10 Best Ways to Use Instagram for Your Small Business
Instagram wields a kind of power that could result in great benefits for your small business. The best thing about it is that the big leagues aren’t the only ones who can utilize this social media app to their advantage. In fact, Instagram is one of the best online marketing strategies for small business owners today. And there are many ways to use Instagram for your small business.
By knowing the different features that Instagram has to offer and trying new strategies, you could also launch your own Instagram marketing tactics to success. Not sure how to do it right? Check out these tips on using Instagram for your small business.
Cultivate a following
Gain followers organically and cultivate a relationship with them. Direct your Instagram posts to them and ensure that these posts are relevant to their lives. This way, you can gain their trust and establish your brand. You don’t need to upload photos everyday, but make sure that you show up on their feed consistently.
Have a mix of fun images and photos from your own business
Come up with a list of different types of pictures that you can upload. Memes, cute photos from other users, lifestyle photos, product photos — it’s up to you what you think would work for your brand. The important thing is to create enough variety so that your followers won’t get saturated with the same kind of images.
Use videos and Boomerang
Instagram has been more flexible, and it’s not exclusive to photos anymore. Make your feed more interesting with videos that are nicely done or by using Boomerang.
Create your own Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is gaining some traction, so just like videos, it would be best to try using this feature as well. Make your followers curious and wanting more; be extra creative.
Engage with your followers and other users
Reply to comments left by other users, like posts that are relevant to your brand, or follow people back. Always make it a two-way street; this will make customers remember you more easily because there was a direct and personal interaction.
Host contests
Come up with a fun contest on Instagram and make sure to associate it with a specific hashtag. This will increase your engagement as the number of your followers will also go up. You don’t need to give super expensive prizes; gift cards or special discounts would be fine.
Optimize your IG profile
Include sufficient information about your brand on your Instagram profile. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy paragraph; try to encapsulate what you are about in one sentence. Don’t forget to put the link to your website too.
Link and promote your IG on other social media
Cross-post on other social media platforms and let your followers know that you are also active on Instagram. You might want to hire a virtual assistant to handle social media management for you because this task will require some effort and time.
Tap influencers
Find influencers who will serve as your brand ambassadors. You don’t need a popular personality with millions of followers. Sometimes the most effective influencers only have thousands of followers, but their following is pretty solid and can give you conversions.
Take a shot at Instagram Ads
For a small business, Instagram Ads is affordable. It lets you reach a wider and more specific audience. Getting started is also simple; you won’t get lost in a maze full of technicalities.
Instagram is definitely an awesome platform for small businesses to be known, and it doesn’t cost much even when you consider advertising on it.
Next: How To Promote Your Small Business On Facebook In 7 Easy Steps
20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.
Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!
READ MOREIs Your Webpage Mobile Friendly? Here Are 3 Ways to Check
If you don’t know whether your website is mobile-friendly or not, you are in big trouble. A lot of people all over the world are turning to their mobiles more than their desktops, so poor experience on your website through mobile phones or tablets will reflect badly on your brand. You’ll lose potential revenue, making your online business marketing strategies futile. You’ll get a lower website ranking in Google, so any SEO efforts you have will only fail to pay off.
Nevertheless, there are easy ways for you to check if your website is mobile-friendly.
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Test on your desktop browser
This is the quickest method to check the mobile-responsiveness of your website. Simply bring up your site on your browser and using your mouse, drag the right side of your browser window to the left until you can’t make it any smaller.
If your website still looks fine, that’s good news. However, if there are sections that have been cut off, content that seem jumbled, or icons overlapping, that is a clear sign that your site isn’t mobile-friendly. This test isn’t super reliable, though, because there are websites that adapt its interface by detecting the device that’s being used rather than the size of the browser.
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Take the mobile-friendly test
Google has a tool, the Mobile Friendly Test, to get this done in as fast as ten seconds. All you need to do is paste the URL of your website and submit it for testing. It will do a quick scanning of your website and tell at the end of the test if the site is easy to use on mobile. If your website is not mobile-friendly, the tool will give you reasons why.
