While the question of how to use Instagram for eCommerce is common, the answer to that is not very simple.
If you’re running an eCommerce business, you need to have a strong presence on Instagram. It’s the norm. Instagram marketing is not only the most lucrative lead generation mechanism but also a promising conversions tool.
As Instagram evolves into a more immersive platform with interactive features such as Instagram Stories, Reels, and direct ‘buy’ options, your eCommerce business can hugely benefit from building a follow-worthy Instagram profile.
In this article, we look at Instagram from all the angles and answer some of the most pressing questions of online sellers such as:
- How can you get more followers on Instagram?
- How can you use Instagram to boost your eCommerce SEO?
- How to sell your products or services via Instagram?
- How to market your online store on Instagram?
- How to build a good Instagram profile for your eCommerce business?
How Can You Get More Followers On Instagram?
For a small eCommerce business or one that is just starting out, increasing followers on Instagram, and building a loyal base of followers and advocates will take time and effort.
For example, assume you’re building a fashion eCommerce brand. There’s a lot of digital and social media marketing that you’ll have to do to give your brand visibility. SEO for fashion eCommerce is not easy but building a following on social platforms will help you attract the right audience.
Having said that, there are a few things that you can do right away to build a credible list of followers on Instagram.
1. Optimize Your Profile
Start by customizing your Instagram profile. Make it look professional and appealing by including a profile picture that should ideally be your brand logo.
Secondly, include a short description that tells your potential followers who you are and what you specialize in. The idea here is to give them a reason to follow you.
Your username should be your brand name – one that is easy to understand, easy to type, easy to search for. Ideally, your brand name should be the same as your eCommerce website’s domain name.
To effectively use Instagram for eCommerce, include a link to your eCommerce website in your bio.
This way, people searching for your business will easily find you, and this will increase your followers on Instagram.
2. Apply For A Verification Badge
You must’ve come across Instagram profiles of leading brands and celebrities with a blue dot next to it. This blue dot is called a badge, and it appears on accounts that are verified.
This badge works as a strong trust-building mechanism. When people come to a profile with this badge next to its username, it assures them that the business account or brand is not fake or bogus.
While Instagram has a list of eligibility requirements for the badge, the platform does allow eCommerce businesses to apply for one. You can learn more about that process in Instagram’s help center.
Remember, sporting a verified badge is a great way to increase followers on Instagram for your eCommerce business.
3. Publish High-Quality Posts
Instagram is a purely visual platform. Which is why post quality matters a lot. A bad photo or an unclear video will hamper your brand image significantly.
While you may not necessarily need a professional photographer or a high-end camera, here’s what you should keep in mind for your product photography:
- Focus on one product or subject at a time
- Find interesting and unique perspectives
- Aim for symmetry
- Capture the little detail
- Entertain your followers
Make sure your photographs are edited properly before you post them. Although Instagram suggests a 1080px x 1080px resolution, you should upload the image at the max resolution allowed, 2048px x 2048px.
Set a regular posting schedule to ensure that you are constantly publishing images and maintaining a steady momentum.
Create content templates and plan your posts regularly. Also, include witty and smart captions to entertain people who stumble upon your posts.
4. Actively Use Instagram Stories
Although Snapchat introduced the feature of stories, Instagram Stories remains one of the most engaging features on the platform.
With Instagram Stories, brands can share content on-the-fly. It gives eCommerce businesses a chance to humanize their brand for 24 hours and publish raw content that may not be as polished as a published photo.
Using Instagram Stories will enable your brand to engage with users in a variety of different ways and cultivate brand loyalty and appeal.
This will not only help to increase followers on Instagram but also to keep existing followers appraised of what you do on a daily basis and it’s one of the best ways to use Instagram for eCommerce and boost your online store.
5. Run Instagram Contests
Another great way to use Instagram for eCommerce and gain more followers whilst increasing engagement on your photos is to run creative contests.
For instance, you can ask people to follow your account or like or comment on your photo in order to enter.
An effective way to get more people to participate in your contests is to add a UGC (User-Generated Content) element.
This requires your followers or prospective followers to post pictures of their own on their respective profiles and tag your brand or a specific hashtag.
In addition, they must follow your account. This is a great way to get people to engage with your brand and have them follow you.
