How to Grow Your Business on Instagram

Here are some inside tips on how to grow your brand and audience if you are just starting your business Instagram account:

• Add your logo as the profile photo and have it be a high quality photo.

• Write a super dynamic bio at the top of your profile—this is prime real estate and it needs to communicate your mission, your USP and a call to action. You only have 150 characters, so make each word count!

• Put up at least 9 solid, branded posts before you start following new accounts (who will hopefully follow you in return!) Your posts should have crisp graphics and the copy should be conversational and reflect your business’s voice and persona.

• Make sure to research hashtags that you want to include with all or certain posts. This will expand your posts’ reach.

• Give yourself a goal of how many times per week you will post (we recommend between 3–5 posts per week) and write your content ahead of time, proofreading and always adding a call to action (read this, comment below, DM us, etc).

• Once your page is optimized (see above), start following accounts that need to know about you—this can include future clients if you are B2B, but it should also include community partners, networking groups, Chambers of Commerce and industry affiliates. Engage with these accounts by liking and commenting on their posts. Spend 5–10 per day engaging.

• Extra tip! Make sure you have converted this account to a business account so you can add contact info and get analytics.

Spending time every day on Instagram engaging with other accounts, paired with putting up interesting, branded content will lead to a healthy, growing account. Happy posting, we are ROOTING for you!

How to Use Instagram Stories for Your Business

Let's talk Instagram Stories:

We know it's one more thing for you to think about, but using Stories will increase your views and your audience on Instagram. The pressure is off a bit for the Stories, as they can be less scheduled, less serious and more whimsical and can give your audience the chance to get to know you and your products or services better. This is a great chance to talk about your team, planning sessions and highlight some of your services and clients you are serving.

You may want to use Stories just for the sheer magnitude of the audience: 400 million people are watching Stories DAILY. And followers who may not catch your content on your feed have a good chance of seeing your Stories.

To create:

1. Open the Instagram app on your phone and tap on the bottom right photo circle.

2. Tap the plus button on the top-left side of your home screen or swipe left in your Feed.

3. Tap the circle button at the bottom of the screen to take photos, tap bottom left camera roll icon to access your photos or tap and hold to record a video.

4. Add multiple Stories at a time.

5. You can add a poll or a question and ask people to add their emails to add to your email blast list by going to top menu of icons  and clicking on square smiley face. You can also add GIFs, location, mentions and hashtags to your Stories by clicking on the square smiley face.

6. You can add text by clicking on Aa at the top right.

7. After you have added your Stories, you can add them to your Highlights for posterity. You can add categories of Stories of your choosing and they will be housed there until you decide to delete them.

Stories go up and stay for 24 hours, but can be stored indefinitely in the Highlights section of your profile. And don't forget to share your IG Story to your Facebook Story!

Happy sharing!

Have questions? Connect with us to discuss your Stories: grow@redrootmarketing.com

You have all heard of Hashtags-but how do you use them?

Hashtags (#) are aggregators and allow your posts to be routed to pages where others can find you. There are 3 types of hashtags we recommend you use on every post on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn (hashtags are not currently effective or used on Facebook).

Hashtags are crucial to your growth as they will allow your posts to be found by people outside of your current audience. On Instagram, accounts can follow hashtags that interest them and your posts may show up in their feed whether they are following your account or not if they are following that specific hashtag.

-Branded hashtags are created by you for your brand and can be your business's name and tagline. For example, we use our company name and tagline: #redrootmarketing #growwithredroot.
-Community/Industry hashtags are what others in your industry are using. For example, we use our main service as a hashtag: #socialmediamarketing.
-Geographic hashtags are used when you want to localize your business. For example, our headquarters are based in Verona, New Jersey and are next door to the vibrant town of Montclair, so we use #veronanj #montclairnj. You can also use your region or state to localize your business.

INSIDER TIP: We like to create our own list of hashtags through research on Instagram but you can also use an app like HashTagged. Once we have our list, we save it to the notes app on our phone. Then we can simply copy and paste it into the first comment once our post goes up. Posting in the first comment kick starts the algorithm and may lead to better engagement on that post!