Some of the most common issues include:
- Text is too small to read
- Content is wider than the mobile screen
- Links are too close together
These may seem like a minor nuisance, but they greatly affect a user’s experience when navigating your website. People would just likely leave without exploring the pages or reaching their goal on your site.
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Utilize Google Search Console
Formerly known as the Google Webmaster Tools, the Google Search Console is a nifty application that can test your website’s mobile usability. It offers a more in-depth analysis than the Mobile Friendly Test. Anything that could have been missed by the Mobile Friendly Test will be seen on the results produced by the Google Search Console.
Apart from insights, Google also provides some recommendations that will help you avoid the most common mistakes with regard to the mobile-responsiveness of websites. These issues typically include:
- Mobile-only 404 errors
- Faulty redirects
- Slow mobile pages
- Content that can’t be played
- Irrelevant cross-links
Some of these require technical expertise, so it’s best to seek advice from specialists. This way, you can guarantee an effective solution to ensure a mobile-friendly site.
You can do these things on your own, but implementing solutions will require an expert. Finding a virtual assistant who is experienced in such would answer your problems and save you bucks.
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How to Promote Your Small Business on Facebook in 7 Easy Steps
Facebook has been revolutionary not just because it is able to fulfill certain functions in our personal lives but because it can catapult even small businesses to the top. If you’re an entrepreneur and haven’t started tapping the potential of online business marketing, you are missing out on revenue and bigger opportunities.
Before you look for a competent social media virtual assistant to help with your Facebook marketing initiatives, here are a few basic things that you should know in order to effectively promote your business on this social media platform.
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Create a Facebook page.
A Facebook page is a lot like a regular Facebook profile, but it is created specifically for brands and businesses. Make sure to upload a professional-looking logo as the primary photo of your page and choose a cover photo that looks good and shows what your business is about. Don’t forget to use a Facebook URL that is easy to remember and unique to your brand. Facebook URLs usually appear in this format: www.facebook.com/(yourbrandhere).
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Optimize your profile.
Write comprehensive information about your business and be as descriptive as you can. List down the products or services that you are offering and include keywords that customers will likely use when they search on the internet. Don’t forget to add a link to your website as well.
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Share relevant and interesting content to your followers.
Social media management means that you need to post content to your page on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be multiple times per day, but it is important to make your Facebook followers feel the presence of your brand. Come up with different types of posts — photos, videos, GIFs, and articles so that people can enjoy a variety of content from you.
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Engage with your audience.
Reply to their comments, say your thanks, and if you can, follow up with a question. When people message you privately, make sure to respond to their queries as soon as you can. Be courteous and use a friendly tone when communicating with them.
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Expand your network.
Facebook is basically for social networking so don’t hesitate to build your connections through your Facebook friends and Facebook groups where you can find your target audience. Invite your friends to follow your page and participate in industry-related Facebook groups. Join conversations where you can properly establish your authority to gain the trust of the members.
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Check Insights.
Facebook Insights is packed with meaty information, which you should use to improve your marketing strategies and get more conversions for your business. Using this tool, you’ll know the main type of audience you have and the kind of content that your followers are engaging with the most.
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Use Facebook Ads.
Traditional marketing requires you to spend a huge amount of money to reach an audience, whereas Facebook Ads enables you to target a specific segment of people for a fraction of the cost. Take advantage of this affordability to increase your page engagement. Whether your objective is to get more page likes or to boost brand awareness, you can do so by utilizing the paid options on Facebook.
There is a multitude of opportunities in social media marketing that it is a must to put up your brand on the relevant platforms. Make sure that you utilize the right strategies as well so that your efforts will result in actual conversions.
Next: 5 Ways Email Opt-ins Can Help Grow Your Small Business
20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.
Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!
READ MORE5 Ways Email Opt-ins Can Help Grow Your Small Business
Your online marketing strategies are dependent with each other, and one of the aspects that you need to work on is email marketing.
Lots of successful businesses have realized the power of email and how it can effectively drive customers to action. If you’re still not getting any emails out to your target audience, you are clearly missing out on a numerous opportunities.
How can email opt-ins help in growing my business?