6. Interact With Users
Instagram is a community of people who share images and videos that interest one another. And as an eCommerce business, you should post illustrious images that interest your audience.
Actively follow their accounts and interact with their content. Doing this will enable you to get people to draw attention to your own Instagram account.
How?
They will want to check out your profile once they get the notification that you’ve followed them.
Furthermore, you can like and comment on their pictures. This will give them a chance to engage with you and follow you back or visit your store and even buy from you citing the special bond.
How Can You Use Instagram To Boost Your eCommerce Seo?
The eCommerce SEO techniques that you usually use to optimize web pages can also be used for a social media platform like Instagram. The trick isn’t to shoehorn Instagram into your existing SEO strategy but to implement your knowledge about SEO in driving organic to your Instagram account.
1. Optimize Your Instagram profile
The first and foremost step in boosting your Instagram reach is to optimize your Instagram profile. Driving traffic to your account is pointless if your profile isn’t optimized for an up to the mark user experience.
Some of the tips for optimizing your profile are:
- Make your profile public
- Create a searchable and recognizable @Username
- Use a colorful and slick brand profile image
- Register for a business account
- Mention a trackable link in your bio
A good thing to keep in mind here is to include a link that is brandable and memorable since it’s the only real estate to mention your eCommerce store’s web address. Instagram name SEO is also something you can optimize. Short names on a relevant new domain extension like .store will do wonders for your online store.
These steps might seem basic, but they’re necessary to implement before moving on to using other Instagram SEO techniques.
2. Mention Your Primary Keyword In Your @Username & Display Name
Instagram is a search engine in itself. You need to work within the app to show up for the correct terms in the search bar. Firstly, you need to define your primary keyword.
Let’s take the example of a ‘bakery’. A user who wants to see baked goods on their feed is likely to search for ‘bakery’. Once you identify your primary keyword, you need to make sure that you mention it in your @Username and display name both.
With this keyword in both places, the probability of your account showing up in the search account increases considerably.
3. Mention Your Secondary Keywords In Your Bio
Secondary keywords are the topics and phrases that revolve around your primary keyword. The next step after mentioning your primary keyword is to get the best out of your secondary keywords.
For instance, in the above-mentioned example, the secondary keywords could be ‘wedding cakes’, ‘cupcakes’, ‘cakes’, ‘baking’, ‘baked goods’, etc. It’s important to craft an informative and attractive bio, but along with it, you need to include at least a few important search-optimized keywords.
Secondary keywords play an essential role where people aren’t searching for your primary keyword but might be interested in your products or services.
A user might not be searching for ‘bakery’ but if they’re searching for ‘baking recipes’ and bump into your account because of your secondary keywords, they might still end up following you because of your content.
4. Use Keywords In Captions
An engaging caption not only helps in attracting new followers but also in satisfying existing ones. An unknown fact about this is that the right caption can also help you show up in the search results.
You can optimize your captions in the same way as you did with your name and bio. Using relevant secondary keywords in your caption helps to create a complete picture for Instagram’s algorithm.
Doing this will enable Instagram to filter your posts and accordingly rank them for search queries.
5. Use Instagram Alt Text
Instagram Alt Text, short for Alternative Text, is a new feature that allows users to write alternative captions for their photos. If the photo doesn’t load for any reason whatsoever, users will see the descriptive text instead.
The feature was mainly introduced for screen readers, which allows visually impaired users to access Instagram, but it also plays a major role in Instagram SEO.
If you don’t use alt-text, Instagram will populate the alt-text options for your photos, but you can rather choose to do that yourself and describe your post in the best way possible using relevant keywords.
You can add alt text by following the below-mentioned steps:
- Start uploading a picture on Instagram
- Select your desired filter and tap ‘Next’
- Tap ‘Advanced Settings’ at the bottom
- Tap ‘Alt Text’
- Type your alt text in the box and tap ‘Done’
Using Alt Text could help your posts rank better in Instagram’s algorithm and can have your posts pop up as voice search results too.
6. Refer To Analytics
If you’re using Instagram SEO techniques for the first time, you need to track your Instagram strategy constantly to understand how it’s impacting your social media goals.
