11 Tips For Promoting Your Local Business On Instagram
How to Use Instagram for Local Businesses
Instagram is a fantastic place for brands to promote themselves and to connect with new and existing customers. Although many local and small business owners know that Instagram is a powerful marketing tool, they often run into roadblocks when it comes to using this platform.
The main concerns associated with marketing a local or small business on Instagram are:
- time and budget constraints;
- questions about what to share;
- confusion about how often to post; and
- not knowing how to attract an audience.
Here we’re going to break all the information down for you into easy, manageable steps so you can get to grips with Instagram!
Don’t think Instagram is a good fit for your or your client’s local business? Think again! While it isn’t for everyone, many brands have found fun and creative ways to connect with local customers on this social app.
Plumbers, electricians, tutors, and even trucking companies have found innovative ways to engage their audiences on Instagram. What’s more, this is a platform that many potential customers are already familiar with and are regularly spending time on. So what are you waiting for?
Why Local Brands Need to Be on Instagram
With more than a billion active accounts and 500 million daily users, Instagram isn’t a platform you want to ignore.
It’s no longer just for filtered selfies and thirst traps—it attracts a variety of users from all over the world. According to a recent Hootsuite study, 90% of Instagram users follow brands and businesses, and 81% will use the platform to research a product or service.
Still not convinced? Instagram is the fourth most used app, overtaken only by sister apps Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Also, even though Instagram is primarily an app, its desktop site is the sixth most-visited website globally.
While these are global numbers, you can see how beneficial this exposure can be to a local brand, even if it’s only capturing a small portion of the total user base.
Building Trust and Brand Awareness
Users like interacting with local brands on social media for a variety of reasons, but mostly this simply boils down to the “know, like, trust” factor.
People are increasingly intentional with where they spend their hard earned dollars, and they want to know the brands they work with—especially for service providers that they’re inviting into their homes.
Giving your client’s brand a personality, engaging with their audience, and sharing helpful and relevant content can increase their know, like, and trust factor by leaps and bounds!
As you can see in the example post below, sharing concise information along with the image is an easy way to increase awareness and boost sales. This kind of informative and relevant information helps to encourage users to take the desired action.
Moving away from the more touchy-feely aspects of social media, Instagram will also assist in furthering your client’s brand messaging.
Users are already on social media for a significant portion of their day, so why not meet them where they are?
Earn their trust and their business by getting to know them and letting them get to know the brand. In doing so, you’ll earn loyal customers who sing your client’s praises on the very platforms you met them on.
Personal referrals and recommendations are far more valuable than any advertising you can do, so why not create that positive environment for your client’s brand and local community?
Instagram for (Local) Business
Clients often ask if they should leave their brand page set up as a standard account, or if they should use a business account. We always recommend taking advantage of Instagram’s business account options.
With a business account, you have better access to analytics and the added credibility of being recognized as a business by the platform. With every opportunity to increase your credibility online, you’re also enhancing the trust factor with your users.
Setting up your client’s Instagram profile as a business account is fairly simple:
- Go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Account’
- At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see an option to ‘Switch to Professional Account’
- Click continue and follow the prompts
- Choose the company’s category
- Select ‘Business Account’
- Review the contact information
- Link to the company Facebook page (if relevant)
- Finish setting up the profile
- Start posting!
How to Optimize Instagram Profiles for a Local Business
You’ve got the account built out, now how do you make sure you’re laying a foundation for success?
There are a few things that you can do to optimize your client’s Instagram profile. This will help to give it a boost, both with your local audience and in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Username
When it comes to the username, the easier you can make things on your users (and search engines) the better.
Try to keep the username the same across various platforms if possible. For example, at Sterling Sky, most of our social handles are SterlingSkyInc. This makes it easier for users to find and identify us, and provides that consistency that Google loves.
If you can have your display name the same as the name on your Google Business Profile and on your website, even better!
Location Information
As with your username, any available location information you can add into your profile should match your website and Google profiles as closely as possible.
Be consistent with spelling or abbreviating things like Street/St or Road/Rd, and always use dashes in phone numbers for consistency.
