“What should I post?”, “How often should I post?”, “What hashtags should I use use?”…

First, though, a quick explanation about Instagram, so you can decide if it’s relevant for your small business marketing strategy.

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social media mobile app that allows you to instantly upload (and edit) photos taking through the app. As a tool, you can use it to take better pictures with your smartphone. As a social network, you can follow other users and share photos.

Basic lingo to know

  • Home
  • Feed
  • Filter
  • Followers
  • Following
  • Frame
  • Gallery
  • Hashtag
  • Instastories
  • Like
  • Post
  • Profile
  • Username

Getting started

  1. Download the app
  2. Choose a username – preferably the same one you used for Twitter and Facebook
  3. Fill your profile and bio, which should include a link to your small business website

Best practices

  1. Write clear, descriptive captions for your photos
  2. Avoid being too promotional/salesy
  3. Make sure all your posts tie in with your brand

Building your community

  1. Follow industry leaders, relevant businesses, suppliers, customers and potential customers
  2. Interact with their posts – that means like their photos and leave comments
  3. Post content relevant to your business and industry – this could be photos of your staff, customers, products, shop

Some cool features to maximise

  1. Instastories are short videos that disappear after 24 hours
  2. Highlights are clips that you group together, and which stay live unless you eventually delete them
  3. Hashtags(#) are keywords that allow users to search for posts on a particular subject (e.g. #property or #surfing)

Struggling with content marketing? Hunter & Scribe specialises in doing content marketing for small businesses. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.