How to Optimize Your Business Instagram Account Without Using Expensive Software
If you’ve not got an Instagram business account, then it’s sad to say, you’re behind with the times! There are plenty of organizations out there that now have social media feeds in order to stay current with the times and connect with their audience over the internet.
Having an Instagram account isn’t enough though, as it takes a lot of work and effort in order to get followers and build up an engaged platform. Optimizing your account is a good way of getting it noticed but how do you do it without having to spend a lot of money on expensive software?
This guide will walk through the steps that are needed to optimize your Instagram business account and why this practice is important for your business. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll have all the tools and knowledge you’ll need to make use of this popular social media platform for your business in 2022.
1. The importance of optimizing your business Instagram
To put Instagram into perspective when it comes to other social media platforms, Instagram currently has around 200 million monthly active users. Facebook only has around 43 million per month in comparison.
Tiktok and Twitter are still two of the biggest ones for drawing in millions more active users but with 57% of Instagram users accessing the platform every day, it’s important to pay attention to its importance of it for your business.
1.1. Delivers more reach and engagement
When optimizing your account, you enable more users to see your content and to engage with it. Reach and engagement are two major influences on the success of your platform and it’s something that needs focusing solely when it comes to building your platform.
By using the right methods to get your Instagram business account noticed, you could end up helping deliver more reach and engagement to your profile. That can hopefully convert to new followers and ultimately, conversions!
1.2. Instagram is one of the biggest platforms in social media
There are around 1 billion active users on Instagram currently, which is a lot of potential leads to take advantage of. Since its creation, there have been multiple platforms created off the back of the success it’s had, Tiktok being its main competition.
On average, people spend around 53 minutes per day on Instagram. That’s a significant amount of the person’s day and could be a great opportunity to utilize as a business.
1.3. Improves sales potential
Improving sales is one of the main reasons to optimize your social media platforms, including Instagram. With two-thirds of the total Instagram user base being 34 years or younger, it’s essential that you’re utilizing the potential buying power within this age category.
Millennials and Gen-Z generations are more likely to purchase online because they’re very much used to shopping online nowadays. Shopping on Instagram or buying products through brands they’ve seen on the platform, is something many will feel comfortable doing.
2. Five ways to optimize your business without expensive software
Now that you know the importance of optimizing your social media accounts for business, how do you go about it? Not every business has the marketing investment to spend money on expensive software. With that being said, there are lots of ways to optimize your profile without having to spend much at all.
Below, you’ll find five ways to optimize your business on Instagram without having to spend too much money on achieving the end results you’re after.
2.1. Interact with similar accounts and regram with UNUM where applicable.
When it comes to social media platforms, it’s easy to focus on your own account when a lot of reach and engagement relies on being sociable with other profiles too. As a business, it can benefit your account greatly by interacting with similar account types to your business and with those who would be most interested in your products or services.
A lot of business accounts nowadays are doing something called ‘regram’ which has been adapted to other platforms like Tiktok, which now has its own feature called ‘repost’. It’s essentially taking the post from one account and reposting it on your own.
Many accounts have used viral news posts to piggyback off the engagement that it’s received through the original outlets. It’s something that you don’t want to do too often but it can certainly help with boosting your engagement and reach every so often.
To regram on Instagram, there’s a popular tool called UNUM that many use for this feature. They have a helpful guide on how to regram on Instagram if it’s a feature that you’ve not tried before and have very little idea of how to use.
When looking for the right profiles to interact with, use Instagram’s recommendations on the discovery page. This is a collection of profiles and content that Instagram feels you’re most likely to connect with. You can also look at accounts that use the same keywords that you’ve been using via the search bar.
2.2. Analyze any new content you create and make notes for improvement.
Part and parcel of creating content online are taking a closer look at how it performs once it’s been published. When it comes to the digital market, the trends are constantly changing and what was a popular form of posting on social media two years ago is likely to have changed greatly over the two years since.
With that being said, every time you do post, it’s worthwhile analyzing that content to see how well it performed. Thankfully, most social media platforms, including Instagram, has its own analytical dashboard that you can use to assess each post.
This free feature means you don’t need to spend more money unless you’re looking for software and tools that have more detailed insights. With Instagram’s analytics dashboard, you get essential information like the reach the post achieved and where the audience you’ve reached is located.
For suggestions on analytics for deeper insights into your social media platforms, a good one is Sprout Social. Not only does this provide detailed analytics but it also acts as a content scheduler, making it easier and more efficient to post content daily.
2.3. Utilize your bio with the right keywords and hashtags.
Your bio is one of the first things that people see when coming onto your profile. That means you want to make everything in that top fold of the page, the most engaging and eye-catching content possible. From your picture to the information within the bio of the profile, it’s all important to make use of in order to keep the user on the page.
Take a look at your picture and if it’s enticing enough for your page and more importantly, is relevant to your business. Be sure to take a closer look at the keywords you could be using in your bio and find keywords that are more relevant to your business branding.
Make use of any links you can add to this section too, as well as any hashtags that you might deem relatable to your brand. It all helps in getting your profile noticed and for it to show up on your algorithm more so.
2.4. Post consistently and know the right times to post during the day.
When it comes to posting the content, a lot of it can depend on when you post. Thankfully, we have a lot of automation at our fingertips, meaning you can post content without having to be at your desk to press publish.
Platforms like Later are a great tool to use when you need to pre-schedule content ahead of time. To know about the best time to post, it’s important to spend some time monitoring and tracking your own content via Instagram analytics.
While there are generic times when you should post online, these timings aren’t really specific to your audience’s geographic locations and general viewing habits when it comes to going on the platform. So an article might suggest the most popular times to post are at 4 pm on a Monday afternoon but your audience might not even be on the platform at that point.
It’s worth analyzing your previous posts and when you posted them to calculate the best time from the top 5 posts within the last week or month.
2.5. Engage with your comments and follow back where you can.
Comments that you receive on your posts should be engaged with as quickly as possible. As a business, you want to interact with your customers because it helps to build a relationship between you and that individual. If you’re not responding back, then the user is less likely to return to your profile to interact.
To engage further, it’s good to follow back accounts where you can. Don’t get caught up in needing to show you have fewer people than you follow versus the number of people who follow you. If they’re an account that’s engaged with your profile and does so on a regular occasion, follow them back!
Utilize Instagram for your business in 2022
If you’ve not already got an Instagram business account, then now is better late than never to start one. Look at how you can take your current business account and elevate it to new heights with the right strategy and tips.