Bio
While you want brand messaging to be consistent across your profiles, you can modify your language in each bio based on the platform and audience. In each instance, determine who your audience is and craft your bio to that audience.
Business Account
As mentioned above, you’ll want to make sure that the Instagram profile is set up as a business account in order to get the maximum benefit from it.
Laying out Your Local Business Instagram Strategy
Before you share your first post, you should lay out a strategy. Without a strategy, your posts aren’t going to work for you. If your posts aren’t working for you, what’s the point?
To avoid spinning your wheels, you’ll want to address a few key elements:
Who are you/they?
Developing and maintaining a consistent brand voice is critical for building trust. Regardless of who is crafting a post or response, it should always feel like your audience is engaging with the same person from start to finish.
Decide who you want the brand to be online, and maintain tone, vocabulary, and personality throughout your Instagram interactions.
What’s the main goal of the account?
Without clear and concise goals, you’re really just throwing things at the wall and hoping they’ll stick.
Do you want to attract new business partners? Connect with potential customers? Sell products? Book appointments? Increase brand awareness? Make people laugh? Laying out three main goals and sticking to them will help drive your strategy forwards and keep you on task as you create content.
It helps to have one main long-term goal and a combination of smaller short-term goals that can rotate based on internal and external factors.
Who do you want to attract?
Often, when we ask customers this question, their immediate answer is “everyone!” I’ll stop you right now and let you know that this is an impossible goal. If you try to appeal to everyone, you’re going to appeal to no-one.
When you’re thinking about your ideal customer, it can be helpful to create a few different personas. This will make it easier to visualize who you’re trying to reach. Consider the following questions:
- What is their budget?
- How do they live?
- What do they look like?
- Do they have a family?
- Do they have pets?
All of these questions can help you zero in on your ideal customer and help you to craft great content that will appeal to them.
What are you trying to sell?
Determine how you’ll measure your conversions, and craft content that assists with that goal. Increasing brand awareness and selling retail products is going to look very different for most brands.
Remember, Instagram is a highly visual platform, so you want to literally show potential customers what you can do for them.
How will you measure success?
This is a step that many don’t consider before jumping into the world of social media for brands. If you don’t have a way to clearly define success, how will you measure it? The goals we mentioned above are key elements in determining if a campaign has been successful.
Some brands like to use vanity metrics, like follower numbers and like counts. I’m not a fan of this strategy, as likes and followers can easily be bought, and some less scrupulous marketing consultants and companies will do this to inflate the appearance of their efforts. Yes, followers matter, but they should not be the main driver of all of your decisions.
Business account users will have access to various analytics that they can use to shape their ongoing strategy and for reporting:
Engagement and conversions are the two metrics we tend to look at in order to determine the success of a campaign.
However, a massive follower count means nothing if these people aren’t interacting with your brand or following through to the checkout.
Remember, we’re working to build that know, like, and trust factor, and you can’t do that with fake fans.
How much time and/or budget do you have available for Instagram?
Consistency is key on platforms like Instagram. Knowing how much time you have to create and share content, and engage with followers, will allow you to determine your strategy.
This will inform how often you post, how in-depth your campaigns can be, and how much effort you can put into the platform.
If you don’t have time to complete these actions effectively yourself, then determine your budget and hire an employee, consultant, or agency to undertake the work.
How will you maintain brand identity?
Once you’ve determined your voice, goals, desired audience, what you’re selling, how you’ll measure your success, and what your budget is, it’s time for the fun stuff!
Create visuals that are in line with the strategy you’ve laid out with the aforementioned questions, and add descriptions that are easily readable with a clear call to action.
Keep in mind that the more recognizable your style is, the better. You can achieve this by adding a logo or overlay to your photos, using consistent colors, hashtags, and lingo.
Posting consistently in this way will help you to create content that your audience can easily recognize, which helps to build trust in your brand. (Are you sick of me saying that yet? Sorry, not sorry. Trust is key in local business success—both online and off!)
What a Local Business Should Be Posting on Instagram
The most common question we get from clients is “What should we post about?”.