Instagram has its free analytics tool for business accounts that shows the activity of your audience, which posts are most engaging and their reach and impressions.
For more advanced features that give you detailed analytics, you can opt for external social media tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Sprinklr.
Tracking the success of your Instagram SEO strategy could help you refine your content, gain buy-in from leadership, and also improve the overall success of your strategy.
7. Avoid Common Black Hat SEO Techniques
Similar to Google, even Instagram identifies and punishes users for using black hat SEO techniques, by reducing the reach or visibility of accounts that try to cheat the system.
Instagram has also introduced a ‘shadowban’ for users that break the ruled repeatedly.
Some of the ways to avoid these Black hat SEO techniques on Instagram are:
- Don’t use bots
- Don’t steal content
- Don’t spam with keywords
- Don’t follow or unfollow too many accounts very fast
- Don’t buy followers
SEO is a long term strategy and it requires patience to see the results. It’s tempting to fall for ways that give a quick boost in followers or reach, but it could do you more harm than good.
Selling On Instagram – How Does It Work?
Selling on Instagram has become even easier with the launch of the shoppable posts feature. Clearly selling on Instagram has benefits galore and is also a great way to establish a strong online presence.
To use Instagram for eCommerce and make the most of this feature, brands need to insert a CTA within their stories to sell directly from there and with more than 400 million users watching Stories every month, this feature is certainly a valuable source to increase sales for brands.
How To Boost Online Sales When Selling On Instagram?
Step 1: Sign up as a business
Instagram is owned by Meta. This means to use Instagram for eCommerce, you must comply with Meta’s merchant agreement and commerce policy. Only businesses can sell on Instagram and so you must sign up as a business account.
Step 2: Set up your product catalog on Facebook
Once you have a business profile set up, you need to set up your product catalog on Facebook. Only the products under this catalog can be tagged on your Instagram shoppable posts and stories.
Step 3: Approval from Instagram
Account approval from Instagram may take a few days. Once done, you will receive a notification.
Step 4: Turn on Shopping features
To begin adding products to your Instagram posts, turn on the shopping features in your account.
How to Sell via Your Instagram Posts
Step 1: Upload product image(s)
Like for any other post, upload high-quality images of your product. You can upload multiple images (up to 10 images in one post) to give users a better idea of what the product will look like in different implementations.
Step 2: Add a caption and tag your products
Write a crisp and descriptive caption for your post and then select ‘Tag Products’. This option will enable you to tag your products (from your Facebook product catalog).
Step 3: Share your post
Once you’ve uploaded the images, crafted a caption, and tagged your products, it is time to share your post with the world! Posts tagged with products will appear on your feed with a little shopping bag icon.
How to Sell Using Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are a rage today. With Instagram introducing shoppable stories, brands can now tap into this feature to enhance sales and better connect with their customers to make selling on Instagram effective.
Businesses that are approved by Facebook and Instagram to sell on Instagram, can add one product sticker to any story. Upon tapping the product sticker within the story, your viewers will be redirected to a page where they can purchase the product directly.
Step 1: Add to your story (image or video)
Step 2: Tap the sticker icon and select the product option.
Step 3: Add your product (only one per Story). You can find all your products from your product catalog by typing its name.
Step 4: The tagged products in your Stories will appear with a shopping bag icon.
Handy Tips to Keep in Mind When Selling on Instagram
1. Tag Smartly
Tagging your posts is the smartest way to derive the most value from your post. Smartly tag each item and ensure that they do not overlap and have enough space between them. This will make the post easy to understand and eliminate any confusion.
2. Tag Multiple Products
Tagging multiple products means you can win your buyer’s attention and increase the utility of every post. For instance, a post that has shoes, shirts, and trousers, all tagged in one post makes for a more valuable post.
3. Tag the right products
Remember, the products that you tag on your Instagram post must coincide with the ones on your Facebook product catalog. This means you need to be sure that you are tagging the right products (especially when it comes to products with similar names).
4. Upload High-Quality Photos
Instagram is still a highly visual medium and therefore, high-quality images make for compelling and intuitive content. This will not only entice your current customers to learn more about your post but will also attract random scrollers to tap on your product tags and visit your website.
Voila! You are now all set to start selling on Instagram!
