Regardless of the fact that it was bought out by Facebook practically the moment it gained any type of popularity, Instagram is a fantastic avenue for growing your social media presence, keeping customers engaged with your brand and of course keeping in communication. In a world where sharing videos and pictures is becoming more and more commonplace, by putting your brand on Instagram, you open up a whole new opportunity to gain followers who can become customers.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so sharing pictures with your followers is one of the easiest ways to get a message across or update your followers on the latest happenings or new products. For example a couture designer with a storefront can snap photos of the garments they design and send it out to their followers on Instagram. One thing about Instagram is that you can easily connect it to your other social media outlets so your posts can be put up there as well. You can also choose not to automatically post to your other social sites. This creates exclusivity, you can even go as far as to make your profile private. This allows you to choose who follows you and who doesn’t. For a business, like a custom garment maker or sculptor this is a great way to create scarcity for your products to ensure they fly out the door.
Pretty much any type of business can use Instagram to their advantage. For instance, a local Ford dealership tends to only see newer vehicles it has sold within the last few years coming in for service. But perhaps every now and again something extrordinary comes through the shop. Perhaps a vintage Thunderbird from the 1960’s, a newer Mustang that’s been built up, or even a big pickup truck thats been heavily modified to go off-roading. By posting pictures of these vehicles to Instagram it allows a business to show off their goods and services and followers can easily share these pictures with their network.
Sending out interesting pictures to followers that already know, like and trust you is great. And will likely create more transactions a month from them, but what about the savvy business owner that wants to find new customers? How can a business owner harness the power of this photo sharing social tool? Simple; by incorporating the hash tag (#). If you’ve been around for a bit and pay attention to social media but also general media (such as TV commercials), you are well aware of the hash tag, but you may not be familiar with how it works in the social media solar system.
Hash tags are a way of categorizing and organizing posts in a conversation. For instance, when using a hash tag on Instagram, lets go back to the Ford dealer and use them as an example. Lets say they get a vintage Mustang in the shop for service, someone can take a picture of the vehicle and post it to Instagram. They might use hash tags like; #Ford #Mustang #64mustang #musclecar. By including these hash tags in the post it will allow anyone looking for pictures on this topic to find the dealer. If someone looking at the dealer’s Instagram pictures just so happens to own a vintage Ford Mustang or something similar and lives in the area there is a good chance they will begin looking into the dealership. First step is that that person will start following the dealer’s social media and in time it is likely they will become a customer.
Another way to get customers in the door using Instagram is to design a coupon and send it out ONLY to your Instagram followers. Making it creative will bring in more clients. In other words, lets use the couture fashion designer from earlier; what they can do is take scrap pieces of fabric, zippers, safety pins, scissors, thread, Etc… And use them to spell out words that will describe the promotion. This brands the promotion to the business and will entice a customer to buy more so than a regular text coupon because it is visually stimulating.
Before you sign up for Instagram and start taking a zillion pictures to drip out, ask yourself if its something that makes sense for your business. Make sure to assess your current client base and what their wants and needs are. If your goods and/or services cater to an older, less tech savvy crowd, it may not be worth the time and effort. But on the other hand, if you deal with a large number of people who are in tune with technology it is certainly something to seriously consider for your business.