Email opt-ins can boost your business in so many ways. Here are five of them:
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Increase brand recognition and credibility
You make yourself look professional and credible to your audience by incorporating your logo, tagline, brand colors, and other brand graphics in your email. However, more than the design of your email, you need to pay attention to its content as well. Providing relevant and valuable information will help you gain the trust of your audience. Moreover, when they see your brand in their inbox on a regular basis, they are more likely to remember who you are.
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Connect with your audience
Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch with your audience. It’s also more personal than, let’s say, a social media post. Hence, people feel more connected to your brand because there is this regular and personal correspondence between the two of you.
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Create new opportunities
These opportunities could be in the form of partnerships, media interviews, brand exposure, etc. Email marketing can even open a new stream of revenue for you. It only takes the right person to see your email, and this person might not actually be one of your subscribers but someone to whom your message was forwarded.
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Expand network
Building your mailing list allows you to reach a wider audience, and this means that more people will know your brand. Make sure to promote your email newsletters on your social media pages. Encourage them to sign up for a subscription by showing them the benefits of doing so. For instance, let them know that by subscribing to your emails, they can get first dibs on product releases or they can receive updates on exclusive discounts.
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Save money
By using email to communicate with your audience, you can lessen printing costs and even save the environment. You can also design a custom template for your newsletter and use this for every email you send. Now, that’s cost and time efficiency for you!
Challenges of getting opt-ins
Of course, before reaping these benefits, you need to build your own mailing list and ensure that your email audience is really the kind of people you need to reach. This can be a difficult task to accomplish since not everyone would be willing to give out their email addresses to anyone.
You can address this concern by creating a strong landing page design, which can entice people to sign up. It can also be done by ensuring solid online presence through different social media channels. You can enlist the help of a virtual assistant to handle social media management for you. This way, you can free your time for other important facets of your business.
Next: 6 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Hire A Virtual Assistant
20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.
Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!
READ MORE6 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Hire a Virtual Assistant
Running a small business may sound easy, but it’s actually a complicated matter that needs proper planning and execution to ensure the smoothness of operation.
There are times, however, that both business owners and employees may feel overworked and overwhelmed that they tend to look somewhere else for help. To give you an idea, here are 6 reasons why your small business should hire a virtual assistant.
Save money on rent and office supplies
Since you’ll be hiring VAs as your workforce, you won’t need to rent office space to accommodate your virtual employees. This allows you to save money on office rent, office supplies, and computers and software. Since your virtual staff will be working remotely, it’s expected that they already have their own computers, software, and internet connection as well.
Hiring VAs is cheaper in the long run
Generally speaking, the average salary of virtual assistants is lower compared to office employees. But what really makes it cheaper is that business owners are not obligated to pay for the benefits and taxes of VAs. This is considered a big cut in the costs of starting and maintaining a small business.
Save time and resources for training
Spending time and resources in training VAs is not a requirement. Usually, when a small business hires a VA, they already have the skillset and knowledge needed to work and contribute to the organization. Probably the only training a VA undergoes is connected with the specific tasks to be given, but for general knowledge on certain procedures, programs, and applications, it’s already expected from a VA.
VAs help the business grow
Aside from helping you out with the tasks you assign them, VAs are huge contributors to the growth of a business as well. By hiring a VA, managers and business owners have more time to focus on more important matters like new business opportunities or expansion opportunities that will greatly help a small business grow and succeed. Business owners can delegate different tasks to their VAs to allow them to attend meetings, seminars and other functions that will open doors to growth and expansion.
Social Media
There are VAs who are skilled in social media marketing and management. This means that as a business owner, you don’t need to spend time answering and managing your business’ social media accounts. This kind of task should be assigned to your VAs while you go and look for other opportunities and strategies your business may need in the near future.
VAs will handle the tedious administrative tasks
VAs are known for being patient, determined and organized. This is why VAs are hired to handle tedious tasks that no business owner or manager should be doing. These tasks include cleaning your inbox, sending emails to different customers and business partners, and gathering leads to name a few. These are time-consuming tasks that business owners should not waste their time on as they should be handling other concerns of the business.
The 6 reasons mentioned above on why your small business should hire a VA should be enough proof that hiring VAs is cost-effective and is proven to deliver excellent results for both your business and yourself as a business owner.
Next: 7 Best Tools For Small Business Owners
20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.
Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!
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