Instagram is a powerful tool for businesses, but you must know how to promote a business on Instagram the right way to get the most out of the platform.
Ignite Visibility’s Senior Social Media Strategist, Josh Rohr, shares 16 proven strategies to help you effectively promote your business on Instagram.
What We’ll Cover:
- Why You Need to Advertise on Instagram
- How to Use Instagram for Business: 16 Tips to Promote Your Business
- Content Creation: Making Engaging IG Posts for Small Businesses
- Case Studies of Successful Instagram Campaigns
- Benefits of Promoting a Business on Instagram
- FAQs: How to Promote on Instagram
Expert Insights on How to Use Instagram for Business
Instagram remains one of the most popular social media platforms, especially for more visually oriented users. Businesses of all types can benefit from an Instagram boost strategy to connect with potential customers while standing out from the competition.
If you have highly visual content and a target audience that’s likely to respond to that content, I definitely recommend Instagram for your marketing efforts. It’s particularly great for publishing short-form video content that captures users’ attention with brief videos, complementing longer-form YouTube videos and other content.
By optimizing your profile, images, and videos to perform their best on the platform, you can quickly discover how to promote your business on Instagram with an effective strategy. Consistency is key here, as you’ll want to post regularly to engage both viewers and the algorithm and maximize visibility.
Why You Need to Advertise on Instagram
With over 1.65 billion users, Instagram offers unparalleled reach. Key benefits include:
- Engaged Users: 90% of users follow at least one brand, and 87% take action after seeing a product on Instagram.
- High ROI: Marketers consistently rank Instagram as the top platform for ROI.
- Targeting Precision: Instagram’s advanced audience segmentation makes it easy to reach the right users.
- Integrated Shopping: Instagram’s shop features enable seamless in-app purchases
Features to Help You Promote Your Business on Instagram
Grow your brand awareness and connect with audiences to driving conversions in the long term, with features such as:
- Reels: If you want to boost brand awareness and help people discover your brand to connect with new customers, use Instagram Reels, which are short-form videos that can easily capture new audiences.
- Carousels: Create a single post with several videos or images in a carousel, allowing you to form a narrative that can include product showcases, tutorials, or other content.
- Instagram Live: This feature allows businesses to host or participate in live Q&As and interviews or show how things work behind the scenes, lending more transparency and authenticity to your Instagram boost strategy.
- Interactive Stickers: Use quizzes, questions, and polls to engage audiences and show that you value their input, which can drive conversions.
How to Use Instagram for Business: 16 Tips to Promote Your Business
1. Create a Business Profile
Create an account on Instagram if you don’t have one, either by logging into the app or the Instagram website, and follow the prompts to create your account.
On the website, click on Profile on the bottom left menu and choose Edit Profile on the next page, or tap the 
icon in the app and select Edit Profile on the next screen there.
Tap on Switch to professional account at the bottom of the next page.
Tap Next and choose your business category, and confirm the selection by tapping Switch to professional account.
Choose Business and tap Next. Add your business’s contact details or skip this step.
Finish setting up your account by following the next prompts, and connect your account to your business’s Facebook page if you have one.
2. Start Optimizing Your Business Profile
Craft an engaging, keyword-optimized bio. The ideal bio will be concise and descriptive, giving your audiences a clear picture of your brand while promoting your business. However, be sure not to stuff your keywords; naturally integrate them into your description.
Consider hashtags to be keywords based on what your ideal audience and competitors use.
- Include alt-text descriptions to your photos to boost your position in search results.
- Post consistently to keep followers engaged and look at the data relating to what people like the most to inform future content creation.
- Leverage Stories and Reels for various content, as these post types often have the best engagement rates.
Check out this optimized profile from Letterfolk’s page, which includes a brief description with some hashtag keywords, a link to the parent company’s Instagram profile, and a link to other sites and profiles, along with Highlights, Reels, and Tagged posts to connect with audiences.
3. Focus on Your Branding
Consider two key visual elements: Your profile picture and a defined brand identity.
Choose a profile picture that includes your logo and include consistent brand messaging in your profile. Your posts could also have a consistent color scheme and logo inclusion to further establish a clear brand identity.
To make sure your profile picture looks good on all devices, see how it looks on both desktop and mobile screens.
A good profile pic will work with the 110×110 px resolution on mobile and the 180×180 px resolution on desktop screens.
4. Use Clickable Links and Link-in-Bio Tools
In learning how to advertise your business on Instagram, it’s also important to drive more traffic to your website and other platforms. You can do so using clickable links and certain link-in-bio tools like Linktree.
