Instagram Business
21 октября 2018
5 Ways To Stand Out: Part 2
Now that you've converted to an Instagram Business Profile, you now have the tools at your fingertips to help your business be more easily recognized and discovered by the people who matter. Perhaps you’ll learn more about your audience with Instagram Insights, just one of the features a Business Profile offers. Or perhaps you'll promote your business to new audiences. We’ll go into more detail about these tools in upcoming posts in this series, but for now, we’re turning our attention to what Instagram was made for: creating and sharing great content, easily.
Get creative with Instagram
Inspiring, eye-catching content not only brings your message to life, but also helps you grow your business by prompting people to interact with your business. Three-quarters of accounts on Instagram say they typically take action after being inspired by a post they’ve seen…
The businesses that get the best results from Instagram are the ones that post consistently and create a clear style and look for their posts. For some, that might mean fun photos or videos and quirky captions. For others, it’s simple photos, inspiring quotes or exciting photography and effects. On Instagram, there are plenty of ways for businesses to stand out creatively without big budgets or special equipment. In most cases, just a mobile phone is all you need to get started.
Explore and experiment
Instagram is constantly investing in finding new ways to serve its community better. To make the most of all that’s on offer, experiment with new tools and formats, and you might just find a new winning formula for your business. Photos and videos are some of the easiest ways to showcase your products, but by using some of the creative tools on offer it’s even easier to up your game. Take a look:
Instagram Stories are used by over 250 million accounts and it’s growing fast. Why? Because this dynamic format allows people to post time-limited content that disappears after 24 hours. It doesn’t sit in your business profile grid or in the feed, so think of it as a way to offer an exclusive sneak-peek behind the scenes of your business, or a way to preview products and offers.
Boomerang from Instagram allows you to turn video into fun, engaging mini video loops that’ll entertain your audience. In fact, 25% of videos shared in Stories are Boomerangs, so that’s a great place to give it a try.
Hyperlapse lets you create high-quality time-lapse videos from your phone that stabilizes your shots with no extra equipment required. Businesses love it as a way to share events or progress over a period of time—reduced down into a slick, short, compelling video.
Get inspired
Ready to get creative but wondering where to start? Well, take a look at these hand-picked examples of how other businesses have used simple, yet effective, creative approaches to stand out with Instagram:
Healthy-eating brand Inspiralized used Boomerang to create captivating video for its Mothers Day ad campaign. Boomerang proved to be the perfect way to showcase Inspiralized’s products in action and encourage viewers to take action.
Italian seafood-themed takeaway business Pescaria has grown its business with Facebook and Instagram, largely thanks to its mouth-watering photos posts themed around the day’s restaurant specials, local produce and neighborhood scenery. Pescaria’s lively updates share a common look and feel that showcases its products and brand personality to perfection.
Huit Denim, on the other hand, has taken its Instagram feed in a very different, but equally powerful direction. Carefully curated photos, often monochrome, reflect the moody landscape that houses the small Welsh denim company and conveys the brand story through a distinctive, glossy-magazine style aesthetic.
Have fun experimenting with all the possibilities Instagram has to offer your business. Check out The Top 10 Creative Apps vetted by Facebook's Creative Shop as the most useful for businesses. These smartphone apps will help take your photos and videos to the next level.
In the next post of this series, when we’ll be talking about how to reach your customers with Instagram and turn interest into sales.
You can also take free, online training courses to help you better understand how to use Instagram to build your business.
5 Ways To Stand Out: Part 3
You’re up and running with your Instagram Business Profile, experimenting with the creative tools and finding your business’s own unique Instagram style. You’re capturing the attention of your audience and attracting new followers, too. So, what’s next?
How about growing your audience further and converting interest in your business into sales? The good news is, you have all the tools at your fingertips to do exactly that. Today, there’s no better way to meet your customers than on mobile—and with one in five mobile minutes spent on Facebook and Instagram combined, businesses need look no further for the perfect place to advertise.
Harness the power of Facebook and Instagram together
If you’re one of more than five million businesses already advertising on Facebook, you’ll know that creating and running ads is easy and effective. It's now possible to run ads across Facebook and Instagram together, so businesses can increase their ads’ reach easily and cost-effectively.
It’s simple to do, too. When building a campaign for Instagram, you'll need to tap into Facebook’s Ad Manager or Power Editor. From there, you can select an ad objective that supports Instagram—typically something that encourages people to take an action, like clicks to website, app installs, video views or conversions—and the Instagram placement will automatically be selected, alongside other Facebook placements.
