Instagram is one of the most powerful tools you can use to advertise your local business. As a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles, we highly encourage our clients to sign up for Instagram as it’s an easy and effective way of getting their name out there!

If you’re just starting on Instagram and unsure of how to go about promoting your local business, then we’ve got just the thing for you. Here are our top 11 tips for promoting your brand to local followers on Instagram!

1. Be Active!

Social media platforms are extensions of local communities online. As such, you want to show your customers and other local businesses that you’re a notable member of the community by not only posting valuable content regularly but also by interacting with your customers and supporting other local businesses!

Simply put, you need to engage with other people if you want other people to engage with you!

2. Repost Follower’s Content

Strengthen connections with your loyal customers by reposting their content (with their express permission, of course). This has numerous advantages: a.) it makes your customers feel happy and involved with your business, b.) you get to advertise your business to their followers, c.) you get to show off your string of happy customers on your profile, and d.) makes you look friendly and approachable.

With each purchase, encourage your customers to tag you on Instagram so you can see them showing off your product.

 3. Have a Consistent Brand

Developing your brand is an important aspect of running a business. Think about it as injecting personality—you want your customers to feel some type of way when interacting with you, whether it be online or in real life.

It’s important not to be fake, as this is very inconsistent and will confuse your customers. For example, if you have a passionate and helpful tone on your profile but have very poor customer service skills, then that’s just going to deter people from interacting with your brand. It’s important to be consistent, so you can set expectations and deliver them.

4. Don’t Copy Paste

A mistake that businesses tend to make is copyin1g the same thing across all their social media platforms. Don’t do this. If you do, your customers can get tired of you and start unfollowing you, and that’s definitely not what you want to happen. Additionally, you’re not optimizing the platforms to their fullest advantage!

Instagram, for example, is a social media platform that primarily focuses on photos and videos. It wouldn’t make sense to post long blogs on there—save that for sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.

5. Be Relatable

It’s one thing to see a picture of, say, a handbag clearly poised for the gram—it’s another to see that same handbag in action while walking around town! Customers want to see your products in real-life situations as this is what they envision themselves to be if they purchase your product. It’s why pictures in reviews are so coveted by both businesses and customers—they drive people to interact with your brand.

So, don’t just sit there making your products look pretty on a pedestal. Take advantage of your locale and do some photoshoots with your product!

6. Hop-On the Trends

Part of making a mark on social media is hopping on the latest trends and crazes. This will make your brand more memorable and seem in with the times, which is why it’s so important to be updated on the latest local and international news yourself.

Memes are a particularly good marketing strategy. Take a look at this cheeky post by pet store Yappy that poked fun at how obsessed people can get about adopting dogs:

Source: Yappy

7. Utilize Hashtags

Think of hashtags as keywords—they make your content easier to find for organic searchers. For example, if you’re a cupcake bakery in San Francisco, the last thing you want to do is tag your posts with #cupcakes or #pastries, as you are definitely going to get buried under millions of other posts.

Instead, use #SanFranciscoCupCakes or #SanFranciscoPastries to really target people in your area.

Take advantage of tools like All Hashtag and Hashtagify to find the best hashtags for your local business.

8. Add a Link to Your Bio

While it may seem obvious, many business owners fail to do this. You want to add your website link to your bio so users that have been brought in by your post on your feed can easily click on it and buy from your shop. You should also include links to your other socials and even your store’s physical location.

Without links on your bio, it would just be like a treasure hunt without an X that marks the spot.

9. Create High-Quality Content

Instagram is a place where anyone and everyone can show off and look through their favorite photos and videos, so it would make sense to have content that’s easy on the eyes and mesmerizing to look at. So, if your content is frequently out of focus, blurry, or just plain bland, then it’s time to learn some photography skills or invest in a professional photographer!

Additionally, you might want to consider buying a high-quality camera to really showcase your products. This will let your product shine!

10. Geotag Location

Targeting your local followers should be your utmost priority, and what better way to do that than by telling them (literally) where your business is located? If your followers know you’re located within their area, they’ll be more likely to visit you or follow you at the very least. So, make sure to add a location on every post.

You can get creative with your location posts, too. Don’t just stick with one—if you live in a particularly big city, why not highlight all of its tourist attractions and landmarks? That way, you can contribute to your city’s tourism and attract foreign tourists too!

11. Keep Track of Your Posts

Some types of content will naturally generate more likes and comments than others. Thus, you need to stay on top of your posts to check what resonates with your followers and what doesn’t. Do your followers prefer pictures or videos? Do they like seeing behind-the-scenes or unboxing videos? Which of your products seems to be getting the most traffic?

Conduct your own research and capitalize on what works and sells.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can get your name out there on Instagram. With a little time and effort on your part, you can easily draw locals in and retain loyal customers with your relatable content, awesome photos and videos, and sense of community.

To drive traffic, marketing firms in Los Angeles highly recommend signing up and being active in the vibrant and thriving community that is Instagram.

Here are other tips to boost your Instagram here: https://www.drivetrafficmedia.net/instagram-tips-for-social-media-marketing/