2 Pro Tips for Your Instagram Account

Instagram is probably the best social media channel for your store to engage with customers and build your brand. Most recent research conducted by cmswire.com show these incredible figures:

• Over 80% of Instagram users discover new products/services on the platform.
• After seeing a product/service on Instagram, 79% search for more information
• 37% visit the retail store and 46% make a purchase.

You simply can’t go wrong here, with an average user usage time of 1 hour a day, Instagram is a great marketing platform for your store. It can help you increase both brand awareness and overall revenue.

So here it comes, three easy “To-Do” tips that can accelerate your Instagram account:

Plan Ahead

Best practices say that you should plan your social media posts one month in advance. However, let’s keep it simple and plan our week in advance, think about all the products and offers you want to show your audience. Then make a good 70/30 balance of content type, we recommend using video 70% of the time for two simple reasons:

• Customers indicate that by viewing a product video their purchase intent grows by up to 3 times.
• Video content drives 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.

Planning ahead makes it easy to create and engage with well thought content that will increase followers and drive brand awareness not to mention it is a much more efficient use of your time. There are some great programs like Tailwind that allow you to plan your content in advance.

Profile Basics 101

• Firstly, Profile Picture!
• Let’s make sure your store’s profile is optimized to attract new followers. You can easily create brand awareness by uploading your store’s logo as your profile image so new customers will recognize it. There are so many similar brand names out there that your profile image makes a huge difference.
• Secondly, Explain Who You Are!
• Provide in the description comprehensive and accurate information about your brand. You can make it even more appealing by writing in a visually attractive way, encouraging new customers to tap the “Follow” button.
• See this great example from American Vintage

• Thirdly- Insert A Link To Your Store!
• This is a “must have”! You want your new and current customers to reach your store in one click. Instagram only lets you have one link in your bio. Wait, there is a pro tip here! You can overcome this issue by using a link in a bio tool such as Url.bio. With a link in bio tool, you can share multiple links for your followers in just one URL. You can share a landing page with different links or create a shoppable grid.
• Lastly, Story Highlights
• Story content has out passed IG feed content last year. So, what does that even mean? It means that more people are viewing and uploading story content. A great way to enrich your Instagram account is by saving your stories to your profile using the highlights feature. You can name each Highlight so your customers will know what they are about to view and unlike a regular story post that lasts for 24h, your highlights last forever.