Tips for Local Businesses to Thrive on Instagram
Whether your business is in its infancy stages or has been the talk of the town for years, crafting an online presence is key to continue reaching new clients in a digital age.
Having an authentic and consistent social media strategy is a great way to showcase who you are as a business, establish rapport in the local community, and educate the public about your product or service. Before the social media boom, entrepreneurs had to squish their value proposition into small print advertorials at the back of the newspaper. Not anymore! Think of your social media page as your own, personal bulletin board that never runs out of space. And unlike in the newspaper, your audience can communicate back with the press of a button. If this sounds like fun, that’s because it is! Here are eight ways to grow your local business on instagram:
1. Optimize your profile
Your profile is like the cover page of a magazine. This is your opportunity to create a strong hook to engage users to scroll through your content! Magazines strategically place keywords on the cover to be eye-catching, intriguing, and informative about what to expect from the pages within. When creating your Instagram profile, think like a publisher. You have to find a way to showcase who you are in just a few characters, so choose descriptive keywords. If this feels overwhelming, remember to focus on these main points:
-Your name and what you offer
-Your location
-How customers can reach you (email, phone, PO box, etc.)
-A link to your store or booking site so customers can easily view your offerings
2. Engage with the local community
The interactive nature of social media platforms like Instagram allows you to open up a dialogue with prospective clients, network with other businesses, and keep your customers in-the-know about upcoming sales and promotional events. When you are active on social media and engage regularly with your audience, customers often feel more connected to your core mission and will have your brand at the front of their mind when they are ready to invest in your product or service. For example, if you own a flower shop you could post something about the first bloom in your neighborhood, or how excited you are for wedding season!
3. Utilize Instagram stories
Instagram stories are short, temporary posts that show up at the very top of someone's Instagram feed. When used strategically, stories are a fun and easy way for your followers to interact with your brand. This feature allows you to embed interactive stickers like polls, questionnaires, quizzes, and sliders into your post. Aside from being entertaining, these stickers can help you increase overall engagement on your account, which plays in your favor when the algorithm calculates how often to recommend your account (and to whom!). And if you create a masterpiece on stories, have no fear. You can save it as a "highlight" to pin it to your profile for future reference.
4. Conduct market research
Using the engagement stickers from stories, you can ask your audience specific questions to help further your business. Lets say you want to roll out a new flavor this September for your ice cream shop but can't decide between cinnamon twist and maple brown sugar. Throw it up on stories using the poll feature and have the audience vote! You get an idea of which flavor will sell, and the audience gains a sense of connection with your business. Everybody wins!
5. Educate your audience
If you were bound to using small print-advertorials for the rest of time, you would have to keep your pitch as short and simple as possible. For example, a sustainable clothing brand would have just enough space to say something like "Looks good on you, looks good on the planet. Open seven days a week". It's a nice slogan, but it's not exactly enough to convince the consumer that their brand is doing everything they say they're doing. This is where social media comes in! Since your Instagram is your personal bulletin board that never runs out of space, you can use it as a platform to educate your audience about your processes and decision making as a company. For the sustainable clothing brand, we would recommend a few lines of information. Firstly, why is it important to shop small and sustainable? Think climate statistics, working conditions in fast-fashion industries, etc. Secondly, what makes your brand better for the planet than the department store? A fun idea here would be to make a reel with information about the ingredients in your fabric dyes, or even a clip of you submerging one of the items yourself!
6. Connect your social media with in-person marketing efforts
User Generated Content is when your end-user promotes your product or service online. Creating campaigns that entice someone to talk about your brand with their friends and family is a great way to grow your presence, online and in-person. An example of a UGC campaign would be to host a monthly giveaway and users enter by sharing a photo after they purchase your product or service, or by leaving a review on your website. Surveys show that about 76% of people trust content shared by "average" people rather than brands, and nearly 100% of consumers trust recommendations from others.
7. Use local hashtags and geotags
Tagging a relevant location in each of your posts is a surefire way to make sure you're reaching local clientele. Check out this post from our Instagram for more info on nailing the location game and becoming visible: https://www.instagram.com/p/B74nfDqJS_5/?igshid=9vgwtd4n5t89
8. Spruce up your instagram SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process by which one aims to rank higher in searches on Google and social media by designing their page using essential keywords. This makes you, as a business, more findable to your ideal local audience. For a detailed post on how to improve your Instagram SEO, click here!: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxgMb0MD3Hv/?igshid=1iantvi2dlrhs
We hope that with these tips you're able to reach new heights in your journey as a local business. And as always, we're here to help! We would love to be your guide as you build your online presence and begin exploring the magic of Instagram. Book a discovery call today to chat with us about your brand's goals. Let's do this together!