The author’s views in this article on how to optimize Instagram business page are entirely his own and may not always reflect the views of Ranking By SEO.
Who doesn’t want to grow revenue?
In 2018, the growth of eCommerce has reached its highest potential: 40% of Internet users have bought something online, retail e-commerce sales worldwide are 2842 billion US dollars, and 500,000 companies use Shopify.
For brands, selling online isn’t an option these days, and marketers are seeking out alternative ways to promote their brands. While more and more people opt for blocking traditional ads, using social media platforms where your potential customers hang out is becoming more reasonable.
Any advice?
Use Instagram for eCommerce!
As one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, Instagram has grown to 800 million active users and it means your target audience is here. Moreover, people love using social media to discover and buy new products.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- 23% of online shoppers are influenced by social media recommendations
- 30% of online shoppers say they would be likely to make a purchase from a social media network like Instagram
- 72% of users have made purchases after seeing a post on Instagram
Sounds great?
Well, although it may be appealing on the surface, you need to put much effort into unlocking sales potential, and optimizing the Instagram business page for eCommerce is a must.
How to Optimize Instagram Business Page
Here is how you can do it.
1- Update Your Bio Section
The first thing your Instagram visitors see is your bio section, and it takes less than 2/3 of a second for them to form a first opinion of your brand. Thus, having a good bio section is crucial if you want to grab and hold your visitors’ attention.
a. Write a clear description
A clear description plays an important role when you want to optimize Instagram business page.
Writing a clear description seems to be easy: you just need to present your company.
But,
With the rise of Instagram marketing, it’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by your potential customers.
Based on the description, your visitors make the choice of whether or not to scroll your feed and follow you.
Check out House of Intuition page to see a great example of a bio. While it’s short, it’s easy for visitors to understand what they do.
When it comes to writing your bio, try to be consistent as you have only 150 characters to explain to your visitors what it is that you do. You have just some seconds to grab Instagrammers’ attention, and your bio description is so crucial for them to understand whether you can be helpful for them or not.
b. Insert the website link
When new visitors want to understand more about your brand and product, they read your bio. And while it’s hard to write a lot using 150 characters, you can add your URL to the bio to help potential followers find out more about what you offer.
You can add a link to your main page, a recent blog post, a campaign landing page, or a specific product page.
Inserting a website link is a priority for most companies, and HubSpot keeps up with the trends, so they know how to add multiple links on Instagram. With the help of Linkin.bio, they give their followers an opportunity to choose what they want to discover: visit the website or read the latest articles.
Instagram is a great marketing channel that helps brands get better results, so paste a link to allow your audience to click through and read more about you.
So, why adding a website link is important?
- It helps visitors understand more about your brand and product
- It drives website traffic
- It makes the purchase process easier
For a variety of eCommerce reasons, adding a link is a great way to boost sales.
c. Mention related accounts
Wouldn’t it be great if your Instagram profile could contain more than one clickable hyperlink?
Great news: now you can add a related account that will become a link as well!
When editing your bio, include a “@” to mention an account. While it should be related to your brand, there’s no matter whether you will include owner’s personal IG profile or another branded account.
Large brands like J.Crew use separate accounts so you can find a business account for women and men clothes. Just type on the related account to get a fast access to another profile.
If you add an owner’s profile, it humanizes your brand. And if you add a related account, it gives you an opportunity to promote both profiles. Anyway, mentioning an account in your bio is a perfect way to add more visibility to your account and allow Instagrammers to discover you.
d. Share your brand hashtag
Want to optimize Instagram business page? Never ignore hashtags.
Using hashtags for business is another great way to boost engagement, build brand awareness, and allow your followers to connect with your company on social media.
Instagram rolls out new ways for companies to grow their businesses, and now you can add your branded hashtag to your bio.
Sharing your brand hashtag in bio allows visitors to click through and view the respective content. It’s also a great way to invite followers to participate in your community.
Let’s take Cloth brand, for example. They encourage followers to share pictures with their branded hashtag #friendsocloth for a chance to be featured on their profile.