Linktree can link to many elements, including your main website, blogs, social media channels, and even specific items like free ebook downloads and other content. In short, this can help with cross-promotion efforts, which we’ll explore more below.
Some alternatives to Linktree you can try include:
- Shorby: This is widely considered the best dedicated link alternative to Linktree, allowing you to easily compile all of your business’s links.
- Pallyy: Another option you can try is Pallyy, which offers a free trial version of its premium platform that comes with various added features, such as a social media scheduler, analytics, and inbox tracker.
- Replug: In addition to bio links, you can use Replug to manage all of your links and create a white-label tool that best fits your brand. A free trial is also available for this platform.
5. Include High-Quality Visuals
As a highly visual platform, the quality of your images and videos can win or lose followers with advertising and posts, so you’ll want to ensure you’re incorporating top-quality visuals.
For instance, all photographs should be clear and encourage people not only to click on the post but to share it with their own audiences. Meanwhile, infographics, charts, and other images should include familiar colors and branding that is distinct to your brand.
If you can, include your logo in the corner of image posts to further establish them as yours. With consistent quality and visual cues, your followers and new target audiences will come to recognize your brand and associate it with great content.
Want to learn how to make engaging IG posts for small business pages? Here are some tools that can help:
- Canva: One popular and easy-to-use design tool is Canva, which allows you to optimize existing images or create new ones with social media templates for Instagram Posts, Reels, and Stories, along with other platforms.
- Snappa: You can also try Snappa, which also makes it easy to create all types of graphics for social media and other content. Using this tool, you can optimize images using presets based on Instagram’s dimensions.
- VistaCreate: This free design tool has thousands of templates to use, including ones to help create visuals for Instagram. Additionally, it gives you access to a massive library of design elements and assets.
6. Create a Variety of Content
No one wants to see the same post types over and over. Variation is critical and should include video and images.
Your content topics should revolve around your target audience and what they want to see. You should also look at your analytics to determine what resonates with them regarding format and subjects.
If businesses want to learn how to promote a business on Instagram, you’ll need to do more than just feed posts. Play with Stories and Reels. Reels get a lot of attention, as users spend a cumulative of over 17.6 million hours watching them daily. The pros of Reels include more video editing tools and effects versus Stories. Plus, Reels can be part of your Explore page and are available to all Instagram users.
Not sure which content to use when determining how to advertise your company on Instagram? Here is a brief breakdown of each main content type:
- Posts: These are traditional Instagram posts that comprise either images or videos. They’re ideal for posting on a regular basis if you want to create a permanent library that grows with your presence.
- Stories: A more temporary option, Stories can connect more urgently and directly with audiences. They’re perfect for establishing more authenticity in the moment with some spontaneity over conventional curated posts.
- Reels: These are videos that can be up to 60 minutes, that may include stickers, audio, and effects. Reels can appear both on Instagram and Facebook to extend your reach to both platforms.
- Carousels: If you want to post up to 20 images at a time, carousels allow you to do so. For example, you might want to use a carousel post to show off a collection of related products.
To get some ideas for how to make engaging IG posts for small businesses or even specific business models, try looking at some competitors and see what content drives the most engagement.
7. Focus on Longer-Form Video Content
While Reels and other short-form content are instrumental in showing you how to promote a business on Instagram with concise videos, you can also use long-form content to build a connection with audiences on this platform.
Specifically, you can post long-form content up to 60 minutes long using Instagram Video, which now incorporates what used to be Instagram TV (IGTV). This feature is useful for developing all kinds of content that short-form videos won’t cover, such as:
- Webinars
- Extensive how-to guides
- Testimonials
- Q&A sessions
- Brand stories
- Behind-the-scenes looks at your company
- Interviews
- Product or service introductions and explainers
Pro Tip: To make the most of your content, repurpose Q&As and webinars or other long-form content into shorter clips. You can then share these clips via Instagram Reels or Stories along with other platforms like YouTube Shorts and Facebook.
8. Write Engaging Captions
To establish a strong connection with your audience, your captions should use language that appeals to your target market, incorporate popular relevant hashtags, and be short and succinct to get your point across quickly.
You can also include a CTA at the end of your caption to encourage viewers to take direct action after engaging with your content.
Don’t forget emojis when appropriate to use, as they can add a visual element to your captions that makes them even more impactful. However, you should only use them sparingly to add some “spice” to your posts and keep them fun and relatable.
9. Leverage Hashtag Campaigns (But Don’t Overuse Them)
Targeted hashtags can significantly amplify engagement by making your posts discoverable to users.
You can also add those that are trending and have relevance to your brand. Another hashtag strategy would be to participate in national days or holidays.
