Instagram for Small Businesses

Instagram is a great visual platform which is used by 700 Million+ people worldwide per month. I have learned that it can be used as an effective business tool to connect with customers as around 80% of users following business accounts on instagram.

It will allow me to drive awareness to my brand services, as well as helping me to broaden my reach and frequency, which in turn will increase traffic to my website, and sales. I can add profile information about my business as well as links and call to actions such as ‘get in touch’ buttons.

Instagram is owned by Facebook and has the same advertising tools, so I can set up ads and campaigns in the same way as Facebook. I can also access insights similarly to Facebook and analyse numbers of impressions, reach, website link clicks, follower activity, video views, and post saves.

I have learned about different types of posts which include photo adverts, which i can add filters to, to create interesting effects. Another type of post are videos which have the added power of movement and sound, and are therefore more immersive than static images. Carousel adverts lets you create scrollable campaigns with several layers of images or videos in one single ad. And finally there is the option of creating Instagram stories, which are very similar to Snapchat stories, only lasting 24 hours. They create a more humanistic content feed.