How can Instagram drive sales?
With over 700 million 'instagrammers' its unsurprising that brands are relying more and more on Instagram to boost their sales. Instagram has had a massive impact on businesses, in fact, there are more than 15 million business profiles worldwide! This is because users want to be inspired, they want to follow their favourite brands and be kept in the loop in real time; 75% of instagrammers take action after being inspired by a post. Brands often think that posting the occasional photo is better than posting nothing at all but are then surprised when this method does nothing for them. Instagram, like any other social media method, should be well thought out in order to achieve the best results. Posts should be well timed, visually pleasing content that provokes a reaction from your followers. Instagram stories allow brands to relay a message to their users in an interactive way. Beats by Dre found that 'Instagram stories also drove an overall 15% increase in click through rate compared to Instagram link ads and the click through rate from Stories was also stronger than that from other advertising channels". Instagram Stories, used correctly, can really make a brand stand out and boost awareness, following and sales; "the native storytelling format of Instagram Stories ads helped our campaign stand out, driving higher recall" Mahak Ambwani, Sk-II.
5 top tips to get started:
Create fantastic content. Instagram is visual, it's important that each post portrays you as a brand and is relevant.
Analyse your followers and discover the best days and times to post!
Use hashtags. Instagram allows 30 hashtags in each comment so make sure you are using all of these wisely. Do some research and find hashtags both popular and relevant to you.
Be consistent. There isn't a recommended post limit on Instagram; posting 10 times a day will not negatively affect your account but if you start posting 10 a day and then drop down to 10 a week, you will lose followers. So I'd recommend posting at a frequency that you can maintain; if this is once a day that's absolutely fine, just make sure you stick to it!
Use the tools provided. It's important that your brand makes use of the tools available and keeps up to date with these changes. If you have a business profile with more than 10,000 followers, consider using the 'swipe up' feature to take your followers from your stories to your website (note, when this feature was first introduced it was only available for verified accounts).
