Connecting With Customers Thru Instagram: A Step-by-Step Guide

You may think of Instagram as a place for posting pretty pictures or following your favorite celebs. Well, think again. The popular app and networking service can be a strong marketing tool, especially if your target audience includes lots of Gen Z and Millennials. It creates a convenient, modern way for clients and customers to contact you, whether it's to ask what time you close or if you have a certain item in stock. It lets you find out what your customers are happy and unhappy about in a forum you have more control over than a ratings and reviews app, where it's harder to be proactive.

Instagram is especially great for brands with a strong visual component: clothes, arts and crafts, food and drink, beauty, health and fitness, animals. Further, since Facebook owns Instagram, you can take advantage of the synergies between these two platforms to get a better return on the time you invest in them. Here's what you need to know to start connecting with your customers through Instagram.

The Power of Instagram

Although it's a decade old (founded in 2010), Instagram is still going strong. EMarketer, an authority on marketing trends and digital consumer behavior, expects usage of the app to grow more than that of Facebook or Snapchat this year, to nearly 30 minutes per day. That's a lot of opportunities for people to see your posts.

Instagram is the world's seventh most-visited website, according to GlobalWebIndex's Coronavirus Multi-Market Study published in April. More than one-third of American adults use it, and about six in 10 Instagram users visit the site daily, according to Pew Research.

Set Up Your Business Account

Maybe you're already familiar with using a personal Instagram account. Instagram's business accounts are a different story. While free, they have tons of extra features, so you should definitely use a business account for your if company, no matter how small it is.

You can always convert your personal account to a business account; if you do, you'll instantly have followers and existing content. Still, it's probably a better option to have a separate business account dedicated solely to your brand. This way, you can keep your personal life separate from your public/professional life and keep all your business-account posts consistent with your company's image.

Even if you're not familiar with using Instagram, getting started with a business account is easy and intuitive.

Establish Your Business Profile

After establishing your new account, fill out your business profile. Your profile displays your company's logo, tells people what your business sells, shows them what industry you're in, and gives them ways to connect with you.

Your bio, which appears at the top of your profile, is limited to 150 characters. Tip: Instead of composing it within the Instagram app, you can format it with line breaks for better readability by composing it in the notes app on your phone, then copying and pasting it into Instagram's bio field.

Use emoji to add personality and share info about your business without using precious characters. Consider including handles for other Instagram profiles related to your business, like those of the farmers who grow your restaurant's produce.

Your profile is the only place to include a clickable link, so choose your link carefully and make sure it takes customers to a page that's optimized for mobile. Most Instagram fans view the network on their phones, because a) the web version has limited functionality and b) they skew younger. The web link can go to your website's home page, to a landing page specific to Instagram users, or to a promotion you're running.

Your bio is also a good place to include a unique, branded hashtag that you want your followers to use when tagging their own posts that relate to your business. If you can't think of a brilliant one right now, that's okay. You can add it later when you run your first user-generated content campaign. For now, just focus on the basics.

Decide How You Want to Be Contacted

In addition to a web link, your profile should include at least one of these: phone number, email address, or physical address. The contact button lets customers email you or call you with just a couple of taps. The message button lets customers message you directly and privately through the app.

Instagram's contact options allow you to quickly respond to customers' questions so you can be sure you're meeting their needs. If lots of people are asking the same questions, you can use Instagram's post, story, or highlight features to answer that question. If you're getting tons of requests for a new offering, you can consider creating it.

Action buttons (Edit Profile/Contact Options/Add an action button) are great for letting clients schedule appointments with you through Acuity, Timely, and many other apps. You can also connect your Instagram profile to your Facebook profile -- which, again, should be your business Facebook profile, not your personal one. Creating a Facebook business profile, if you don't have one already, will allow you to link your Instagram profile to a Facebook shop where you sell your products.

Create Your Content

How advanced are your social media skills? If your answer is "not very," focus on posting photos to get started with your Instagram business account. Each photo should tell customers something about your product or service, your business's values, the people (or animals) behind your business, or anything else about your brand that will foster interest, engagement, and loyalty -- and ultimately drive sales.

Your phone's camera will be fine; technique matters more than equipment. Shoot in natural light whenever possible, and don't shoot between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a sunny day when shadows will be harsh and colors will get washed out. Early morning and late evening light can add a warm glow to your shots. Filters and presets can help you tweak tint, contrast, color, and saturation to give all your shots a brand-consistent look.

How you caption your photos matters, too. They tell your customers something about why you're posting that photo. Is it a picture of your cafe's latest seasonal salad? The paint color you're advising home sellers to choose for their living room? Are you offering a promotion on your product? Consider asking a question that will generate comments, too. If you have the budget, you can pay to promote key posts.

Users also engage with Instagram to stay in touch with friends and family and to be entertained. So think about creating posts that will delight your followers and inspire sharing.

Advance Your Content-Creation Skills

Once you become a more advanced user, you'll want to start using Instagram stories, highlights, highlight buttons, and IGTV (Instagram TV) to communicate with your audience through videos and slideshows and add more to your profile page.

Separate apps, many of which are free or have free and paid versions, can help you improve your Instagram posts beyond what you can do within the app itself. These include Lightroom, TouchRetouch, VSCO, and Snapseed for editing photos; Unfold and Canva for creating stories; Planoly and Hootsuite for scheduling and managing content; Boomerang and Hyperlapse for special effects; and Layout, Adobe Spark, and Over for creating layouts and adding text.

Time Your Posts

Instagram business accounts come with free analytics to help you see when your followers are on the app. Posting at these times will help you get more views. Posting regularly is an important part of creating engagement, too.

Post too often and people will mute or unfollow you. Post infrequently or when your followers are offline and you'll never be top of mind. If you have trouble posting regularly and during peak viewing hours, use an app that lets you schedule posts. Try posting three times a week to start.

The Bottom Line

You can do a lot of things on Instagram that you may already be doing on Facebook. But you'll expand your reach, and because you can cross-post and sell on both platforms at the same time, you'll potentially increase your customer engagement and sales without much extra effort.

There's also much more to learn about Instagram -- how to respond to comments, decide who to follow, monitor posts you're tagged in, deal with trolls and spammers, optimize hashtags, create a content calendar, and even hire someone to manage your social media.

But getting started by creating a business account, completing your profile, and posting regular photos with quality captions will establish a presence you need now that you can always build on later.