Use Hashtagify to uncover what’s popular. Here are a few more tips:
- Look at competitor posts for ideas
- Limit them to three words
- Use between 3 and 5 per post
Just don’t overdo it with hashtags—too many could over-optimize and overwhelm your audiences, potentially coming off as spammy.
10. Engage in Advanced Optimization
There are many components you can use to fully optimize your content. Specifically, one effective method is to add music that hooks viewers audially.
Some easy wins to optimize your posts include tagging locations and adding alt text to images. Every post can enable you to tag its target location to optimize it locally, while alt text can provide more context for images to help people find them in searches.
Other elements to incorporate include user tags and keywords in titles, captions, and other text content.
11. Post at the Most Optimal Times
Try experimenting to identify the best times to post on Instagram. Look at engagement metrics and see when audiences are viewing, liking, commenting, and sharing most frequently.
Keep in mind that the weekends are often best for some audiences, depending on the kinds of followers you have. Some people may spend more time scrolling when they have time off from work on Saturdays and Sundays.
12. Cross-Promote on Different Platforms
Spread your content around by cross-promoting on different platforms. To be efficient, you can use social media scheduling tools.
Tweak captions for each platform to adapt to its style. For instance, while you might be lighthearted and humorous on Instagram, with emojis that appeal to that playfulness, a more formal tone could work better on your Facebook page, or the language could change based on the age of each platform’s respective audiences.
If you want to know how to use Instagram for small business promotion across platforms, here are some scheduling tools you can use:
- Hootsuite: This social media management tool can help you schedule posts on multiple platforms along with many other aspects of social media marketing. Use it to post, measure engagement, and optimize your Instagram boost strategy and overarching social media campaign.
- Buffer: In addition to using this tool for scheduling posts on your social media platforms, you can use Buffer’s various social media marketing tools to optimize campaigns and see organic audience growth.
- Sprout Social: This all-in-one social media management solution can help you glean valuable insights into your audience, publish posts, and develop influencer marketing strategies.
13. Follow Accounts Relevant to Your Industry
Since Instagram has such a diverse user base, your target audience is there. You just need to find them. One way to do this is by following reputable and esteemed accounts in your industry.
Those you follow should have an established presence on Instagram. For example, if you’re in the healthcare technology industry, you’d want to follow an associate like HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems). It’s a respected and credible association.
But don’t just follow them—engage. Share their posts, like them, and even comment when the content has synergies with your brand. Doing so could support how you promote on Instagram in two ways. First, the profile could follow you back, which amplifies your presence. Second, their followers could find your comment interesting and head to your profile to follow.
14. Form Meaningful Influencer Partnerships
To start with, it’s important to find the right influencer partner based on your niche and budget. Ideally, you would find an influencer with a loyal following and whose values align with your brand’s.
While you might want to target the big influencers with 100,000 or more followers, consider going with micro-influencers in your niche who are more cost-effective while reaching a potentially even more loyal following.
There are also plenty of ways to go about working with influencers. Examples of collaborations can include product placements, paid partnerships, joint livestreams, giveaways, and more.
One example of a successful partnership was between influencer Theresa Laine and Logitech, which promoted a Valentine’s Day discount for Logitech customers through Laine’s expansive audience.
15. Hosting a Contest or Giveaway
Instagram also makes it easy to host contests and giveaways using hashtags and other features. For instance, you can get your followers to enter a contest by subscribing, liking, or otherwise engaging with your content, which could help you maximize your reach while giving audiences something in return.
Giveaways can also encourage people to connect with you more frequently if they can expect to get something of value out of regular interaction.
16. Run Paid Promotions on Instagram
Taking advantage of paid promotions is a critical part of learning how to promote your brand on Instagram. These include Boosts and Instagram Ads, both of which can help expand your reach and connect with your target audience.
- Boosts: Quickly convert existing posts into ads to reach a broader audience. Boosts are ideal for engagement-focused campaigns but offer limited customization compared to ads.
- Instagram Ads: Created through Meta Ads Manager, these ads provide advanced targeting and creative options, allowing for tailored campaigns that align with specific goals like website traffic, lead generation, or sales.
Ad Targeting Options:
Instagram offers precise audience targeting through:
- Demographics: Age, gender, and location.
- Interests: Based on user activity.
- Custom Audiences: Retarget previous website visitors or app users.
- Lookalike Audiences: Target people similar to your best customers.
- Language: Tailor ads to specific languages.
Ad Formats:
Instagram supports various ad formats, including:
- In-feed ads: Appear in users’ main feed.