How To Market Your Online Store On Instagram?
An interesting statistic suggests that 68% of Instagram followers engage regularly with brands while a Track Maven research found that the engagement ratio on average, is 8 times higher on Instagram than any other social media platform.
Here are 6 ways to use Instagram for eCommerce marketing campaign and make the most of what the social media platform offers.
1. It’s all in the name
The first step towards creating a successful Instagram marketing campaign is to optimize your profile. Optimize your brand’s profile by:
- Reflecting your brand name or motto in the username
- Using the logo as your profile photo
- Including a smart bio with a link to your website
These may seem like simple things to do, but there are businesses that don’t pay attention to this and as a result, come across as less credible brands. These three simple steps will help you to make the most of your Instagram marketing strategy.
2. Quality matters
Being a social media marketing platform that is driven by visual content, posting high-quality images the first intuitive step towards driving engagements and outperforming the competition.
Build your Instagram profile to become a splendid gallery of your products. High-quality pictures that are thought-provoking and tell a story will make your brand stand out and help to build a credible brand image for your business as a whole.
Use tools such as Canva or Pablo to create high-quality and engaging content that compels people to follow your page and engage with your brand. Instagram marketing isn’t about hard-selling your products or advertising products only to get people to make a purchase.
It’s about showcasing your brand’s journey, new stories that define the brand, and the lifestyle attached to the products that you sell.
A great example of Instagram marketing comes from Adidas. A majority of the images featured on the Adidas profile shows athletes in action or the teams they support across all sports. Only when you look closely that you notice that all of these athletes and teams are wearing Adidas products.
Adidas isn’t just marketing their products, but they are marketing the sort of lifestyle that their brand inspires. And let’s face it, who would shy away from being a famous athlete at the top of their game?!
3. Believe in the rule of thirds
Just like we mentioned above, Instagram marketing is all about subtly showcasing your products as opposed to hard selling. As an extension to that thumb rule, it is advisable to adhere to the rule of thirds. This includes:
- Promotional Posts: Posts that showcase your products or anything related to the company.
- Engagement Posts – Posts that encourage your audience to indulge in a conversation (questions, contests, giveaways, special offers, etc.)
- Sharing Posts – Posts related to industry news
Cross-collaborations works well when trying to get your new online business’s name out there and to attract more followers.
This also helps build brand awareness and serves as an effective hack to start with your Instagram marketing campaign.
Once you have a decent number of followers, you can switch to promotional posts that will help you drive site traffic and sales.
4. Make your products instantly sellable
The ultimate goal of your Instagram marketing strategy is to sell the products you showcase on your profile. With Instagram’s shoppable tags you can tag products with the price and description as a clear call-to-action to purchase straight from your profile.
Setting up your Instagram shoppable posts is simple and it can transform your Instagram profile into a sales channel. Here are a few tips on getting started:
- Set up a shop section on your business Facebook page. Currently, shopping on Instagram supports catalogs on Facebook’s Business Manager. You can create and manage catalogs on Business Manager and add a section to shop on your brand’s Facebook page. Connect this page to Instagram and simply add your products there.
- You can tag products in both new and existing posts from your Instagram business profile. Instagram allows you to tag up to 5 products per single-image post or 20 products per multi-image post. Top Tip: It is better to provide the customer with the option to checkout from your own website rather than on Facebook.
- It will take a few days for you to get a notification on your Instagram account before you can start tagging posts. Wait for the notification and then start tagging.
- When uploading a new post, select the “tag a product” option. With this, you should see a populated list of all the products you have uploaded to your Facebook shop. This way you can choose which products you want to list on your Instagram account.
How To Build A Good Instagram Profile For Your eCommerce Business?
To use Instagram for eCommerce, you need an optimized profile will help your eCommerce business attract genuine people to follow you, engage with you, and learn about your brand and its products.
Here’s what you need to do to make sure your Instagram Profile is optimized right.
1. Make Your Instagram Profile Public (Not Private)
By default, your Instagram profile will be public. This means anyone on Instagram can follow your profile and engage with your posts and Stories. However, there is an option to make your profile private.
Doing this means, people will have to send you a follow request before being able to engage with your brand. If you’re creating an Instagram profile for your eCommerce business, then you should ensure that your profile is public since it allows anyone to interact with you and follow your brand.
