Instagram Marketing - How to Make Money Online for Small Businesses

Instagram marketing is a skill on how to make money from the internet that small business people must master in today's online era. How about an Instagram marketing guide for small business sales and promotions? We created a guide to running Instagram marketing as a way to make income from the internet for small businesses.

Why should Instagram?

That's a question that comes to my mind when reading many digital marketing experts advising business owners to do Instagram marketing.

Instagram is the social media with the fastest growing users today and has the highest visitor engagement rate (a crucial metric on social media), which helps brands to grow and develop.

How do you do marketing on Instagram, especially for small businesses with all their limitations?

I collected practical and easy-to-run Instagram Marketing guide tips for small businesses from experience and references in various literature.

Before discussing these tips, one thing I want to emphasize is that Instagram is a social media platform that is perfect for small businesses with limited money, few resources, and not much experience, to make money online from the internet.

What is Instagram?

Instagram (IG) is a social media that provides a platform for users to share photos and videos for free.

Visuals are Instagram's way of conveying a message - “picture speaks a thousand words”.

Currently Facebook is the social media with the most users, but the growth of Facebook users is slowing down and tends to be stagnant compared to IG.

You can use Instagram to promote effectively visually.

1. Why is Instagram Suitable for Small Businesses

There are several reasons, I see that for you small entrepreneurs who are just starting a business, want to make money from the internet, IG is perfect as a platform for promotion and sales.

Instagram is the most popular social media platform in the world today. The number of users is growing very fast, is very popular among millennials (almost all urban millineal children have an IG account) and is a visual platform (photos and videos) that is suitable for Indonesians who love visuals more than reading.

Instagram is Free! There is no fee to join this social media platform, you only need a smartphone and data package to be able to join and have an IG account.

Instagram account set-up is very easy. You can definitely create an Instagram account, it's very easy, doesn't need special skills.

Instagram is integrated with Facebook and (maybe later) with Whattsapp. We all know that IG belongs to Facebook and both are integrated, campaigns on one platform can be connected to other platforms, so marketing campaigns can be more effective and cost-efficient.

With the above reasons, you are small entrepreneurs, there is no reason not to try and use IG as a tool for promotion and product sales, making money from the internet.

To be successful, you need to understand what Instagram Marketing is so that marketing with this platform is effective and efficient.

2. What is Instagram Marketing

Instagram marketing is a marketing method that you do through Instagram for promotional and educational purposes to increase sales of your business and business products.

Medium Instagram has characters, ways of working and features that are different from other media, so you need to learn about how this platform works.

The first step is to use a business account - business account - on Instagram. Business accounts provide many tracking features as well as analytical tools to analyze followers and monitor the performance of your brand online on this social media.

Also, make sure that the IG bio clearly includes who you are and other important information, such as your website, address and contact number (if needed), and what is no less important is the Call To Action.

How can your product reach more Instagram users?

One of them is important to understand how Algo Instagram works.

3. Instagram Algorithm, Why Important!

The algorithm is the “brains” behind Instagram that matters to your business.

There are 3 keys to Instagram Algo that you need to understand, namely:

• Engagement: The more people interact with IG posts by providing comments, likes, shares, the better your posts will rank on the IG homepage.
• Speed ​​of engagement: the more good interactions, but the faster the interactions occur, indicated by the number of shares, likes or comments, the better.
• Recency: Recent posts are better in the eyes of IG algo than old posts, which makes new posts easier to see.

By knowing, this algorithm will make you know what must be a priority and must be done in a marketing strategy via IG.

How to increase engagement with your IG account visitors, which you can do in several ways when posting, namely:

• Make a contest or quiz campaign posted with certain prizes provided that visitors must leave comments, shares or likes
• Make intriguing questions on Instagram posts when posting, so visitors are triggered to comment
• Post in busy online hours of your account visitors. You can get information about this from the results of analytics on Instagram, available for free for business accounts.
• Answer the comments that appear on IG. It is necessary to build a 'conversation' with his followers.

How to Add Followers?

The most effective way of promotion on social media is to increase followers on Instagram.

What are followers?

These are users who follow your Instagram account and every time you update, the update will automatically appear on the homepage of your followers.

The more followers of your IG account, the more likely it is that promotions will have a greater reach.

How do you add followers?

There is a way to buy followers and there is an organic way of followers.

Buying is a fast way to increase followers, but usually the quality of followers won't be good.