You can even run the same ad creative seamlessly across Facebook and Instagram, so you don’t have to spend time and money preparing different ad creatives for each platform (unless you want to). Ads are automatically optimized to the placement that meets the chosen objective best, at the lowest cost.
The result? A stronger performance, with your ads reaching more people.
More reach, better results
Italian gift brand Tonki sells an entirely original product: send it your favorite image and Tonki will print it on cardboard in ingenious packaging that becomes a frame for your art. Founders Ruggero and Alessandra knew that they wouldn’t be found through search engines when they launched, so they looked to Facebook to build an audience through ads. And when they added Instagram into the mix, they were able to expand their reach even further on a visual platform that was perfect for their brand.
Contemporary men’s skincare retailer Brooklyn Soap Company also had its sights set on growth. It found that by advertising across Facebook and Instagram it could boost not only brand awareness but also increase sales, without radically changing its tried-and-tested Facebook advertising approach.
And book subscription service Read Dog Books saw a 7X return on ad spend when it ran a single ad campaign across Facebook and Instagram to boost sign-ups.
Make a start with Facebook and Instagram
Inspired? If you haven’t experienced the combined power of Facebook and Instagram advertising for making your business stand out, now’s the time to try. Start small, experiment and keep an eye on your results so that you can learn what works best for your audience.
In the next post of this series, when we’ll take a look at how those all-important insights can help you take your business even further.
You can also take free, online training courses to help you better understand how to use Instagram to build your business.
5 Ways To Stand Out: Part 4
Instagram is a powerful platform for businesses. But with Instagram Insights available to all Business Profiles, Instagram has become an even more powerful tool when it comes to helping you meet your business objectives.
Instagram Insights offer businesses an up-to-the-minute picture of things like who their followers are, which content they like and what they’re most likely take action on. With this information at your fingertips, it’s even easier to tailor your content to what you know your audience values the most.
Knowledge is power, with Insights
Let’s take a more detailed look at some of the things that Instagram Insights can tell you and how that can help your business:
Impressions and reach: The first thing you’ll see on Insights is the total impressions, or number of times your posts have been seen on Instagram. You can also see your total reach, meaning the number of unique people who have seen or interacted with your posts.
Why it matters: Consistency is important when you’re promoting a business on Instagram: if impressions or reach drop, it could be because you’re posting less or that your posts are less popular than previous ones. This is also an important metric for measuring the effects of ads.
Popular posts: Which of your posts did people like the most? Insights shows you a visual grid of the posts that pique the most interest so that you can see what works, at a single glance.
Why it matters: When you understand which posts your followers love, you can give them even more of the content they value. Look out for clues—what do the most popular posts have in common? What can you do more of?
Single post insights: You can also find out the number of impressions, total reach and interactions on specific posts.
Why it matters:This is a great tool forfiguring out which posts to promote to non-followers when you’re building awareness. Say you’ve identified a few popular posts that you’re considering promoting on Instagram—use single post insights to decide which to use, based on audience reactions to date and taking into account your objectives. For example, if you’re looking for clicks to website, you’ll be able to identify the post that’s already delivered these best.
Followers: Insights can tell you more about who your followers are, from gender to age group to location and behaviors (like their most active times on Instagram). You need more than 100 followers for this metric to show up in Insights.
Why it matters: The better you know and understand your audience, the better you can serve them with content that’s relevant, at the right time. So, if the majority of your followers are female and aged 18-24, be sure to take that into accountin the content you post. If you know they’re most active in the evenings, schedule any high-impact posts (like special offers or announcements) to land when they’re most receptive.
You can also use Insights to monitor the performance of Instagram ads, with metrics available for stories, videos views, engagement and more.
Make a start with Insights
With a wealth of insights available, it’s easy to hone your content to your audience and make decisions about where to direct your advertising budget with confidence. Once you’ve created or converted to a Business Profile on Instagram, you’ll automatically be able to access your insights, within the app. Just tap the bar chart icon at the top of your profile and start exploring.
In the next and final post of this series, we’ll be sharing our top tips for planning ahead for an inspirational 2018 on Instagram.
You can also take free, online training courses to help you better understand how to use Instagram to build your business.
