I actively use social media to grow my business. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest. I ‘ve used everything.
But Instagram?
Not until a year ago! Sure I had an account on Instagram and occasionally posted photos of my recent blog posts, but I never really thought about it as a platform that could grow my business.
Oh boy! How wrong was I!
Whether you sell physical products, digital products, or want to attract clients to your services – if you are a creative entrepreneur, you need to sign up for Instagram. Like yesterday.
In the past year, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with other creatives, book photography clients and sell-out the beta spots for my e-course – all through Instagram. Anyhow.. how do you use Instagram to grow your business? Glad you asked. This post is all about that and more.
I share regular tips on how to take gorgeous, high-quality photos for your Instagram, so make sure to follow our Instagram here : @RisingWomenNetwork
1) Your content is your lead magnet
Content is the queen. And it is everything. There are millions of Instagram accounts. Millions that are trying to attract the same audience that you are. So then, how do you cut through the noise and stand out?
High-quality photos.
Instagram is visual and the only way you can attract your audience to stop, take notice of your work and hit that follow button is through the photos in your feed. A high-quality, cohesive feed that tells a story and connects with your audience is a sure shot way of growing your business on Instagram.
But wait, taking photos doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t need a DSLR or know professional photography for that.
You can take high-quality photos for Instagram using your Phone.
2) Share value and build trust with your audience
Growing your business on any platform, let alone Instagram boils downs to just one thing – building trust. If your audience trusts you, they ‘ll love you, they ‘ll do business with you and they ‘ll tell their friends about you. If they don’t trust you, that’s the end of it.
So to build that trust, you need to be authentic, you need to share your expertise and you need to shower them with value.
Use Instagram captions to share value and your voice
Think about the different ways you can provide them value for free:
- Can you share tips that would help them?
- Can you entertain them?
- Can you uplift them emotionally?
- Can you engage their curiosity in your business?
Whatever it may be, share value.
3) Grow your email list
For a long time, I believed that I couldn’t use Instagram to grow my email list – but when I started experimenting I was pleasantly surprised. If you are attracting the right kind of audience on Instagram, there is no reason they will not click over to the link in your bio and subscribe to your email list.
You can use bit.ly links to track the number of clicks on your Instagram profile.
4) Connect and Interact with your community
I haven’t yet come across a successful business that doesn’t care about their community. There is no business without your audience, your people and your tribe – aka your community. While running a business, you rarely get opportunities to showcase your personality in everything you do. But Instagram provides a wonderful way to get personal and connect with your community. Your audience loves to see what you are up to, so share behind-the-scenes, the not-so-pretty struggles, the little wins and the happy moments.
Share your story through Instagram stories
I love using Instagram stories to share little updates and behind-the-scenes of my business and occasionally my life too. It is a super casual, super fun way of interacting with your audience and sharing your personal side.
5) Build buzz, launch product and make sales:
For my last course, starting from the beta launch to the final launch – I used Instagram to build interest around my product by sharing regular sneak peeks to the course. This made my audience familiar with my course even before it launched and which made them super excited to check out the course when it launched. If you have an upcoming launch, use Instagram to build interest and excitement around the launch. You can share behind-the-scenes of your launch, sneak-peeks and preview of your product, dates and exciting announcements to keep your audience updated about the product – you can get as creative as you’d want here.
6) An engaged community is better than a large community
Lastly, I had to talk about the numbers. Often on Instagram I see people get stressed about the following on Instagram. Sure numbers are important, no doubt. But not if your audience doesn’t engage with you. Something that is more important than an audience is an engaged audience. If you have 100 engaged followers on Instagram – its far better than having 25k followers who don’ t care about what you do.
My Instagram audience connect with me, book my photography services and purchase my products – and that is far more beneficial to my business than having a huge following who aren’t interested in what I have to offer.
How do you use Instagram for your business? Leave me a comment here!
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