Oftentimes, they feel that their service-based business may be boring, or they don’t have an opportunity for great images that will wow their audience. Your clients don’t have to own a boutique or restaurant to earn attention on Instagram. People want to get to know the brand, so why not let them?
One of the simplest ways to lay out a solid posting strategy for a local business is to pick two or three main content categories. Choose those categories based on your social media and overall brand goals. Some categories that work well for most brands include:
- General brand information
- Specials or promotions
- Community events
- Entertaining or ‘just for fun’ posts
- Shares from partner brands or other local businesses
Typically, we advise that one in every three to five posts has a direct call to action for the brand, such as the post below:
If you’re asking people to buy something, provide some value to them in between your asks to keep them coming back for more.
A word of advice: Don’t discount that seemingly ‘fluff’ content. Memes and entertaining posts will boost engagement, ensuring your brand-specific content reaches a larger audience.
Stories, Posts, and Reels. Oh My!
The various posting options for Instagram can be overwhelming, but once you find a good groove with your audience, this will help you segment and target your content to those who want to see it most.
Currently, Instagram offers four options for posting: posts, stories, reels, and videos.
Posts
Posts are the in-feed content which is first presented to users when they open the app. Once shared, they remain on your profile permanently—in the order you posted them—unless you choose to delete them.
Stories
Stories are located on your profile or on a follower’s main feed in circles at the top of the screen. These clips can be up to ten seconds long, and there are currently no limits as to how many you can post.
Stories appear on your page for 24 hours and then disappear. If you want them to stay longer, you can save a story as a Story Highlight, which will pin the clips to the top of your profile permanently.
Reels
Reels are best described as Instagram’s answer to TikTok. They’re short video clips that play on repeat. As with TikTok, you can add music, captions, and visual effects to video clips directly within the app.
Video
Earlier this year, Instagram changed how users can create and share video content. Previously, shorter videos could be posted to the feed, and longer videos were posted through IGTV. All video content is now available in one place—Instagram Videos—which can be up to one hour long.
Instagram Videos can now be found on a user’s profile in the ‘video’ tab.
Nuts and Bolts: Instagram Best Practices
While every brand is different, the following are a few tried and true best practices that we’ve found to be successful, regardless of industry or location.
Plan Ahead
Create a content calendar, and use it!
Fill in important dates and events as soon as you’re aware of them so you can add in content leading up to those dates.
Plan posting around holidays, community events, and the seasonality of your client’s business.
Ensure campaigns have enough lead time to get people’s attention and buy-in. This also gives you ample time to proofread and edit copy as needed.
Once you have your content calendar planned out, you can take advantage of Instagram’s scheduled posts and Reels feature.
Leave room for last minute or ad-hoc posts, of course, but a good plan is key to your success on Instagram.
Images
As spontaneous as Instagram may appear, most brands do not snap a quick photo and send a post out to the world. Have a library of photos and brand images to choose from when creating content.
If you’re using your content calendar effectively, then you have time to get images for upcoming posts that you may not have in your library.
No Walls of Text
Break up blocks of text with emojis or bullet points to keep it easily scannable and visually appealing. Try to stay short and to the point. You don’t have much time to get or keep a user’s attention.
Hashtag Library
Know which hashtags deliver for your client’s industry and location. Some of this requires testing and tweaking, but you can get a good idea of what’s working by searching for related posts in your client’s industry and location.
It’s a good idea to keep a library to pull from so you aren’t continually reinventing the wheel. Also, ensure you only use relevant hashtags specific to the post in question.
To make your posts more visually appealing, separate written content from the hashtags, like in the example post below, to avoid the dreaded wall of text:
You should also be careful to avoid banned hashtags. An easy way to see if a hashtag is banned is to search the hashtag on Instagram and see what comes up.
If you see the ‘posts hidden’ message, you’ll know that it’s banned and you can stop using it.
Emojis
Posts with emojis tend to perform well, likely because they break up text and make it easily scannable. They can be used to help show the topic, sentiment, and mood of a post.
Be sure not to overuse emojis, as it can make your content appear juvenile or immature.
