Three Tips for Your Instagram Business Account … from an Instagram Coach! -

So you’ve got your business account up and running, but now you want to know the secrets to success? I hear you! But remember, no success is “overnight”, as some people will promise you. Especially when it comes to the ‘gram!

But if you apply these tips to your strategy, you will see growth, engaged followers, and vast improvement! Let’s dive right in.

#Instatip 1 – Your Profile Picture Matters

If you are a service-based business account on Instagram, your profile photo should be a close-up shot of YOU, the service provider, and not your logo (think dentists, Realtors, photographers, massage therapists, personal trainers, etc.).

To make sure the photo is cropped closely enough, see what it looks like as someone sees it on their feed, not as it appears on your profile.

Larger brands and businesses with multiple people can use their logo in place of a photo, but be sure it’s a version of your logo that is visually clean and easy to read as it appears on someone’s feed. If your logo has the main graphic with smaller text underneath, for example, consider cropping out the smaller text underneath and going with the larger more recognizable graphic.

The exception to this could be places like an animal shelter, for example, having a photo of a cute pup rather than the logo of the shelter would draw more attention.

Instagram has provided a way to make businesses and brands personal like never before, and people want to do business with… you guessed it. PEOPLE! So get personal.

Get more Instagram profile ideas.

#Instatip 2 – Make Sure You’re Searchable

Imagine my horror when I learned that MY profile, the Instagram guru, DIDN’T EXIST when someone searched my name in the Instagram search bar.

Since I have the “A” in @mollyacahill, if you just typed in “Molly Cahill” to the search bar I was nowhere to be found! I used the bold “NAME” line in my bio to say “Marketing & Instagram Coach” since there was no need to repeat my name twice, but I didn’t take into consideration that the search function would be so finicky as to exclude me from a search simply because of the “A” in my username! (You can see how I tweaked it here: @mollyacahill)

? How to fix: have someone who IS NOT currently following you search for you using not just your name or business name, but whatever keywords you think they might search for.

? Examples of what someone might search:

▪️hair San Diego

▪️realtor Nashville

▪️graphic designer

#Instatip 3 – Use Hashtags With Less Than 1 Million Posts

It’s that simple, y’all.

⤵️Examples:

#design: 175M

#designinspo: 1.1M

#ilovedesign: 97.5K

#keto: 11.5M

#ketorecipes: 1M

#easyketo: 107K

#babygirl: 57.2M

#babygirlclothes 212K

If you choose hashtags that are too saturated, you’ll be buried.

To research your ideal hashtags from the Instagram app ON YOUR PHONE (not computer as you’ll get related hashtags suggestions once you click on a tag you want to use) simply search a hashtag in the search bar to see the amount of associated posts. There are several tools out there that help with hashtag research, too, like Plann and Later.

Then, store several of your “go-to” sets in an app like Planoly or even the notepad of your phone. You can rotate through these where appropriate and add in specific tags when needed.

Don’t use the same 30 tags on every post. Yes, I use all 30. No, it isn’t spammy.

(Side note: you can include hashtags in the caption OR in the first comment. It makes no difference except that if you choose to put them in the first comment make sure you post them immediately and use five vertical dots to make them “disappear” from the scroll view. It’s purely an aesthetic preference.)

PRO HACK: Use hashtags that your target clients would be searching, not just your peers or others in your industry.