Understanding Instagram for business

Social media is a great way to engage with your audience and boost brand awareness, and Instagram is no different.

Instagram has now given brands a better way to show off their content and understand their audience better with their new business tools.

What are Instagram business tools?

The new business tools enable businesses to monitor their posts and advertising on Instagram by providing you with useful data. It can tell you the best time of day for you to post and how your audience is responding to your content.

Instagram provides users with real-time data in three main areas:

1. Account Insights

Account Insights show you how many times your post is seen, how many people see your post and how much engagement your post has had (e.g. likes and comments). With this information you will be able to see how well your posts do and what your audience wants to see from you.

2. Ad Insights

This is exactly the same as the above but for paid campaigns.

3. Ad Staging

This allows you to create, preview and schedule your posts.

What’s the difference between a Business profile and a normal one?

The two profiles will look almost identical apart from a business profile that will include a “contact” button next to the “follow” button. The contact button gives you a few unique call-to-actions including visit website, get directions or email.

The second difference is that a business profile will include a category in the bio section. This will allow you to list the type of business you are.

Creating an ad campaign

It’s very easy. All you have to do is choose a photo that you’ve already posted, add a button and select the audience.

The button options include call-to-actions like “Learn More”. The audience can either be your own customised target audience or you can use the suggestions from Instagram. Once created, you just have to choose when the ad will run.

Will this boost brand awareness?

Instagram has stated that there are over 200,000 active advertisers on their platform and 50% of Instagram users follow a business.

Just like any social network, signing up to one won’t guarantee you success but if you pay attention to what your audience wants and post high quality content frequently then you are likely to boost your brand awareness significantly.