You should also avoid unprofessional emojis or those that have inappropriate connotations.
Influencers
Many brands look at mega-influencers and instantly believe they don’t have the budget and move on. Fortunately, micro-influencers work well for local brands, often even better than celebrities.
Find someone who has a great reach within the community, and find a way to get them to share your content or product offerings. Complimentary services or products and great customer service can go a long way with local influencers.
Share the Love
Do you want people to comment on your posts? Extend the olive branch and do the same for them!
Comment on posts from local businesses and community members, share their content, or share a photo of your client’s team using their product. These are all relatively easy, inexpensive ways to create some goodwill within your client’s community.
Have Fun
None of this is worth it if your client isn’t enjoying the process. It’s obvious when brands have a presence somewhere just because they have to. Don’t be that profile.
Location, Location, Location!
Instagram has check-in and location tagging options available. Depending on the nature of the local business you’re promoting, you may want to spend some time deciding how you want to utilize location tagging.
Like hashtags, Instagram location tags make posts and stories searchable by users. Using location tags can be a powerful tactic for brands, especially in more densely populated areas, or locations with popular landmarks.
Instagram users can search for location tags to find posts from specific areas:
While a business that services clients at their homes may not want a check-in option, and instead should encourage customers to tag them in a post.
A retail location, however, can utilize location tagging to let customers know where they’re located and boost engagement with those closer to them.
And Remember…
Instagram should complement your overall local marketing strategy—it is not a replacement for search engine optimisation (SEO).
You’ll always have more success on social media if you’ve got a comprehensive local marketing strategy in place, including a well-optimized website.
About the author
Erin has been working in digital marketing since 2005 and has specialized in social media and brand reputation since 2010. She is proud to be a member of the Sterling Sky Dream Team™, working with local businesses throughout North America to help them succeed online. Erin is passionate about community and loves assisting brands in finding their place, both virtually and locally.
11 Tips For Promoting Your Local Business On Instagram
Instagram can be a powerful tool for your local business. Here are 11 tactics for engaging your community and promoting your brand.
- June 3, 2022
- ⋅
- 12 min read
VIP CONTRIBUTOR Ashley Segura (Ward) VP of Operations at TopHatRank
Instagram is perfect for your local business.
I know what you’re thinking, “How could a social media platform full of funny cat videos, posts from influencers, and pictures of food help you land more customers and make more sales?”
Believe it or not, there’s actually a whole lot more to Instagram than just fun pictures and videos.
It’s also increasingly becoming a marketplace, with a full 70% of shoppers looking on Instagram for their next purchase. And 50% report being more interested in a brand when they see ads for it there.
Now consider that there are 1.13 billion people using the platform, with more joining every day. That’s a whole lot of potential customers, which explains why there are more than 200 million businesses on Instagram.
But becoming Insta-famous is more than just creating an account and posting product shots. There’s an art to cultivating a following for your local business. And you’re in the right spot to learn how.
In this guide, you’ll learn 11 tips that you can use on Instagram to reach a wider audience, generate engagement, promote your local business, and generate sales.
1. Participate, Participate, Participate
Before anything else, Instagram, like any social media platform, is a community.
And just like your business is a valuable part of your local community, you also want to show that you’re a reputable and valuable member of the Instagram community.
This will help you earn followers eager to engage with your content.
But posting great images or videos is not enough!
To establish your reputation in the Instagram community, you want to create relationships with influencers and other brands (even direct competitors) and join the conversations they’re starting. Interact with the content they’re producing and engage with other Instagram users.
You must spend engagement to make engagement.
And when your followers create a conversation in the comment section of your posts, actively join those talks and respond to questions, concerns, praise, and other sentiments.
This is also a great chance to address any potential negative experiences, get out in front of bad publicity, and show your followers that their opinions matter to you.
2. Strengthen Your Instagram Community By Reposting Local Content
You can enhance your business’s reputation on Instagram and in your local community by regularly reposting content published by your local followers, other businesses in your area, and local celebrities.
Not only will the content creator feel great that their content is being featured by your business, but other followers will take notice.
