Instagram Marketing - Optimize Your Instagram Profile
Strutta recently released Tagwin, a new platform to make it easy to run a giveaway on Instagram. Check out Tagwin today, and give it a try with our special launch giveaway of One Free Contest!
Your Instagram profile is your brand’s home on the social network, sometimes the first thing that Instagrammers see when they find you, plays a role in search optimization of your brand, and can serve as a jumping off point for users who are interested in finding out more about you, your products and services. Below, you can find a series of helpful tips on how to optimize various aspects of your profile.
1. Username
First you will need to select a username for your business on Instagram. If you were able to get your exact business name as Strutta was (eventually) able to, great!
If not, Social Media Week advises using your brand name followed by another word, as opposed to preceded by - “Many brands might try to put “the” or “real” at the start of their handle to differentiate their brand, but ideally you want your username to begin the same way that people will type your brand’s name into search.”
Not able to get the username you wanted? Set a weekly or monthly reminder to go back and check for it to see if it’s become available.
2. Display Picture
As with any manifestation of your visual brand, it’s important that your display picture is a strong representation of your company’s logo, logomark, or other recognizable symbol of your company.
At the time this guide is being written, for Strutta’s Instagram profile we’ve slightly modified our logotype for our Instagram display picture. The addition of colourful graphics means that our display picture is more likely to stand out in search results or a user’s feed.
3. Name
Alex Khan has a great recommendation when it comes to your “Name” on your Instagram profile: utilize keywords related to your brand, product/service that will potentially be searched for on Instagram to increase your chances of coming up in a search.
For example, instead of just using “Strutta” as our name, Strutta uses “Strutta Contests & Sweepstakes” so-as to include keywords that may be searched for.
4. Business Information
It’s a great idea to connect your business’ Instagram account to your Facebook profile for many reasons, but one is to unlock the additional information you can display about your company. (This is in addition to the profile and post analytics that you’ll unlock by doing so.)
Connecting to your Facebook profile can be done by editing your Instagram Profile and authenticating with a Facebook account that manages your company’s Facebook page. In order to complete these steps, you must have an Instagram Business Profile.
5. Bio/Description
Use this section to briefly summarize what you do, what it is that you can offer to people who follow your Instagram account, and/or just your brand’s tagline. Keep in mind that attention spans on social media are often short so don’t go on for too long!
Strutta has a brief description of what we do and how we do it, and also makes extensive use of #Hashtags due to our related functionality on Instagram. Keep in mind that although hashtags can drive interest amongst viewers and potentially inspire searches, they are not actually linked in the mobile Instagram app; only when viewing an Instagram profile from the web.
6. URL
Your URL space can be used either as a way to drive traffic to your main marketing properties on the web, or as the one click-able link anywhere on your Instagram account to send viewers to another related property.
Although some experts recommend tracking this link, we prefer to leave the link unshortened, so that viewers are able to understand where they will be taken by tapping/clicking. Keep in mind as well that if you are linking to your own web property, you will be able to track traffic from Instagram via your Analytics platform.
Additionally, an increasingly common practice is to use the fact that this link is clickable/”tap-able” to connect your viewers with other content outside of Instagram. Strutta does so by linking to the most recently featured promotion on our account.
7. Contact
The “Contact Options” section of the “Edit Profile” menu in Instagram allows you to input different methods of contact for your business: email, phone and street.
Email is an important touch point for almost any business, and should be included in your profile. Include a phone number if you make one generally available, but as Strutta does not, we do not include one in our profile. Including your street address is a great opportunity if you are a brick-and-mortar/storefront business with a main location to feature, as Instagram users can utilize this portion of your profile to easily pull up your business in their native maps application.
