Your business has an Instagram profile and it’s not up to the standard of some of your competitors. You want a kick ass social media profile but don’t have a budget, so how do you do it? There are a bunch of free ways to improve the look and flow of your profile and they’re really easy!
Convert It To A Business Profile
If you haven’t already, you should change your business’ profile into a business profile(as well as your business’ Facebook page). There are benefits and features of a business profile that you don’t normally get. Users would now be able to contact you via your preferences (email, phone call, or give the user the ability to pull up directions to your business). You also get access to Instagram’s analytics which offer some services like the ability to see how many times your profile was visited in a week or the amount of impressions a post got. You also get the ability to promote your posts via ads, which allow you to reach many new users who could become users and also customers!
The Best Camera Is The One On You At All Times
You don’t need to invest in any DSLR or mirrorless camera to produce good content. You’re most likely reading this on a smartphone and I’m willing to bet that smartphone has a camera capable of amazing photos and really detailed videos. If you’re photos don’t look great it’s probably because you’re not taking great photos. You can look up photos taken on smartphones and you’d be shocked to see how amazing they look. These are the same cameras you have access to, others just know how to use them properly. Make goof use of lighting and if you are able to shell it out, spend a few bucks on an app that lets you manually control your camera settings like the Moment app. This way you can manually lock your exposure, ISO, shutter speed, and other variables that can affect your picture or video. 25 minutes of YouTube videos and you will be an amazing mobile photographer and be able to better document your business’ products or services.
Engage With Your Users
If all the engagement you are able to muster up is responding questions and DMs (Direct Messages), then do it. Your engagement can be outbound as well by liking, commenting, and messaging other accounts. But if all you have time for are questions or comments on your content or messages, then that’s better than nothing. Your engagement with users is crucial for your business because there could be questions that are being asked and by ignoring them, you could be losing customers. There’s extreme value in engaging with others.
Learn How To Use Stories
Instagram stories are a great tool because you can pump them out throughout the day and they don’t clog a social feed. People going through the stories portion of Instagram know what they’re getting into. If they scroll upon someone who has 15 stories up, it’s not a surprise and it won’t be a turn off. If you post 15 times in a day, you could really upset some users and cause them to unfollow you. Stories are temporary and are a great way to post day to day activities and content meanwhile leaving actual posts for concrete type content that you don’t mind being out there forever. Get creative with your stories and experiment. You quickly learn they can be fun will improve your overall social skills.
Bonus Tips That Are A Bit More Tedious
Setting Up Story Highlights. These are stories that are permanently on your profile. Some examples include your schedule, some examples of your best work, your place of business, etc…
Come up with a theme for your page. This includes posting images with similar colors or filters. This helps your page flow as a whole.
Engage on other’s profiles and their content. If they have a story you like, let them know via a DM.
These are some small and free tips to help improve your social media skills. Social media isn’t easy, but it’s far from the most difficult thing. Even then, if you’re going to venture down the social media path, do it right. There are a lot of ways to utilize social media to grow your business and clientele, but if it’s best for your business, you should look into an agency to manage all of your social media needs. Brad James Consulting is a full service agency who can help alleviate the burden of working on your social media.