How To Increase Engagement on Instagram Business – How To Grow Instagram For Online Store – So you’ve just started an online store and you’re trying to grow your Instagram account, so that you can increase more reach to your potential customers. And you’re wondering, “How am I going to do that with just selling products? And it’s not like I am an influencer, or I want to grow my lifestyle business, it’s more of a product that I’m trying to sell to my potential customers.”
If you’re interested in learning more about it, watch the video below or scroll down, as I will share some of the things that I have used personally, to grow my Instagram account for my online store, and how I used the social media tools to convert those potential audience into a buying customer on my online store.
How To Increase Engagement On Instagram Business
Time Stamps: How To Increase Engagement On Instagram Business
- 1:03 Have An Engaging Image
- 5:07 Have An Engaging Caption
- 6:52 Engage With Your Audience
- 8:47 Post When Your Audience Is Most Active
- 9:35 Use Instagram Story and Instagram Reels
- 11:13 Work With Influencers
- 11:24 Hold Giveaways
- 12:49 Research and Analyze
Tip #1: Have An Engaging Image
My number one tip is create an engaging post.
And you might be wondering, “What does that mean? That’s not really helping me much.”
So when I say create an engaging post, I’m going to first start off with the type of image that you want to post for your Instagram account.
For example, since you are an online store, you would probably have product photos. One thing to remember is that the photos that you would post on your website or on Amazon account may be different from the type of photos that you want to post on Instagram.
Instagram is a social media tool, and people are not there looking for products to buy.
They’re just there to socialize and see what other people are doing.
So, instead of posting the same image that you would post on platforms like Amazon, (the one that has very crisp white background with some shadows), you may want to use your product photo that’s more styled.
It could be flat lays, or it could be someone that’s actually using the product. You want to be creating those engaging image, rather than just a straight product photo.
These could be lifestyle images that either you create or you work with other influencers to create. I have talked about how I have used influencers in the past to create lifestyle images in this post, so make sure you go check it out.
You want to use these lifestyle images and create stories around those lifestyle images to make it engaging for your audience.
And another thing to know is not all lifestyle images are going to perform well. For example, on a quarterly basis, I do photo shoots for my photos, which includes lifestyle shots. What I have noticed is they don’t perform as well as actual people really using the product.
When I collaborate with influencers and get photos from them, those photos perform way better than these styled lifestyle images that I get from my photographers.
You will have to do some experiments to know what photos perform well on your Instagram account.
In my experience, the staged lifestyle images that I have created from photo shoots look really beautiful. They make my product look really nice. But at the same time, what is lacks is, it doesn’t really have stories behind it.
When influencers are creating these images, it has better stories. They have better captions. It has a better lifestyle look, because they’re actually using it in their home. I’ve experienced that those perform way better than these styled lifestyle photos that I get from my photographers.
My last tip about the image is that you don’t always have to post photos of your product on your Instagram account.
Let’s say you are somebody that is selling pet products. You can have a very relevant pet photo or some quote, or some other type of engaging posts on your Instagram account that doesn’t really involve your product. As long as your audience is going to resonate with the photo that you share, you can post those. You will have to ensure that you’re giving proper credit to the person that has originally posted.
I use a mix of these strategies to make sure that I’m experimenting with the type of image, and also posting some images that don’t have necessarily my product in it.
Tip #2: Have An Engaging Caption
My second tip is create an engaging caption.
Ideally, you want to create a story around the image that you post on your Instagram. This could be sharing how you came up with this product idea, how this product is solving certain problems that your audience may be having, or how this influencer or your customer has used it and they have found success. You may also ask questions, and have a call to action at the end of the caption such as, “Hey, share with a friend that would love this product,” or “Which color is your favorite.”
If you’re just sharing an engaging post, where you’re sharing a quote or something funny, or something that your audience may resonate with, you can engage your audience by asking questions such as, “Who else has this experience? Tag a friend who might find this funny.”
You want to create an engaging caption that would actually get your audience to take certain actions, like leaving comments or liking it, or sharing with a friend or share on their stories.
I have done experiments to see whether long or short caption will perform better.
We have seen that when we are sharing long captions, it actually does perform better than the short captions.
If it is something that they’re resonating with, they’re going to take some time to read your caption and also like your posts, which helps you to reach more audience..
