Instagram Business Account vs. Personal Account – Know the Difference
Whether you are an influencer, running an eCommerce store, or a small business, social media platforms can assist you to build brand awareness and quality leads. Instagram business accounts use for these purposes. An Instagram business account contains modern features that are specifically designed to know your audience and bring traffic to the website. Here’s the question that always comes to mind: what is the major difference between an Instagram business account vs. a personal account?
An Instagram business account helps businesses to track their interactions and engagement. These profiles have more analytical tools than a personal account, help you understand your audience, and increase business reach.
Instagram business accounts come with two primary advantages, such as audience insights and lead generation tools. If you’re using Instagram to find inspiration and connect with family and friends, a personal account is a right choice for you.
A basic account allows you to share content and view other Instagram accounts. You have an option to set a personal Instagram profile to a private one where your followers can see your content. On another side, an Instagram business profile is public, and everyone on Instagram can see it. It is great when it comes to targeting a new audience and increasing your brand’s exposure.
Benefits of a Professional Instagram Account
When you are using Instagram as a marketing strategy, an Instagram business page gives premium features that help your business grow digitally. Here are some important factors that differentiate an Instagram business account from a personal one.
Instagram Insights
Analytical tools are an integral part of digital marketing strategies. If you want to boost your performance on Instagram, you have to measure it through any tool. Instagram Insights is one of the main advantages of having a business account.
Instagram business accounts offer detailed analytics about your post performance and audience. You can see the insights on the right corner of the Instagram application. They include metrics such as content interactions, reach and impressions, followers, and audience demographic information.
Ability to Improve Instagram Posts
If you want more engagement with your content, improve your business posts increase for maximum reach. When you boost your posts with the help of Instagram ads, you can choose a target audience and set a specific budget. Instagram endorses your posts with the result-oriented ads in the insight tab.
Quick Reply and Contact Button
You can add your contact information to the profile with your Instagram business account. Your new and existing customers can visit your profile and use this profile to contact you. While setting up a business account, there is a ‘Public Business Information’ section that enables you to add an email address or phone number.
When you are too busy to answer Instagram messages, a business account gives you an option for quick replies. There are pre-written and auto-replies to some general questions that you can send to customers. Go to the ‘Quick Replies’ in your account settings. A business account also allows you to categorize your inbox, which is best to track your most important leads.
Instagram Shopping
Instagram also offers online shops and shopping posts that are perfect for retailers and eCommerce websites. Instagram users with a business account can active the Shop tab on the profile to make the Instagram account their storefront. They can build shopping Instagram posts for users to buy products and save them for later.
Auto Publish Content
Another advantage of an Instagram business account vs. personal is that you can schedule content to auto-publish. You can schedule your posts using Meet Edgar with a business account, and your post will be auto-posted at the chosen time. All you need to connect your Facebook account to run this application. If you are posting for a personal account, you can post the content manually. You can schedule it in advance, and the Meet Edgar application will push a notification to remind you about the time to publish the content.
Who Requires a Business Instagram Account?
Anyone using an Instagram marketing strategy should opt for a business account, even if you are trying to boost organic reach. Service providers and retailers will mostly get benefits from Instagram business accounts. However, there are some other types of Instagram accounts:
Instagram Business Account vs. Instagram Creator Account
Instagram account has another type that is Creator account. This profile lies between the personal and business Instagram account. The main advantages of creator profile are:
- Audience Insights for the past seven days
- Streamlined inbox
- Additional contact information button
Business accounts have more analytics, whereas the creator account offers more flexible options to users. You can set up a creator profile by adding a contact button and creator type, and you can remove it any time to turn your account into a personal one. This option makes the creator account appealing to public figures and influencers.
Remember that if you are using an Instagram account as a monetization strategy, go for a business profile. And, if you want your audience insights without the business contact option, you can go for a creator profile.
How to Setup an Instagram Business Account from Existing Account
If you already have an Instagram account and want to switch it to a business profile, it’s free and easy to follow. You need to follow a few steps to set up a business account from mobile:
- Log in to the Instagram app
- Choose the Main Menu on the top right corner of your profile
- Go to ‘Settings’
- Select ‘Account’
- Choose ‘Switch to Professional Account’
- Tap ‘Business’
- Link your Facebook Business Page (optional)
- Enter the contact information of your business
- Tap the Done button
But how to change an Instagram account to a business account from a desktop? It’s the same procedure as the above-mentioned. Keep in mind that Instagram is a mobile-friendly app, so the desktop experience is not as smooth as mobile. Moreover, you can also switch to your time anytime from the Instagram business account.
How to Start a Social Media Management Company in 2022: A Step-by-Step Guide
Social media was initially used as a fun way to connect with friends and family in any corner of the world. Over time it has grown into an inexpensive, imperative marketing strategy for all sizes of businesses. Many businesses are stunned by different tasks that go into handling thousands of messages across social media accounts, and they hire experts to do it efficiently. If you’re curious about how to start a social media management company, this guide will be helpful to know about the details.
What do Social Media Managers do?
