How to start a business on Instagram from scratch: 31 tips for beginners

On average, a user visits the social network 16 times a day. Over 60% percent of instagrammers check for updates daily. The application on mobile devices allows you to be within walking distance from your account. The level of banner blindness is less than in other networks. Ideal conditions for promotion, if you stay informed on how to open a business on Instagram. Do you know about the features of the social network? Where to start the business, how soon the budget will pay off and what to expect in the future. We offer to understand our article.

Instagram Business Opportunities

Knowing about the capabilities of Instagram will help you achieve your goals. What tasks can be solved:

increase in conversion;
brand awareness;
maintaining reputation and promoting the atmosphere of the company;
Warming up interest in offers;
increased engagement: likes, reposts, comments.
a story about the product and its benefits;
informing about company news and much more.

Instagram clearly separates personal accounts and profiles for business. In the latter version, you can see free statistics and run ads using the Facebook account for flexible settings. For beginners, simple promotion of posts will do for the first time. Of the minuses: few goals and functions for selecting audiences.

Instagram for business: where to start

Here are the recommendations, having studied which, you will know how to conduct and promote a business on Instagram yourself.

Choose a niche based on your interests. Analyze what you understand perfectly and can talk about it. Do not rely on other people’s preferences – in most cases you will abandon the business you have begun.
As soon as the list of interests lies before our eyes, it’s time to check how successful competitors are doing in these areas. What do they do to attract an audience? What business strategies do they use? Choose the most realistic way for yourself and start planning.
The business should not only be loved, but also bring money. How to understand that the chosen niche will not just steal the invested budget? Type its name in the search bar and see how much advertising you get in return. If there are many, goods and services are in demand.
Analyze who you are going to sell: gender, age, interests. The right choice of target audience will save the budget and increase the chances of a successful business promotion.
Concentrate on the direction. Choose not too wide, otherwise there will be problems with attracting advertisers. It’s not too narrow either – there may not be enough ideas for permanent content. In the future, you can expand and add new product lines, but it is better to start with just one thing.
Make a schedule according to which you will continuously upload content. Remember that the post has a lifespan of 4 hours and it makes no sense to make more than one record for this period.

With experience, skills are fixed and errors that occur at first, will not be an obstacle.

We recommend reading it: Business of the future. Top Business Ideas for 2020

About the target audience and where to look for it

Determine who your customers are: how old they are, what income they have, what they are interested in. In the future, you will invest in targeted advertising to attract customers.

Find out what people consider good goods and who is credible in your area. What do subscribers dislike, what are they avoiding, or who is they making fun of? A preliminary analysis will be needed to place promotional posts with bloggers or in cool communities. Pleasure is quite expensive, but brings maximum effect: the advertisement looks like native and enjoys high audience trust.

Types of business promoted on Instagram

Instagram is based on the perception of visual content, on the feelings of people. Therefore, sales with pre-long preparation are poorly promoted.

What topics are popular:

clothes;
food;
gadgets
accessories for women;
sport;
travels.

The average amount of goods in a check is 5,000 rubles. The best product to implement is visually catchy, vibrant and beautiful.

How does Instagram for business work?

Sales begin after about three months of active profile management: daily posts, contests, communication with subscribers, advertising.

If your product is original and unique, and the blogger managed to convey to the audience the benefits of the product, then success is guaranteed. Instagram will work like a word of mouth – one shared a photo, the other wanted it too.

In other cases, when the product does not have originality, there are two ways: abandon Instagram and concentrate on regular advertising or tell your subscribers a personal story. Why so? The social network is built on visual content. To convey emotions and feelings with the image is the main task, and the text complements, narrating and explaining. Subscribers are interested in how you live, goals, dreams – everything that you discover in your story. Relive the product, invent stories, participate in them and share with the world, and it will reach you.

Ask readers what story they have on the topic. With comments, the post has more audience reach. The feed is not based on chronological order, but on the level of involvement of other users. Instagram algorithms select the most interesting posts for the user and show them first.

Use comments not only to increase engagement, but also for communication. People understand that you are just a touch away, be sure to answer, even if the remark or emoji does not imply feedback. Followers begin to trust, which is important in business development. It’s not enough to wind up subscribers who will be silent. An integrated approach is needed to interact with the audience and content.

We recommend reading it: What are vending and vending machines? How to make money on them?