You can experiment with buying (in small amounts), then see the followers that you bought how their profile is. You will likely be disappointed because of the quality and profile of the followers you bought.

Organic, of course, has better quality, because the addition takes place naturally.

It's just that, everyone knows, the organic method is not easy and requires a lot of time and resources.

It needs the right strategy in adding followers organically, namely:

1. Update Quality Content Routinely

• At the end of the day, content is the King.
• With good content, your account will automatically be shared by many people.
• Apart from creating interesting content, we also have to be consistent in posting. Why have interesting content if you rarely post.

2. Use Hashtags in Posts

In creating a post, we should add hashtags or hashtags, which help you to increase followers. Our posts will be grouped by IG based on the hashtags we use. And hashtags are 'keywords' that visitors use when searching for content on IG. How to create hashtags, I will discuss separately later.

3. Instagram accounts don't get private

Making an IG account private means that people can't see posts. People have to wait for it to be confirmed. This will certainly slow down the addition of your followers. If you want to add followers more quickly, you should not have your account private.

4. Create Interesting Captions

Create interesting captions, which can make people follow our accounts. Making funny, wise, or interactive captions will attract people to follow. Not even a few followers repost our caption. How to make a caption, I will discuss it separately later.

5. Interaction with Followers

It is mandatory to build interactions and relationships with people who comment on posts that can make people interested in following our IG. If someone comments on a post, then don't miss it. You must reply to these comments or at least like them if you are unable to reply to comments.

6. Cross-Postings

Link IG Account with Other Social Media Accounts - cross postings.

To reach more people, we can integrate IG accounts with other social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. So that every time there is a new post on IG, it will also appear on our Facebook or Twitter account.

Tips for Writing Captions on Instagram:

• In every photo or video that you post on IG, you can write a comment or it is called a 'caption'.
• Caption is important. After the image or video, visitors will see a caption to read, reflect and then be triggered to comment or like or share your post.
• But what's more important is that captions help you place a CTA - Call To Action - that drives conversions, such as purchases or registrations.
• Because of its importance, you must think carefully, how to write an attractive caption.

Some tips for making captions are:

• Write a caption according to the content of the image or video. Relevance is important because the caption function supports content.
• Use the right hashtag in a proportionate amount and don't forget to use your brand's hashtag.
• Write a 'Question' or discount to encourage interaction with followers.
• Testimonials or quotes are a way to convey a touching message, but make sure they are relevant to the content.
• Write a Call To Action to encourage conversions with your business, if possible hook it with a 'sense of urgency' or 'sense of action'
• The initial sentence in the caption is very important because the sentence is readable by visitors, so try to write the main message here, while the sentence behind it must be read by clicking 'more'.
• Take advantage of capital letters, bold, questionable sentences or emojis to help you emphasize the sentence in the caption.
• Cut long sentences into several paragraphs so as not to tire your eyes reading long sentences.

How to Create a Hashtag

Why are hashtags important on Instagram?

When searching for information on IG, users will use certain hashtags to find the desired content. Hashtags can be likened to "keywords" in a search on a search engine.

When using hashtags, IG account posts will appear in three places, namely:

1. Instagram feed posts;
2. Instagram stories and, 
3. IGTV.

IG displays search results with hashtags in two windows, namely: popular posts (Top) and recent posts (Recent). What appears first are the popular posts, then the latest posts.

Although I can put up to 30 hashtags for 1 post, my advice is to use a maximum of 15 to 20 hashtags to make it more effective.

How about tips on using hashtags?

• Hashtags is relevant to the content of the content. Don't make hashtags unrelated to photos or videos on IG
• Research popular IG hashtags for your content. There are tools you can use to search for popular hasgtags.
• Do not use excessive hashtags even though IG provides up to 30 hashtags. Because if it's exaggerated, posts are filled with hashtags, it interferes with the user's experience.
• Use your product's brand hashtag. Don't forget to consistently promote your brand via hashtags.
• The key to choosing the right hashtags is understanding your target segment. What are they looking for, what keywords are they using in searching for something.
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• Undoubtedly, with a good understanding, you can use the most relevant hashtags

How to sell on Instagram

Now comes the thing that maybe a lot of people ask, how to use Instagram to advertise or sell via Instagram?

Based on your own experience, then learning from various sources and observing success stories selling on Instagram, some tips for small businesses to promote and sell on this social media platform, namely:

1. Create a Brand Account

Don't combine personal accounts with business accounts. Apart from having different purposes, business accounts on IG have better analytical abilities than personal accounts.