Social media managers provide multiple services based on their expertise and clients’ requirements. These services include:
- Develop the marketing strategy as per client objectives
- Social media accounts setup
- Posting images and videos
- Follow up the latest trends and news
- Increase the number of followers
- Perform market analysis
- Community facilitation to the target audience
- Quick customer service
Reasons for Getting into Social Media Management
There are plenty of reasons to get into the social media management business. You will be paid for using social media, and it can be great if it’s something you love doing. All it just needs some investment or equipment to start the social media management company. You can run the business sitting at home with stable internet connectivity. Instead of exploring different social media platforms, you can only focus on the top social media sites. The need for hiring social media managers has increased as more freelancers and small businesses are heading into this field.
It’s a fact that not all businesses are adept in social media management. You might also have to invest in some tools that you don’t have, such as free graphics, scheduling services, and editing software. When you’re doing social media management, you’re representing your company. Therefore, it’s imperative to act on your client’s behalf and tone to reach the target audience.
Furthermore, you will be required to stay on top of changes in algorithms, policies, and other aspects of social media platforms. You should know how to engage the target audience, as well as skills to design graphics that attract people at first sight.
How to Start a Social Media Management Company?
How to start a social media management company? This question comes into your mind when you plan to come into this business. A social media manager requires more experience in the relevant field than education. There are multiple courses available in social media management, but it’s best if you do some research on your own.
Social media is an advanced marketing tool – it is different from traditional marketing. Gone are the days when newspaper, radio, and billboards were the only resources to spread information. Social media has revolutionized whole marketing, and it helps businesses to grow digitally. Now, it’s all about having an informative and interesting conversation with just a single click.
Know the Different Social Platforms
Social media management is not limited to a single platform. Various platforms have specific strategies and policies for best marketing practices. How a business boosts on Facebook is different from how it markets on LinkedIn and Instagram. You should have the ability to manage several social media platforms at the same time for multiple clients.
Develop Strategies to Meet the Clients Requirements
A social media management company helps clients to understand social media and how it works. For an instance, research tells that a few sales are made through social media, but this platform is effective in gaining customer trust. A well-reputed social media management company helps to capture the clients’ voices. If your client is determinant and result-oriented, social media posts need to reflect that.
Build your Following
You should have influence even after having a huge number of followers. A big count of followers is nothing if they are not reaching your posts. As a social media management company, your goal is to build engaged followers who comment, share, and like what you post.
Decide What Services your Company will Offer
You can offer different packages such as start-up services that include creating accounts or a full-service package that does everything from account creation to posting content and moderating the community. You need to focus more on marketing or data analysis, and your core talent will help you achieve your goals. Start your social media management company with what you are an expert at.
Identify your Niche
Now, determine in which social platforms you are specialized. Having vast information about the subject is always imperative. Sometimes, it’s good to consider some factors that provide outcomes with better customer satisfaction. Some clients ask for professional assistance for Twitter and Facebook, and others need help with YouTube and Instagram.
Write a Business Plan
Your business plan is a roadmap for your social media management company’s success. It should not be complicated and too long to read. Properly plan your business goals, services, assets, liabilities, and marketing data. Don’t forget to explain how you will complete the competitors in the market and what makes you the best choice.
Determine Your Prices
As a new business, you might face difficulty while setting up the costs per service. Referrals and testimonials can help you stand in the market and tell people you’re offering reasonable pricing. What you charge will depend on your experience and the services you offer. It may vary from the amount of work and the number of channels that a client wants you to handle. You can charge on monthly basis to your client, or maybe you have a long-term contract with them.
Tip: you might have to offer social media management services at a steep discount at the start for a limited time. You’re selling your skills and talents. It will impact when you make your clients happy by offering quality services at affordable rates.
Decide Your Business Name
A small business name can be turned into a brand. Therefore, choose your business name wisely. It should reflect your services and market. Make sure that the name you choose for your company shouldn’t be trademarked by someone else.
Determine Your Business Structure
You can start and run your business as a sole proprietor. It’s free and doesn’t require any legal paperwork except a business license. Your clients might have issues if they found any problem regarding social media management services. To avoid this, consider developing an LLC (limited liability company) to protect yourself in the market.
Get License and Permits
When you plan to build a social media management company, make sure to get a license and permits. Contact your local city for having an official business license.
Develop a Marketing Plan
Develop a marketing plan for getting potential clients. Networking is the best for getting your initial clients. Methods for getting testimonial and referrals are also imperative for a marketing plan. Apart from all that, inform your potential clients that their marketing plan will have proven posting strategies, such as:
- Posting consistency is important than posting frequency.
- Content quality is more important than quality.
We have put together all aspects of how to start a social media management company. Let your plan for establishing a social media management company work, and build your business gradually.
Facebook Brand Awareness vs. Reach – Which Should You Choose From?
When it comes to Facebook brand awareness vs. reach, choosing a suitable ad campaign goal is one of the most challenging tasks. If you’re new to Facebook ads, you might be confused while making a decision and only focus on boosting posts. It requires some time to know the methodology of Facebook Ad objectives, and it can help achieve better results.
