How to Use Instagram for Local Businesses

Instagram has active users to over 800 million. Businesses have an extended opportunity here on Instagram to market their products and to get an interested and targeted audience without spending on paid advertising lots of money. The best part of Instagram this year from January 2018 is that it permits Sendible, a third party platform to publish photos on the business profile of this Instagram, thereby making it easily visible.

Here are few tips to use Instagram superbly for local businesses:

Make your Bio Outstanding

Ascertain people understand your business is in local areas on finding your bio. Add a brief description of the location. Space is limited, so write perfectly, as to what you do and who you are. Ensure a great quality bio image. Personal images for the profile also work better or even your logo, if it is really recognizable.

Your bio place allows you to hyperlink your website, so make relevant links to your goals. Drive traffic by placing your link and give a reason for people to click it!

Hashtags

Hashtags are the key to a larger audience. Develop a list specific to your location and industry as popular hashtags. Hashtags making sense and relating your brand will result in more engagements and will increase likes and followers on your profile, as well if your profile is new than you can give it an initial boost by buying some likes or followers from sites like SocialShop. You can skip the usual #instafollow.

• Share Local Images: Even with hashtags relate your clients with local images. This helps in making connection easily with your followers.
• Use quality images: A well-known fact is that Instagram is the first image sharing network and so upload quality images taken by DSLR or a Smartphone. Ensure the photos relate your local business.

Note: Add hashtags in the comment section of your post instead of the description.

Have a Theme

Your Instagram account should not appear as some hodgepodge account featuring random photos. To make it appear real, have a theme so that your brand is recognized and keep images consistent.  Incorporate your images on time and remember to curate your content!

Having a theme does not mean all your images must be promotional. Remember, this is your business account on Instagram that works as a social shop. It should specify why you are here and the local business you are doing.

Tools and Resources

Grow your Instagram account with these tools and resources:

• Hootsuite: Schedule in advance your posts. This is a great tool that helps in scheduling your posts and you also can save hours by posting the prepared captions and images on the fly.
• Canva: If you wish to add fancy effects or some text, to the Instagram post, the best is this desktop site, Canva. The advantage is that this is very simple to use. It is not available currently on the mobile devices; however, if you work all day at a computer, it may be easy to design the posts.
• Typorama: This is an app that is easy to use and it will allow you to include images and text. The benefit is that it also offers stock images and cool backgrounds in an extensive selection to choose. In fact, you can include to your images even watermark in the pro version. It is great, but you must ensure the company’s logo or the name is appearing on the images. This will keep your local business running.
• Snapseed: The phone application provides editing. It is available for Apple and Android devices.
• Iconosquare: You can use this tool and track your account specific metrics. Of course, this does charge a monthly fee, but actually depends on the details that you wish to report.
• Get Analytics: This is a fascinating start as a simple tool for reporting. It will show in its record the reporting for three months and you can easily track the follower’s numbers, comments and likes, besides know how they are trending.
• Instasize: This is a mobile editing app that lets you curate straight from your phone. Instasize lets you choose from a collections of professionally designed filters, text styles and borders to edit your photos and videos. It integrates seamlessly with Instagram and works great for those who want to establish a consistent brand aesthetic.

As it is your local business promotion that you do use Instagram, without fail include your location so that it allows geo-tagging your posts and you are found easily. Add to every image your location. Check out this great tool for the Small Business Blogs.