How to Use Instagram to Promote Your Business

This article is part of our series for London Social Media Week. #SMWLDN

Instagram is a mobile photo editing andsharing app that saw its user base explode from 15 to 80 million since Facebook acquired the company back in April.

But even before the acquisition, many savvy brands had joined the platform—especially retail brands with stunning visual content. Clothing, media, and design-based brands were a natural fit for both the platform technology and Instagram’s early adopter user base.

However, unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram doesn’t have business-specific profiles, built-in visibility or engagement metrics, or paid advertising options.

So why are brands rushing to join yet another social network? Here’s why:

Instagram is easy-to-use — and awesome!

Instagram’s technology helps you easily create stunning images that you can easily use on your other social networks.

Both Facebook and Twitter have optimised how photos are displayed on these platforms and you can share directly fromInstagram to those platforms (as well as to Tumblr, Foursquare, Flickr, andemail) automatically or by individual selection.

Instagram allows visual storytelling with no advertising

Both the way the platform works (the technology) and the way most users approach the platform (the user experience) allows brands to employ visual storytelling that has more continuity and artistic value than other platforms.

With the absence of advertising (or even clickable links in captions or comments), business uses for an Instagram profile begin and end (for now) with awareness and branding. However, a fewimages that encapsulate a brand moment in a second or two is much more impactful than lines and lines of copy—no matter how brilliant the writing is.

Instagram is mobile — perfect for what people want — instagramification

Instagram combines two of the most powerful forces in the social technology market—mobile and photo sharing—to create a platform that truly offers a unique value proposition. Brands with an Instagram presence can take advantage of that intersection where users are focusing their attention.

Here are six tips to help you get the most out of this powerful tool:

1. Use images to tell a story, not blast your branding

If you sell a product or service, make sure the images you use are about the experience of using the product or service, and not a product placement ad.

Starbucks is an example of a big brand that does this well. Sure their photos show lots of Starbucks cups, but their photos also tell a story—the focus is always on what the person is doing while enjoying their coffee—on the beach, reading a book, etc.

There’s not a lot of tolerance for marketing that’s obviously marketing. Keep it subtle and keep the focus on your customers.

2. Most photos fall into two categories: beautiful imagery or humour

Make sure your Instagram photos fall into one of these categories. Most users aren’t posting all their random party pics to their Instagram stream and brands should exercise similar constraint. Photo albums in that vein are for Facebook. Think of your Instagram photos as high value/low volume.

3. Don’t post too often

A general rule, don’t post more than three photos in a row or one every three hours. If you post more often thanthat, you run the risk of hogging your users’ feed.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that most users follow between 50 and 250 users. I think this is a sign of social media maturity—folks are learning from their experiences on Facebook and Twitter that following too many accounts is overwhelming.

Also, unlike Facebook, the commitment level to an account is low—”unfollows” can happen frequently. Don’t automatically share your Instagram photos—editorially select and customise each one for the appropriate platform.

And remember, you can use apps like PicFrame to include several snaps in one Instagram. Just be sure the images are related and the impact is magnified (rather than splintered) when you use a collage.

4. Choose an account name that’s the same as your Twitter handle

Having the same Instagram account name and Twitter handle serves two purposes. One—your profile will be easily recognisable and easy to find. And two—if you are tagged by another user in a caption and that photo is shared on Twitter, that tag will link to your Twitter profile. It ensures that tagging makes sense when an Instagram photo is shared on othernetworks.

5. Use hashtags, but don’t be creepy about it

Like on Twitter, hashtagging photos enables discovery of your profile by users outside of your primary connections. You can use the search functionality on the app to find out which hashtags are often used. Like on Twitter, hashtagging Instagram photos by event, geolocation, or subject matter is a good idea.

Other hashtags people tend to use on Instagram are filters and colours. Hashtags tend to be somewhat limited on Twitter due to the character length limitations. Because Instagram doesn’t have these limitations, this has encouraged some users and brands to stuff Instagram captions with every hashtag imaginable. Don’t do this—it looks like you’re trying too hard. Even worse, it makes you look like a spammer.

6. Set up an account on a web-based viewer

Instagram’s focus continues to be all about the mobile experience, but the app recently added the ability to viewindividual photos on the web through a shareable link. This feature allows your Instagram stream to not only be seen by those not using the app, but allows those who do have an account to like and comment on a shared photo right from the web. However, using a separate web-based viewer can help you manage your presence and track your progress.

Using Instagram’s API, these tools recreate your feed on a webpage, so you can view multiple photos at a time (without scrolling) on your computer. Most often you can make the same actions (liking, commenting, searching, tagging, etc.) on these web viewers that you can make on the mobile app. My favourite tool is Statigram—they even have a few basic metrics, comment notifications, and an Instagram campaign toolkit.

Bottom line: As the old adage goes—a picture is worth 1,000 words. It’s still true today, but with Instagram, a picture may also be worth 1,000 “likes,” retweets, and shares!

Is your business using Instagram? Tell us how you you’ve used it to help promote your business!