If you asked any small business what is their no.1 go-to place for raising brand awareness and promoting their business…they would probably say social media platforms.
This isn’t a surprise considering that even 97% of Fortune companies rely on social media to promote their enterprise.
Even though Facebook has nearly 2 billion users and Instagram half of that, Instagram is becoming more popular when it comes to promoting businesses of all sizes.
We even have a chance to see businesses that operate on Instagram only. This means that they have a shop under their account, and that shop can’t be found anywhere else. We personally don’t recommend following this practice, since you don’t actually own the media, and it can easily happen that you get banned and lose your business overnight.
However, if you are using Instagram to raise awareness about your brand, even to increase your sales, you might want to explore all the options that Instagram has to offer.
Influencers
Depending on your budget, you can find a great influencer to spread the word about your business, product, service, etc.
Before you decide who will be an ideal candidate for your advertising, check if the audience of that Instagram profile is your target audience.
The price per post depends on how many followers the influencer has and what is his/her specialty.
According to the study, travel influencers’ posts are more expensive than entertainment influencers’ posts.
If you want to find out more about influencer marketing, we highly recommend reading this article about using influencer marketing in the best possible way.
Story
If you had a chance to spend at least 5 minutes on Instagram, you have probably seen those highlighted circles in the upper part of your app – Instagram stories.
Contrary to Instagram posts, Instagram stories exist for 24h straight before a system automatically deletes them.
Instagram has rolled out a function that allows you to manually save your story as a highlight.
In no time, people became obsessed with the Instagram Stories function, and the engagement ballooned immediately.
But what’s the reason for this hype?
The thing is that Instagram stories allow you to connect with your audience on a whole new level. Different from staged Instagram posts, stories are considered to be spontaneous, people watching them have the feeling they have an access to ‘the backstage’.
With the 15 seconds that it takes for your story to play out, you have more than enough time to engage your audience with different types of content. Be it an announcement, giveaway, new product, or just a regular post, your options with Instagram stories are countless.
IGTV
Instagram has been recently evolving as a powerful channel for video storytelling. Since all of the other Instagram options don’t allow the user to watch long-form videos, Instagram has presented a new function called IGTV (short for Instagram TV).
This feature allows you to upload up to 60 minutes of video and gives you a much better opportunity to use the power of storytelling.
Here are some of the benefits of using IGTV:
– You can upload vertical or horizontal videos on IGTV.
– Videos are longer than regular videos on your feed.
– Followers can watch the part of the video before they click on the button “keep watching”, allowing you to grab your audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds.
– The video doesn’t have an expiration date, and it stays on the platform as long as you need them to.
Reels
Instagram Reels is the newest function that Instagram rolled out. However, the concept of these short videos is not quite new, and Instagram adopted the idea from the increasingly popular platform TikTok.
Basically, Reels are 15-second, multi-clip videos that usually include music and special effects.
Since these videos are meant to be fun and entertaining primarily, their main goal is to entertain and prolong the time users spend on Instagram.
Right now Reels have outstanding visibility, so you might want to explore this option!
Instagram is a social media platform that is definitely keeping up with all the trends, and it’s constantly opening a pool of opportunities for small businesses.
If you’d like to reap the benefits of promoting your business via Instagram, make sure that you contact us.
Mila Z.
