The Best Instagram Marketing Practices for Local Businesses

It is known that Instagram is the Social Media of choice for the Millennial generation. Those who grew up using the internet and handling a cell phone made it the third most popular Social Media right after almighty Facebook and Youtube. As a local business, you can capitalize such huge potential by acing some of the best Instagram Marketing Practices available today.

Small, local business are the great winners on Instagram. It’s 800 million users login every day to do basically two things: share photos and follow other accounts sharing photos. The key to succeed on this platform is to stand by being an active part of such massive community. The more you get involved, the more the community will interact with your brand. The more engagement, the more conversions and sales for your business.

Be part of Instagram

Instagram is probably the Social Media that has a community sense the most. It’s not that prone to conflict as Facebook or Twitter as it’s more about image than text. However, sharing photos or videos is not enough. A successful social media marketing strategy on this platform requires that you genuinely participate on it.

How can you do that? Follow other brands and influencers and interact with their content. This is also a great opportunity to show your expertise and solidify your reputation. Interact with your competitor’s clients; answer their questions, be aware of their praise and wishes. It will be a matter of time until they start visiting your account and interact directly with your brand.

Stay proud; stay local!

As much as you need to be part of Instagram, you also need to be part of your community. As a local business, it is a good advice to repost content by local followers, other businesses in your area or local characters and celebrities. This way, followers will not only get the joy of seeing their post on your account but also know that you are local for real. You also get a bonus benefit: you save valuable time that you can invest in future posts with original, fresh content on your own.

Being such a visual platform, Instagram allows you to show your local lifestyle. Clients can notice that you are into that lifestyle, creating a unique identification and following. And even if they are not locals, users can tell that yours is a brand with an active role in its community. You can easily create content that links to local activities, events and community-specific holidays. By staying tune with your community, you can capitalize trending topics and lead those followers to your brand.

Optimize your Instagram Account and Profile

Hashtags on Social Media play a role similar to keywords on Search Engine Optimization. In order to boost your local reach, you should focus on localized hashtags. That way, people in your area can find posts from your business through area-specific hashtags. If you are promoting a hair salon, don’t use a generic #stylist; instead, use #LosAngelesStylist to reach those looking for a stylist in Los Angeles.

Instagram doesn’t allow you to share any link except for one place: your business page biography. You need to capitalize this as much as you can by adding your website’s URL. It might sound obvious but it’s the most direct way for Instagram users that reach your page to interact with your site and generate conversions. You should also include information of other social media platforms you use and your address and/or phone number for them to contact and visit you.

If you need assistance to manage your Social Media for your company, call Website Depot at (888) 477-9540 to make a consultation with our experts.