For Cloth, it’s a brilliant way to prove potential customers that other customers trust their brand. And it’s a great example for other brands to show how to use an option to share your branded hashtag in the bio section.
e. Add contact information
Modern customers value their time, and when they want to ask an urgent question, they don’t want to wait much for the reply.
Thus, marketers should work harder to provide great customer support, and adding contact information on Instagram is a great way to ensure your clients have options how to connect with you.
While running Instagram business page, you have different contact options (email, phone number, directions) to provide followers with various ways to get in touch with you.
For example, Mac Cosmetics uses two buttons to help their followers understand more about their brand. ‘Shop’ button redirects people to their store, and ‘Call’ button helps to connect with the company, using the phone.
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Plus, you can visit Insights to understand whether your followers have tapped on the contact info or not. Thus, add as many options as you find optimal, and allow your customers to connect with you the way they want it.
Bonus Tips Optimize Instagram Business Page
Choose your business category:
It helps people understand what your business is about. Therefore, you attract right followers.
Update information:
As any developing company, you might have news to share with your customers. Thus, it’s important to keep your bio up-to-date, and using relevant information and links is a must.
Use emojis:
It’s a perfect way to add creativity and visualize your information.
2- Organize Your Instagram Feed
People are visually-oriented, so Instagram pictures you post matter. Moreover, your whole feed matters: if it’s appealing to the eye, you will attract more Instagrammers who might want to discover more about your brand.
a. Take care of your feed
A picture is worth a thousand words, and your feed is worth your brand success.
To increase engagement and attract more followers, take care of your feed. You need to think about every single post and how they will look together. If you can take amazing photos, that’s great. If you know what photos you should put next to each other, that’s even better!
Taco Bell is a great example of a cohesive feed. They publish 3 posts to showcase their artwork in horizontal lines. It’s eye-catching, without a doubt!
If you don’t have much budget to produce content like Taco Bell, you can follow three simple rules to make your feed look pretty:
- Choose a strategy and stick to it
- Maintain a consistent color palette
- Lay a bet on minimalist design
It may take much time and effort to understand how to make your Instagram feed better.
However, it’s worth trying as your feed helps to attract and hold followers who can convert into customers.
b. Post user-generated content
Do you believe in the power of influencer marketing?
It’s proven that people are more likely to trust a peer on social media than branded content. Thus, posting user-generated content is a great way to promote your product with the help of Instagrammers who have already build up a good following.
Moreover, when people create UGC, it looks better than overly-polished professional photos, and it adds authenticity.
For Starbucks Instagram, user-generated content plays a key role. Their customers produce many photos, and Starbucks marketers are happy to feature these images on their feed. Firstly, it helps to build brand loyalty. Secondly, it gives free content.
People love taking photos, and you can make it beneficial for your business. Even if you’re not a large brand like Starbucks, you can encourage user-generated content and help your business grow.
c. Use shoppable tags
Who else wants to sell stuff and earn money on Instagram?
With the announcement of shoppable tags, it’s no longer a dream.
The easier the purchase process is, the more likely your customers will buy your products. And adding shoppable posts is a perfect way to tag up to five products with their prices in a single post. Now, your followers don’t need to leave the app to go through with their purchases.
Just take a look at JackThread post to see how it works.
When a visitor sees a little shopping bag icon, it means they can tap it to view product details. If the item is interesting, followers can tap again to get directly to the company website to purchase.
Sounds great, right?
Although this feature helps optimize Instagram for eCommerce, it can be daunting. However, you can rely on third-party apps to delegate this task. Obviously, you should be ready to pay for this help.
Look, you don’t need to get math assistance from experts to understand: spending money on using third-party apps is worth doing as shoppable tags allow customers to complete their purchases faster. Therefore, it boosts sales.
d. Describe items
Writing Instagram posts isn’t easy.
You need to keep your texts short, clear, and engaging to optimize Instagram business page. The main idea is to describe items the way your customers will want to buy them.
