Instagram Marketing For Businesses (7 Pro Tips For Success)

Instagram has really evolved over the past decade. It’s no longer just a place where people take and share photos–it’s officially a money-making machine for businesses.

Let me rephrase, it’s a money-making machine for businesses that know how to get the most out of this platform.

With more than 2.4 billion users on Instagram worldwide, it’s time you start leveraging this tool to its full potential.

7 Ways to Market Your Business on Instagram

Here is a list of seven ways that you promote your business on Instagram.

1. Instagram Cannot Be Your Only Tool In Your Toolbox

Clearly, Instagram is a great mobile marketing tool, but it is not the only tool.

By design Instagram works best with other visual friendly content sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook. Why? Because these are the places where people talk about great photographs.

So know when to use Instagram and when not to use it. For example, if you take a great photo or want to share some behind the scenes videos of your production facility, Instagram works well.

But for sharing your latest blog post, Instagram shouldn’t be utilized.

2. Start Involving Your Community

Start thinking about creating scavenger hunts and contests and many other ways to have visuals drive action.

Use visuals for all the power they really have and let people “play” with your shots as much as possible.

UGC (user-generated content) is probably the best way to get free marketing exposure on Instagram. If you can get people to share images of your brand than it will automatically help increase your awareness and might even get you some new followers along the way.

3. Get Your Employees Involved

Encourage everyone in your business to take the most realistic pictures they can as often as they can. Unlike Pinterest, photos on Instagram can be more gritty and real and you need to play that out.

Another reason why I encourage you to get your employees involved is because it helps add a “face” to your brand.

Whether you’re a small business, multi-national conglomerate, or somewhere in the middle, customers can feel more connected to your brand if they feel like they know you better.

4. Use HashTags That Get You Noticed

IfThe speed of the hashtags is almost blinding.

Use photo specific tags where possible as opposed to brand attributes as a better way to engage the hashtag craze.

Individuals looking to promote themselves should and still use these tags as I do, but they should also focus on Instagram group hashtags and contest tags to gain greater recognition.

5. Create Your Own Hashtag and Engage People that Use It

Creating, using, promoting, and monitoring your own hashtags makes some cool things happen in that your own hashtags let you monitor the dialogue about your products and your brand from the outside and be able to jump into the fray when you want to.

The use of original hashtags should be a priority for you.

6. Geo-Tag Instagram Photos

When in doubt, go geo! Instagram users have the ability to transfer that location information to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare all at the same time. They can even convey where the photos were physically taken.

With geo-tagging, restaurants, retailers, and any other brand can promote their location and their products in use using and promoting geo-tagged Instagram photos.

How cool is that?

7. Find the Perfect Timing

Very simple. Stats show now that the best time to post to Instagram is between 5 and 6pm locally. Go figure.

But this can be misleading, as the “perfect” time for your business might not be the same for someone else. This is especially true if your audience is nationwide or even global.

You may have to stagger the timing of your posts to appeal to different markets. But the only way to figure this out is through experimenting and following your analytics.