- Reels ads: Engage viewers with short-form, full-screen videos.
- Stories ads: Immersive, full-screen ads displayed between Stories.
- Carousel ads: Multiple images or videos users can swipe through.
- Shopping ads: Showcase products and drive purchases.
- Explore ads: Reach users browsing Instagram’s Explore tab.
Content Creation: Making Engaging IG Posts for Small Businesses
Small businesses may need some guidance to get started. Here’s some of my favorite tips:
- Keep a Content Calendar: One way to maintain regular engagement among audiences is to develop and maintain a content calendar, which will help ensure you’re posting several times a week.
- Engage Directly With Audiences: Don’t be shy with your audiences; consistently build personal connections by commenting, replying to direct messages, and giving shoutouts to some of your loyal followers.
- Share Behind-the-Scenes Footage: Show your team or processes at work, potentially showcasing employees and putting a human face to your brand. This kind of footage really shows that your company comprises people, not just an entity.
- Showcase Products: Show off various products, such as collections of similar offerings. These videos could highlight use cases, features, and benefits to entice more people to consider buying.
- Post User-Generated Content: You can create a branded hashtag related to a particular product and encourage people to post videos of themselves interacting with that product in creative ways. You can then reshare that content and use it to further extend your reach with Instagram marketing.
- Utilize Interactive Features in Stories and Reels: Instagram offers various interactive features such as polls, quizzes, or questions to enrich and diversify content on the platform. Experimenting with these features could help you determine how to advertise your company on Instagram using various posts while driving more engagement.
- Focus on Visually Appealing Posts: Implement high-quality images and video, with plenty of lighting in photos or video footage to keep them bright and balanced. When appropriate, also use filters that enhance your visuals while still keeping them authentic.
- Write Captions That Tell a Story: Construct a compelling narrative with your post captions, appealing to your audience’s emotions while conveying a clear message. You should also end with an enticing call to action.
Case Studies of Successful Instagram Campaigns
There are plenty of brands out there demonstrating how to use Instagram for business, including the following great examples:
Salesforce
The brand behind one of the top customer relationship management (CRM) solutions has used Instagram to great effect, maintaining engagement through a wide range of posts.
Salesforce posts footage of events and the staff behind them, with entertaining explainer videos and ads featuring influencers and even celebrities, with recognizable branding across all of its content.
From Reels to image posts promoting its various products and solutions, Salesforce has taken full advantage of the platform to maximize reach and build meaningful connections with potential customers.
Today, the Salesforce profile has over 250,000 followers and continues to grow.
Duolingo
A good example of a brand that knows how to poke fun at itself and use humor to its advantage is the language-learning app Duolingo.
Duolingo has fun with its notoriety around its frequent push notifications and has developed a defined mascot, that instantly recognizable green bird Duo, that makes plenty of playful appearances in it the company’s many video and image posts.
For instance, Duolingo partnered with Chipotle to show how Duo is “just like us,” as he stops into a Chipotle to buy a meal.
Other content features Duolingo taking part in themed trends like a choreographed Squid Game dance ahead of the release of the show’s second season, along with image posts highlighting top languages.
FAQs: How to Promote on Instagram
1. Is there a cost for Instagram for business?
No, there is no cost to have a business profile. You’ll only pay if you want to advertise on the site. Also, if you use Instagram Shopping and their native checkout, you may have selling fees.
2. Is Instagram good for small businesses?
Yes, small businesses can succeed on Instagram by cultivating a community and sharing quality content. It’s worth the time investment with all the features available and its high ROI. Knowing how to promote a small business on Instagram is essential, as is knowing how to make engaging IG posts for a small business to help it stand apart.
3. What are the most important features of Instagram for business?
Professional accounts offer Instagram Insights, Instagram Shopping, and Instagram Direct. These are crucial for understanding demographics, selling directly on the site, and having a direct way to communicate with customers.
4. What is the best way to improve your Instagram business profile?
You may think, “I wonder how to tune up my Instagram business page.” Well, there are many ways to do so. Including effective branding and visuals, adding links to your bio, and figuring out how to add your business location on Instagram in different places could help you get the most from your profile.
Learn How to Promote a Business on Instagram With Ignite Visibility
Promoting and advertising your business on Instagram has great value. It can yield brand awareness, loyal fans, and revenue. To do it well requires expertise and consistency, and we can help.
Our social media experts can support any of your social media marketing goals by:
- Developing a plan to get the attention of your target audience
- Optimizing ads for the maximum number of clicks
- Identifying the right influencers for your business
- And more
Ready to start using Instagram for business the right way? Reach out today to get started.
