Join Instagram and Get Your Business Profile

 before we dive right in to the account setup details, let me share two brief paragraphs about the remarkable rise of Instagram. The founders’ story is incredibly inspiring, and tens of thousands of marketers around the world are now benefiting from their genius. Who are these guys?

The Remarkable Rise of Instagram

On October 6, 2010, two Stanford classmates, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, launched the Instagram app (Figure 1). They were backed by $500,000 in investor funding from famed Silicon Valley firms Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Their hope was to catch the wave of phone-based picture taking and sharing. Apple had made it fun and easy with the launch of the iPhone 3, and improved it in the summer of 2010 with the iPhone 4. Systrom and Krieger were betting on the death of point-and-shoot cameras and the rise of phone-based sharing. They guessed right.

figure 1

Two months after launch, Instagram had a million users. By September 2011, less than a year after launch, Instagram passed 10 million users. In April 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for a billion dollars, and the user growth continued its phenomenal pace. By February 2013 there were 100 million monthly active users. In December 2016 the Instagram team reported passing 600 million monthly active users. At the time that this article series is being written, according to Statista, Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, and the site shows no sign of slowing down. It has become one of the most widely used social networks on the planet.

Brand-New to Instagram—Read This Before Signing Up

For the rest of this chapter, we’ll cover the process for signing up for Instagram as well as marketing strategy and advice related to launching a professional profile. If you’re brand-new to Instagram and haven’t signed up yet, I recommend you read the whole chapter before creating an account. There is marketing strategy connected to your profile, so you’ll want to understand it before you make an early mistake.

The main thing to remember is that Instagram is designed to be primarily managed from your phone, not from your computer. As with all new tools, there is a learning curve that you struggle through until you feel confident with it. Don’t worry. You’ll get past that, you can do this! If you’re already familiar with Instagram, then use this chapter to fill in any gaps in your knowledge.

The Power of the Profile

Let’s talk about the importance of the profile briefly, then we’ll do a step-by-step walk-through of getting your account set up and getting it listed as a business profile. It’s time to get you up and running on Instagram.

Have you ever visited someone’s Instagram profile and been immediately impressed, or maybe unimpressed? The reason is simple. Your profile is the most important piece of real estate you can manage on Instagram so it’s the starting point of successful Instagram marketing. It needs to be powerful, focused, and professional.

Spend time thinking about your ideal prospects and the messages that will resonate with them at an emotional level—and those that won’t. Create your profile with your prospects in mind. Sort it out at the start and find the deep meaning that you can bring to the work. Just like an archer shooting an arrow, each aspect of your profile and every piece of content you share has the ability to hit the bull’s-eye, fall short by a bit, or be dangerously off the mark. Refine your aim. How far off the mark?

INSTAGRAM’S FANTASTIC RESOURCES

Because Instagram is constantly adding new information and refining its functionality, I’d encourage you to visit several of its online sites including:

1. Its excellent help resources. Visit the general help content at http://help.instagram.com. You’ll find useful information related to using Instagram with content for general use as well as resources for various users such as parents, businesses, brands, and law enforcement.

2. Its press release site. Instagram also does a great job of announcing new features. To read those announcements, you’ll also want to regularly visit https://instagram-press.com.

3. Its business blog and resources. Instagram has done a terrific job of creating a user-friendly destination for business owners. It includes training, success stories, access to approved partners, and more. You’ll want to bookmark this site and visit it regularly. It is the ultimate online resource for business owners and marketers. Find it at https://business.instagram.com (Figure 2).

Instagram figure 2

Power to Hurt Your Cause

If your profile is the most important piece of real estate you manage on Instagram, then it stands to reason that done poorly, your profile will hurt your chances of connecting with your tribe. A poorly done profile will be unclear and therefore unproductive. Worst case: it may even repel the very people you’re trying to attract.

This shrink-sales-via-blunder scenario is actually a fairly well-documented situation in marketing work. To get a huge list of examples where media efforts backfired, simply google, “advertising that hurt sales.” You’ll find plenty of examples. I was surprised to see that Taco Bell’s (@tacobell on Instagram) Yo Quiero Taco Bell campaign was on the list. It stuck in my mind as a fun idea, so I assumed it was successful—not so. Although it was a very popular phrase in the late nineties, and the cute little Chihuahua was good in the commercials—according to the company, tests proved that the campaign reduced sales by 6 percent. That was enough to get the CEO fired. The reason it didn’t work? Many marketers believe it was because, although the message was memorable, it was ultimately a negative association. Dogs like Taco Bell food—so you should too? Maybe not.

The point is this: in each situation where a media effort damages sales, there is a clear reason it occurs. Although it is not obvious beforehand to the marketers involved, it becomes clear in time if they pay attention to their audience’s behavior and learn along the way. This presents a doubly dangerous situation for your Instagram marketing because unlike TV commercials, you cannot easily test whether your Instagram profile is damaging your online efforts—or by how much. Don’t make the mistake of just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Learn how to make and manage a professional Instagram profile that works well—it’s a subtler art than you might at first appreciate, so invest the time to do it well.

A Powerful Profile Is Focused

On Instagram, you want your profile to quickly explain to visitors who you are, what you’re all about, and what type of visual content they will get if they follow you. Professional. Clear. Customer focused. Never forget your profile is your Instagram home page-treat it with care.

If you’re a thought leader or business coach, a profile that has authority and credibility is important. If you’re a fashion blogger, then demonstrating your on-trend visual style is key. If you’re a local Realtor, it might be social proof via houses sold or testimonials. Your profile lets existing customers as well as prospects know what you’re using Instagram for and what they can expect. Prove to them that it will add value. As you can see in Figure 1.3, Whole Foods does a nice job of it (@wholefoods on Instagram).

Instagram figure 3

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