menu
Instagram has become a tool familiar to many businesses, and we dare say, a highly effective one in reaching out to millions and billions of people.
Most people dive headfirst into the platform without knowing the basics of using it for a business. Don’t neglect this important foundation.
In this post, we will be sharing four ways you can grow your Instagram page, for FREE!
Read on to find out how you can accelerate your business today.
Converting your page to a business account is simple and has three main benefits. These benefits are, allowing you to put your contact on your profile, place ads and see insights to your posts and accounts.
A business account will have your contact shown on your profile. By tapping on a Call button on your profile, your audience can easily contact you when they find your page.
Ads are also exclusive to business accounts. Recall the last time you scrolled through your Instagram feed and came across a post from a company you don’t follow. Those are sponsored ads that you can put up if you have a business account as well.
Lastly, a business account will let you see important data such as the number of visits to your profile and the engagement rates for individual posts. This way, you’ll know the kind of content that works or doesn’t work with your audience.
So how can you convert your profile to a business account?
Well, simply head over to your profile page and click on the three lines at the top right of the screen. It should trigger an expansion to the menu. Look for Settings on the bottom right of the screen, click on Account and scroll to the bottom. Click on the option to change to business account. Then follow the instructions to complete the conversion.
Have a clear profile description so that those who come in contact with your profile will know exactly what you do. First impression counts!
There are three things to take note of in your profile: your profile name, bio and website url.
For your profile name, use words related to your niche or industry so it will be searchable for those looking for relevant content. For example, when someone searches for watch repair, the business page for a watch servicing company pops up.
Next, keep your bio short and sweet, by minimally stating what problems your business solve or its unique selling point (USP).
And of course, do remember to include your website link, so people can easily land on your website to obtain more information.
To edit your profile description, simply go to your profile page and click on Edit Profile.
An example of a business with its profile description optimized is assemblesg. As seen in here, their name consists of the word tailor, their bio shows their USP and the website link is there.
Ask yourself this, if you cover the top part of your Instagram page, will people be able to tell what your business is all about if they just look at the posts?
For this first example (left), it is obvious that the man pictured is a real estate agent from his posts about property and flipping houses. Similarly in this second example, it is clear from the photos that this account belongs to a luxury watch servicing company.
To create posts with beautiful images or eye-catching graphics, you can use software such as Canva, which has both free and paid versions. For starters, using the free version will be sufficient.
Hashtags are important because they increase your reach and expose your account to those who have not heard of your business.
There is technique to using hashtags, and some businesses may be doing it wrong. The goal is to use hashtags where your target audience is hanging out.
Let’s imagine that you own a pet grooming studio. Instead of using #petgrooming, it might be better to use #sgpets instead, as majority of Singaporean pet owners will use this hashtag.
So how can you do hashtag research to find out which hashtags are most relevant for your business?
There are a number of ways to do this, using either free or paid tools. To keep things simple, this is a method using Instagram itself.
Before you begin, have an excel sheet so you can record the hashtags and number of post within that hashtags.
Firstly, search a particular hashtag and click on tags, which will show related hashtags. Click on the hashtag that you searched.
After recording down the hashtags, you will need to sort them by size i.e. number of posts per hashtag now.
As Instagram only allows 30 hashtags per post, you have to choose the hashtags you use carefully and optimally.
Here’s a rough guide on how you can use the hashtags. Only include 10 to 15% of large cap hashtags, and 20 to 30% of mid cap hashtags. Use more of the smaller and micro cap hashtags instead.
As a brand new page, you would want to rank on the top posts for smaller and micro hashtags. Having too many large cap hashtags will be much harder to increase your reach as you are competing with bigger businesses and your post might not be seen.
There you have it, four simple, but powerful ways to grow your Instagram page. Try them out yourself and watch your business account grow – good luck!
Stay tuned for part 2 of How to grow your Instagram page for free – Organic Growth
