what are the advantages of Instagram for SMEs?

New technologies and social networks are here to stay and are becoming more popular among users every day. One of the most used and fastest growing social networks is Instagram, millions of users spend a large part of their day on this medium, so a good strategy for any business is: if your customer doesn't come to you, you go to the customer, and most of those potential customers are on Instagram.

And most of those potential customers are on Instagram, so it has infinite advantages. So if you are an SME, Instagram will benefit you enormously. Let's see why in the following list:

Instagram advantages you can't miss out on as a business

• Business profile

Without a doubt, you can't have an Instagram account without converting it into a company profile, this will give you infinite advantages and you will be able to use its tools and functions:

-Statistics: You will have at your fingertips a breakdown of statistics in which you can know your reach, likes, if they have saved your publication, how many people have entered the profile to see the publication and from where they have seen your publication (home, profile, location or other origin).

-Ads: With this you can promote your posts to reach more potential customers, appearing at the top whether they follow your account or not.

-Shopping: Instagram Shopping, which we'll talk about in more depth below.

-Contact information: You can add your email address, location and phone number directly to your profile, which is much more convenient for the user to find or contact you easily.

• Instagram Shopping

To encourage online shopping, Instagram enabled a few months ago a function called Instagram Shopping, which consists of being able to add direct links in your publications to the website where you can buy the product. This facilitates sales as they are much simpler and quicker. Product that the user sees, product that they can buy instantly.

It is also rumoured that Instagram intends to introduce IG Shopping, a separate application (like IGTV) that will contain a catalogue of all the shops that the user follows. The difference with Instagram Shopping is that it will be much easier to buy, doing so directly from the application without the need to redirect you to the official page of the shop. It is expected that the launch of this application will compete with others such as Amazon or AliExpress.

• Instagram TV (IGTV)

This Instagram application is one of the trends for 2021. As the platform only allows you to upload videos of a maximum of 1 minute, this application allows you to share videos from your mobile phone of up to 15 minutes, extending to 60 minutes if you upload them from the web platform. This allows you to create more complete content without the need to limit yourself to a single minute. You can increase not only the duration but also the creativity, quality and dynamism.

• Visibility

Thanks to Instagram, your brand will have more visibility than if there is only your website, you can make yourself known within your target audience and get a reach of thousands of users in a very short time. With attractive images and videos it is much more likely to attract all kinds of customers. This visibility is very easy to achieve using the rest of the tips on this list.

• Influencers

Within Instagram there are some great opinion leaders, and these, as their name suggests, are very influential to their followers, and serve not only to persuade their audience by recommending certain products, but also to publicise new products whose followers have not yet heard of them.

If you have just created your Instagram account as a company, one of the best ways to publicise your account is through influencers, collaborating with them through paid advertising, your products will have a huge reach in a very short time. One of the best ideas for working with influencers are sweepstakes, in which normally the user has to follow the influencer and the brand itself, usually adding the requirement to mention one or more friends in the comments.

All this has great benefits, on the one hand you gain a lot of followers, of which many will stop following you at the end of the sweepstakes but many others will continue to be loyal to the brand if they have really liked your products. On the other hand, by requiring the sweepstakes user to mention other users in the comments, you will make the brand known among potential customers who did not know it. And finally, by generating comments, you position the publication and give it more visibility.

• Improve positioning in the consumer's mind

Here it is not only important to have a good positioning within the application, another very important requirement to make yourself known as a good brand is to ensure that the consumer has a good mental image of your brand. If users think of your brand when they think of a quality brand, you have a great part of the way done. When they have that image of your brand, they will recommend it and this can be achieved by creating quality content within the platform.

• Live video and photo sharing

Another of the many functions of the platform consists of the possibility of live broadcasting, although at first this may not seem beneficial, what you are achieving with a live broadcast is to get closer to the consumer, to transmit that behind a company or brand there are people who work every day, to humanise the brand.

Another benefit is that these users can write in a chat and can resolve doubts instantly in the live show itself, communication in real time that will be saved for 24 hours for those who cannot get in at the same time as the live show.

• Promotions with Geolocation

When you upload any publication to Instagram, you can add a geolocation of where the photo was taken or the actual location of the company, which is not only beneficial for users to know the location of the same, but it is a great opportunity to be visible, because every time a person searches for that location, for whatever reason, the company will appear on the map of photos.

• Photo carousel

Within the same publication, you can add up to 10 photos or videos, which is very beneficial when you want to explain in several images the reasons why they should buy your product or why it is beneficial, which helps to ensure that there is a common thread, as if it were uploaded in several publications, they could appear out of place on the main Instagram page.

• Feedback

One of the main advantages of having your company on Instagram is the proximity to customers and users, anyone can leave a comment or ask directly by direct message to the company itself, so it gets to know the opinion of its consumers and potential customers without the need to conduct surveys or hire external companies to obtain this information.

• Stories

through stories you can launch text, images and videos that last 24 hours, it is a form of consumption that is a trend at the moment, being so easy and quick to consume, users prefer them to publications when consuming them. Being active through stories helps the user not to forget your brand, you will be present in their mind. In addition, through stories you can interact more easily with users, through direct chat, reactions or through surveys that you yourself can create to know the opinion of the people in a very simple way.

The next step is to create an account for your company

With all these features that Instagram can bring to your business, it would be absurd not to create a profile for your company. Everything on the platform are advantages, and all (except ads) are free features. Besides how easy it is to use all these tools. What are you waiting for? Make your company a company profile on Instagram.