In addition, a biz account builds the credibility of your product or business stronger.

Creating a business Instagram account is not difficult. Visit the IG settings menu and select "Switch to Business Account".

When going to create an Instagram business account, make sure you have created a Facebook account and Facebook fanpage beforehand. That's because both will be needed when you want to create a business account on Instagram.

2. Clear Target Audience

Who is the target market for your product? Who will you target on IG?

• One of the most popular marketing theories is STP - Segmentation, Targeting, Postioning. It's all about the target market.
• With a clear target, you can build content on IG that is relevant and appropriate to your audience.
• Focus is the keyword in targeting your target market.
• A large number of followers is not a guarantee of sales conversion if the target audience is wrong. What is there, you waste time, waste energy, without success.

3. Master the Instagram Ad Technique

There are various ways and techniques of advertising on Instagram that you need to learn and master. Not as long as you post content and then sell.

Changes in social media marketing are very fast, the science and knowledge in this industry are changing rapidly. You need to be mentally always learning new things.

Now many people use IG for sales, the competition is getting tighter, so it takes extra effort to build promotions via this platform.

In the previous section, I talked about how to write an interesting caption, how to choose the right hashtag - there are ways, there are techniques. Then, IG also continues to innovate to make new features, for example, IG Story which can be used to promote effectively.

Everything needs to be learned and ready - who's new to understand science is obsolete in no time!

The good news is, in today's digital era, materials for learning, online learning, are widely available and often free, what is needed is a willingness to learn and practice.

4.  Build Followers

You need to build a base of followers. Do it organically, don't buy.

Why are followers so important?

Because they are the target audience with the most potential to convert, to buy your product.

However, if they organically follow your IG account, it means that they are interested in your account and most likely your product.

There are many strategies for building followers, for example updating content regularly, building interactions, creating content and others.

One of them, what I see effective is collaboration with accounts with many followers who have the same interests as your account.

In essence, building a follower cannot be instant, it requires ways, effort and collaboration. 

5. Learn from Instagram

Changes in today's digital era are very fast. One or two years ago, people didn't use social media much for marketing campaigns and sales, but now everyone is competing to enter the platform and do promotions.

You need to quickly keep up with these changes. Every time there are always new methods, methods and innovations in advertising.

But, don't worry.

You can learn a lot from people's posts on Instagram who share strategies, methods and techniques for how to make money from the internet via Instagram.

Many of the things I write here come from posts from many parties on IG. I learned a lot from IG.

Top marketing writer, Rhenald Kasali, writes in his book, that now is the era of sharing, the sharing economy. Everyone shares their knowledge and expertise, it is free and easy to access.

You must be diligent in researching and following trends on IG regarding the development of Instagram Marketing, if you don't want to miss the trend.

Some things that become my notes regarding the method of marketing Kaloka promotions on IG, which you can make as material for your reflection, namely:

#1. Super Appealing Product!

Evereything starts with the product!

Being a coffee lover, I happen to frequent many coffee shops, especially in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. I noticed that the coffee cups produced by Kaloka look stand-out and unique among the others.

#2. Quality Content

Posts are made with great preparation, so that what appears on their Instagram homepage is always interesting and makes people curious.

Make a well-thought-out content plan before post content is displayed on the IG account.

Besides posts, one of the most frequent updates is via Instagram Stories - this feature is very helpful because it is very interactive.

#3. Consumer Collaboration

#4. Hold a Contest

To provoke interaction with followers, increase followers, and build brand awareness, IG often conducts posts quizzes and contests that give prizes to winners.

Followers are asked to share posts on their IG as one of the conditions for participating in the quiz. This method is effective in attracting new followers.

IG Marketing FAQs

What is Instagram Marketing

How to do marketing through Instagram.

Why Instagram

Instagaram is the most popular social media platform today. Instagram uses visuals to convey messages, which fits perfectly with Indonesians who like to convey messages visually.

Can small businesses take advantage of Instagram?

You can. In fact, this platform is suitable for small businesses because it is easy to operate, free and has a wide reach.

What is the key to successful promotion and selling via Instagram

There are many factors. But the most important factor is understanding the audience or target market and building content according to the needs of the target market.

Conclusion

Instagram marketing is the way of communication of the millineals. Mastering this skill, you can make money from the internet relatively quickly, especially for small businesses that have many limited resources. One thing that is important is that you have to dare to try and experiment. From the results of testing, you learn which ones work, which ones don't.

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