Unconventional advice about using Instagram for business.
Back in May 2012 I was one of the first 10000 Android users to install Instagram on the day it was released. Not bad considering there were about 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours. I’d watched patiently for nearly 18 months as my iPhone toting friends had connected and enjoyed the platform. At the time I had no intention of using Instagram for business.
Over the last 4 ½ years I’ve used my personal Instagram account as something of a visual diary.
A simple way to capture memories and share them with people. Sometimes my photos are beautiful and sometimes they’re more on the dodgy side. All of them are real, nor are they staged.
We didn’t dive in and start using Instagram right away when we started Hardwood Digital. Even now using Instagram for our business something that we are still developing a strategy for.
I like to stick with our colours of red, yellow, blue and red. But, I guarantee you’ll see more photos of coffee, food and beaches than you will motivational quotes in an on trend brush script font. Every time I sit down to try and create some I can’t, it doesn’t feel right. I’ve got mad Adobe Creative Suite skills but I’m no calligrapher.
Nor do we sell pretty quotes.
For us, Instagram is the behind the scenes of our business. It’s our personality and, just like us, what you see is what you get. Even then, I feel that we’ve been a little restrained. Like it’s time to step out on a slightly narrower ledge.
This post is about encouraging you to do the same when developing a strategy around how you’ll use Instagram in your business. Using Instagram for Business should be done as authentically as possible. Tricking people into following you isn’t going to serve you well in the long run.
When we started this business an overarching goal was to show ‘traditionally stiff’ professional service businesses that they didn’t have to be. To teach them how to build trust and gain clients by being themselves and sharing what they know.
Instagram is a safe place to push some of those traditional boundaries. Right now is a great time to get on board and expose your business a little, a few layers below the surface. To a depth that feels right to you.
Check out our FREE Instagram Marketing Planner and develop a complete strategy to get great results using Instagram for your business.
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Using Instagram for business is a smart move, especially when you are looking to connect with potential clients in your local area.
However, one of the ironies of Social Media is that businesses have a tendency use it in unsociable ways.
Over the past week I carried out a bit of a ‘growth experiment’ on Instagram. I tried out a few of the popular Instagram growth strategies to see what kind of results I got.
14 posts over 6 days.
About 120 new followers (and about 140 new accounts I was following)
Average <3 per post = 70
Engagement regularly <100%
2 image reposts
Here’s what I learned about using Instagram for Business from my little experiment.
Gaining new Instagram Followers
Recently the number of ‘bots’ at work on Instagram seems to have increased. It’s possible to pay for automatic account follows and programmed post likes and comments. These tactics are being used both by humans and bots. It’s not unusual to see accounts grow from a few hundred to several thousand followers in the course of a few days.
In reality I feel strongly that artificially growing a large following on Instagram is not going to serve your business well in the long term. It’s important to remember that Facebook own Instagram and I see no reason why history won’t repeat as they continue to strive to provide the best possible user experience.
As is the case for Facebook achieving and maintaining high organic engagement will ensure that more of the right people see your stuff in the future. If your following is largely made up of people who will never engage with you then you’ll be carrying around dead wood in the future.
The accounts I followed were accounts that I was genuinely interested in engaging with. I followed them with no intention of unfollowing when they followed back.
Interestingly, after each account following spree (I had two) a number of accounts followed me. Very few of them were the accounts I’d just followed. I can only speculate as to why this might have been. The majority of my new followers resulted from hashtags, not from following other accounts.
Most of my new followers were not accounts I expect will engage with me. They’re deadwood on my account that will lower my engagement rate, and potentially my organic reach.
A few accounts followed me more than once. After one of the accounts followed me for the third time in four days I commented on one of their posts, calling them out on it. They eventually deleted my comment and no one replied. The irony of this is, it’s a decent Instagram account that I would’ve followed back if they’d actually engaged with me.
Morale of the story: The best way to attract new followers is to genuinely engage with the people you’d like to build a relationship with.
Exactly the same thing you’d do to develop a new relationship with a real person (or business) in real life.
Fancy that!?
Using Instagram Hashtags for Business
I used a variable mix of hashtags over the course of my experiment. I didn’t use a saved set, I just picked and chose from the list I’d researched. Each post had a combination of broad and narrow hashtags. Some related to the topic, others to the location.
Arguably, I had my best success with my location based hashtags.
From the 14 posts, two were reposted. One by a local business I frequent, the other by a local radio station. This was a major win.
The broader, industry based hashtags tended to attract follow and comment bots. However, their interactions helped keep my posts in newsfeed for longer. This ultimately attracted further engagement from my ‘real audience’ because I was showing up in their newsfeed.
Hashtags are important when you’re developing a strategy for using Instagram for business. Importantly they allow you to introduce your business to new audiences for free. This is something that’s much harder to do on Facebook.
I encourage you to take some time with your hashtag research, figure out what it is that your ideal client is engaging with at a time when they’re not actually looking for you. Strive to meet them in the middle, rather than smack them over the head with your business.
If you’re a business looking to attract clients in a particular location then it’s essential that you leverage location tagging and hashtags. Get involved with your local community where they’re hanging out online. Stop thinking about your business in terms of what you do. Instead think of it in terms of who you serve, what they do and where they live. Introduce yourself to them on a personal level.
If you want to read a little more about hashtags check out this post.
Be real in a way that makes you approachable and interesting.
Ignore people who tell you that every image needs to be perfectly perfect, colour coded to match your sugar coated feed. That certainly makes people ooh and ahh but it doesn’t let people get to know you and build trust with your business.
Create an Instagram feed that’s real and interesting to your target audience.
Use hashtags in a meaningful way. Targeting local audiences is honestly going to get you the best results.
Develop actual relationships with real people. Because, after all, that’s actually what social media is all about.
What results have you had using Instagram for business?
We’ve put together a complete Instagram Marketing Planner to help you develop a strategy for using this highly engaged platform.
Download the Instagram Marketing Planner HERE
Will you be using Instagram to help you grow your business?
