“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos.
Social media is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools a business can make use of in the current day. If used correctly, you can scale your business exponentially, but to make it happen you must understand what you should be using, and how to use it. Which platforms work best? Which platforms give the highest ROI?
Any business with the slightest intuition in regards to digital marketing will know that Facebook is king, being the largest platform out there. However, recently more and more people are transitioning to Instagram, why is that?
Facebook is slowly entering a decline in popularity, especially with teens who are abandoning it in favour of Instagram. So the questions is no longer why you should use Instagram, but how?
For those that are not familiar, Instagram Stories are similar to that of Snapchat Stories. They are posts (pictures or videos) which will remain on a users ‘Story’ for 24 hours. Now before you decide to ignore this idea, you should know the following:
So you have decided to read this far? Now it is time to learn how to take advantage of this feature in 2020 to grow your business!
The key to keeping any business from plummeting into the ground is customers, they are the reason your business exists. More customers = more revenue. So, how do you get more? You need to grow your online presence because more followers mean more leads which means more customers.
Now you will be wondering, how do you get more followers? You need to make your Instagram page seen, make yourselves known to people. The way to do this is by using #hashtags that resonate with your brand and your target audience. Make the stories interesting so that viewers will click through to your profile and follow you. Find out which #hashtags fit with your brand and are trending.
Thanks to Instagram’s location sticker, you can increase your exposure to those local to you. Let your audience know where you are at a particular moment if you are at an event or even where your store is located. This can help increase the footfall for your physical stores if you have them.
Without gathering feedback on your products or services, you’ll be left in the dark in regards to how improving these products or services, which is why it is crucial for all businesses to get the opinions from your customers about your business. Without feedback, you won’t know what customers like and don’t like, what needs improving, are there any growing trends?
This process of data collection is made easy with Instagram stories thanks to their Poll stickers and Question stickers. This is a quick and effortless way for your followers to give a quick yes or no, even a short sentence about a given topic.
Instagram Stories have proven to be a great way of getting engagement, and building your email list is no different. Any account with at least 10,000 followers will get access to the feature enabling them to add links to their stories which will be displayed as
“See More” at the bottom of the story. So if you have access to this feature, share a link to your sign up page, and remember to add a call to action (CTA) to improve conversions such as “Swipe Up!” or “Subscribe Now!”
Getting new customers is great, but you want to work on turning these one-time customers into returning customers with some brand loyalty. The more loyal customers you have the more success you will have. The way you build a more loyal customer base is by building a relationship with your followers.
Here are some ways that Instagram Stories can help with this:
Publishing articles to your blog on a regular basis can generate some incredible results for such a simple thing. After all, “Content is king”. However, publishing these alone won’t be enough if nobody knows about them.
Many people feel uncomfortable dealing with unknowns, they want interactions with people. Show your followers that there are real people behind your brand. This will help to relax customers and build trust.
One great way of doing this is by using the Instagram Live feature which will appear on your story. Followers can then jump straight onto the live video and ask you questions.