2. Choose The Right Instagram Profile Picture
Ideally, the Instagram profile picture of your eCommerce business should be your brand logo or your mascot or your brand ambassador. The picture should be consistent across all digital media platforms.
Maintaining visual consistency across all channels is a great way to build a formidable eCommerce brand.
Consider the size and image quality of your Instagram profile picture. Use a high-quality picture that doesn’t appear too small or pixilated. Instagram profile picture size dimensions are 100×100 pixels on a mobile device, but the picture appears larger on the desktop.
Based on the device type, Instagram resizes your profile picture. This means you should choose the right size and quality. It’s wise to have a few options so you can A/B test your profile picture to check which works better.
3. Pick The Right Username
Your Instagram profile name (or handle name) should be easily understood, easily recognizable, and easily searchable. However, if the name of your choice is already taken as a username, pick a name that closely relates to your brand name.
A smart thing to do would be to keep your business name as the first part of your username so people can find you easily. Alternatively, you can consider choosing an abbreviation or short variation of your company’s name.
The name that appears on your Instagram profile should also include a keyword that defines the nature of your business. This will help to optimize your Instagram profile for searches since most will use specific keywords to look for your profile.
Selecting the right keyword requires a good understanding of your potential followers and what they look for. In addition, your choice of keywords should showcase what your brand stands for.
Your handle name can include a specific product name or the city name where you are located/serve.
4. Optimize Your Bio
Your bio is a great place to use relevant keywords. This helps to optimize your Instagram profile for SEO to appear in search queries thereby increasing your reach.
As a best practice, you should target keywords that perfectly describe the nature of your business and where you are located.
Your bio is the only piece of real estate where you can insert your store’s URL or a dedicated landing page. In either case, you should ensure that you are using a memorable and relevant URL.
Ideally, you should opt for a simple and short domain name like buyshoes.store or londonheels.store as your call to action. In fact, you can use your .store domain extension as a simple non-clickable CTA for your posts as well (buyshoes.store/heels)!
5. Submit The Correct Details
The Instagram profile for your eCommerce business should always be a business profile, and you need to be sure to select the right business category while creating your profile.
As a business profile, you will be able to add not only a business category but also insert your contact information and include action buttons in your Instagram profile bio.
To ensure that your followers are able to contact you, you can add your business’s official email address, phone number, and office address.
6. Publish High-Quality Content
While this may seem obvious, a lot of eCommerce businesses and online retail brands make the mistake of uploading low-resolution photographs that appear grainy or pixelated.
To use Instagram for eCommerce, publish high-quality photos are a critical factor of a well-optimized Instagram profile. When someone visits your profile, there is a high probability that they will first scroll through your feed of photos, and depending on the quality of your photos, they will decide whether to follow you or not.
Similarly, it is important to maintain a quality check of the captions used across your posts, Stories, and bio. Ensure to consistently post high-quality pictures that keep your followers engaged.
The posts on your Instagram profile should be relevant to your business, and information about your line of business. In case you are using it to promote your products, ensure that you have a bank of good-quality well-shot photographs that you can use to post regularly.
A good habit here would be to follow a certain style of photographs or a specific language that resonates with your eCommerce business’s brand guidelines.
7. Harness The Power Of Instagram Stories
Make the most of Instagram Stories by telling authentic brand stories and featuring real people. With Instagram Stories, you can create a narrative that keeps your followers in the habit of viewing your stories and to engage with your brand.
Include witty captions and dedicated CTA links to point people in the right direction. Instagram also allows eCommerce businesses to sell to their viewers directly from Stories.
8. Actively Engage With Your Audience
Keep your notifications on so you know when your followers are sending you DMs (Direct Message) and when they are commenting on your posts. Try and respond to as many genuine messages and queries as you can.
Keep your DMs open for anyone who wishes to get in touch with you, and make sure you monitor the messages that you are receiving here.
It also works favorably if a brand replies to comments on posts and responds to the mentions on others’ profiles. It not only helps build camaraderie but has the potential to establish a brand personality.
Other people will witness your comments and how actively you engage with people and this will probe them to visit your profile and to follow you.
