How to Use Instagram as a Small Business

Define your voice 🎤

1. Remember that Instagram is recreational. People aren’t necessarily active on Instagram because they intend to purchase items, so they don’t always want to be talked to as a “consumer.”
2. Therefore, the best way to communicate with your followers or prospective shoppers is in a natural way, that seamlessly integrates with the rest of their feed.
3. Although you should speak differently to your consumers on Instagram as opposed to your website or traditional ads, your branding should still be cohesive. If someone discovers your brand on Instagram, they shouldn’t see completely different messaging when they decide to visit your website.
4. Focus on what makes your brand unique. Because Instagram is so competitive, it’s important to get to the “why” of your brand. Why would consumers choose to follow you? Why would they want to keep up with you instead of your competitors? Make this clear on your page.

Structure your page strategically ✔️

Here’s how we have set up our page, as an example!

Create and share content that resonates 🥰

1. Show your followers the people behind the business. One of the best things about small businesses is the people behind them, and this is something that is a completely unique selling point. A great way to humanize your brand on Instagram is by using features like Instagram Lives, where you can directly speak to your followers, and allow them to ask questions, live. You can also create Live Rooms with other small businesses in order to extend your network and reach some of your peers’ existing followers. Another great reason to use Instagram Lives is that they live on, so you can repurpose the content by saving it as an IGTV video, or adding it to your Story.
2. Speaking of Stories, it’s important that you use them! Again, Stories are a great opportunity for you to communicate with your audience, by using interactive question stickers, running polls, and creating countdowns for campaign launches. Currently, Instagram has a ‘support small businesses’ sticker, which you can also utilize to your advantage in order to get discovered!
3. Make your content go further. A great strategy on Instagram if you have limited resources, is repurposing content. If you want to learn the best techniques to do this, you can check out our blog article, here.
4. Contextualize product-based content. What we mean by this, is don’t just post pictures of your products. If you want to share products, integrate them with influencer marketing campaigns, or aesthetically pleasing flat lays that allow consumers to visualize your product in their day-to-day lifestyle.
5. Use content creation platforms like Canva, in case you run out of ideas. You can create templates on Canva that are branded, with your colors, logo, fonts, etc. easily and quickly — and you don’t have to be a design pro. If you pre-design a few assets that you can use as a series on your Instagram, you can quickly refer to them when you have gaps in your schedule.
6. Create value-adding content. If you have something to teach – teach it! This will make users much more likely to follow you if they feel that they can gain some personal value from your feed. If you are a florist, for example, you could post online tutorials, tips, and tricks on Instagram Reels or even full ‘classes’ on IGTV.

Here’s an example of an easy content format you can easily replicate and adjust for your audience or niche.

Use hashtags and Reels to get discovered 🔍

Set up shop 🛍