So how can you choose a campaign goal that’s appropriate to grow your business digitally? What factors do you need to follow to make a wise decision? For this purpose, you need to figure out Facebook Ad objectives and which one of them is designed to deliver optimal outcomes.
What Are the Facebook Ad Objectives?
Facebook scrutinizes its users’ data when they choose an objective and then serves the data to the target audience. Whether you want your audience to download an application, make a purchase, or visit your store, Facebook ads help to connect with potential audiences. Facebook objectives are categorized into three different parts:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
The following steps help to select the best Facebook ad objective. Let’s get started!
Know where Your Potential Clients are
First of all, choose the category that deals with where people are in your sales funnel.
Awareness Objectives – Top of the funnel goals to develop an interest in the services you offer.
Consideration Objectives – Middle of the funnel that targets people who want to know about your services.
Conversion Objectives – Bottom of the funnel goals for registrations and visits.
Choose the Right Objectives
Now is the right time to review Facebook Ad Objectives that work with the sales funnel stage. Choose one that supports the action you want your target audience to take.
Awareness Objectives for Facebook Ads
If you want to attract more audience, you’re required to select from Facebook brand awareness vs. reach.
Brand Awareness
This objective is helpful when you want to introduce your brands to a broad audience or increase awareness of your product or services. With this objective, there are fewer chances that the target audience will take any additional actions. For example, people who see your brand awareness ads probably will not click through to your website or make a purchase. You can serve conversion and consideration ads to the same audience through the funnel.
Reach
Use the reach objective to show your ads to the target audience. As the name says it all, this campaign is developed to reach the maximum number of customers that your ad budget allows. If your customers are in a specific area, this Facebook objective limits your target making the ad relevant. It also sets the frequency setting so you can get more from your ads.
Consideration Facebook Ad Objectives
If you want your audience to become better aware of your brand and its services, you can select the following consideration objectives:
- Traffic
- Engagement
- Video views
- App installs
- Lead generation
- Message
Traffic
When you aim to send your target audience to a destination outside of Facebook, use the traffic objective. For this, you can link to a blog post, a podcast, a landing page, or an application. You can also track customer activity with SDK or Facebook Pixel.
Engagement
When you desire more people to interact with your ad, use engagement objective. Social media managers have three options:
Post Engagement – encourages users to react, comment, and share a post.
Page Likes – enable people to like and follow your page.
Event Responses – invite users to attend in-person or online events.
The main benefit of choosing this objective is generating additional reach. It increases an organic reach into news feeds. It also helps you build your Facebook page engagement audiences. You can leverage this audience for retargeting purposes.
Video Views and App Installs
When you want your audience to watch your brand’s video, go for video view objectives. It helps customers to know your brand. This objective also helps to build a video engagement audience that can be used for future purposes. Remember that you don’t only need to consider video views just because you’re including video in your campaign.
App installs objective is the right fit if you want to lead customers to App Store or Google Play Store. When you choose this objective, you can target high-value customers to ensure the ROI.
Lead Generation and Messages
When you want to gather customer data on Facebook without driving traffic to your website, use the Lead Generation objective. It enables you to get information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers. When you can customize your lead form, you can collect more specific data.
You can download all the data your campaign collects or automatically add it to the CRM tool with this objective. You can use the data to track customers and move them further along in your funnel.
Messages objective is the right choice when you want to start conversations with the target audience. This campaign helps you connect with customers on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Business, and Instagram Direct. You can ask questions to your target audience and inspire them to engage with your business. You can generate leads and gather customer data.
Conversion Facebook Ad Objectives
When you want your target audience to visit your website or make a purchase, you can select from the following conversion objectives.
Conversions
It is required when you want your target audience to click through to your website and take some actions such as inserting payment details and making a purchase. To follow up on the results, you need to install SDK or Facebook pixel. According to general rules, you need around one or two dozen conversions per week to get the job done efficiently. If your site or app is unable to meet the minimum, consider the Traffic objective.
Catalog Sales
When you have an eCommerce store and want to promote products, go for catalog sales. For this purpose, all you need is to connect your eCommerce store to Facebook Ads and build a product field. You can select from advertising to new customers or retargeting existing ones. You can also consider target customers who have viewed but not purchased products yet. Make sure to add dynamic content to optimize your catalog sales.
Store Traffic
This Facebook ad objective is used when you have different business locations and plan to target customers around. For this, you’re required to add store locations in Facebook Business Manager. It helps your brand to generate sales and traffic from all locations. In case, your business has a single brick-and-mortar store, use Reach objective to optimize your ads.
Sum Up
Facebook brand awareness is the key to generating leads and filling the initial phases of your sales funnel. If you got stuck between Facebook brand awareness vs. reach, feel free to try both and compare the results. Create two campaigns from the factor you want to test and let them run for at least a week. At the end of the week, identify the top performer and continue running the most effective campaign.
