You've probably seen Instagram's power. Instagram offers many features that can help small businesses compete digitally, from customer complaints to viral products. Because it has been around for quite some time, you will find plenty of information on how brands can make use of it. This guide will help you use Instagram to grow your business, from how to take advantage of its features to how to make your brand more visible online.

Why use Instagram to promote your small business?


1. Basics: Create your profile

After you have set up your business account, take some time to look through your Instagram profile. You can change settings and features all the time. You should also update your business hours, locations, contact methods, and link any product or service catalogs. These are all essential items for business profiles. Check out your profile elements (such as your bio, profile picture, and contact method) to ensure they are consistent with your overall social media branding.

2. Optimize your bio link

It is common to refer to your link in bio in posts. This link can be used to create a landing page that contains both recent content and links to the most important pages of your product or service pages. Sprout Social's link-in-bio feature, Sprout link, is ideal for businesses that share links, have multiple links they want to offer customers, or have multiple offerings.

You can create a link-in-bio landing page using a variety of tools. Sprout Social's Sprout Link makes it easy to create one. It replicates your grid and gives you clickable links to each post. This allows you to highlight your most important content and drive traffic to it. You can also stay within Sprout's Instagram publishing workflow for scheduling and optimizing the rest of your content.




3. Geotag your posts

Add the name of the small business to your post when you are posting from that location. Instagram compiles all posts that were tagged at the location and sorts them into top or recent. Your brand photos are displayed alongside customer photos. The link to the tag business is located at the top of the page. This increases brand awareness and allows customers to research your business.

4. Use the Save Post feature

Although this strategy isn't public, it could be useful in boosting your small-business's Instagram content strategy. Instagram allows you to save a post to be saved and sorted into a collection that can be viewed later. Although it is not required to create collections it is a good idea. This feature can be used for inspiration and research in many different ways. 

5. Highlights can be used to show what your business stands for

Instagram's Stories Highlights feature allows you to share more information about your company. Highlights can prolong the life of Stories by featuring them on Instagram's profile, after which they would normally disappear. They also allow you to collect Stories and make it easy to find evergreen content.

6. Make guides

Guides is similar to Instagram Highlights. It allows you to combine your favourite posts into one piece. There are some key differences. The format is more editorial, almost like reading an article. Photos and posts can be added from both your own feed or from other feeds you have saved. ig guides




Each embed can be given a caption that allows you to write more about the product or place you are featuring. Guides, in addition to the suggestions already made in the Highlights section of the site, are great for creating a list with recommendations. You might be hesitant to use this feature. No worries. You can save drafts of guides until you are ready to publish them.

7. Pay close attention to captions

The caption's first line is what grabs people's attention. It decides whether they continue reading. You should also pay attention to the rest of the caption. Instagram has recently added keyword search to its platform. This means that your captions are more important than ever. This could be similar to basic keyword research. It could also include your brand, product names, and general terms that are related to your business niche.

8. You can use Instagram Live continuously

Instagram Live has many benefits. One of the greatest benefits is that Instagram Live users receive notifications when accounts they follow go live. This is crucial, especially if you want to be unique on the network. Here are some ideas to get you started on Live.

Take a look behind the scenes. Give a tour of your space, or show off your creative process. You should not give the customer access to anything that isn't public.

Ask a question: Instagram offers a Q&A feature that allows you to ask questions. If you use the sticker, your story post will change accordingly.

Interview: You can share the live stream with another account. You can interview a guest on Live. This gives you the opportunity to ask them questions or allows them to share their passions.

Demonstrate a product/service: It's easier to show than to tell about your product/service. You can use Live to show this. Your viewers can also leave comments to give you suggestions on what they would like to see.

9. Followers-only promotions

Everybody loves a good deal. An exclusive sale? This is marketing using FOMO and urgency. You can run a followers-only promotion that lasts for a short time to give your followers an additional reason to engage and stay for the next one. If you are looking to create hype or run a flash sale, countdown Stories stickers can be used.

10. Keep track of your analytics

This advice is repeated in other guides. Keep track of your Instagram analytics. Your strategies won't work if you don't have data backing up your intuition of success. It is important to understand the differences in impressions, reach, and other network-specific metrics. ig profile Sprout’s Instagram Business Profiles Report tracks engagement and hashtag performance, as well as top post performance. Sprout's Profile Performance Report allows you to compare your Instagram performance with other networks.

Take your Instagram strategy for small businesses further

This is a great place for small businesses to get started with Instagram marketing strategies that they can use to increase their presence on the platform. You can improve your Instagram strategy by using Stories Highlights and Instagram Live frequently to build a relationship with your customers.