How to Use Instagram to Grow your E-Commerce Business?

With over 1 billion active users, Instagram has become one of the best platforms you can use for online marketing, but you may already know that it isn’t easy to increase followers organically on the visual-based social network platform.

Let’s look at some ways to use Instagram to build your brand and increase your followers with zero budget!

How to Use Instagram to Grow your E-Commerce Business?

#1 Make sure every post includes your brand image

Being aesthetic is very important on Instagram. The picture should be perfect as should the feed. So, It’s essential to plan out what your content strategy will be and then publish images accordingly. For instance, many brands will alternate photos from a product shot to a lifestyle shot or pick a specific filter to use for all.

Whatever your branded theme is, you should stick to it, so your Instagram feed looks unique and compelling for your target audience.

#2 Follow rules of third

In order to send a balanced message to your followers and not be too much promotional, you should follow the rule of thirds, which includes:

·       Conversational posts:

Including posts that encourage your followers to engage in a conversation. You can ask some questions in your captions, throw out contests or giveaways.

·       Promotional posts:

Including product pictures or anything related to your company.

·       Other posts:

Including industry news, educational information or cross-promoting with your audience or other companies.

You should find the right balance between these three to increase followers and engagement.

#3 Use Instagram shoppable posts

Tagging products are beneficial because it lets you have a clear call to action and make the purchase process more comfortable for the customer. Instagram now business accounts in specific countries to tag their products in their posts, similar to tagging people.

#4 Create and use branded hashtags to save time

Hashtags are really helpful on Instagram because they let you show up in search results and attract new followers. Do some research around hashtags related to your brand and use them on a daily basis. You can save them in a note and use them anytime you want to post something on Instagram.

Make sure not to overuse them and only use the relevant ones, try to keep the user experience on top of your mind. Using Instagram to find new customers requires a lot of patience and effort, but it definitely will pay off.

So, find or create a  branded hashtag for your very own business account, combine it with relevant hashtags and use them on your captions. This will increase your brand awareness and follower numbers at the same time.

#5 Engage with your audience

When our brand was first starting to grow on Instagram, we spent one whole year commenting, following and liking posts and accounts of our target audience.

Liking and commenting on other user’s posts, often leads to them visiting your profile. So if you engage with your target audience, they will often check you out, like some of your posts and even click on the follow button.

Purchasing fake likes and comments is not really good for your growth. While it may seem like an easy and quick way to get your metrics up, in a long time, it can do more damage than goods, especially with the new purge started by Instagram these days. With Instagram’s priority being a perfect user experience, fake accounts or accounts who have purchased followers and likes are likely to be shadowbanned.

#6 Use third-party apps to create the ideal Instagram feed and save some time

Using third-party apps can help you manage and save your time since building and maintaining a popular Instagram account can be really time-consuming. Instagram automation tools like Instagram bots and post schedulers can allow you to get rid of the exhausting routine activities. You can also use third-party apps for photo editings to craft your posts the best way you can.

Instagram has restricted rules about using third-party apps, so it’s important to understand the rules and only use these apps in a way that complies with Instagram’s terms and conditions.

#7  Pay more attention to analytics

A simple lookup on your Instagram analytics gives you great information that you can use to create more popular posts to increase engagement. Under the audience tab on Instagram insight, you can see when your followers are active on Instagram, down to each hour, and then schedule your upcoming posts on these times to get the most engagement out of them.

Also, you should pay attention to which photos get the most likes to understand your audience’s taste. You can use this data to post more of what they want and increase engagement that way.

That’s it for today.

Hope you find this article helpful. Comment us below and ask us any questions you have about Instagram marketing.

We will be happy to help.