Tip #3: Engage With Your Audience
My next tip is, if you want to increase engagement, engage with your audience.
People who actually end up purchasing on your online store will most likely have private accounts on Instagram. They’re the customers of yours that are just following your account, because they like your products, they like what you share on your Instagram.
So what you want to do, in order to engage with your potential audience, because you can’t really engage with those people that have private accounts, is you’re going to go onto an influencer that would have your potential audience.
Find an influencer that you would like to collaborate with that you know that has your potential audience, go to their account, leave comments on their posts and like their photos. In that way, whoever is following that influencer may see my account and then check it out.
Another way you can engage with your audience is by looking up the hashtag that’s very relevant to the product that you’re selling. And you want to engage with some photos that are using the same hashtag.
Tip #4: Post When Your Audience Is Most Active
The next tip is to study when your audience is hanging out, and post your image around the time that your audience is most active. I have seen that there is a difference in engagement rate, when I do post on certain time periods. Go to your analytics, and see what time people are most active on a certain day, and try to post your image at that time.
Tip #5: Use Instagram Stories and Instagram Reels
The next tip that I’m about to share with you is probably one of the most important tools that you need to be utilizing in 2021. Instagram is constantly introducing new features and new algorithm. But right now, I do believe that if you’re utilizing Insta Story and Instagram Reels, you are going to experience more reach and more engagement.
It hasn’t been long that they have introduced the Instagram Reels. When you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed, you can see that they’re prioritizing Instagram Reels over others.
If you’re not utilizing the Instagram Reels or Insta Story yet, you’re really missing out on potential reach to your audience and engagement.
You want to be utilizing these video tools that’s available on Instagram.
Who knows what’s going to change next year? But right now, I do believe that Instagram is putting a lot of emphasis on Instagram Reel, just like TikTok.
Try to Instagram Reels to showcase your product, or talk about the behind the scenes on how you’re fulfilling the product, how you’re creating the product, what kind of problem this product is solving. Or you don’t even have to really talk about your product. You can just talk about a relevant topic that’s very closely related to the product that you’re selling.
Whatever the topic is, as long as it’s relevant to the product that you’re selling and your audience may actually engage with, you can share those types of information on Instagram Reels, Insta Story, to get more engagement and more reach on your Instagram account.
Tip #6: Work With Influencers
The next tip is also really important in growing your Instagram account organically, and get more reach and engagement. It is working with influencers.
And I have already talked extensively about working with influencers in this blog post so do check it out: Influencer Marketing For Ecommerce To Explode Shopify Store Sales
Tip #7: Hold Giveaways
And the next tip is, participate in a giveaway. This is not just any giveaway that you want to participate with, because I know that there’s a lot of giveaways where they say, “Win this iPhone and you can get a lot potential US followers.”
Those are not the type of giveaways that you want to participate in.
The types of giveaways that you want to participate in are the ones that ideally you coordinate and identify three to four other brands that would have similar audience as yours. And you would give away a store credit to your online store. You want people interested in getting a prize of purchasing a product from your store, or other similar stores in your niche, to participate in this giveaway. This way, you’re getting quality leads for your store.
And what is even better is not just getting the followers, but getting them to leave the email address.
Tip #8: Research and Analyze
My very last tip is that you want to study what other accounts are doing in your niche, and you want to experiment different strategies on your account.
You want to see what is working and what is not.
Without you doing this research and analysis part, you are really not going to see what’s resonating with your audience, what’s working for your account.
Every account may be different. Just because something worked for someone , doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be working for your online store.
You have to be constantly experimenting on your account and analyze and ask questions such as, “is it really working for my account? Is it really resonating with my audience?”
It really comes down to this really simple thing: you want to see what your audience wants, and just give them what they want.
On a monthly basis, I sit down and try to examine what has really worked in the past month and what didn’t.
I also study some other accounts and see what success that they’re seeing, and try to experiment on our account. And then the following month, I determine, whether that worked for us or not. Just because it worked on some other account, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s always going to be working for me.
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All right, so I hope that was helpful. Give me a thumbs up if you liked this video and make sure you subscribe to my channel, and I’ll see you guys next week.
If you have any other questions about increasing your engagement on Instagram Business make sure to leave comments below.