Instagram is an excellent tool for promoting your business and its website. But in order to get the best possible results, it’s important to promote your Instagram profile as well. Here are some of the best ways to get the word out.
* Get a badge. Instagram makes it easy to link to your profile by offering official Instagram badges. Just go to your account, choose the badge size that you want, copy the code and paste it on your website or blog. It’s that simple.
* Include a link on your other social networking profiles. The more ways that people can follow your brand, the more opportunities you have to market to them. So take a minute to add a link to your Instagram profile on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and any other profiles you have.
* Use hashtags. While it’s important not to overuse hashtags, including a few relevant ones can get your images more exposure. This in turn will draw more users to your profile page.
* Use Instagram to post to other networks. Instagram also offers the option to post your photos to a number of other sites as you upload them. If you choose to do so, they will show up in that network’s feed along with a link to the image’s Instagram URL. Visitors who click through can view your other Instagram photos and follow you if they choose.
* Add an Instagram feed tab to your Facebook page. Statigram offers an app that will create such a tab, which will then display all of your Instagram photos along with a link to your profile. Just install the app and post to Instagram as usual, and it takes care of the rest.
* Have a photo contest. Ask fans to post photos related to a specific theme to their Instagram profiles using a unique hashtag, and use Instagram to announce the winner. Statigram also offers a toolkit that is a great help in running such a contest.
* Use your mailing list. Drop subscribers a line when you start using Instagram, give them a link to your profile and ask them what kinds of photos they would like to see. You can also send them a link when you post something special – just be careful not to overdo it or they may become annoyed or lose interest.
Promoting your Instagram profile will help you better keep in touch with current customers and prospects, and it can also help you gain new ones. And once you’ve gained some followers, you can easily integrate Instagram with your other marketing efforts.
