Discover Instagram Tips for Boosting Your Local Business

Often small local businesses make the mistake of assuming that Instagram is not the right place for them. They think that Instagram is an effective marketing platform for mega organizations having millions of followers or e-commerce businesses that are dealing with huge quantities of products. Fortunately, Instagram is a versatile and vibrant marketing platform for all kinds of businesses. It has over 1 billion MAUs and a chunk of those users are local businesses. When you promote your local business here, you could expose your company to a brand new audience. This way you could broaden your reach and boost foot traffic to your local company.

Gradually Instagram is shifting its attention even more than before on local businesses and this is quite evident while browsing through https://www.searchenginejournal.com. The article on SEJ claims that in early March 2019, Instagram has initiated the launch of a novel in-app feature called the ‘Local Business Profile Pages’. It is believed that Instagram’s local business pages seem to be somewhat similar to the Local Knowledge Panels of Google. With growing importance to local businesses on Instagram let us explore some effective Instagram tips to promote your local business on this robust social media platform.

Focus on Word-of-Mouth Marketing Along with Instagram

Conventional local businesses depend immensely on word-of-mouth. For example, suppose your local business offers handcrafted patio furniture. A customer purchases your handcrafted furniture and places it on his patio, his family, neighbors, and close friends are invited for a get-together. When they come over to his house and like the furniture and ask where he got the stuff, your customer would be mentioning your business. Then you would find these interested buyers heading to your doorstep.

On Instagram word-of-mouth works literally the same way. A client buys your product. Then he posts a photo of that product on Instagram and he even tags your business in the picture. His fans, friends, and followers would see his Instagram post and check out your furniture business. This way your local furniture business is exposed to a brand new audience.

When happy customers post pictures with your products, those pictures are referred to as User-Generated content. This sort of content creates a trust for your business in the minds of your prospective customers. A customer picture with your product is proof enough of your product’s quality and authenticity.

According to Statista, around 31 percent of consumers in the United States browse through relevant user-generated content before going out shopping. The best way of generating more such content highlighting your local business; you simply need to ask for it from your customer. Your fully-satisfied customers would be too happy to share such pictures. This way, you could obtain a lot of organic traffic to your business. However, you may even get in touch with services such as Like4Like for the instant addition of a whole lot of likes to your Instagram posts in your account.

Consider Participating with the Community.

As a small local business, you must make it a point to become an integral part of your precise community attending and even contributing whole-heartedly to local functions and events. One great way of promoting your local business on this vibrant social media platform is building a robust online community just for your business and participating actively for building strong long-lasting relationships with your customers. Remember when you build an online community, your audience would feel good about it.

Ensure That You Are Promoting the Local Lifestyle

As Instagram is purely an image-sharing social media platform, your content must necessarily be captivating enough to grab user attention. We know that Instagram users are continuously being bombarded with advertisements and pictures of products in their feeds as such they are becoming somewhat uninterested and desensitized to them. The best thing would be to highlight your local lifestyle instead of forcibly pushing your products.

Local lifestyle does not imply that you must restrict yourself to tourist hot spots in and around your town, instead, you could focus on the kind of life your customers are actually leading post the purchase of your product. Share pictures that give your audience a glimpse into the kind of life they desire. You may choose to incorporate some important local landmarks in all these pictures for promoting your local pride even further and making pictures instantaneously recognizable to all the local shoppers.

Conclusion

Instagram is not limited to e-commerce businesses only. It is a robust marketing and promotion platform for local businesses too. If you follow the above-mentioned tips, you would soon come across new customers who would be visiting your shop from near and far.