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Promoting Your Shop with Instagram
Instagram is the second largest social media channel you can use to build your brand.
With over 1 billion monthly active users it certainly captures a worldwide audience for your brand.
You can follow our Instagram page by going to Instagram.com/baphomartuk
If you have a personal Instagram page already then you will need to create a new account for your business and go to settings where you can change it to a business account.
The advantage of having a separate account is it keeps your personal life separate from your business and brand. Instagram has a great feature which allows you to switch between the accounts when you wish so you do not need to log in and log out each time.
Instagram is very image and video orientated, using visuals to story tell.
Unlike on Facebook you cannot invite friends to like or follow your new Instagram account.
It is always a good idea to promote or share your Instagram account to your Facebook followers to come over and like you on a different channel.
Instagram does not allow you to directly share links onto its platform in the form of posts.
The only link you will have is on your bio which will allow you to put your Baphomart shop link in.
When posting on Instagram you will be able to post an image and just like on Facebook it is really important to make these stand out.
You want to be story telling on the platform and making it engaging.
You do not want it to be sell, sell, sell.
This just puts people off your brand.
If you’ve added a new piece to your shop then why not post a photo of it and describe what it is made of or show a video of you making it.
It’s always a good idea to do different posts from Facebook on Instagram to keep it fresh for your followers as they will perhaps be following you on both platforms.
Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags on posts. A hashtag is a key word that is written like “#jewellery”.
This means your post is then posted within this hashtag so that anyone looking through that hashtag will find your post.
We recommend using up to the 30 hashtags to make you more discoverable and of course remember to use the hashtag #baphomart.
This will help increase your following and make you more discoverable to potential customers perhaps looking for something specific.
But don’t worry if you cannot think of up to 30 hashtags, it’s a lot to think of but just pick some keywords related to the post.
Just like Facebook, Instagram has stories and these are highly watched by users of Instagram.
All story posts last 24 hours before expiring and vanishing from your story.
Try posting videos engaging with your audience of you talking to them or making products.
You can also go “Live” which allows you to broadcast just like a TV channel directly to your followers.
It also alerts them to when you go live so you have a higher engagement there and then.
Linking Instagram with Facebook
Although Instagram does not allow links on posts it does allow you to link up posts with a Facebook shop.
This usually shows on a post as a shopping bag in the top right.
You’ve probably seen it on Instagram and always wondered how people achieve it.
We are going to take you through how to set this up as it involves Facebook.
Firstly you need to create a Facebook shop:
1. On a computer, select the Shop tab on your Facebook Page. If you do not see this tab, you can change your Page template to the Shopping template.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to add a shop to your Facebook Page. Fill in all the required fields.
3. Select Finish when you’re done.
4. On a computer, click the Shop tab on your page. It’s possible to add products from a phone.
5. Click Add product. You can add products into the collection as well.
6. Add images or videos and a title for your product.
7. Add your checkout link (this is the product link where your product is listed online). 8. Click Save when you’re done.
Secondly you need to turn on Instagram Shopping in the Instagram App:
- Go to your profile and tap the menu.
- Tap settings.
- Tap Business.
- Tap Shopping. Note: the option to tap Shopping is only available to accounts that have been approved for shopping on Instagram.
- Tap Continue
- Select a product catalog to connect to your professional account.
7. Tap done.
Once you have followed these steps you will be able to tag the products you have added to your Facebook shop and this will allow people to follow the link out of Instagram to buy your products from the site you sell on.
Just like with Facebook ensure you are interacting with your audience.
If they comment on a post make sure you respond.
If they tag a friend then thank them for sharing your post with their friend.
It’s little things and tactics like this that make a big difference to your audience and growing your audience on Instagram.
