Instagram Tips and Tricks For Your Business
Adding a link to your bio
Your Instagram bio is essential as it provides the most important info for your business. In this space you can give your full business name, location, opening hours (if applicable), address and a link to your website.
Most businesses now have an online presence, whether they are e-commerce websites or not. Therefore adding a link to your website on your social media pages will assist your followers to make the next step and buy online or view more information about your product or service. You can even update the link so that it takes your followers to different web pages each time depending on what you post.
How to add a link in your bio:
It’s really easy!
- Once logged in, go to your Instagram profile page by clicking on your logo or profile image located in the toolbar in the bottom right corner on mobile or in the top right if you’re on a computer.
- Next, click “Edit Profile” which features under your bio if you are on mobile or next to your username if you are on a computer. By clicking this button, you can edit anything that features in your bio, not just the website link.
- Now to add the link! Copy the website url and paste it in the empty field next to “Website.” Note; you don’t have to add a link to your website, you can add any link to any website!
Sizes for vertical, square and horizontal images
With the new sizing options on Instagram, figuring out the right size for your content can be tricky. When it comes to posting your pictures to instagram there are three different options: square, portrait and landscape. Square photos are usually the easiest photos to get right on the first try because of the auto cropping feature on Instagram. iOS also features a square photo tool directly in the iOS camera. High quality images and a picture no larger than 1080px by 1080px and no smaller than 320px by 320px is the best way to easily upload your gorgeous photos to Instagram without having to crop your photo.
When to post
Instagram has a feature that allows you to see what day and what time during that day your followers are most active and likely to engage with your posts. If you go to the Audience section of Instagram’s Insights and click on “learn more,” you’ll see a full page of information about your followers including their gender, age, and top locations, below this you’ll see a visual graph showing the days and times that your Instagram followers are most active, this will give you an insight on when the best time to post on your account is if you’re looking to get a good amount of interaction.
Engaging captions
Engaging captions are an important part of your posts on Instagram. Firstly, using the same ton and writing captions that are relevant to the post or resonate with your audience are key to good engagement. Asking a question to promote engagement is often a good tool to use as it can encourage more than just a ‘like’ from your followers. No matter how hard you try, sometimes you’re stumped for a good caption on your post, so when all else fails just use a quote from google!
Instagram story tips
Instagram stories appear in a bar at the top of your followers feed. When posting to your story there are a few ways to make sure it does well.
- Adding Hashtags or Locations: when posting a story adding hashtags and locations are a way for new followers to be able to find your story on their discovery page under the hashtag or from the location used on your story.
- Adding Polls: A feature of instagram stories is that you are able to add a poll sticker, this is an interactive feature that lets you ask a question and see results from your followers. The poll choices are customisable and allow for further engagement from your views which could be a useful tool for someone running a business from Instagram to see what their customers want.
- Story Highlights: When you post a story on your instagram account it will expire in 24 hours, story highlights are a way of making sure that even when your stories have expired your followers can still see them. You can add story highlights to your instagram profile just below your bio with different highlight covers and names to easily organise your stories into categories.
- Stickers, Gifs and More!: Adding stickers and GIFs (moving stickers) are a fun way to spice up your instagram story to really engage the viewer. Nobody wants to look at a plain boring image with no colour or interesting features. You can add drawings, stickers, text, and GIFs all of which are super customisable to your liking to suit an aesthetic or image.
Hashtags
Hashtags on Instagram are a critical part to getting found by users and building your following. You can add up to 30 hashtags on one single instagram post or in one comment under your post. Posting 30 hashtags below your photo can look and feel a bit spammy to the viewers of your photo or video, instead putting them in the comments hides them from viewers, but still allows for the hashtags to do their job of boosting your engagement.