How To Promote Your Business on Instagram

Instagram is the internet's home for pictures and videos, snapshots of people's daily lives with branded content sprinkled in. It's a place we go to escape, scrolling through entertaining content and even shopping. What started as an app for posting your best selfies and enviable lifestyle pictures quickly became monetizable for businesses and even people (coined influencers) with enough followers.

Once the platform emerged as a tool for businesses, new features like Instagram Shopping and boosted posts made it a must-have for any brand. In 2021, worldwide, the average user spent 11.2 hours each month on Instagram, which is a 10 percent increase from the year before. If you're looking to promote a business on Instagram, we’ve got you covered.

Table of contents

• Optimize your Instagram profile for your business
• Create a consistent brand image
• Set clear, achievable objectives
• Develop a content strategy
• Interact with your followers
• Cross promote
• Use trending hashtags
• Track your progress

Optimize your Instagram profile as a business

Instagram has three different types of accounts: personal, creator, and business. If your company sells products or services, you’ll want a Business Account to get access to enhanced reporting, ads, and other business features. An optimized profile is the first step in promoting your business on Instagram.

Facebook (now Meta) owns Instagram, so now you can monitor the analytics of both social media platforms in the Meta Business Manager. You will also need to use the Meta Business Manager to run Instagram ads. Over 90 percent of people on Instagram follow a business, making it a great tool for reaching your target audience.

Instagram profile basics

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Profile picture

Most businesses choose their logo as their profile picture to help with brand recognition. You could also use a picture of your most popular product or a headshot for creators. You may have to edit your image to make sure it looks good when cropped down on your profile. Since the profile images are circular, pictures with a 1:1 ratio tend to crop best.

Name

This should be the name of your business, but some companies also choose to add emojis that represent who they are. You could help increase searchability by adding your main keyword after your name or username ex. restaurant, salon, or clothing.

Username

Usernames should be either your business name or a shorter variation that's easy to remember and tag.

Pronouns

Choose pronouns if it applies to you or your business.

Website

You can put a single link or use a tool like Tap.bio or Linktree that turns your bio link into a landing page with clickable links. When someone clicks on your link, it takes them to a page in-app where they can click the link added to any posts, which is super helpful for shopping or promoting a blog.

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Bio

Instagram gives businesses 150 characters in their bio to describe who they are and what they do. It should contain your main keyword or keywords (for searchability) and give your target audience a clear idea of what your business is. The bio is the first opportunity to show a bit of personality, whether making a joke, using emojis, or setting a more serious tone. You can include a few hashtags for your most searchable keywords. A business bio could also have a call to action (CTA), whether it's to shop products or promote customer content with a branded hashtag.

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At Upwork, we keep it short and sweet. Our bio includes our industry category: The World's Work Marketplace.

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Loom does a great job of telling its followers precisely what the software is used for. It also addresses the main reason they would want to use it and adds an emoji for a bit of fun.

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Zoom tells a story, showing the bigger picture of what the software does, and then lists some other functionalities underneath.

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Kristen Kish, a celebrity chef and our latest CoLab partner, uses her profile to promote her restaurant along with the shows she's currently featured on. She uses the show's hashtag and then also mentions the streaming platform.

Public business information

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Page

Connect your business's Facebook page to your Instagram page to make monitoring analytics and posting to both platforms easier.

Category

Choose the category that best describes your business. The correct category helps the algorithm know who to show your page to based on other accounts like yours that they follow, as well as their interests.

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Contact options

In addition to commenting and sending direct messages to reach your business, you can add your business's email, phone number, and address.

Business diversity information

Black-owned shops can get additional promotion and protection with this tool.

Action buttons

Followers can order food, make reservations, book services, and fill out lead forms with predetermined action buttons (these may not apply to your business).

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Profile display

Businesses have the option to choose if their category label or contact information is visible on their profile.

Create avatar

As a fun extra, you can create an avatar for your business.

Story highlights

While posts, videos, and reels live on your profile page, stories disappear after 24 hours. If you created a great story and want to keep it, you can create story highlights. Each highlight holds up to 100 stories, and the highlight can have a name and a cover image. People visiting your profile can tap on the highlights and see older stories that you saved.

