Five Things You Must Know About Instagram

Instagram has exploded in popularity in recent years and can represent an amazing opportunity for your business. But before you jump on the bandwagon, there are some things you must know about the platform to make sure you’re set up – not just for social media success, but for business success.

#1: Links

Simple – they don’t work.

There is one single place that you can put a clickable link on Instagram, and that’s in the website field of your profile’s bio. For this reason, it’s really hard to get people out of Instagram. It’s just not a good platform for a direct response social media program. Click to buy, click to convert, driving web traffic – these are just not things that Instagram is good at. Not to say you can’t find ways to make it happen, but you need to know that posting your products with links to buy is simply not going to work. Got it? Great.

#2: It’s not shareable

In social media marketing, we’ve come to approach content creation with the mindset of “is it shareable?” We’re constantly after those things that will “go viral” and spread across the Internet. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube give us the chance to do this incredibly well, but Instagram doesn’t make it easy. Your choice of actions on Instagram is to Like or Comment. There is no Retweet. There is no Share. So unless your content is Kardashian-esque enough to “break the internet” and make people go out of their way to share, it’s not going anywhere. So don’t count on it.

#3: It is discoverable

But what Instagram lacks in share-ability, it makes up for in discoverability. Remember how I noted that Instagram users are super active? Well, they’re so engaged that they love discovering new content, regardless of who puts it out. To be as discoverable as possible, you’ll want to make sure you’re making the most of your opportunities: hashtags, locations, tagging, and engagement. That’s how you can make sure as many people are seeing your content as possible.

Hashtags are highly prevalent on Instagram and are the primary way new people are going to come in contact with your content. It’s totally acceptable to use multiple hashtags as long as they’re relevant, so go for it!

Location tagging is the practice of marking your picture with where it was posted. You can name the location whatever you want, but you can also use what the rest of the community is using to get more exposure. For example, if you’re posting from the NAMM show and you tag it with NAMM 2015, others who are posting or viewing content from that location may be exposed to your content. Cool, huh?

Tagging other users and getting users to tag their friends in your posts is as close to sharing as you get with Instagram. There are two ways to tag people: in the copy with an @mention, or Tag in Photo. Use this to pull in your followers, your vendors, your employees, and your partners.

Finally, engagement is the key to showing up on the Search/Navigate page. The more people like and comment on your content, the more likely it will be to show up on that page to people who aren’t already following you.

#4: Interact

Posting on social media, and Instagram in particular, is not a one-way endeavor. You’re going to get the most out of your Instagram program (more followers, more likes, more comments) if you’re not only posting content, but interacting with people on Instagram, as well. This means responding when people ask you questions, following other users, and liking/commenting on their content. Just be social (especially with your customers and with your vendors)!

#5: Phone only

Other platforms allow you to use third party applications to post, monitor, and engage. Other platforms let you schedule posts so that you can plan ahead. Other platforms let you post from your computer. Not Instagram. That’s part of what’s kept it pure, real-time, and cool. But for a business, that’s tough. Put together a plan for who will login and use the account and when. If you can, maybe dedicate a device for your store to be the “Instagram device,” so that multiple people can use it without mistakenly posting something to your brand account that should have gone on their personal account. Yes, it’s a limitation, but as we musicians know, sometimes technological limitations lead to creative revelations.

But wait. There’s more!

BONUS: Beautiful images
With all this planning, process, and technical discussion, let’s not lose sight that Instagram is all about beautiful images. If you want to be awesome at Instagram, step up your photography game. Images of products on white backgrounds will not cut it. Get creative, get visual, make it memorable, and make it unique.

Ben Blakesley, author of Get Social: a practical guide to using social media for business and co-founder of Community Manager Recharge social media conference, has been working in social for the better part of a decade, spanning industries from music to finance to sports apparel and many in between. One of those “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” kind of guys, Ben lives and breathes social and thrives on making connections and making a difference. Now leading social media for Reebok, he lives in the Boston suburbs with his wonderful and socially adept wife, Lauryn, and their three children.