The right platform for visible networking
This app can do more than show beautiful photos: Instagram is one of the most important resources for many SMEs at the moment. You can stay in touch with your customers, network with other companies and even generate sales. We have found out for you what opportunities there are in the social network.
Support and networking
Initiatives have now emerged in many cities to support local and small businesses. There is sure to be an association like this in your area too – otherwise, you can just find one yourself. You should also take a look at the hashtags from your region – there are currently great promotions there too.
Important: Give back the support! Otherwise, such an action will quickly go nowhere. This can mean that you comment and like posts from other companies yourself, maybe even share them if the content could be relevant for you or your customers. If you have been mentioned positively in stories or contributions, you should share this in your story and thank you for the support.
Tip: Learn how others do it
Many of your colleagues and competitors will now also be using Instagram. The best time to learn from each other. Let the content inspire you. But be careful: don’t just copy! Give the ideas your touch. Nobody wants to see simply stolen content.
Present shopping window online
Small shops have reopened, but many customers don’t yet dare to go into town or simply cannot for health reasons. Either way, far fewer people are seeing what your business has to offer right now. That is why you need to bring the offering to customers’ living rooms. Such a virtual shop window can be easily created in the feed on Instagram. Simply put your products in front of you one by one – you should start with the long-running hits. Take photos, short explanatory videos and don’t forget the price in the description. It’s great when you can tell little stories with your content. For example, the new item of clothing looks great on a walk or how easy gardening is with the special tool. You know the needs and problems of your customers best – take advantage of this. A large online shop just can’t do that.
As with your real shop window, you should pay attention to an appealing look.
Alternatively, you can also create a real shop on Instagram. To do this, they have to add their products to Facebook using a service like Shopify.
Quickly informed with stories and live
A piece of news or a contribution does not always fit into the elaborately designed feed. But Instagram developed the stories for this. This content is only displayed for 24 hours but can then be permanently placed in a highlight collection on the profile page.
With a live or small video, you can address your customers directly in the stories. Here you are welcome to get personal, tell about everyday life and also be a little humorous.
Instagram offers a variety of stickers with different content for the stories. A great tool, for example, is the survey – you can involve your community and collect valuable mood images. Let off steam. Almost anything is allowed in the stories.
Multiple-use
Of course, you don’t have the time to fill all of your channels with individual content. You don’t have to. Since you can reach different target groups with different social platforms, you can reuse your content. A post about your company is just as relevant on Instagram as it is on Facebook. With the “share directly” function, your Instagram posts are automatically published on Twitter or Facebook. You can also use Instagram to tease the content of your blog and thus attract new readers.