A Comprehensive Guide on How to Optimize Facebook Ads
Facebook is one of the most popular social medial platforms. As the biggest online advertising platform, it has millions of active users all around the globe including small businesses and brands. This platform has the potential to take a brand to next level with online ads. These Facebook ads are not expensive, and brands post content to promote their services or products to drive traffic towards the website and boost conversion rates.
You don’t need to be a Billionaire Company to successfully advertise on Facebook. Without an expert team, it’s difficult for all small brands to meet their ad potential. For example, a common mistake many brands do is boosting a post instead of creating an ad. Boosting is a swift way to get maximum reach on your Facebook post. However, most small businesses are not aware of how to optimize Facebook ads.
Facebook algorithm is designed for ad success. You invest time and money in generating effective Facebook ads and want to get an advantage from the ad budget. You can optimize Facebook ads by:
- Understanding the key metrics
- Choosing the ad objective
- Defining the target audience
- Designing and testing Facebook ads
- Tracking and optimizing campaigns
Understand the Key Metrics
To optimize Facebook ads, a data-driven strategy is followed by improving the campaign results. You should be an expert in ad performance assessing and define your advertising strategies to meet business goals. The following key metrics assist as a benchmark in considering the campaign performance:
Conversions
In conversion, the target audience interacts with your ad and clicks through call-to-action. If you want to visit the website, you will count the conversion when a user visited your site directly from the ad. So, conversion rate optimization is a key for all elements of your website including ads.
Frequency
Frequency stands for the estimated number of times a user sees your ads. It is calculated by dividing the number of impressions by ad reach. It helps to know how effective the targeting approach is and how to avoid showing an ad to the same user again and again.
CPC and CTR
Click through rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click ads, leading them to the form or landing page linked to it. When it is low, it means more people are not interested in your ads. Whereas, cost per click (CPR) tells the actual cost of an average click.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Conversion value is equal to the revenue that a business earns from conversion. ROAS is the total conversion value distributed by your advertising cost. The more ads lead to the conversion, the more ROAS of your brand will get.
Choosing the Ad Objective
Before getting into details, it’s imperative to know the Facebook ad structure. The first step of ad creation is setting up the campaign and select the objectives to form an available list. The essential factors to consider while selecting the ad objective are:
Awareness
Campaigns under the awareness objective are usually for fresh brands or businesses growing to a new location. You will choose brand awareness as an objective if you make the brand known to more audiences.
Consideration
These objectives are targeted keywords that entice the audience to engage with the brand. For instance, the lead generation objectives help you to build unique Facebook ads with built-in lead-capture form.
Conversion
When your target audience is in your lead pool, you can convert them into a potential customer. The conversion objective enables you to choose between a website or application to track the conversion on your ad.
Define Target Audience
All campaigns have an objective, but you need to identify that every audience segment should according to your strategy. It’s a great idea to invest time customizing your audience for every single campaign. Here are the multiple ways to define your Facebook ads target audience.
Demographics
You can set up various parameters such as audience location, age, and gender following the Facebook policies. Facebook offers a panel to check estimated results and making changes as per demographics.
Targeting
Facebook gathers the users’ interests and behavior due to its unique algorithm. For example, Facebook can identify fashion freaks and cricket lovers. Any reputed firm advises targeting the most likely group to access the campaign performance better.
Custom Audience
You can target users who have interacted with your brand with a custom audience. Facebook records this via Facebook Pixies- a tracking tool.
Design and Test Facebook Ads
Every element of your ad impacts your ad and its performance. Using relevant keywords in headlines keeps the content engage. SEO optimized ads are tested consistently, and the key points you should focus on are:
Choose the Right Format
You can select from the available ad formats based on what displays your services best. These formats include videos, photos, or stories. Make sure to complete your ad with a persuasive description and title to grab the audience.
Plan Your Content
A ‘download’ button in a Facebook ad offers a free template. When choosing your media, select stock image or Facebook Dynamic Creative Tool that customizes creative variations. It helps to make your content well-planned.
Strategic Ad Placement
Facebook allows you to select your ad placement. The available placement such as Instagram stories, Facebook feed, and Messenger inbox will base on your goals. It can be chosen manually or automatically through tools.
Control Ad Budget and Schedule
It’s essential to control the budget and schedule of your ad. When you set up a budget, you control media budget allocation. You drive improved results by showing your ads during peak Facebook hours or specific hours for integrated results.
Track and Optimize Campaigns
The only possible way to measure the impact of optimization is to consider campaign data. Your expert team needs to specify key performance indicators based on business objectives. These metrics help to know whether the campaign is successful or not.
Your campaign data helps to know how to optimize Facebook ads, get desired results within a specified budget, and show ads at the most appropriate time. For Facebook lead ads, your data might show that the user clicks your link but does not reach the lead-capture form. It can be an indication that your Facebook ads had man form questions. Tracking data in depth enables your brand to optimize Facebook ads and overall performance.
Final Thoughts
There are numerous benefits of using Facebook ads in your marketing strategy. When used correctly, you can drive high-quality traffic, conversion rate, and profit. But, to generate maximum profit, you need to know how to optimize Facebook ads effectively. For this, all the above-mentioned information can help you to achieve desired outcomes.
