Instagram has been on the rise in recent years and if you are still not sure if you should promote your shop on Instagram or not then hesitate no more. With over 600 million monthly active users and 4 billion likes every day it became one of the most influential social media platforms out there. But the term social media is becoming somewhat obsolete. As Gary Vaynerchuck says one of his videos — there’s no such thing as social media anymore. Everything is social, and everyone is media.

Be authentic

I’ve said numerous times that you need to build the following and Instagram is the best place to do it if you are looking to promote your e-commerce business. But there’s a catch — you need to be genuine and authentic because your followers and soon-to-be customers will spot any discrepancies in a moment. They are very good at it being bombarded with spammy advertising messages every day.

The only way to build trust and credibility is by creating visually appealing content your audience will like. It doesn’t mean that you need to because of an exceptional photographer or hire one. You can always curate your content giving credits to original authors. That is something Buffer does in their Instagram accountю

Make sure to have a recognizable avatar in your account. You need something that stands out and reflects your brand. Something as simple as one or two letters on a colored background will work if you don’t have a real logo yet. You’ll also need a decent description so that people who visit your profile for the first time would know the purpose of the account. I would recommend something that resonates with your audience and includes a mission and a purpose. Consider changing “Best watches deals found online” to something like “Best watches for men that value their time.” Be specific and take a stance.

You will need to create a pattern for your posts and create plenty of them before starting to promote your account. That means that you need to select a subject and create 2-3 pages of quality content without getting any initial feedback. People feel suspicious of newly started accounts, but if you show that you’ve been posting daily for few weeks you will be perceived and someone consistent enough to be trusted. The more posts you have, the better, but I recommend starting your growth campaign once you have at least 30 posts.

Be consistent and do your research

Pay attention to the quality of the photo. Do not upload blurry images or the ones taken with poor light. There are plenty of ‘Taking perfect Instagram photos” out there. Check out Youtube, Skillshare or Udemy. Don’t overuse filters and other effects — the best-retouched photos are those that look like the ones without any retouching.

Do your research. You need to identify top 30 hashtags in your niche and apply them to every post. Hashtags make your content foundable, so you need to add as much of them as possible. The limit is 32, so I would go just right below it. Look for hashtags that are popular enough to bring people to your posts but are not super popular. Those that have millions of posts would probably not work because your content would be barely noticeable among post of other people. Once you start posting use Post Insights to track the source of visitors.

Get yourself a business account. It is free and has zero drawbacks and plenty of benefits. All you will lose is the ability to make your account private and ability to link to multiple Facebook pages. You probably don’t want to have a private profile anyway if you’re looking into growing your following. And you would need to stick with a single Facebook page to focus your marketing efforts.

Pro features of business account

You will get a lot of pro features with a business account though. First of all, you will get analytics that provides detailed information on your followers — who they are, when they are typically online, where they are coming from and many more. You’ll be able to see insights for the whole account or specific posts and stories.

Second feature available only for a business account is the contact button. A personal account has only one option of displaying contact information — adding a link to the website in the bio. Of course, there are also direct messages but contact button you can add more information available within a click — directions, a phone number or an email address.

With a business account, you will also be able to promote your posts or utilize Instagram ads. There’s nothing better than boosting post’s reach, though you need to be careful with targeting because your marketing spend can quickly get out of control. Instagram ads are somewhat similar to Facebook ads in targeting options and requirements. I will try to cover those in one of the future posts.

Be ready to work a lot without any reward

Instagram marketing isn’t hard, but it requires plenty of effort without any reward. You will need the be prepared to spend weeks or even months to get some traction. Don’t let this discourage you though and keep on working on your content. You will need to develop a habit of posting daily, and over time you will gain momentum that will help you come up with new post ideas and variations.

You will get initial exposure using the hashtags if they are popular enough, but you’ll need to promote your account via promoted posts and by engaging with other users. Take your 30 hashtags and find ten people every day who is starting out just like you. Visit their profiles, follow them and leave some meaningful comments. There’s a big chance they will follow you back. By repeating this process daily, you will grow to 100 followers within just a few weeks spending an hour a day and without using any black-hat techniques like bots or paid followers.

One more thing — I would suggest adding everyone you followed in a table with the date of the following. Somewhere on google docs should be fine so that it doesn't get lost over time. Instagram has a limit on the number of followings — you can’t follow more than 7500 people. Note that they also have a follow/unfollow limit of 160 people per hour. You will use this table later to slowly unfollow people to be able to follow new ones.