An Example Of How To Use Instagram To Market Your Online Fashion Store
There are numerous fashion brands that choose to use Instagram for eCommerce for raising brand awareness as well as forming a connection with their target audience. The fashion industry also uses social media platforms like Instagram to brush up their sales, traffic, and customer loyalty.
1. Use Instagram Feed to Sell Directly to Online Shoppers
Online fashion brands can use their Instagram account to sell directly to their customers.
Through Instagram account feed, fashion brands allow their customers’ easy access to pricing and product details of their products, thus optimizing the purchase process.
Intelligently incorporating call-to-action in the Instagram bio that directs a user to the online shopping website is another smart way to use Instagram for eCommerce.
2. Leverage Influencer Marketing
It may be challenging for new fashion brands to create content and grow a following of their own at first. However, such brands can always resort to influencer marketing, which gives them a shot in the limelight through an already established influencer’s followers.
Marketing through Instagram influencers spikes up brand awareness and the total outreach of a brand, thus contributing to lead generation and improved sales.
Most marketing professionals count on Instagram posts, followed by Instagram stories as the preferred medium for influencer marketing.
3. Get The Most Out Of Instagram Stories
While an Instagram story’s lifespan is just 24 hours, they can create a long-lasting impact on your followers. Instagram stories feature multiple modes, features, and filters that can be used on video and static photo content.
All fashion brands on Instagram can leverage the ‘stories’ to promote their products or services creatively.
For example, fashion brands that showcase behind the scenes action through Instagram stories create engaging content to keep their audience hooked. Even brands that decorate their stories with shopping-related CTA stickers see a spike in their sales.
4. Story Highlights
Fashion brands can walk down the Instagram story highlights route to keep visitors updated with their products and services as well as use it for marketing.
Unlike Instagram stories, story highlights stay on the brand’s Instagram profiles for well beyond 24 hours, until the profile owner decides to get rid of them. As story highlights are placed just under the brand’s Instagram bio, they can act as click-bait for visitors to the profile.
Another smart way you can promote your fashion brand on Instagram is to use story highlights and play around with themed icon sets.
5. Use Your Existing Customer Base to Market Your Brand
Most Instagram users love to post beautiful pictures of themselves, and that can be of unique advantage to your fashion brand.
To use Instagram for eCommerce, take lessons from the fact that recommendations from peers are of distinct value to individuals. Have your users generate content for your Instagram handle as this gives instant credibility to your fashion brand.
User-generated content can boost conversion for your fashion business. Incentivize your customers to tag you in the pictures they post wearing stuff from your fashion label and then repost those pictures on your Instagram handle.
This gives your prospects ideas on how to style the stuff brought from you and inspires them to make immediate purchases. It can be a win-win for social media users looking for a chance to get noticed or featured by a fashion brand on Instagram.
6. Invest In Instagram Ads
While it may seem like the deadbeat way to reach out to your target customers, Instagram ads necessities monetary investments. Instagram Ads campaigns can feature various formats- image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, and even Stories Ads.
Brands that wish to promote a single product often run an image ad or video advert. However, brands that are set to launch new collections or a bunch of products often opt for carousel ads or Instagram stories ads to drive sales.
7. Product Tagging is Crucial
Instagram is one of the most shoppable social media platforms because of the unique ability of tagging products that it allows its sellers. Sellers can tag the products as they appear in new posts and can even add tags to old ones. Users find it useful to tag up to five products in a post.
When users click on a tagged product, they are led to a separate landing page from where they can buy that particular product. Instagram sellers connect a product catalog to their profile and link its contents to the products featured in their visual content.
Start Using Instagram For eCommerce And Increase Your Sales
Visually captivating nature of Instagram content allows brands to be creative in their marketing effort on the channel. A plethora of features and filters will enable enough freedom to fashion brands that use it to entice potential customers from the target marketing segment.
That is why most brands around the world want to use Instagram to market their online store.
Even the customer’s love for Instagram as a shopping platform is justified with opportunities to buy their favorite items with a single click.
We hope that the tips and tricks discussed above help you showcase your fashion brand in the right light, engage your customers, and scale optimally. Strategize the way you use these Instagram marketing tactics to capture your target customers and improve your ROI.
