An Instagram Strategy for Your Business

While Instagram has done its best to remain a personal and intimate social network, businesses are slowly adding it to their social media portfolios, hoping to reach the growing network of 300 million Instagram users. However, despite the business world’s dismay, Instagram is still taking cautionary efforts to keep advertisements down, and is partnering only with selected brands to test out different potential advertising opportunities it may one day – in the distant future – offer to the masses.

So, with this lack of advertising ability, why is it that businesses are creating Instagram accounts at a faster rate?

Simple – to create a sense of community and intimacy with their consumers, thereby building a relationship that instills trust in their products and services and puts their company top-of-mind.

So how should you do it?

1. Share Your Goods

Businesses use Instagram to show off their products, but in unique ways. We aren’t talking descriptive posts with all the product specs and features, but rather photos of the product being used in a unique way or flowing through production and testing. It is also common for businesses on Instagram to put a call out to current or previous customers to share photos of themselves using a product, with the company featuring the best photos on their corporate Instagram page – a technique called user-generated content.

2. Share Your Services

Businesses create a sense of community and build relationships by sharing images of happy clients and consumers after a service has been performed. Companies also display videos and images of the service in process, allowing potential customers to gain trust in how the service is really performed.

3. Share Your Environment

Sharing photos and videos of your corporate environment helps create a community between both current and potential employees, as well as allowing your consumers to see the working conditions and service personnel behind their favorite products. This has typically been achieved through posting images of specific employees and their talents or unique work environments.

4. Share Your Personality

This is the fastest-growing reason for companies to adopt Instagram into their social media portfolio. Sharing your personality is all about displaying your corporate culture, your brand persona, and inspiring clients and employees. Through behind-the-scenes footage and images of employee interactions, Instagram is best at exposing a company’s corporate culture – allowing employees to feel proud about where they work, consumers to feel proud about where they do their business, and potential employees to flock to the company.

Your Instagram account should create a community and exude personality and corporate culture – all of which make consumers smile the next time they hear your company’s name.

What are your thoughts on businesses adding Instagram to their social media portfolio?