How to sell on Instagram? Explore all the possibilities that this tool – so useful and current – offers for the promotion of your business.
Instagram is a social network of photos and videos that is reaching billions of active users every month. And guess which is the second country in the world with the most active accounts? That’s right, Brazil. Therefore, learning how to explore Instagram for sales is very important to promote your brand.
Want to know more about how to sell on Instagram?
We’ve talked several times about how to promote your brand on Facebook. Now, check out the following tips to better understand how to use Instagram to make your store a favorite among users.
How to use Instagram for sales and business
The first question you have to ask yourself before creating a profile for your brand is: does it make sense to be on Instagram? If you have products that are visual (like clothes, decorative objects, accessories, handicrafts, food, drinks, etc.), the answer is definitely yes.
Remember that you also need to think about your persona (we’ve already talked about how to create one). This should be directional for the content that you will publish.
If you are confident that it makes sense to publish your business on Instagram, time to make a profile there!
And here’s the first tip:
If you have a personalized URL on Facebook, try to register the same username on Instagram and use the same logo to facilitate communication between the two platforms.
After all, the user who is on Instagram can also be on Facebook. Therefore, the closer the identity, the better the visibility of your brand to the public.
Also, don’t forget to link your Facebook to your Instagram account. Just go to your brand’s fan page, click on Settings, and then Instagram Ads
Synchronizing both social networks, when you boost a Facebook post to generate traffic in your store, it will be possible to optionally display the ad on Instagram. This strategy is very powerful in articles that generate impulse purchases, for example.
In your Instagram profile description, be very direct about who you are and what you do. If you are a fashion brand, make it clear that on that channel people will be able to check out news from the fashion world. If you are a brand of decorative items, warn that their people will find good references on the subject. Being truthful about the published content is the best practice for building bonds of trust.
What to post on your brand’s Instagram
1. Photos
Instagram is a social network initially created for photos. And well-done photos! Unlike other social networks, what draws the most attention here are images with high visual appeal. Even if the products in your store are very cool (and we are sure they are), just avoid posting this on your profile.
The persona is fundamental for you to think about the content that will be published. Take into consideration what she would like to know and track. Get headlong into the person’s lifestyle and sell a brand awareness, not just products.
If your store is of decorative products, for example, look for images of inspirational environments, references of famous houses, images that bring different color palettes, always focusing on the lifestyle of the people whose product fits. Remember that, although this is also a commercial space, users are looking for a space of entertainment and consumption of relevant content for them. It may not seem like it, but it can help and a lot to sell on Instagram.
Also, take care when framing your images and use cool photo editing apps. Some interesting apps are VSCO, PicFrame, and InstaBox.
2. Texts
Although photos are important, pay special attention to the text of your publications. Always bring creative captions, which are not too long, and with hashtags (we’ll talk more about them in a little bit).
3. Videos
Making short videos, up to 60 seconds, can be a great way to engage your audience and demonstrate a product. This type of content has very good reception on this social network and holds the users’ attention.
A very fun tool that can help you get involved is Boomerang, which allows you to create short repetitions.
How to manage Instagram more easily?
We know how difficult it can be to manage your Instagram account mobile-only. Everything takes longer than on Facebook, right? But know that several online solutions are sensational:
Crowdfire: in this free service, you can schedule publications via the computer. When installing the Crowdfire app on your phone, everything that is scheduled will notify you in time to only send to Instagram what you have programmed on your computer. Also, it has an intelligent system that checks the best time of your audience. Highly recommended.
Later: in this service, you can create a much more visual automatic schedule. Also, it has collection, search, and approval tools. It is also an excellent choice!
Sprout social: focused mainly on larger brands, Sproutsocial contains several analysis, reporting, and personalization tools for those who need to have a complete view of their business.
Hoot suite: the Swiss army knife for social media. Although it is full of features and so it is not so intuitive, if you want to organize all your social networks in a single tool, Hoot suite is a good choice.
How to make your brand profile more relevant
Many brands, especially when they are starting to advertise their products and services on Instagram, are very concerned with the number of followers. Of course, the more people who follow your brand profile, the more people will follow the published content. However, it is useless to have many followers and they are not qualified – that is, they are not interested in the content you publish or in the products or services that your brand offers. Better to have a smaller base that grows healthily, than a poorly qualified base.
