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Nowadays, there are no barriers to creating a business. Thanks to technology, anyone can start an enterprise from anywhere in the world. You no longer need to have a place or a lot of money as capital, to begin with. Now that technology is at your fingertips; the opportunities are almost the same for everyone.
The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can go to a fun place and still make a lot of money is you. Does Instagram ring a bell? It should. This platform alone boasts of over a billion monthly users. That is a lot of potential customers!
While a lot of people use their Instagram accounts simply to upload their photos and talk to their friends, you would be leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t start taking advantage of the massive attention. In fact, more businesses are now seeing why this platform is hot for sales.
If you would like to level up your business online, Instagram might just be your ideal choice. In this article, we will be covering some really cool stuff about Instagram, and how to explore this opportunity. Let’s dive right in!
What Is Instagram?
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. If you are familiar with the world of social media, you will know that Facebook owns Instagram. Taking a quick look at Instagram, you can understand why Facebook acquired it.
Instagram focuses on visual contents like images and short videos. These contents can be accompanied by captions and hashtags, and other users can like and comment on them. Users can follow each other, send direct messages, comment on photos, tag others and customize their profiles.
If there is one other thing Instagram is a master at, it is imitation. In 2016, Instagram launched its Stories feature, a smart move that practically imitated Snapchat. With Instagram Stories, you can post images of moments, which would disappear in 24 hours. The intrigue won more users for Instagram.
Apart from Stories, Instagram also launched its live video feature in 2016. This time, it isn’t imitating a foreign competitor, but its own parent company app, Facebook. Facebook live has worked out so well that the same was replicated on Instagram. The difference? It disappears immediately or in 24 hours.
In 2018, Instagram launched IGTV and revolutionized how we consume long-form video. Before then, we consume video online in the horizontal format, as you would see on YouTube. IGTV offers up to an hour-long video in vertical format, exactly how we use our smartphones.
Because of how natural it feels using Instagram and the ability to put a professional touch to photos with its filters, Instagram is perfect not only to share your lifestyle but also to sell all kinds of products and services by growing your business.
We usually think of Facebook when it comes to social media advertising, but Instagram has proven to be an equally effective platform when it comes to promoting your business.
How To Use Instagram
If you want to start building an audience and level up your business on Instagram, you must first learn to use its most basic functions. Follow this simple checklist:
Download The Application
- While you can enter Instagram from your web browser, to get the most out of it you should download the application on your Android or iOS device.
- Go to the App Store or Google Play Store and in the search bar enter “Instagram.” It will be effortless to find it since it is one of the applications with the highest number of downloads.
- Click on “Install” and wait for it to download and install on your device. You’ll know because now you’ll have the Instagram icon along with the rest of your applications.
Login Or Register
- Touch the application icon and when you first enter you will be asked to enter your account details or register.
- Enter your account details if you already have one for your business, or just register with your Facebook account if you have one.
- If you do not have an Instagram account yet and don’t want to use Facebook to sign up, create one from scratch.
- To do so, open the application, and click on the blue “Register With Your Email” button.
- Next, select the option you want, and enter your phone number or your email.
- Then, you just have to click on “Next”, write the name of your business, a password, and you’re done. You now have an Instagram profile for your business. Explore!
Switch Your Account To Business Account
Having an Instagram profile is one thing. Having a business account is another. Although not as popular as the personal profile, business accounts are different from those of ordinary users and have different features to get the most out of them.
How To Switch To A Business Account On Instagram
Switching to a business account is quite easy and straightforward. To convert your personal profile to a company profile, follow these steps:
- Go to your profile and touch the settings icon.
- In the account section, choose “Switch To Business Account.”
- You will be presented with the option to access Facebook to be able to link a page that you manage.
- To finish, you can configure the contact information of your company as phone number, email and address. You can also edit this at any time.
You now have a business account on Instagram!
So, why even switch?
Better Integration When Scheduling Posts
Instagram has improved the way users can schedule their posts. Thanks to the changes in its API, third-party applications now help you to publish directly, a positive step forward from when all they notify you to “share” when it is time.
Now, self-publishing is allowed, but just for business accounts for the time being. So, if you want to be consistent with the way you publish content, switching to a business account will make things easier.
Publishing Links In The Stories
Instagram doesn’t allow any links you embed in your posts to be clickable. This has helped cut back on spammers. However, this may be a disadvantage for your business. However, if you have a business account, you can easily include links to external web pages from your Instagram Stories. However, this function is somewhat exclusive: it will only be possible to include links if you have more than 10,000 followers on Instagram.
Access To Post Insight
With a business account, you will have greater control of the impact of your publications. You will have access to a report on the results of each of the photos and videos you publish on your business profile. Standard accounts do not give information on the performance of each of the publications.
Sponsored Posts
With a business account, you can promote your post, so that you can beat Instagram’s algorithm and reach a greater audience. The use of advertising is as essential on Instagram as it is on Facebook, the platform from which it draws its inspiration. Without boosting your offers, you may only be reaching a tiny fraction of your audience.
Just like advertisements and promotions are set up on Facebook, the same principle applies to Instagram. You can choose to advertise on both platforms at once. When you start posting, Instagram will start suggesting that you boost your posts to reach more people. This service is available at a price to business accounts.
Know The Audience Better
Currently, Instagram shows the location of the followers, their gender and age range, as well as the hours of highest activity according to your audience. In each post, there are data about the impact, the reactions, the number of times the image or video has been saved, the comments or the shares.
In Stories, you will be able to see the stories your users check out, and on which ones they stop swiping. This will give you a good idea of the kind of posts your audience likes. Without a doubt, it is a great help to have this information in order to offer a product that fans like and that helps create a larger community.
Switching to a business account will allow you to discover the new features that Instagram keeps adding one after the other to make business accounts more useful for businesses. Making the transition and changing the profile type will not only offer you information about the audience and posts about how to manage your content, but it can also help to gain more followers and improve the impact of your publications.
Leveling up your business with Instagram will open up a lot of opportunities for your brand. That is why we take it seriously at WunderTRE.