Using Instagram for Social Media Marketing

By Adam  |  4 Jul 2015 16:00:00

When people think of social media marketing, they think of the obvious ones - Facebook and Twitter. Fewer people would think of Instagram as a great marketing tool, but actually it has proved to be very effective for some businesses just as it may do for you. So in this post I'm going to talk about how you can use Instagram as a marketing tool for your eCommerce business.

First of all, to make sure that all of your customers and prospects are able to find your Instagram feed, make sure that you have a clear link to it on the homepage of your website. Make some good use of social media buttons and make sure that if somebody were to just take a glance at the homepage, they'd easily see where to go for your social media. It's important to connect with your customers over social media because then that creates an ongoing connection between you; someone might come to your site once, buy something and forget about it, but with social media they might come to your site, follow you on your social media outlets, buy something, leave and then be constantly reminded of you when they see your social media posts and probably come back at some point down the line.

But what does Instagram have to offer which other social media outlets do not? Well, Instagram is primarily based around the sharing of photographs, so if you've got a product which is especially aesthetically pleasing, it would be a good idea to post lots of photographs of it. People might share photos of your product amongst their own followers and not even realise that they're helping to promote your business. If you're based in a particularly iconic or nice looking location, you could also post photographs of that too (though it would be best to have the product be your main focus).

Instagram is especially useful to people who sell clothes. Some Instagram users have built up a very large following just by posting photographs of themselves and essentially become independent models. If you sell clothes, it would be a good idea to investigate and get in touch with these models; if you were to supply them with some free clothes, which I am sure they would appreciate, then they could take photographs of themselves in those clothes, which would be seen by thousands of their followers. It's a great way to get your product seen, to make some new connections and to gain some new customers!

So, as you can see, to that astute marketer, Instagram appears to be an excellent platform with which to advertise your website! It may not be perfect for every business, but if it suits yours why not sign up now? You can use Instagram for free!