A Comprehensive Guide to Instagram Advertising Strategy
If you run a small business or sell something online, you know that digital marketing and social media advertising play an important role to grow your business online. It’s an effective way to increase brand awareness, obtain new customers, launch new products, and generate revenue. With multiple options available around, it can be difficult for small business owners to decide how to advertise and link with the target audience.
That’s where Digipeak comes in. Our integrated Instagram advertising strategy makes it affordable and easy to connect your business with potential customers on Instagram. We ensure our clients they’re spending money in the right place to achieve the desired results. Let’s get to know the advertising campaign features that Instagram offers to the business of all sizes.
The Benefits of Advertising on Instagram
Instagram is primarily a photo-sharing platform that provides an opportunity to reach the target audience, showcase products, and build a strong connection visually. It’s an ideal source for brand awareness campaigns, direct-response, and conversion-based campaigns on social networks like Facebook or email.
Having around 700 million worldwide users and half of them market their business on Instagram, Instagram is the go-to medium for marketers who find different ways to boost their brand. This platform has higher post engagement as compared to other available platforms.
Instagram offers powerful advertising tools similar to Facebook, where you can take advantage of Facebook demographic and behavioral data. You can connect with a custom audience based on keywords and interests. Furthermore, unlike organic Instagram posts, ads allow clickable URLs so people can click to visit your website or online store.
Instagram Ads Creating Strategy
Instagram ad campaigns are an efficient way to promote your business, increase audience, and sell products. With creative Instagram ads, you can target the right audience, reconnect with previous subscribers, and grab new people to your brand. If you’re looking for different ways to revamp your Instagram strategy, consider the following factors.
Describe Your Goals
Before getting started, it’s crucial to consider your goals of Instagram marketing and ad campaign efforts. Perhaps you focus to increase your audience, brand awareness, or drive traffic to your online store, there can be a lot of other objectives as well. Defining the purpose of your ad helps you choose your message, CTA, and audience.
As Instagram is a mobile platform, so keep in mind you’re creating your campaign too. Your goals should base on the best experience for your audience. For example, if your online store or website is not augmented for mobile users, your Instagram ad should reflect brand awareness rather than focusing on traffic or conversions.
Determine Your Audience
Selecting the right audience and keeping the content relevant is the key to an effective Instagram ad. If you’re a retailer of women’s apparel, you just need to target the relevant audience. Sometimes, choosing a broad audience might result to lower Instagram engagement. You can leverage eCommerce data and subscriber activity that help you show relevant ads to the right audience.
People on Your List
Targeting your existing followers on Instagram is an ideal way to rejoin customers who are already involved with your services. Powerful Instagram advertising tools enable you to leverage what you know about your contacts to build relevant ads.
People with similar Interests
Instagram profiles are linked with Facebook accounts, so it contains data about potential users that help marketers to find the target audience. When you build an Instagram ad that targets the relevant audience, that acquired data is beneficial.
Instagram scrutinizes the Facebook profiles of individuals, then builds an audience similar to interests, demographics, and behavior. You have an option to filter the audience by age, gender, location, and keywords. It can help introduce your brand or services to a new audience.
Choose the Right Image
When you build an Instagram ad campaign, you have options to make a carousel or single-image ad. Carousel ads are best to tell a story or showcase products. But if you want to drive sales of a specific product, a single image is the right choice. As Instagram is a visual platform, there are different things to follow when choosing the image such as:
Focus on Products
If your Instagram ad is about selling the products, make sure to use striking images. It varies from Facebook ads, where you emphasize the advantages of the product than the product itself.
Keep Text to a Minimum
Keep in mind that Instagram users are here to see the appealing images. While planning your ad, think about the advanced and interesting ways to define your story of brand and products without using supportive words too much.
Use High-resolution Images
A high-quality image grabs the audience’s attention when the scroll Instagram news feed. Most mobile phones have advanced cameras, you don’t need any special camera to capture the picture of your products.
Instagram Top Advertising Practices to Remember
Introduce Ads with Personality
Whether it’s a funny video or just an image, if your Instagram post doesn’t look humanized then there are fewer chances to reach the potential audience. People use Instagram for their entertainment, and appealing to emotions is always the key to success.
Use Relevant Ads
What works best for one social media platform won’t necessarily go well with another. For example, your business will not support the same content through LinkedIn as it will through Twitter. The same happens for Instagram. Keep your target audience and their behavior in mind.
Use Hashtags
You need to perform some research before using hashtags. Make sure to use hashtags that are in trend, relevant, and most searched by the audience. Hashtags help to make your content easily findable on Instagram, and you can reach the audience with the right hashtags.
Schedule a Contest
Arranging a contest or giveaway is one of the most effective ways to meet your objectives. People like winning free stuff from a competition. It can be an ideal Instagram advertising strategy to grab your potential audience toward your brand.
Get Started with Instagram Advertising Today
Instagram advertising is a great source to enhance your business and draw maximum customers. Over 1 billion people are using Instagram every month, and you want your brand to be on the top where they can see it. Are you ready to get started making Instagram ads? We can’t wait to see growing your business digitally with just the right strategy.