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Pin to top

One of Instagram's more recent updates gives users the option to pin up to three of their favorite posts or reels to the top of their profile. The pinning isn't permanent; you can unpin and pin other posts later. These posts can be your highest engaging, most relevant content, or just the posts that you think represent your business best. Pinned posts typically will have a higher engagement rate and more visibility as they're the first pins someone will see when looking at your profile.

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Instagram Shopping

Product-driven companies looking to promote their small business can use Instagram Shopping to sell to consumers directly through the platform. Instagram Shopping lets businesses create a shop with full product-detail pages and even curate product collections. Once you connect Instagram Shopping, you can tag your products in Instagram ads, posts, reels, and stories.

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Create a consistent brand image

Part of promoting a small business on Instagram is creating content that is consistent with the brand's image. Between the website, storefront, and every social media platform, you should have the same general theme for your internet marketing strategy. Your brand includes the words you use to develop the tone and voice, along with the fonts, graphics, and types of images used.

When someone scrolls through your business's Instagram page, it should be a cohesive experience, from the colors used in your posts to the language used in the captions. Decide whether your posts will all be in the same color scheme, feature people or products, and what type of content you will post on your stories and reels. Everything you post on Instagram builds your brand and is part of your customer experience.

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A great example of this social media marketing consistency is Headspace. Headspace uses bright colors and inspiring quotes for its Instagram posts. You don't need to feel limited by your website or existing content, but the general messaging shouldn't stray too far. Headspace's homepage, for example, is more sparing with the bright colors but keeps the overall light feel with animated characters.

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Set clear, achievable objectives

As you create your Instagram marketing strategy, set clear, achievable, measurable goals. This will help you figure out what type of content you want to post and how to measure its success. Social media KPI's might include increasing brand awareness, driving traffic, or improving the user experience.

Build brand awareness

If your goal is to build brand awareness, then you want your content to reach as many people as possible. Brand awareness is how familiar people are with your business and products or services. You want people to be able to tell you apart from your competition and know what makes your brand better.

Target metrics for brand recognition include:

• Impressions per post. Facebook measures impressions by how many times people see an ad.
• Accounts reached. Facebook measures reach by how many people see your campaign at least once. Unlike impressions, reach only counts the same person once.
• Followers. Facebook measures how many followers you gained from running an ad. If they clicked your ad, then followed your page, they appear as a new follower.

Once you've created great content, make sure it has the best chance of being seen by posting at the right time and using hashtags. Finding the time to create compelling content from scratch and then optimizing it for reach can be a struggle, especially if social media isn't your specialty. You can find Instagram marketers on Upwork that eat, sleep, and breathe social media and know how to create great content for your business. Keep doing what you do best and let someone else do what they do best.

Boost website traffic

Another reason to promote your business on Instagram is to drive website traffic. The goal of your website traffic may be to gain leads to drive sales. If you want more leads, you can use a landing page in your bio link and capture customer data. When driving sales, you can tag specific products and send customers directly to the checkout page. Instagram's analytics show the number of website clicks from your stories, ads, and posts (if your shop is connected).

You can drive website traffic in a few different ways:

• Add “link in bio” to your captions and send your audience to your bio link
• Use the link sticker when posting a story
• Include a clickable link to your sponsored ads
• Tag your shop and products in posts, videos, and stories

Pro Tip: If you want deeper analytics, you can install Meta Pixel onto your website or Google Analytics. This lets you see if your website clicks convert to sales or leads, and allows you to track how long users are spending on the website.

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Increase business sales

If your goal is to increase your small business sales on Instagram, you can set up your Instagram Shop and tag products in your posts, reels, and stories. Customers will be directed back to your website if you don’t have in-app checkout available. You can track your sales through the Instagram app if you do have in-app shopping.

Pro Tip: The most accurate way to track conversions (actual sales) through links or product tags on Instagram is to use UTM tags.

Add a customer service outlet

Once you have Meta Business Manager connected, responding to customers on both Facebook and Instagram is easy. Instagram can be a customer service platform to answer questions. Instead of putting your email or phone number on your website, you direct customers to your Instagram page.

In Meta Business Manager, you can set up automated replies when customers reach out on messenger, or you can set an away message during non-working hours. The Messenger API for Instagram lets you create automated DMs to help steer the conversation with customers from the very beginning with an approved chat service. You can measure your customer service success by seeing how many people send direct messages and your average response time.

Pro Tip: Add a FAQ section to your Highlights. Create and save stories with popular customer questions and your answers for quick help.

