How to use Instagram to promote your brand or business?

Instagram, acquired by Facebook in August 2012, is one of the trendiest and busiest social networks in the world. Last June, it exceeded the milestone of one billion users, including more than twelve million French people. At first, a simple platform for sharing photos and videos with relatives or people with the same interests, it has become a valuable marketing tool for companies. They are investing more and more in Instagram to promote their products. Here are some tips for using the app well to highlight your business.

Instagram had more than 25 million business accounts in November 2017, according to an article published by TechCrunch, a US news website specializing in digital start-up news. 53% of French SMEs said that the social network helped to increase their sales and more than half agreed that their activities are stronger thanks to it, according to a survey carried out by Ispos in May 2017. 80% of Instagrammers subscribe to at least one company account and a third of the most viewed stories were posted by brands in 2017 according to Simply Measured, a firm that develops analytics solutions especially for marketers. Many companies and brands have thus been able in a short time to create and strengthen their community as well as boost their activity by highlighting their products. To achieve this, they have adopted various strategies.

Create a professional account

In the beginning, Instagram offered the same type of account and features for individual and business profiles. Since the end of 2016, the platform has evolved by offering a professional account for companies. With this new profile, the entrepreneur can access four elements: contact information, analysis tools, the Promote option of a publication and the addition of links in stories. The first element allows customers to reach the company through an email address, phone number or postal address, visible via the profile bio. The second gives the professional access to statistics such as the number of visits to his account, the times at which users are present, the most popular publications as well as the age, gender or city of his subscribers. s. The entrepreneur can then understand what the reach and engagement is on their posts and how they can improve their performance.

Promote, carry out an advertising campaign

With the "Promote" option, a brand has the possibility of carrying out an advertising campaign: it just has to choose the desired objective such as more visits or views of publications, the target audience from ten criteria such as age or location as well as define the duration of the advertisement and the budget it wishes to devote to it. Stories, ephemeral videos visible on the platform for 24 hours can intervene with companies to promote their product. A “Find out more” link is added to take the user directly to their website. Airbnb, which specializes in apartment rentals, and Boursorama, in online banking, use these methods.

Set up contests

Contests are good ways to make your business visible, but also to attract new subscribers and potential customers. They also generate engagement and highlight new products that the entrepreneur wants to sell. Several game mechanics can be implemented. The techniques most often used consist of the user participating by leaving a comment, a like, reposting a photo and identifying one or more friends.

A relevant action

They allow you to bring in thousands of followers in a minimum of time and without great difficulty. Other processes are also used to stimulate the creativity of subscribers. This is particularly the case for photo and video competitions related to the brand or on a theme related to it. The fact of renewing these different competitions on a recurring basis makes it possible to retain the loyalty of the community and to continuously integrate new customers. French companies such as Top Achat, a computer and electronic products distribution company or many clothing brands such as Bizzbee regularly use this system.

Know how to use hashtags

Hashtags are great tools for creating engagement and increasing visibility for businesses and brands on Instagram. They allow users to find content and accounts to follow. By finding one or more specific keywords, the entrepreneur can make his company known to a varied audience. But you have to know how to handle them with care. You can add up to 60 hashtags per publication, but the ideal is to use about fifteen, in order to avoid confusing the message that the leader wants to communicate about his product. It is necessary to choose short, simple and easy to write terms to mark the minds of potential customers.

Select hashtags carefully

You have to select popular hashtags on the social network such as #instagood (Bon instant in French, contraction of Instagram and "good", editor's note), #photooftheday (Photo of the day in French, editor's note) or even #Love, mot- most used key on the platform, more than a billion times. Creating your own hashtag may also be necessary for the company to reach the greatest number. This encourages followers to use it on their own post and helps display the products to a wider set of users. Nike, for example, uses its iconic 'Just Do It' slogan on much of its easily identifiable posting and is featured in more than 14,600,000 million photos today.

Win-win strategies

These different strategies will allow you to promote your brand or your company's products on Instagram. Many companies are thus seeing their visibility increase thanks to social networks. The English research agency Brandwatch unveiled last May its annual list of the hundred most visible global brands on Instagram and Twitter. She has analyzed one hundred million images posted on these social networks around the world. Seven French companies are part of it, including Louis Vuitton, 14th with 1.4 million photos, L'Oréal, 45th with 233,392 and Carrefour, 63rd with 87,290.