They may mention your “shout out” on their Instagram page, which will help you reach their followers and even more people in your local community. Win, win!
When you share content created by real people, it makes your brand seem more approachable and human.
In other words, your company begins to feel like a friendly neighbor, instead of a business after sales.
This strategy is not only effective at creating a stronger reputation in the community, but it also saves you a lot of time creating original, unique content.
Just be sure to ask first and tag the user’s Instagram account.
3. Maintain A Consistent Brand Identity
Your business Instagram account is just another extension of your brand.
While Instagram is a unique platform that can (and should be) used to achieve different objectives from other touchpoints, even your other social media accounts, you need to keep a sense of consistency across all platforms, especially in terms of the tone and personality set by your brand.
Many customers follow your brand across several, if not all, of these different channels.
If your Instagram persona is dissimilar from the tone set by your website, Facebook page, or your in-store employees, you run a strong risk of confusing your customers.
That means your customer interactions on Instagram and the tone you set in the captions of your posts need to align with how it really feels to visit your business in person.
Otherwise, you may have customers walking in expecting the jovial, upbeat business they met on Instagram, only to be underwhelmed.
This creates a disruption in their customer journey and may disenchant them all together.
4. Avoid Blanket Posting
While the tone and persona behind your posts need to remain consistent across different channels, too much similarity can be damaging.
You have to carefully navigate the space between remaining consistent and posting unique content, without blanket posting, that is, using the exact same message and content across different social media platforms.
The danger of blanket posting is that customers who follow you across multiple social media channels are going to see the exact same message multiple times.
After the first time, it stops being engaging and starts being disruptive. Remember, every channel is different and should be treated as such.
That said, there are times when blanket posting is acceptable, like when your business is hosting a local event or releasing new products and you want as many people to hear about this news/event/product(s) as possible.
However, you still want to be sure that you’re cross-promoting responsibly.
Responsible cross-promoting isn’t just copying and pasting your efforts from one platform to the next, but using each channel appropriately to promote the same cause.
5. Demonstrate Your Local Lifestyle
Your business’s local lifestyle can best be described as the life a customer leads after they’ve purchased your products.
Because Instagram is such a visual social media platform, it‘s the perfect channel to demonstrate what your brand’s local lifestyle looks like.
Incorporate pictures of your products in action to let customers envision living that lifestyle.
This strengthens your overall brand value and encourages those customers to make a purchase.
When creating images or videos that demonstrate the local lifestyle offered by your products, you should always aim to incorporate popular landmarks in your town.
Not only are these places recognizable and familiar, but they will help complete the customer’s vision of your products in their life, especially if you use landmarks they frequently visit.
6. Go With The Trends
Holidays can always be counted on to become a trending topic and businesses have long taken advantage of these days to engage customers with holiday-themed messages.
But there are a lot of other popular topics you can leverage to create compelling Instagram content.
This is a great way to garner some local attention while posting content that is relevant and interesting to your local followers.
To find trending hashtags in your area, you want to pay attention to the news, local events, and community-specific holidays.
That’s why it’s smart to follow other businesses, local celebrities, and other community thought leaders because you can look at their Instagram for inspiration on trending and local keywords to use.
However, there is a dark side to leveraging trending topics. Some brands push the envelope and try to hijack topics that are better left alone.
For example, if a tragic event occurs, you want to avoid it. Otherwise, it may appear like you’re trying to capitalize on the misfortune of others.
Controversial topics are another sore spot for many people, and you’ll do less harm to just ignore them. Things like politics, religion, or other controversial topics are a no-no!
7. Focus On Localized Hashtags
Speaking of hashtags, there are a lot of parallels between hashtags and SEO keywords.
To optimize the local reach of your Instagram page, you need to focus on localized hashtags.
This allows people in your area to find your posts and your business through area-specific hashtags.
Instead of slapping a generic #nature on your outdoor photo’s caption, use a hashtag that includes your location, like #NewportNature.
It’s also good practice to include hashtags that include your area and the type of business you run. Again, hashtags are a lot like keywords.
If people are searching Instagram for a hairstylist in Chicago (and you happen to be a hairstylist in Chicago), you want your business’s Instagram content to appear in that search.