Develop a content strategy

Once you've optimized your profile and set the objectives, it's time for the fun part: developing a content strategy. The content strategy is when you figure out what you're going to post and how. Your Instagram content marketing strategy will partially be determined by what images and videos you already have available. Instagram was built for visual content, and while captions are important, the pictures and videos are the star of the show and what draws people in.

Pro Tip: You can reuse images and make them engaging by adding stickers, text, and other elements with user-friendly graphic design tools like Canva.

Content mapping

Social media management platforms like Loomly, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social make it easy to collaborate with your team and map out your content. You can fill out your social media calendars month by month, assigning tasks to different individuals and requiring a final sign-off before scheduling. Many of these platforms will post scheduled content for you, so you don't have to open Instagram every day at a specific time to post. View your content as a calendar and visualize the content experience to see if you have a good balance of stories, reels, and posts.

Pro Tip: If you add your other social media platforms to these tools, you can use the same graphic and quickly tailor each platform's captions.

Content themes

Your Instagram marketing strategy should include a variety of different content themes. While you may initially want to focus on talking about your business and products or services in your posts, you’ll want a good mix of entertaining and inspiring content sprinkled in with more traditional marketing posts to keep your followers engaged.

Pro Tip: Once you've decided what type of content you need, you can browse Project Catalog™ and search social media to get the help you need. With transparent, upfront costs, there are projects for captions, custom graphics, and video editing, and you get to choose how involved you want to be. If you want an entire month of social media management, there is independent talent that can't wait to jump in and start making engaging content for your business.

Content Theme Ideas

• Customer testimonials. Tell the stories of happy customers and encourage your followers to share their positive experiences with your business.
• Discounts or sales. Reward your followers for their continued support by posting discounts or sales on Instagram first.
• Product or service posts. Promote your products and services with beautiful imagery.
• Thought leadership. Include sharable statistics or facts that establish your expertise in your field.
• Behind the scenes. Show all the hard work that goes into making your products and the people behind your services.
• Inspirational. Post quotes or inspiring images that are relevant to your followers.
• Engagement. Ask questions and use interactive story stickers like Quiz or Poll.
• Holidays. Celebrate national and local holidays that make sense for your brand.

The cost of paid ads

You can promote your business on Instagram for free; there's no cost for having a business account. You choose how much to spend if you want to boost specific posts, reels, or stories and run paid ads. According to Instagram, half of users reported being more interested in a brand after seeing it in an Instagram ad.

Whether you're a product-driven business looking to increase sales or are a service company looking for leads, Instagram ads are a great way to engage your target audience. You can choose the content you want to promote (image, carousel, reel, or story) and who you want to see it. Target your audience automatically based on your current followers and engagement, or set up a custom audience based on demographics, interests, locations, and behaviors.

Pro Tip: Boost your best-performing post or reel to maximize engagement. You can feel extra confident knowing that the content is already popular among your followers.

Instagram content formats

There are a variety of ways to use graphics to promote your small business on Instagram. Each type of post has a different recommended size to optimize your image or video and make it look its best.

Post

You can post a picture and add up to 2,200 words in the caption on Instagram. But be warned: engagement rates may be lower if you have too much copy. Copy should explain the image and have a clear CTA. Some brands only post a sentence or two, while others do a paragraph. Caption length can also vary from post to post.

Carousel post

Carousel lets you post up to 10 pictures and videos on the platform, and viewers can swipe left to see the next slide. It’s a slideshow of posts and videos that your audience can engage with. They have to manually swipe or click to see the next post, compared to stories which automatically go to the next slide. Carousel posts tend to have higher engagement rates.

Stories

Instagram stories are pieces of content located at the top of the app that only stay visible for 24 hours (unless added to highlights). The user must tap your profile image to see a story and each story is only 15 seconds long. You can create the story in real time by using the camera, or upload a video or picture.

Instagram story sticker options

• Caption. Automatically transcribes video audio
• Countdown. Set a date and time (perfect for announcements and product launches) and have a countdown, and everyone who turned on reminders will be notified when the countdown ends
• Current time. Displays current local time
• Current weather. Display current local weather
• Donation. Create a custom fundraiser and raise money for select nonprofits
• GIF. Add a trending GIF to your story.
• Mention. Tag another account in your story (great for cross-promotion)
• Music. Choose a part of a song to play on your story
• Poll. Ask a question and see what options are most popular among your followers (an opportunity for free market research)
• Emoji slider. Encourage interaction with a sliding emoji reaction.
• Product. Tag your product or store
• Questions. Ask a question and let your followers reply with their answers (a chance to interact and get customer opinions)
• Quiz. Create your own multiple-choice quiz
• Selfie. Take a selfie and add it to your stories as a sticker.

