How to Promote Your Business Locally Using Instagram

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Instagram is no more a place where you just post fun photos with your friends; it has the power to drive sales and conversions for your business.

Consider it as a platform to connect with your consumers, capture their attention, engage with them and add value to their life through your page and rest everything will follow.

9 Best Ways to Promote Your Local Business Using Instagram

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1. Give Your Brand a Face

People connect more with a person than with a brand. If your Instagram grid is full of your products, none of your followers will be able to connect with it.

Instead, if they see someone using that product or talking to them about it, they will find it more interesting for sure.

Not just that, the face you choose for your brand should be someone that your viewers can look up to or relate to.

Have a look at how Tentsile, a hammock, and tree tent brand, showcases people using their product on their Instagram to connect with their customers

Here Are Some Tips:

1. You can show a glimpse of your employees or people working with you, so your viewers know what goes on behind the scenes.

2. Your brand face should educate your users to look, become or feel better in a certain way.

3. The idea behind creating content should be to make your viewer's life easier, which adds value to your Instagram page by building trust.

2. Build a Community with Your Followers

It is essential to make your audience feel important because they are. 

Simply posting about your brand, people or products won't help as it is one-way communication. 

Make it two-way instead. Interact with the audience, and that's how you can build a relationship with your followers.

Here Are A Bunch Of Things That You Can Do:

1. Conduct weekly live sessions with your followers on Instagram.

2. Whenever you post on Instagram, make sure your captions and creatives are so that your followers reply in the comments section, and you engage with them by liking and responding.

3. Use features like a poll, AMA, this, or that on Instagram stories for better engagement.

4. Hold quizzes and giveaways for your followers. You can try running campaigns every once in a while.

Here’s Anima Iris, a leather handbag brand, doing an Instagram chat with another influencer to engage with their customers better

3. Use the Right Set of Hashtags for Each Post

You need to see which hashtags are trending on a particular day you plan to post. 

Think of the region you are targeting and use the hashtags accordingly. This will give your post a better reach. 

Don't worry if your hashtags get a little longer; it is better for your local audience as that's how they are searching.

Make use of these tools for the right hashtags:

1. HashtagsForLikes: You can use this tool to reach the right audience and analyze how popular the hashtag is, whether it is trending or not?

2. Kicksta: It is a free tool that gives you suggestions for the keyword you type in. It allows you to fix a range of posts for a specific hashtag.

3. Later: Make use of this tool to compare engagement data of different hashtags because not all tags have a similar response. It has even more to offer!

4. Be Approachable to Your Followers

Your followers are your people, so don't play hard to get. Stay active on Instagram and be aware of what's new in the city. 

Make use of Instagram stories to repost content created locally. This sends a message to your followers that you respect other people's work and humanizes your brand even more.

To-Do So:

1. You can keep an eye out for what celebrities in the town are up to and repost their content on your Instagram page.

2. Repost content from your followers. This will build an immediate connection. Moreover, they would share it on their Instagram to make you reach their followers.

3. Tag them and write a personalized note whenever you repost any content. This will leave a forever impression in people's minds. Who wouldn't love that, after all?

Notice how Bolden USA reposts stories showing their product placement around local stores in the area.

5. Have a Consistent Tone and Brand Message

The way you talk to your followers on Instagram should be consistent throughout. 

When people open your post, they should recognize that it is from your brand because of the consistency in tone, graphics, language, etc.

Here Are A Few Tips You Can Refer To While Creating A Post:

1. While creating content, don't fluctuate with your talking style, writing captions, mood board, etc.

2. Each post on your grid should resonate with what your brand stands for. Your brand message and Instagram posts should be in line with each other.

3. Each post should have an insinuation of your brand logo illustrations so that it sits in people's minds while scrolling through your feed.

You can use Canva to create consistent designs that resonate with your brand’s message and positioning to make sure your audience remembers you.

Read: Instagram SEO: Benefits & Step-by-step Process to Optimize It

6. Show the Change Your Brand Is Bringing

The best bet would be to make your customer the hero of the story who has been in some trouble. 

Make your brand the guide that bridges the gap through its products and helps the customer achieve what he wants.

Here Are A Few Examples You Can Pay Heed To:

1. Let's assume your customer has low self-esteem issues. But after using your product, he grooms his personality, looks better, and feels confident.

2. You can show a before and after shot of people using your products. This can drive conversions.

3. The product or service you offer should solve customers' problems. It should add a sense of ease to their life.

Bolden USA celebrated Black History Month by showcasing its brand's change in the Black community and recognizing the Black creators for their work.

7. Choose a Clever Bio Line

Your Instagram should have a clever bio line. Until you have 10K followers for a swipe-up link, your link in the bio has a lot of jobs to do.

After seeing your Instagram page, if you wish people to visit your store, mention your local address and link to your website. 

Add on your contact and email id so that they can reach out to you. Make people find you.

To-Do That:

1. Go to your profile, edit it and add contact details.

2. Your bio should give people a gist about you, your business, and the problem you are trying to solve.

3. Make your bio about your people. Add human angle to it. Ultimately, your followers are people.

8. Hook Your Audience with Reels

You should be able to grab attention within the first 3 seconds of your reel, or else people will scroll down.

People's attention span is decreasing, and Instagram is flooded with reels. You need to be smart to capture the attention. But how?

Here Are Some Ways To Go About It:

1. The best way to go about it is to snip the most important section of the video and slide it to the front.

2. The hook point of your video will make people watch the entire piece. Add value to people's time so that after watching your content, they feel it was worth it.

3. Your focus should be to deliver maximum information in the minimum time utilize complete 30 to 60 seconds.

Check out how Califia Farms, an almond milk brand, creates amazing reels showing recipes their customers can use the brand’s almond milk in

9. Cross-Promote Across Other Social Media Channels

If you put in so much effort while designing and writing one post, then why not repurpose it, right? 

You can take a screenshot of it and post it on Facebook or Twitter to leverage that audience as well. It will help you boost the reach of one post.

Here Are Some Things To Keep In Mind:

1. Optimal Send Times: Use Sprout's Optimal Send Times to schedule the posts when they are expected to get maximum engagement.

2. SproutSocial: Use it to draft a post for various social media platforms. The suggestions it offers make scheduling posts a piece of cake.

3. Be ready with a prototype: Before you cross-promote, you should know the post timing, content, captions, and everything that completes your post.

Here’s a screenshot showing how you can schedule your posts across various social media platforms using Sprout Social

Key Takeaways

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• Participate with your community of followers. Be active on Instagram stories, live sessions, comment sections, etc.
• Create valuable content for your followers. If they spend a few seconds on your page, it should be worth it.
• Repost content from your region to connect better with the local audience.
• Use hashtags that are best for your region. They can be longtail too!
• Represent your brand with the brand face. Posting just products would be of no help.
• Address people's concerns by being approachable. Share your contact details, email address, website link, local store address, etc.
• Post at a time when your audience is active. Always keep an eye on the insights.