Thus, you would want to hashtag your content with tags like #ChicagoHairStylist, #ChicagoHair, or #ChicagoBeauty.
The challenge, in terms of localized hashtags, is knowing how local to get.
Do you focus on your specific town or entire state? Is it better to use a hashtag with just your town’s name, or is there more volume in the town and state? Maybe you should target within your specific neighborhood?
There’s no universal, correct answer to this question. It largely depends on how people search in your local area. You will need to do some research to determine the best local hashtags to use in your area.
You may find third-party tools, like Hashtagify or Focalmark useful, as they allow you to enter a keyword/hashtag and see other related words and phrases.
These tools are great for tracking the performance of various hashtags, while also gaining inspiration for new ones.
You can leverage these tools to find great local hashtags and better understand how people search in your area.
8. Include A Link In Your Bio
This may seem obvious, but it is an absolute necessity to link to your website on Instagram.
And your business page’s bio is the only space on Instagram that can include a link, so you must capitalize on it.
Without this link, followers won’t be able to convert by visiting your website, buying your products, or engaging with your brand elsewhere.
Wherever it is you want your followers to go after consuming your Instagram content, that link needs to be in your bio.
You may also want to include information about your other social media accounts, like your company’s Twitter handle.
And, as a local business, it’s also crucial to include your address, so followers know where to find you.
9. Create Professional, Creative Content
This may go without saying, but there are a lot of business pages on Instagram that routinely post images and videos that are of lower quality, blurry, or poorly composed.
If you want to gain a serious edge on Instagram, consider investing in a higher quality camera, rather than just using your smartphone.
You may even decide to invest in a professional photographer to help you create compelling pictures.
After all, Instagram is a visual platform, if you want to really excel at promoting your business in this environment, then you need to create the best visual content possible.
This is especially important if you’re sharing product pictures. You really want followers to see the item and be able to envision themselves using it (remember, local lifestyle).
If the picture is low quality, not only will they fail to do this, but they may be convinced that your products are poor quality, too.
10. Geotag Your Posts
This is another strategy that, while seeming obvious, is something a lot of local businesses forget to do.
If you want Instagram followers to discover and visit your local business, you need to tell them (and Instagram) where to find your business.
You can geotag individual posts with a location.
When users click that location link, they are brought to a map page within the app that shows them exactly where your business is. It also shows other content posted from this location.
However, you shouldn’t always geotag your exact business location.
If you post content about a landmark or specific area in your locale, geotagging that location can create some post variety and creates the opportunity for your content to be discovered by people that search those locations on Instagram.
This also helps demonstrate the sense that your business is an active participant in the community.
11. Track & Measure Your Efforts Constantly
Consumer attitudes and behaviors change and that means your Instagram followers are also going to change their preferences.
You should always be paying attention to the content that creates the most engagement and investigating why sudden spikes in likes, comments, and shares occurred.
When possible, ask people who visit your local business as a result of your Instagram efforts what drew them in. The insights they share with you will be invaluable.
Conclusion
And where Instagram really shines is in its ability to bring culture to life.
From shared stories to interactions in the comments section, it provides lots of opportunities for you to show off just what makes your business great.
Instagram gives businesses a ton of options for promoting themselves.
And, whether you’re relying on completely organic posting or you’re supplementing with paid ads, it gives you plenty of routes for people to discover and engage with you.
As the platform ramps up its branded content features and shopping features, this trend seems sure to continue. eMarketer predicts retail social commerce will be an $80 billion industry by 2025, so the sooner you get on board, the better.
But, as you navigate this exciting new world of expanded social media, don’t forget about your local market.
Keep your target audience in mind, pay attention to trends, and don’t be afraid to try something new.
More Resources:
- How To Sell On Instagram: 11 Tips
- 10 Companies Winning at Instagram Advertising
- Local SEO: The Definitive Guide to Improve Your Local Search Rankings
Featured Image: Bogdan Sonjachnyj/Shutterstock
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/instagram-for-local-businesses/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/promote-local-business-instagram/250051/