Different Strategies of Instagram Marketing for Small Business
Instagram is a great marketing frontier for small businesses with the potential to bring new customers to the global level. Nearly 65 million monthly active users, 10 billion photos, and iconic logos make it an appropriate platform for small businesses. Instagram, as a photo-sharing platform growing continuously, so does it impact users’ buying behavior? We should know that Instagram isn’t just limited to sharing pictures, but it grabs new customers for your business. If you’re a small business owner and looking for top Instagram marketing ways, you’re at the right place. We have gathered the best strategies from SMBs in this article. Here are the top ways to use Instagram as a marketing tool. Let’s get started!
Make a Business Account
First of all, you have options to make a personal or business account while joining Instagram. A business account is appropriate for businesses as it assists you to view analytics, link your account with a Facebook page, run a paid advertisement, and makes it easier for the follower to reach you.
Fill Your Bio
Instagram offers 150 characters to tell about your business to followers. Use this space accurately keeping the goals in mind. You can add hashtags in the bio that help people find your profile. Don’t forget to include a link to your official website.
Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Are you not sure where to start? Just analyze what other small businesses are doing on Instagram and identify their strategies. Take note of the content they post, the hashtag they use, and their visual language. You can also check how many followers do they have and how much engagement do they receive on posts to get a better idea of where you need improvement.
Build Content Pillars & Plan Content
Once you’re done with Instagram marketing research, there is an important step to follow before planning the content. Creating content pillars is a key to grow your small business on Instagram. Streamline some themes for the content you plan to post while scheduling content. Now it’s time to decide what type of content you need to post and be strategic about it. Plan in advance what you’ll be posting on weekly basis.
Use Hashtags Wisely
Hashtags are a significant factor of Instagram marketing for small business. They make it easy for people to discover the content even they don’t follow your page. Research has proved that using 7 to 30 hashtags per post is good for marketing, but it varies based on how many followers you have. Instagram recently updated a feature allowing you to see how many people reached your post with the help of hashtags.
Upload Instagram Stories
The story feature on Instagram makes a splash and helps small businesses to stand out from the crowd. Stories appear at the top of the feed and are more dynamic than regular feed posts. You have a choice to post multiple stories a day. Make Instagram stories an integral part of your marketing strategy to scale your business.
Offer Discounts and Deals
Nothing can excite potential customers to follow your Instagram account except offering discounts and deals. It will not only grab new customers, but you will notice an increase in followers as well. Loyal customers who are already familiar with your business are more likely to engage with you.
Use video
Instagram isn’t limited to uploading photos, but you can also upload videos. Videos are more engaging, and there are different ways to post them. You can share a clip of up to 1 minute on the feed and a 15 seconds clip on the story. There is another feature IGTV that helps you to post videos of up to 10 minutes.
Actively Engage
An Instagram tip that is imperative for businesses and influencers of all sizes is to actively engage with others. Follow interesting accounts, likes, comments, and share their posts. The more they get notified of you, the more they will think of you. It’s the best way to grow your small business on Instagram.
Paid Advertisement
Even with all the above strategies, it’s still the biggest challenge for small businesses to reach a new audience organically on Instagram. A paid advertisement is the right solution. Instagram ads help you to target a specific audience, improving your experience to reach the people who are most likely interested in getting your services.
Geotag Your Posts
It’s a powerful way to grow your Instagram small business followers in the local area. You can tag location in feed posts and stories. Geotagging will show your content in the search results when people actively search from your area. To geotag a feed post, you are required to add your location on the caption editor page. If you want to geotag a story, you can use the location sticker.
Use Highlight Feature
This feature enables you to choose from a range of stories to display on the top of your profile. They are the best way to showcase your business services, and to get more followers.
Give Shout-Outs
Shout-outs are one of the unique strategies of Instagram marketing for small business. Now you can stand out your business from the market with this feature. When you give a shout-out on Instagram, make sure to tag all the accounts properly.
Feature Your Instagram Account on Website
Is your small business Instagram account linked with the official website? If not, do it right now. Make it easy for your customers to find and follow your account through the website. This is an imperative Instagram marketing tip for small businesses to gain followers.
Post Regularly
It’s beneficial for business accounts to post regularly, but make sure that the post is engaging and relevant. It is a great chance to showcase your brand personality and connect with potential followers, so utilize it with the right content. Many businesses use Instagram stories as another way to make their content striking. You can achieve this by creating short videos, and act as an extension of an account that meets your brand image.
Use the Save Post Feature
Now you can save content on Instagram similar to Pinterest and Facebook. Save the content that you like most with Instagram ‘save’ feature. Whereas it is not required to create collections, it’s just suggested. Some collection ideas are:
- What are your competitors posting about
- Visual inspiration for pictures
- Quality captions
- Potential influencers
- Future posts ideas
- Customer feedback
Connect with Influencers
As a small business, you have enough budget to invest in influencers for Instagram marketing. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t connect with them. Find local influencers around you that meet your requirements and engage with their content frequently. Once you get connected with them, ask them to send them a free sample for PR.