5 Ways To Stand Out: Part 5
So far in this series, we’ve explored some of the best ways to make your business stand out with a little help from Instagram. From setting up a Business Profile to creating awesome content, to harnessing the combined power to Facebook and Instagram, and tapping into Insights, you’ve got the foundations in place for success.
Now you’ve found a wealth of ways to stand out with Instagram, it's a great time to plan ahead and make your ambitions a reality for 2018.
Make 2018 your most outstanding year yet
Get ready to have your best year ever with Instagram. A little planning goes a long way, so take some time to think about what you want to achieve in 2018 and how you'll do it. If that sounds daunting, look no further than our tips for planning ahead the easy way. Ready?
Map your year
Think about the year ahead. What are some of the major upcoming milestones that are meaningful to your followers? Perhaps it’s family time and holidays like Easter and Mother’s Day. Or perhaps it’s major sporting or cultural events—or a combination of these. And what’s meaningful to your business? Think in terms of peak shopping periods, anniversaries, new product launches and announcements. Start to map your year around major milestones, so that you can be ready for every single one, as it happens.
Brainstorm your ideas
It might be months away, but what does summer festival season mean to you and your audience? How about Black Friday? For every major milestone in your year ahead, start thinking about the kind of content you can create: consider themes, places, people, potential collaborations, relevant products and offers. Step outside of your comfort zone and plan to try new approaches, too. If you haven't used Instagram Stories much yet, 2018 could be your year to master them. If you're wondering about advertising, plan to experiment on a small scale around Valentine's Day, for example.
Plan to win
Now you have an idea of what’s ahead, it’s time to make a plan. Month-by-month, what’s your Instagram focus? What do you want to achieve, who do you want to reach and how can you do it? You might not have all of the answers right now, but it’s good to have even a rough idea of where you’re heading. You can refine the plan as you go along, helped by Insights.
Time it right
Instagram is great for sharing spontaneous moments day-to-day, but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan ahead, too. So, just how far ahead should you be planning campaigns and content? Well, as a rule of thumb, it’s good to be thinking a good few months ahead when it comes to major campaigns and activity periods like Christmas, Valentine’s Day and back-to-school season. Make use of Facebook Ad Manager, where you can plan and schedule campaigns across Facebook and Instagram well in advance.
Instagram opens up the world to businesses, giving them access to a highly engaged and creative community of more than 500 million active daily accounts. And that number is growing. Make 2018 the year you stand out with Instagram—and achieve more than you ever imagined possible.
To learn even more Instagram for business skills, explore our free courses on Blueprint and download the 5 ways to stand out PDF here.
Experience Luxury
Over 500 million accounts are now active on Instagram every day, and among the many passion-driven communities that thrive on it, lovers of luxury have made it the go-to destination to satisfy their appetite for the finer things in life. Experience Luxury looks at why Instagram is where people now go to discover a world of luxury and how it offers a perfect fit for the world’s most prestigious brands.
As a visual storytelling and discovery platform, Instagram allows brands to express their visual DNA in inspiring and unconventional ways. Evoking emotion through mutual interests and aesthetics allows brands to connect with disparate consumers.
Nikoloz Makhatadze, Group Director, Global Media at Tiffany & Co
@tiffanyandcoThe Power Of Stories
Instagram’s emphasis on visual storytelling makes it the perfect medium through which to share the world’s most sought-after products and experiences. With 300M accounts now using Instagram Stories every day, and 1/3 stories watched coming from businesses, luxury brands can harness the power of stories on Instagram to invite their most passionate audiences into their brand universe and inspire them to action.The best way for luxury brands to inspire consumers has always been through storytelling. As Instagram is a visual storytelling platform, the link is a natural fit.Tennille Kopiasz, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Parfums Christian Dior
@dior
WHAT DO THEY USE INSTAGRAM FOR
58% of luxury lovers on Instagram rely on it to keep them in the know and up to date with all of the freshest looks and styles, with 49% of them following the brands on Instagram that they feel the closest connection to. This close following of trends turns into action for the 41% who use Instagram to discover sales and discounts on luxury items.1
INSPIRE ACTION WITH LUXURY CONSUMERS
Instagram’s precise demographic targeting gives advertisers the power to target their desired audiences to convert aspiration into awareness, and passion into sales—with a success rate that can be measured.
Discover for yourself how Porsche, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton and many more luxury brands are using Stories to bring their audiences closer, and gain actionable tips and insights into successful Instagram advertising strategies. Download Experience Luxury on Instagram now
