Starting your own business feels entirely unique. There emerges a love and dedication to this thing that you yourself have built. As ethereal as this is, showing your target audience this love and passion is one of the most challenging hurdles for startups. They fall into the dark well of standard marketing, following the typical way most companies do it.
However, the uniqueness of startups is their journey, passion, and novelty. As a startup, the most potential for visibility and brand building you will ever receive is through social media. And among social media, Instagram is the platform. It isn’t entirely professional like LinkedIn, neither is it entirely unprofessional like TikTok. It strikes the perfect balance, which equips businesses to make the most out of it.
When starting with a handful of followers and no idea what to post, it might seem impossible to take your name off the sidelines. But with the right strategies and practices, even you and your startup can break into the system.
Get Your Account Started
To begin with, you first need a professional account. You can either choose to turn your personal account into a professional one, or you can create a new one altogether. A professional account will allow you to access Instagram insights, which can provide valuable data about your audience and content performance. It also allows you to run ads and link your business website on your profile.
Username
Usernames matter a lot. That’s like your Instagram address. The more complex the address, the lesser the chance of visitors. The ideal username is your company name. Anything else, and your marketing strategy will end before it starts. Just make sure to keep it classy enough for your target audience.
Profile Picture
A step in setting up your professional (as well as personal) account is adding a picture which will essentially be the face of your account. As a company, profile choice matters a lot. Make sure you pick one that aligns with your company—it is best if it’s the logo or something similar in color and style. You could also keep your own photo as a profile picture, but that must be done only when you decide to make yourself a face or ambassador of your company. The profile picture is you letting the users know what they should identify your startup with, so make sure your profile picture aligns with that.
Bio
Your bio is the little space given to you to add the basic details of your company. In this step, it is advisable to follow the simple pattern of industry, tagline, and link. One word that tells the viewer in a single glance what type or niche your company is—industry. One-liner, which is either a catchy tagline or a description of what the company is all about—tagline. A link that directly leads to your website or a page with multiple links—link.
It must be mentioned that you must not make your bio too filled up, and neither do you want it to be lacking. It must be a crisp, if not quirky, description of what your company is all about. There is indeed the option of going unconventional and writing your bio in an entirely different way. You could make it personalized and speak directly to the viewer, or you could give your company an identity of its own and refer to it in the first person.
Contact Details
Do not forget to add contact details so that potential customers may reach out to you—through email, WhatsApp, or a number on which to call.
Make it a Hit
Now that the account is ready, you need to start putting in actual effort. We have the kitchen; now we gotta cook. From here on out, whatever you post contributes to your brand image.
There are a few key elements to keep in mind.
Aesthetic
Instagram is all about visuals. Not only will visual brilliance get you far in terms of reels and posts, but also in terms of your grid. Make sure to keep your grid (the place below your profile where all your posts are shown) in a certain pattern. Which one to go with is up to you and your team and depends on what you wish to portray, but the idea is that when one opens your profile, they should want to keep checking out your posts. A helpful feature is the highlights section, where you can permanently save your stories based on what they consist of.
Content
What it all comes down to is content. You can employ a hundred different strategies that will get you in the public’s eye and yet it will not hold eyes for long if the content isn’t up to the mark. Embrace the fact that to build a brand, you need first to be one. Create a unique voice, a unique style and don’t think you need to necessarily follow along the lines of others or competitors. Social media is all about innovation and creativity, show some.
Other Means
As mysterious as the heading sounds, there are indeed other means to achieve the goal of visibility. You can adopt options like—purchases, ads, and partnerships.
A purchase is when you buy likes, views, or followers from external sites that offer such services. There are various types of purchases. Some sites offer likes/views/followers from bot accounts or fake accounts. This can be used as a boost or a temporary solution until you use the fake visibility to gather an authentic one. Other, more expensive sites offer the same but from real and authentic accounts. This makes the activity less suspicious, with fewer chances of the algorithm catching it.
There aren’t many sites that offer the latter at moderate pricing, but Blastup is one such site that is affordable and even offers the option of gradual likes so that a sudden increase in likes or followers doesn’t raise suspicion. You can check their offers for likes at https://blastup.com/buy-instagram-likes.
Ads are when you pay Instagram to advertise your product or service, and partnerships are when you employ an influencer or celebrity to advertise your product or service on Instagram. Both options clearly state what they are, and it is obvious to viewers that it’s a paid marketing endeavor. This might reduce the chances of traffic, though not always.
Engagement
A big part of why Instagram is at the top and garners the most traffic to sites is that people view it as an app for entertainment and socialization. This means a significant factor in your brand building will be whether you were socially active enough. Not just with your own followers and their comments but on the platform at large. Think of your company as a person. Give it an ideology, a social standpoint, a humor, etc. Comment on trending posts or posts of important accounts. Have a social and ideological standpoint. This is the age of liberation and freedom. Your company need not be silent on controversial matters. Though, yes, it would be advisable not to engage in political statements or standpoints as that may backfire. You can surely have an ideological standpoint, however.
Collaboration
A way to benefit each other for companies is to collaborate. To create posts, projects, and events together. This gives access to one’s followers to the other. It increases visibility for both, and there are more chances of that event/post/project becoming a hit.
Conclusion
Starting out in any field is a daunting task indeed. Yet once one gets the hang of it, all seems easy. There are just a few tricks of the trade that one needs to acquaint themselves with. For all the entrepreneurs out there, this article gave a beginner’s guide to professional Instagram. From building the profile and content quality to aesthetics and engagement, all was covered and overviewed. We also discussed various other means, including purchases, partnerships, collaborations, and ads. It is essential to note that other means will only help temporarily or on the surface, while the authentic means are bound to take time, but will give fruitful rewards in the long run.
