What about Instagram?

Instagram has been fairly doing well recently… actually, that’s a huge understatement. Instagram has been killing it with 1 billion people using it! Coming in at third place within the Social Media Platform industry, just behind Facebook and Youtube respectively. Considering that 8 billion people live on earth today, that’s 1/8 of the entire world population as of 2019!

It’s undeniable at this point that Instagram is one of the best platforms to sell your products or services today. Here are the 6 ways to effectively sell on Instagram.

1) Get a  Business Profile

Before you can start selling, you need to be legitimate first in the eyes of Instagram itself. I mean, wouldn’t it be more appealing to you if someone would sell to you using a business profile rather than a personal one?

But that’s only touching the surface. With a business account, you can access A LOT more features that can’t be seen in a personal account. Features such as Instagram Insights, running ads, and much more.

There’s also a unsaid feature with a business profile. You can partner with other businesses! This comes in line with my first point where if you want people to take you seriously, you got to convert man. You won’t be seen by many as a professional just for that reason alone

So you’re done converting. Now what? You can further optimize your Business account by doing simple things. Such as changing your profile to your brand logo. This can easily help audience identify you and gain you brand awareness.

You can also link your website to your bio if you have one. This is really useful when people are going to check out your profile. This can also work the other way around where you also link your instagram business account to your website.

Speaking of bio, you should also include there what’s your business all about! Though I’m sure most of you already know this, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

2) Beef up your Gallery!

Instagram is about photos, pictures, and images, your gallery should be filled with photos, pictures, and images! Of what you ask? Generally, your products (or services)! If people are going to check out your instagram, they’re likely there for your products and see what they look like. So be sure to get a good and stunning picture of all of your products!

However, be sure to not falsely advertise your products and mislead people. Best to avoid any filters since they will generally alter the product’s true appearance. Sure, most won’t mind. But what about those few who do? Just be real and use your epic photography skills to showcase your products!

If people happen to like the look of your products and would want to buy, where would they go? Yes, the link to your website you provided earlier in your bio! See? It comes full circle.

Also, try to use captions every now and then. They tend to engage more people rather than just a pure picture. So whenever you’re taking a picture of your product, you might want to leave some space for a few of them for the captions.

3) #UseHashtags

In case you’ve been living under a rock for a few years now, hashtags have been everywhere! Like seriously, they’re all over the internet. Why? Because there’s a reason for that. It gains attraction! Love it or hate it, it’s a fact that hashtags help you gain more reach.

It’s best to research what hashtags are being used to most. There are a lot of ways to to this. Some just more simple like just pressing hashtag on the search bar. Others are more complex like using statistics and analytics to determine the best hashtag trend in the next hour! (not really but you get the point)

However! Don’t go overboard with your hashtags! Just maybe pick a few like five ones, more or less. And also, be specific when using hashtags. And another thing, put them in the end of your product description. This way, it won’t get in the way of your main descriptions

4) Instagram Shopping Feature

This feature enables you to put tags on your products in the pictures. If clicked, it will direct the buyer to a page with a product description. From there, the buyer can purchase the product the he/she would like.

This is such a Godsent from Instagram, making it more convenient for buyers to buy and sellers to sell! If a dog is a man’s best friend, then the Instagram shopping feature is an Instagram buyer/seller’s best friend.

5) Advertisements and Ad Stories

Remember to have advertisements! Advertisements, statistically have good, if not better ROI (return on investment). So if you’re planning on running a business, at least in a B2C (business to consumer) setting, advertisement is certainly a must!

So make sure to have a budget for advertisements. Yes, you can do without them if you’re still early in the game. But earlier, the better! Besides, you’ll eventually have to run advertisements someday.

With it comes another advertisement model made by Instagram. And that’s Ad stories! I’m sure if your using Instagram as your platform, you must know what Instagram stories are. So if you combine advertisements and stories, what do you get? Yup, Ad stories.

Though still in its early form, Ad stories are believed to grow and grow further. The benefits of this is you get to be more personal, allowing for possible further engagement with your audience. And since Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) is all about engagement this days, it won’t be surprising if Instagram will focus even more in engagement in the Future

6) Influencers!

I’m sure you know Instagram influencers. They’re a good source to widen you reach! Now, I’ve heard that some people dislike partnering up with influencers, saying they’re not worth it. Really now? I’ll be going on a tangent for the next paragraph so just skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear me and my 1st world problems

A person that has possibly tens of thousands of followers will be promoting your product! Let’s say you pay them and give them free products. In return, more people will get to see your products. How much did you lose in partnering up? You gave ten or twenty free products to him/her. Or maybe payed him/her $200.Then what if 50 people out of 20,000 came to buy your product? That’s total profit right there even though the numbers are so small! 0.25% to be exact! I can’t stress this enough.

Back to the topic, influencers are a big part of Instagram. They’re included in a good amount, if not a majority of all business strategies in Instagram. You see artists that are featured in a commercial? That’s basically the same thing! It costs so much to feature artists in any content. Still, why do they still appear? Because it works! And that’s likely the case for you too, only in a much smaller scale.

In Conclusion

In the end, there’s no full proof way of effectively selling your products or services. There’s too many variables to consider. One way may work for you while others might not. However, these ways I’ve given seem to be effective in a majority of businesses. Why? Because it’s what they do! And why do they continually do it? Because they work! At least for them. And most likely, for you too!