How much to invest

Business development on Instagram involves the presence of advertising. Moreover, not only will you earn on it by providing a rental to another ad. At first, you will have to look for sites to promote your posts.

Buying ads is best from pages with thousands of followers. This means that you must also have several thousand live followers. There are special tools for detecting and screening bots. To collect 10,000 subscribers on average will cost 500-800 dollars. However, the numbers are average, because various factors are taken into account: the quality of the sites on which you leave the publication and the content of the post itself.

31 Instagram business ideas

Starting a business through Instagram will help ideas. You can take them from the head, from successful blogs, from everything that surrounds and inspires. Here are some ideas that showed the results.

Set the frequency and publish posts with questions to subscribers. Be interested in their opinions, respond in the comments, in Direct. So you not only increase brand awareness and reputation, but also inspired by activity. And some of the followers can throw an idea for a new post.
Find on the Internet what questions people in your area most often ask. This will be a guideline, what kind of content plan to write, what to educate people about and how to get to the point.
Take a picture of the product in the hands of a celebrity. Inspiration and respect of subscribers is ensured: the star will not advise bad.
Talk about the team and outstanding employees. Small stories raise the mood and motivation of colleagues, and followers see the company’s activity. Shed light on how these or those colleagues came to you, what they have achieved in life and what they are striving for.
Create a storefront from your account. Photos are a quick way to find out the product and price. And the text will help to fill in the remaining information on delivery, terms, etc.
Hold a master class. Subscribers like to learn something new, and when they propose to do it with their own hands – even better. Let it be a useful life hack or a decorative thing. The main thing is on the subject of the brand.
Post relevant content. Follow the news in the world, research in your field. Be sure to choose interesting for you, this may become a new topic for discussion.
Check competitors in your area. What topics do they write about? Tell about the same, but in more detail, so that the reader receives the maximum information. In no case do not copy their material. Be unique.
Do not know where to find competitors and partners for cooperation? Take advantage of the trick: ask your subscribers what they read. Do not want to take risks – keep track of hashtags and reviews.
Make content diverse. For example, on weekends, use funny pictures for fun, and on Tuesday-Wednesday talk about serious numbers. Periodically post posts with quotes from famous people.
Keep track of what subscribers are saying under the post. Look for interesting comments, mark them. Find the best one, put his topic in a separate post, whether it is a serious expert opinion or entertaining material. You will encourage attentive readers and develop a new thread for discussion.
What causes people wonder and desire to pick up faster? Free product / service. You can set certain hours or days when subscribers will be entitled or for some condition: the first five, the author of the best comment, or in a random way.
Tell us about brand activities. What are you doing behind the closed doors of the office? What meetings, conferences do you attend? What cool people do you meet? Or maybe you have changes in the manufacturing process? Share with readers, they will support.
Learn your analytics. Share the ups and downs.
Spend the game. Not necessarily for prizes, you can offer to write an opinion on the quote or continue the unfinished proposal. Fantasy is in your hands. Small distractions are useful in the evenings or on weekends when everyone is at work and ready to play or joke.
Communication takes place in Direct. With the permission of the interlocutor, take a screenshot of the dialogue and comment on it in a separate post. Perhaps this is frequently asked questions, a wish for the future, a review of the work done, or just a phrase that reflects the style of the company.
Sell not just with text, but with verses or even hoku. Mark all the characteristics and indicate the prices in an unusual format. Use various literary devices: comparisons, exaggerations. Give a product or service a creative description: readers remember vivid images.
Get a rubric of the best or most popular publications of the week. You give your posts a second life, and your readers get acquainted with the material that they may have missed.
Post positive photos that make readers feel good. You can step back from the topic, but it’s important to keep the style so that the page is designed in the same style.
Come up with a proprietary hashtag. Check that it is light and beautiful by ear and letter. Correct typos or errors and post it under each post. Soon you will be able to track people’s reviews not only by comments, but also by their records with the content of your hashtag.
Thank the audience. Find a reason: for support, for increased activity, for growth, for inspiration. The main thing is sincerely.
Share links to resources on your subject: articles, audio and video. Users love any additions to the text. Help them find useful sources, and they will remember you.
Use live broadcasts to meet with experts. Ask for their opinions and answer questions from the audience.
Show not only the process of how you are creating the product, but also the stages of manufacturing or conducting the service. Photos can be merged into one post carousel or publish multiple entries.
Do not forget about Storeys: in addition to advertising, they can talk about discounts, new arrivals, contests and announcements of the next posts.
Create a flash mob for subscribers and a separate tag for it. Do not forget to participate by showing great photos.
What are the tops of your brand? Set a goal and talk about your successes or failures towards it.
Create categories where subscribers can post reviews. Encourage them and publish the best. From the negative, find the qualities that you need to work on, from the positive – strategies for successfully moving forward.
Add follower photos with your product. You can find them by hashtags or arrange a contest. Ask permission first.
Share how your company relaxes: in addition to possible meetings and conferences, discard photos from a corporate party or a joint trip.
Another way to start a discussion is to post a photo and ask them to come up with a name for it.