Sum Up
Instagram is the best platform to raise your business awareness and connect with new customers worldwide. As you can see, there are so many opportunities available to scale your business on Instagram. Start experimenting them these strategies and find which of them goes right with your small business.
A Guide for How to Promote Online Store on Facebook
A Guide for How to Promote Online Store on Facebook
Facebook is the world’s largest pay-to-play platform. It’s a great place for businesses of all sizes to expand with the latest market trends. It facilitates people’s lives, providing the quick context to reach their friends or family members at any time. It also keeps you informed on the topic of interest, helps in finding the event you want to participate in, and notifies what your friends are up to.
Technology and social media are connected and revolutionizing day by day. Now, Facebook is not online limited to communication but businesses can also maximize their sales by reaching out to the target audience. Numerous tools are integrated to build scalable online stores on Facebook. Moreover, Facebook business pages and shops are free for all, and that’s the main reason people usually focus to promote their business on Facebook.
If you want to know how to promote an online store on Facebook, first of all, you need to understand this social platform and find the right ways to scale your business. Let’s have a closer look at some significant factors that are helpful to promote your store on Facebook.
Select Your Target Audience
You need potential customers to run your online store on Facebook. But how could you grab more customers and establish your business reputation? Facebook offers different marketing tools that enable you to target ad campaigns to increase followers and sales.
Selecting the right audience is a crucial step in this procedure. Your products or services are not fit for everyone. That’s why knowing your target audience is important to maximize your sales. Facebook has developed a tool ‘Facebook Audience Insight’ that helps you to get insights about your audience. It provides data about the audience, how they integrating with your business, and what are their requirements. You should have the following details to create customized ads and increase your online store visibility:
- Demographic: gender, where they live, age, marital status, education, etc.
- Language: the native language of your target audience.
- Facebook behavior: how frequently they use Facebook.
- Previous Purchases: know their previous shopping experience if they have any.
Build Targeted Ad Campaigns
Facebook Ads tool is one of the great promotion tools on Facebook for online stores. Almost all businesses have a Facebook Business Page where they serve customers, develop brand awareness, and improve sales. Grabbing the right audience to your online store might seem a difficult task, especially when there are different ads from other available businesses around.
Facebook ads help to target the right audience based on demographics, interests, and needs. Some business owners don’t focus on promoting the context to an audience who already has liked their Facebook page. But, it is equally important to target the people who already follow you. They will get your services if they find you trustworthy and develop a strong connection with your brand in the future.
Promotions and Giveaways
Marketing strategists have observed that promotions and giveaways grab more followers, improve brand awareness, and turn visitors into customers. It is a great way to scale your business because promotions and giveaways don’t ask users to put in any effort. When it comes to giveaways, people are just required to like the Facebook page, tag friends, and share the post with others.
It’s completely your choice how you manage promotions or giveaways. But, dealing with them efficiently helps to promote your online store on Facebook. Remember that Facebook doesn’t offer any tool to follow the number of likes, therefore use any third-party tool to get insights.
Several tools ease your task of organizing contests on Facebook. These tools are designed to boost businesses sales. It provides giveaway analytics that allows you to track contest performance. However, some tools are free of cost, and some are paid. While selecting the right contest tool, you mainly need to consider its features that should meet your requirements.
Customer Interaction
Converting your visitors into customers is a time-taking procedure. You are required to build your online presence strong to grab more customers. Many businesses overlook their customer needs that impact their sales. Selling without selling is a well-known concept on Facebook. According to this concept, you don’t need to post solely about new products and promotions. People will not consider a brand that only shows interest in sales. They will prefer a brand that values customer opinions and feedback.
The domain of customer interaction is necessary for promoting your online store on Facebook. Many businesses don’t focus on it, but increasing your customer base and sales can be a real challenge. Many new visitors will observe how you interact with your followers and customers before making a purchase.
Therefore, it is imperative to answer customers’ comments, queries, and reviews as soon as possible. There will also be many negative comments and reviews, but accepting your mistake and improving it is the best way to deal with it. Do not take anything personally and find the solutions to engage your customers toward your brand.
Customer interaction is significant because it’s a great chance to scale your online store on Facebook and connect with the right audience. So, how to improve your interaction with potential customers? The answers are:
- Communicate with customers in a simple way instead of being unnecessarily formal. Be genuine and professional to stand out from the crowd.
- Your customers do not need someone to criticize them. They need a brand to understand their requirements and issues and treat them with respect.
- Answering some comments or queries on your Facebook page is not enough. Consistency in responses and your behavior towards customers will make them loyal to your brand and will be more likely to select you.
Final Thoughts
As the technology and Facebook marketing strategies are evolving, there is no consistent technique to increase sales and customers. Therefore, promoting your online store on Facebook might seem boring task sometimes. Facebook Shops are the best way to increase sales, brand awareness, and followers. But the above-mentioned points are important when you look for how to promote an online store on Facebook. Knowing your target audience will let you build target campaigns and ads.
