Have you ever glanced at your screentime logs on your phone? You know, the thing that lets you see how much time you spend on individual apps? If you haven’t, do it now! Take a look at Instagram – or any social media app, really. 

Phew, right!?

Now imagine being able to leverage all this time and attention spent on social media to bring your local business visibility. The possibilities are endless!

This is where practices such as SEO in digital marketing come in: they can meteorically boost your visibility on social media!

Intrigued yet? Keep reading to learn how you can promote your local business effectively on Instagram.  

Create a Unique Brand Identity for Yourself

The tricky thing about promoting yourself on Instagram is standing out. In all that noise and content – and cute cat pictures! – it’s crucial for you, as a local business, to create a unique brand identity for yourself.

Of course, this doesn’t happen in a day, and is not set in stone. 

Nonetheless, a clear sense of the tone and personality you’re aiming for should underlie every post you make. You’ll also be making these choices based on your target audience: do they want to see quirky content, or prefer earnest seriousness across the board?

Audiences want to engage with authentic content that adds value to the time they spend on the internet. Give them this with a unique voice, and they will stay. 

Engagement is Your Best Friend on Instagram

At its core, Instagram is a community that is built on mutual interaction and engagement. As a business, too, your presence on Instagram should emphasize and prioritize authentic and personalized engagement with your user base.  

This approach can be profoundly beneficial in the long run: you’ll get followers who want to be there and are eager to see and engage with your content. 

By engagement, we don’t simply mean posting regularly. 

Engage with your audience on a personal level: enter conversations through likes, comments, and shares. When such spaces are created on your own profile, engage with them consistently, thoughtfully, and warmly.

Variety Across Social Media Channels

When you enter into the world of social media, you’re likely to not restrict yourself to a single social media channel. By this, we mean it’s not just Instagram: you’re likely to want to maintain an active presence on other social media platforms as well.

When this is the case, it can be tempting to share the same information in the same way – through the same kinds of posts – on every platform. After all, you know what works and the message is clear this way. 

This, however, can be damaging to your social media presence across channels! 

Why?

Each social media platform is unique: it has its own language, dynamic, and expectations from users. Thus, it becomes imperative to strike a balance between sticking to your brand image and creating unique content that is specific to each social media platform. 

There are, of course, times when this is okay: if you’re hosting a sale or releasing a new product, the information is the same across the board. However, as a general rule, the more specific your posting strategy is to Instagram, the more effective it is bound to be!

The Upshot

Instagram allows you to engage in a warm, authentic, and personalized way with your target user base. It can also be tricky to get right: the strategies you employ must be well suited to your brand. This is where an agency like AdLift, with expertise in SEO and digital marketing, can help. They can tailor a strategy specific to Instagram for your local business so you can do what you do best: create.