now you can start using Instagram as a professional platform to promote your business. Here’s how the setup screen appears:

Source: Box Out Blog

Step 2: Optimizing Your Profile

Let us now walk you through the essential steps of arranging your profile with attention to every detail.

The Importance of a Strong First Impression

What exactly is the importance of an Instagram profile?

The simple answer to this: it is the first feature potential customers will come into contact with and it needs to make a good impression on them. A well-optimized profile will improve your trustworthiness, help your followers understand your proposition, and persuade them to take action.

Creating a Memorable Bio

Your bio is usually a summary and it tells the reader who you are and what you do. This needs to be succinct, simple, and straight to the point. Bear in mind that you have just 150 characters to express the value of your brand. A great bio should include:

  1. A short description of what your business does
  2. A call to action (e.g., “Shop now”, “Check out our latest collection”)
  3. Emojis can be used to make it visually appealing, but don’t overdo it

Example Bio:

Source: Instagram

Choosing a Profile Picture

Your profile picture has to follow the concept of the Instagram business account. Every brand presents its logo to achieve effective brand recognition and consistency in different digital spaces. For instance, if you are a personal brand you can use headshots.

Here is an ideal example:

Source: Instagram

Provide as many means as possible for people to reach you. Apart from your email, you can add a phone number or a link to your website, Facebook. Instagram bio does allow the possibility of having one clickable link, making it point to the right alternate.

Also, you can use Linktree to integrate more than one hyperlink to your website or blog or from other sites.

This is what a Linktree landing page of the popular brand ‘Magalogue’ looks like.

Source: Linktree

Step 3: Planning Your Content Strategy

It’s now time for you to analyze the importance of the content strategy and positioning that can take your business from zero to hero.

Importance of Consistency

Building a business over Instagram requires a lot of patience as well as regular effort, and at the crux of it all lies consistency. This helps reinforce your brand to your audience and earns them their trust gradually. A content strategy helps you develop posts that will be timely, interesting, and appropriate for your brand.

Instagram offers various content formats:

  1. Posts: Great for high-quality images and brand stories.
  2. Stories: Perfect for behind-the-scenes content and time-sensitive promotions.
  3. Reels: Ideal for quick, entertaining videos that showcase products or brand personality.

Creating a Content Calendar

Content posting calendars make processes simpler as well and guarantee regular content output. Establish how many times per week or day you will be posting and prepare the content beforehand. There are services like Hootsuite or Later whose basic features allow scheduling posts over the network to ensure coherence.

Here’s what Later’s Instagram Visual Planner looks like.

Source: Later

Types of Content That Work for Businesses

Here are some of the content types and themes that have been proving beneficial to businesses across domains.

  1. Behind-the-scenes: Show the making of your product or day-to-day business operations.
  2. Product showcases: Highlight key features of your products through attractive visuals and videos.
  3. Tutorials and demos: Teach your audience how to use your products with step-by-step guides.
  4. Collaborations and shout-outs: Partner with influencers or feature user-generated content to build trust.

Here’s an example of a popular business ‘The Kitchen Artisan’ using Instagram Stories and Reels effectively to showcase their services.

Source: Instagram

Step 4: Using Instagram Insights to Track Performance

You can even use Instagram’s useful ‘Insights’ feature to analyze your performance and activities across the platform. Let us find out how.

What Instagram Insights Can Tell You

Instagram Insights is a very powerful tool that provides statistical data about how your content is working. It’s a page that allows you to see such metrics as the number of users exposed to the Instagram business account, repeat visitors to the account, and the number of followers.

This information aids you in figuring out what type of content is well received and how your approach will need to be adjusted.

How to Access Instagram Insights

Here’s how to access Insights on your Instagram business account:

  1. Go to your profile and tap the three lines in the top-right corner.
  2. Tap “Insights.”
  3. You’ll see data on your content, activity, and audience.

You even get to view insights for individual posts to keep track of how many people they reached, how many likes and comments they received, and the overall engagement rate.

Here is a demonstration of how Instagram Insights shows the key engagement metrics for a post.

Source: Unbox Social

How to Use Insights to Improve Your Strategy

Here’s how Insights can be used effectively to tweak your strategy to yield better outputs.

  1. Identify top-performing posts: Replicate the style, content, or timing of posts that perform well.
  2. Adjust posting times: Use audience activity data to find the best times to post for maximum engagement.

Step 5: Running Ads on Instagram

Ads on Instagram can boost your page and posts to an all-new level, reaching out to wider audiences. Let us look at their potential.

Why Instagram Ads Are Worth It

Advertisements on Instagram have the potential of putting you before potential markets and helping you direct visitors towards your profile page or even your website. There are many types of ads including video and photo ads that are easy to incorporate into organic feeds.

How to Set Up Your First Ad Campaign

  1. Choose the post you want to promote.
  2. Tap “Promote” and follow the instructions to select your target audience, budget, and campaign duration.
  3. Once you’re satisfied with the ad settings, tap “Create Promotion” to launch your campaign.

Here’s how the ad setup screen appears, showing different targeting options.

Source: Andrew Hubbard

Step 6: Engaging with Your Audience

Being all ears to your audience is one of the most essential aspects of growing your business on a platform like Instagram. Here’s how you can make the most out of it.

Building Relationships with Your Followers

Posting content is not even half of the work required in building the Instagram community; engagement is the key to uplifting any activity on the profile page. Be sure to reply to comments, respond to DMs, and answer story replies as all these will inform your audience that you are hearing them.

Using Stories and Polls for Engagement

Polls, questions, and quizzes are among the tools that can also help boost audience engagement as they motivate the audience to join in. For example, polls can seek the opinions of the followers on such things as the next product they would wish to see being developed or even the color of a certain product.

Here’s an example of the popular brand ‘Royale Touche’ using Instagram Stories with a poll feature to engage followers.

Source: Instagram

Step 7: Collaborating with Influencers and Partners

Partnering with influencers is the new norm for brands to prove their relevance. The young audience resonates with such events, leading to more number of purchases and sales.

How Influencer Marketing Can Grow Your Business

Influencers can assist you in expanding your audience, increasing trustworthiness, and boosting sales. Brand’s success is also dependent on Influencer marketing. Sponsored posts, giveaways, and product reviews are just some examples of the means through which influencer partnerships can promote your brand.

How to Find the Right Influencers

The audience of the influencer you intend to use must also fall within your target market. In your research, you can take advantage of these software services such as BuzzSumo or HypeAuditor which can give you insightful knowledge of influencers in your field.

Example of a Successful Collaboration

A local business collaborated with an influencer in its city for a giveaway to increase its follower base by 30%, and consequently sales.

Here are a few examples of successful influencer collaboration posts by ‘Durex India’.

Source: Instagram

Step 8: Best Practices from Successful Instagram Businesses

Here are some of the best initiatives taken up by businesses to stand out on Instagram.

Showcase of Gold Standards

  1. Small Business Example: A local bakery using Stories to show the baking process, boosting engagement and creating a loyal community.
  2. User-Generated Content Example: A fashion brand encouraging customers to post pictures wearing their products, creating a sense of community and social proof.

Here is an example of popular celebrities donning products and flaunting them on Instagram.

Source: Instagram

A Final Word

Instagram business setup can be a great way to expand the customer base as well as the visibility of the business. Following these processes: creating an Instagram business account, optimizing the profile, content, advertising, and audience interaction; you can make a significant impact on the social network.

Start today but remember to do it consistently and it will not be long before your business flourishes in Instagram!

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Written By: ISHAN BARMAN

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