Stay tuned for comments and encourage audience engagement: she can tell a lot about you and give new ideas.
Be sure to have a notebook and write down your business ideas, later you will not forget and implement them on Instagram.

We recommend reading it: Business idea – luminous flowers

Instagram Tools for Business

Doing business on Instagram means having tools that facilitate processes and improve the quality of content. We have selected the main programs and services that help to attract customers and earn their trust.
Tools you already have:

Let’s start with the free built-in service familiar to every instagrammer – Instagram Direct. Why is it important? This is an analogue of private messages on any other social network. People communicate with companies in one touch. In addition to working with comments, it is important to respond to messages in Direct: perhaps you are one step away from getting a new regular customer. Sharing information increases conversions and trust. Encourage your audience to communicate. Interested in offers. Business profiles have a convenient feature: you can mark messages as important and customize answers to frequently asked questions. Save time, money and attract buyers.
Use free statistics for business profiles. It is useful when you want to know which posts are most attractive to your audience: where are the most likes and comments. Based on the information received, you will recognize successful criteria for publications and adjust the content plan. Get to know your target audience through statistics and formulate precise targeting settings.
The feed is another tool to attract the attention of subscribers. Moreover, we can talk about both targeted advertising, which is shown to potential customers, and there about the posts created by the company. In any of these cases, focus on creativity and customer interests. Find the “pain” – what interests people – and give a solution in the form of your product.
Instagram Stories are popular among users: more than 300 million use them daily. They will be useful for informing about discounts, promotions, contests and just company news. Stories are stored only 24 hours and then deleted. A good way to talk about limited offers.

How to grow your business on Instagram through other tools:

Aviary At the initial stage, you can not do without a photo editor. Learn to create high-quality photos, follow the trends in processing. Aviary has numerous stickers and stickers. It is available on Windows, iOS, Android.
PicFlow is an application for easily creating slideshows. In Instagram, in addition to static photographs, videos relevant to the images after a certain time interval are relevant. All you need to do in the program: select pictures, their duration and audio file: music or voiced text. The paid version provides access to transitions between images and can remove watermarks.
Crowdfire. The tool will show all analytics by subscribers: who unsubscribed, subscribed. You can create black and white lists, analyze followers according to the interests of the company and find potential customers. Has 1 free rate and 4 starting at $ 10.
Adobe Spark A powerful tool that supports various templates for filling Instagram content. He adds brand attributes, creating personality in every design. Available in mobile and web versions. Ready records are added to the social network and, if necessary, downloaded to a computer.
Hootsuite. It works with several social networks and is able to publish posts simultaneously in different ones. Harvest publications in advance, analyze audience engagement and follow brand mentions. The first 30 days, a demo is available, and then the tariffs to choose from.
Canva. The developers took care of creating templates for Instagram Stories. Design, customize, and don’t be afraid to go beyond the limits. The designer works with fonts, graphics, photos, combining them into one masterpiece. Able to align images, crop, adjust text. Work with transparency, brightness, saturation and contrast of images.
Storiesads. By name, you can guess that the service is intended for Stories. A video editor with built-in templates creates individual videos, depending on the task. There is a free trial period.

This is not the whole list. In the first stages, take care of the quality of the content to form the style and schedule of publications. Pick up relevant hashtags, periodically change them and monitor the effectiveness of posts on analytics systems.

We recommend reading it: 25 Business Ideas for Animal Lovers

To summarize

We covered several points on how to use Instagram for business. The social network helped many companies to talk about themselves, so do you. Decide which business you want and can promote. Consider delivering your audience’s content and targeting targeted ads. Calculate your strength and budget. The first time will be difficult and almost no one will know about you, and only after a few months the first customers will go. The main thing is to keep going forward.