A good number to keep in mind is 10% conversion. That’s right, the best Instagram profiles are those that manage to get closer to the 10% rule.
And what is that 10%?
If you have a base of a thousand followers, ideally, each photo or video published should be able to get close to 100 likes (10%). Of course, this value alone is already difficult to achieve, but the more you pursue it as a goal, the healthier your fan base will be.
To get followers on Instagram in an effective way, you’ll have to sweat your shirt without using gimmicks. See valid actions to go beyond this:
1. Interact with your persona
There is no way to think about communication strategies and how to sell on Instagram without taking into account your brand’s persona. Once you have a clear idea of who your audience is, you know where to find them.
Look for the brands and other profiles that your persona accompanies in the application. After that, interact with these potential consumers. You can start enjoying some of your photos, make some comments on the person’s profile (but without exaggeration, please!) Or start following them.
Remember that it is not just conversion posts that your base needs. Use the seesaw strategy, merging posts that talk about your products with others focused on engagement so that people feel empathy.
If a follower interacts in any way with your photo, the Instagram algorithm is more likely to show more of your content in the coming weeks. Therefore, making engagement posts just to move the base is essential.
2. Use hashtags
The hashtag is one of the best friends of the good strategist on Instagram. They function as hyperlinks on the network and, when someone clicks on them through Instagram, they are “magically” transported to a screen that brings all the images that received that particular tag/theme.
Still holding your persona, make a list of the things that she apparently should like and that are linked to your brand. If you are a gym clothing brand, then your persona is probably someone who likes issues related to that. Study what hashtags are commonly used by these people and put them in the photos you post.
Some examples are #academia #fitness #gym #gymlife (yes, when it comes to hashtags on Instagram, people also use English words).
In addition to using these more generic hashtags, it’s nice that you also create one that is exclusive to your brand. The clothing brand from Rio de Janeiro Farm (which is also a good benchmark for stores that want to have stock ideas for Instagram) created #tono adoro farm. In addition to using this hashtag in its publications, the brand encourages consumers to also post it, which generates free advertising for Farm.
3. Publish relevant content
Publishing interesting content makes your brand profile much more attractive and reinforces that you understand what you are talking about. This gradually creates a reference image in your market.
Also, if you post really interesting content and images, your Instagram will start organically receiving visitors. A person who follows your brand and who likes what you post will certainly mark friends in another publication. They, in turn, can start following you, tag new friends in your photos, and so on.
4. Invest in promotions on Instagram
Another way to sell on Instagram is to do promotional actions on your brand profile. You can do this by boosting products on Facebook and Instagram.
The tip here’s to never put too much money at once. Start slowly, with little, do tests with different formats and follow the conversion of your publications. When you find one that is doing well, then add more investment money and also try to understand why this campaign did well.
Was it the photo? The text? Or did the product even have more to do with the persona of your base?
5. Don’t forget personal contact
This tip is not necessary to get new followers but to keep the current ones (after all, what good is a job to get new people if the old ones leave, right?).
Whenever someone asks any kind of question on your profile, respond quickly. This will make a great impression for those who accompany you, showing that your brand is active.
In addition to these actions, you can disclose your brand’s Instagram link in several ways, such as:
.Put it in the signature of your professional email;
.Share photos from your store’s Instagram account on other social networks and your blog;
.Add on the label and other materials of your products the address of the channels of your store on the internet;
Encourage your customers to take photos using your products and publish them on the app with your brand hashtag.
How often to post on Instagram
On Instagram, there are no business hours. Your store’s profile cannot stop working on weekends, or after “business hours”. Remember that people who accompany you on the social network are people, who work, eat, sleep, etc. Try to think about your persona’s routine and adjust the publication times according to their interests and the peak times when they are in the application.
A study by TrackMaven found that people use Instagram more often on weekends, especially from 1 pm to 6 pm. On weekdays, the preferred time is from 5 pm to 6pm. But more important than general data is to understand what works best for your audience. For this, there is no magic formula or secret: do tests.
You also have to be careful not to saturate your base. In services like Crowdfire, already mentioned in the post, use the service to track users from your base to check at what times of the day they are online on Instagram. This is a fundamental tip to reach 10% of likes in each publication made.
Profiles to be inspired
Are you dying to put your store’s Instagram on the air, but need references? Then check out these store profiles that are great on social media.