Different Types of Chatbots to Meet Business Objectives
The connection between customers and brand interaction has transformed with the development of chatbots. They are an advanced addition for many businesses to their sales and marketing team. Chatbots are redefining how brands and people interact with each other. The change that chatbots bring to business makes them grow more digitally.
Businesses are making the right use of chatbots. They are performing as 24/7 customer service agents, assisting businesses by providing data points to predict user behavior. Technology, software design, and different types of chatbots depend on the customer base. Your business objectives define what kind of chatbots are best for continued success. An impeccable chatbot strategy always starts with knowing the types of chatbots and their limitations.
Some Major Types of Chatbots
The rise in technology has been as dynamic as the evolution of chatbots capabilities. Chatbots can be generally categorized into different types.
Scripted/ Quick Reply Bots
These chatbots are used to cooperate with the customers based on predefined knowledge and technical capabilities that can respond to fixed instructions. For this purpose, all queries need to be gathered with a specific language programmed in the chatbots.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) Chatbots
These chatbots are one of the major applications of artificial intelligence. Primarily, all chatbots use AI technology, and NLP describes a user’s input such as text or voice to an intent. In these chatbots types, messages are classified to obtain variables for an answer and language parsing is done.
Voice-Enabled Chatbots
Voice-enabled chatbots offer customized experiences for users. They accept user’s input when they talk, act upon their request, reply to their queries, and accomplish creative tasks. Through text-to-speech (TTS) and voice recognition APIs, different businesses now can make their voice-activated chatbots.
Social Messaging Chatbots
These chatbots are integrated within a social messaging platform such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack. It enables users to directly communicate with the bot as they do with their family or friends.
Service/Action Chatbots
To complete the user’s request, these chatbots collect relevant information from the user. These chatbots are mostly used in the airline industry. It has become easy for customers to check their flight booking, flight reservation prices, and statuses as well.
Context Enabled Chatbots
Contextual chatbots are an advanced form of conversational chatbots. To remember the earlier chats, these chatbots use Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with particular users to learn and grow. Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are some examples of context enable chatbots.
Chatbots Types for Businesses
Support Chatbots
Support chatbots are primarily designed to solve problems. They are used in industries such as human resources, retail, digital marketing, and healthcare. They request context awareness, personality, and multi-turn ability. Most of the support chatbots use deep learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to perform actions. Recognition of speech is optional for such chatbots types. They can walk a user through specific business processes and respond to multiple FAQs.
Website Chatbots
If your business website has poor conversion rates, it’s the right time to opt for a website bot. It provides users and visitors with 24/7 response times. An organization will boost lead generation, often having a virtual assistant to answer queries and reserve meetings with customers.
Companies may gather key information during the interactions, such as the name of the prospect, email address, and follow-up phone number. These chatbots help with preparing presentations, schedule meetings with salesperson, managing prospects with high-quality content, and other similar tasks.
Modern website chatbots make it easier to access the clients. When they need help most, sales and marketing departments may use them to initiate discussions with prospects. The bots understand when a visitor opens a sales email and visits a landing page.
Skills Chatbots
Single chatbots are single-turn-type and don’t need contextual awareness. They simply follow a specific order to accomplish an action. Amazon’s Alexa is one of the major examples of skills chatbots. These chatbots require powerful Natural Language Processing features to function efficiently.
Assistant Bots
Assistant bots are good at communicating and answering questions. They efficiently engage the customer queries. Siri by Apple is an example of assistant bots. It not only follows the user’s commands but replies in an entertaining way if it doesn’t understand the query.
Transactional Bots
Transactional bots can be categorized as assistant bots as they occasionally perform some specific actions upon user instructions for different transactions. These transactional bots are used in various industries. They help users to improve their productivity by interacting with external systems.
Technical Classification of Chatbots
Based on advanced technology, different types of chatbots help businesses to grow digitally.
Menu / Button based Chatbots
Menu or button-based chatbots are the most common and used chatbots in today’s marketplace. They are designed to direct a single domain like information about a business. These chatbots need to have character, multi-turn functionality, and knowledge of context. They should be capable of walking a consumer through any business processes and answering a wide range of questions of the FAQ kind.
Keyword Recognition based Chatbots
Keyword-recognition-based chatbots try to hear what users type and respond properly. To decide how to answer the user, these chatbots use customizable keywords. Such kinds of chatbots are slow when they answer similar questions. A hybrid of keyword recognition and menu/button-based chatbots are in trend nowadays. They enable users to choose whether to ask a question directly or make use of the bot’s menu buttons.
Code-based Chatbots
These chatbots have a built-in AI technology and are rendered with frameworks such as the Wi.ai NLP service Facebook Bot Engine or the luis.ai NLP service Microsoft Bot Platform. These tools are best for customer experience, but they can fall short of the over-the-top incorporation of functionalities.
When a business implements the latest automation strategies, it will get improved results, saving time, money, and effort. Different types of chatbots make it easier to connect with clients, add value, and build better customer experiences. Now people shop what and when they want. Anything can be achieved quickly and effortlessly with chatbots, and they have become an immersive way for businesses to connect.