Reels

Instagram recently announced that all videos will now be posted as reels and viewed in full-screen mode. Reels under 90 seconds long will be eligible for Instagram Discovery, where Instagram recommends your videos to non-followers.

Live

You can live stream to your followers on Instagram Live. Schedule up to 90 days in advance and invite up to three guests. Live is great for brands that want to collaborate or if you want to have a guest speaker. Hosting a Q&A and live product demos gives your followers added insight into your business. Lives are seen as more authentic because they happen in real time.

Branded content

When working with influencers to promote your business on Instagram, the platform requires creators to tag the brands they're working with on a post to let followers know it was sponsored in some way.

Interact with your followers

Over 80% of users expect companies to interact with them on social media. So when someone posts a comment, tags your business, or sends a direct message, you’ll want to respond quickly. People on Instagram who interact with brands see this as the brand caring for them, and it increases brand loyalty.  

Tips for interacting with followers on Instagram

• Respond as quickly as possible to comments and messages
• Like and comment on posts that you're tagged in
• Ask questions in your captions and stories
• Repost content featuring your business
• Use story stickers like Poll or Question and share your favorite answers

Cross promote

While each social media platform is different, you can use your Instagram marketing strategy to improve your other social media channels. The demographics between platforms are different enough that even if you're posting the same image on Instagram and LinkedIn, it will likely be seen by different people.

All of the content you post on Instagram may not be appropriate for your other social media channels, but cross-promoting when it makes sense will help you get the most out of each graphic and idea. The overall message should be the same, but the captions should change for each platform as they all have different post lengths.

Pro Tip: Use a social media management tool that automates posting and allows you to plan your content in advance for easier cross-promotion between Instagram and other social media platforms.

Use trending hashtags

Adding hashtags to your posts is an important part of promoting your business on Instagram. Users can search or follow their favorite hashtags, so they help to expand a post's reach and make it possible for those who don't follow you to see your content. You can add up to 30 hashtags to a post or reel and 10 to a story.

Hashtag research

You can search for a hashtag and see how popular the hashtag and related hashtags are. As you start adding hashtags, Instagram will help by auto-populating hashtags for you. These hashtags are typically what's currently trending. You can also check out popular posts by influencers or other businesses in your industry and see what hashtags they use.

Staying on top of trending hashtags and knowing what's popular on Instagram will help you develop new ideas for your content calendar and help get your content seen. If you join a new trend—whether a dance, meme, or reel audio—and use trending hashtags, it improves virality and increases the chance that Instagram will promote your content.

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‍Pro Tip: If you don't want your hashtags in the caption, add them as the first comment immediately after you post.

Track your progress

Instagram Insights gives businesses an easy way to track their progress and see what's working and what isn't. In the Insights Overview, you can see how many accounts you reached (how many people saw it), engaged (how many people interacted with it), and how many new followers you gained in the selected time.

Important Instagram insights

Sort your posts, stories, and reels by performance and compare different metrics to see what you should be posting most of and what resonates with your target audience. In Insights, you can also track the progress of any ads you have running and make adjustments as needed.

• Content interactions. Likes, saves, shares, comments
• Profile activity. Website taps, profile visits, follows, email/address button taps
• Audience demographics. Gender, age range, top locations
• Impressions. From profile, hashtags, home, or other
• Reels. Comments, likes, save, reach, plays, shares, reel interactions
• Stories. Exited, follows, next story, impressions, link clicks, back/forward, profile visit, reach, replies, shares, website taps, story interactions

Get help from an Instagram expert

Ready to start promoting your business on Instagram? Even if you love checking Instagram daily, creating a strategy for your business can be challenging. You can get help from an Instagram expert on Upwork with any step of the process, from mapping out your plan to scheduling posts and responding to comments.

There are independent professionals on Upwork who have helped brands of all sizes grow their following on Instagram. These professionals are ready to take your project and hit the ground running. You can create and implement an Instagram social media strategy, choose how hands-on you want to be, and what exactly you need help with when working with independent talent.

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