Week 11 - Instagram Tips for Business

Isn’t Instagram just for young people? If that’s what you’re thinking then you’re doing yourself and your business a huge disservice.

Recently, Facebook bought Instagram and that move has only allowed it to grow even bigger in recent months.

Check out my guide to Social Media platforms for the ‘Why should I be on Instagram’. It also includes all of the statistics of how many people use it per month, too.

In short, Instagram is a great way to find out more about your ideal clients, to interact and build relationships with clients, suppliers and other people in your industry.

This week, I recorded the Instagram interface on my phone, so you’ll be getting a tour of all of the features, since some of the features are disabled on their desktop website.

I have videos for beginners and advanced, starting from topics like how to create your profile, through to how to build your business with hashtags.

How long will it take?

There are a total of 8 x 10 – 15 minute videos. Of course, you don’t have to watch them all. Take a look at the descriptions and watch the ones that apply to you and skip the rest.

Video 1: How to Create your Instagram profile

This video below is for the absolute novice. I show you how to create an account and edit your profile. Duration 8:57

Video 2: An Introduction to the Instagram Interface

This video is designed for people who haven’t used much of Instagram before. I show you the different menus, where to find things and how to navigate around in Instagram. Duration 12:58

Video 3: How to Post Photos and Videos

In this video I demonstrate how to post photos and videos. I also show you how to access Google Drive or Google photos for uploading images (so you can take a photo on your camera, save it to drive and then upload to Instagram). Iphone users I believe have a feature called ‘Air’ in order to share stuff between their computer and mobile devices. Duration 10:52

Video 4: How to Find and Follow People

This will suit both beginner and intermediate users. I show the basics of how to find and follow people and I go into a little of the advanced features like using hashtags to find people. Duration 8:01

Video 5: Instagram Stories – Part 1 – Other People’s Stories

For anyone who doesn’t know, an Instagram Story is a short piece of content (pic or video) that is different to your main feed. The posts are never seen on your main feed, only in the stories area. Additionally, they can only be seen for 24 hours before they are deleted.

In this video I show you how to watch other people’s stories on Instagram. I talk a little about the algorithm that controls which stories you will always find first and about how you can interact with messages (swiping up or swiping left). Watching these before you start creating your own content can really help give you ideas about what to do and what not to do. Duration 10:02

Video 6: Instagram Stories – Part 2 – Creating Your Own Stories

Video 6, will show you all the different ways you can create a story (there are a couple of different types). This is a great chance to create some fun behind the scenes content as well as less polished content for your followers. Make sure you tell them you are posting stories so they can look out for them. Duration 8:13

Video 7: Instagram Stories – Part 3 – Creating Your Own Stories continued

The final part of how to add writing, stickers etc to your recorded story and then upload. Duration 8:42

Video 8: Hashtags and Growing your business on Instagram

A hashtag (this symbol #) is placed in front of word to make it a keyword. This means if you are searching for a particular word and put a ‘#’ symbol in front you will find what you are looking for easier. Posts with #sunrisephotography in the post or the comments will come up in searches of that term.

I demonstrate how to use hashtags to find out more information on clients or suppliers. I also talk about how to build a relationship with them and then contact them via direct messaging. There are a few tips on what to look for when selecting a hashtag and how to use one hashtag to find other hashtags (one keyword to use other keywords essentially). Duration 9:25

What’s up next week and beyond?

We’ll be focusing on catching up. No new content, just a chance to catch a breath and see what you might have missed so far. I’ll also provide some links to some other awesome hints and tips I’ve found out in the Internet-verse lately.

The week after catch up week will be a brief introduction to Twitter. After that, I will be investigating options for scheduling your social media with options like Buffer, Hootesuite and more.