Here’s an example of this tactic in action by Lululemon. As a technical athletic apparel company, they know the importance of comfort for their customers. Thus, they use lifestyle photos to deliver the message and add a short description to clarify everything in several sentences.
For customers, this description helps give a hint at what they can get with the purchase.
Although Instagram is a visual platform, you need to use texts to communicate with your customers and explain everything your picture can’t tell. This is one of the best strategies to optimize Instagram business page.
Bonus Tips to Optimize Instagram Business Page
Use one filter:
Around 60% of the brands use the same filter to create a cohesive feed.
Choose a color palette:
Stick to 3-5 colors to make your feed look pretty.
Plan in advance:
Using apps like Snug or Preview helps you understand how your feed will look like to make it better.
3- Use the Power of Ephemeral Content
Ephemeral content is on its rise. More and more people use short-lived content to share moments with their followers on Instagram. For brands, it’s a great way to increase your Instagram visibility and boost engagement. Moreover, you can turn your followers into customers with ephemeral content.
a. Post stories
Instagram Stories hit 300 million daily active users, and the number is kept on growing. It means people love disappearing content, and as it provides a fear of missing out (FOMO), people are more likely to watch stories than regular posts.
For brands, it’s another great opportunity to share genuine content without overposting. Moreover, Instagram Stories appears in a separate feed which makes it easier for your followers to watch your content.
If you want to make the most out of your Instagram Stories, think about the strategy. You can publish behind-the-scenes moments, lifestyle photos of your products, expert videos, teasers, etc. No matter what you choose, ensure it helps your business shine.
Whole Foods uses Stories to tell their followers about the product launch, special deals, trends, and much more.
Another good point is that accounts with 10k+ followers can include links. This way, followers can get a quick access to the website to read more about the announcement or purchase the item.
If you want to deliver more branded messages without annoying your followers, use Instagram Stories.
b. Group stories highlights
Do you believe that creating short-lived content is a waste of time and effort?
Well, we have bad news for you then. Now you can make your Stories live longer by grouping the best Stories into Highlights.
And it is a good practice to optimize Instagram business page.
It’s a perfect way for brands to gather important information and keep everything in one place, just below the bio section. Highlights stay on your profile until you remove them, and you can edit them with ease.
Yes, Stories’ Highlight helps to save your followers time as they can find everything about your brand on the top of your profile.
For example, Lulus groups Stories to keep everything below the bio section. It helps visitors find out more about the company, its products, and trends without scrolling the feed.
There are many ways to use Stories Highlights: share tutorials, current sales, or featured items. Actually, it depends on your creativity how to make the most out of this feature and boost sales.
4. Go Live
Very important to optimize Instagram business page!
As an expert in the niche, you have the knowledge to share. And if you want to sell your product, you need to convince your potential customers to rely on you. Thus, going live is a great social proof and a way to interact with followers and optimize Instagram business page.
Live streams help you humanize your brand and bring customers closer to you. For example, Beyond Yoga brand is happy to give their fans an opportunity to see the offline event with the live stream.
Moreover, you don’t need professional gadgets to go live. Thus, it’s a free way to engage your followers and increase your brand loyalty.
Still, not convinced?
When you going to live on Instagram, your followers get a notification which means they won’t miss your stream.
More and more brands go live on Instagram to build authenticity and brand loyalty. People love being in the moment, so they join live stream to discover more about your brand.
Bonus Tips to optimize Instagram business page:
Collaborate with influencers:
People rely on opinion leaders so you can invite them to join your stream or ask them to share info about your product in their stories to get better results.
Add links:
Don’t forget about another opportunity to get more website traffic (available for business accounts with 10k+ following).
Publish announcements:
If you plan to go live, inform your followers in advance using Stories. After all, if they know when you go live, they can change their plans in order not to miss your stream.
In a Word
Instagram has become a goldmine for eCommerce, and selling here is a dream of all. If you know how to optimize your page for eCommerce, you can simplify the purchase process, and therefore make it more comfortable for your followers to buy without leaving their favorite app.
Want to share any tip on how to optimize Instagram business page? Leave it in the comment section.
