For online businesses, having a vibrant social media presence is essential even if they have high-quality websites. Among all the social media networks available to businesses, Instagram has emerged as a clear winner, with 25 million businesses active on it. It is so effective that, according to Instagram, around one-half of all the businesses present on Instagram don’t even bother with having a website to drive sales and engagement. Some practical tips on how to optimize your Instagram profile:
Ensure You Have an Instagram Business Profile
While the standard Instagram profile is perfect for individual users, businesses should invariably opt for a business account as they have ready access to many useful features and tools, including Instagram Ads, Instagram Shopping, and Instagram Insights. It is easy to learn about the audience demographics, as well as the performance of your posts and the growth of your followers, using analytics. You also get the advantage of being able to add to your profile action buttons allowing users to call you, make reservations or visit your store from your profile directly. Importantly, business users can list their address, location, hours of business separately without consuming the character limit of the bio. Users can also add a Contact button that can be used by the visitors to phone, SMS, or email you from the profile itself.
Choose a Handle That Simple, Memorable, and Easy to Discover
When you consider that there are more than one billion users on Instagram, having an obscure user name or handle can make it difficult for people to discover you and engage with you. The trick is to figure out a user name that incorporates your brand, mnemonically simple, recognizable, and easily searchable. If your business name is taken up, you can use it as the first part of the handle and add on something extra to make it distinguishable. By doing so, users will more easily be able to find you, engage with you, and become your loyal followers. To boost your follower count in the initial days, you can check Instagram likes for a nominal amount from a reputable Instagram marketing agency.
Use a Branded Profile Picture for Easy Recognizability of Your Businesses
Not only does your profile picture show up in all your posts and comments but is easily the first thing that comes to the notice of people visiting your Instagram profile. Because of this, it is important to have a profile picture that is not only attractive, easily recognizable but also representative of your business. Typically, for most businesses, the ideal Instagram profile picture is the business logo. In case you are just starting and don’t have a business logo, it is important to pay some attention to its design as it is something that you cannot be changing at will. Look at what your competitors are doing for inspiration but be careful not to mimic them as you need to have a distinct business identity. Ideally, your profile picture should be 180px by 180px, so make sure it is not getting chopped off when Instagram crops it automatically to fit its circular window.
Compose a Compelling Bio
The second thing that users look at after your profile picture and business name is your bio. The bio is the place where you inform your users who you are and what value you deliver to your customers. Since the bio is restricted to just 150 characters, you need to be able to craft it well so that visitors know immediately what they can expect from you. The best bios also try to capture the essence of the brand’s personality in addition to highlighting the benefit to customers. Incorporating a powerful call-to-action along with a relevant emoji can help to catalyze conversions.
Optimize Your CTA Link
Even though marketers love Instagram for the opportunity it gives them to increase brand awareness and boost customer engagements, a pain point is that users are limited to using one solitary clickable URL in the bio section. It makes the Instagram profile link immensely valuable when you want to use a post to drive traffic to a particular webpage or a website. The bio link is undoubtedly the easiest method of getting people to interact with your brand outside of Instagram. However, since you can use only one link, you should keep on changing it at regular intervals to maximize its potential. With Instagram now making moves to allow shopping directly from the posts, the Instagram shopping market could explode to as much as $10 billion by 2021, according to edition.cnn.com.
Conclusion
Instagram has proved itself ideal for attracting traffic from the target audience so much so that many small businesses have made it the fulcrum of all their online marketing operations without even setting up a website. Even though like any channel, it has it won set of restrictions, savvy marketers can easily find ways of working around them and making it a growth engine for their businesses.