Are you a small business owner trying to market your business on Instagram or social media in general? Are you struggling to increase your engagement rate, grow your instagram, or gain followers? Read this blog post and learn how I grew my Instagram from 0 – 1200 followers in just a few months as a new small business owner!

Tip #1: Use ALT text

You might be wondering….what the heck is ALT text?? Well, it’s alternative text for screen readers. So, if someone is blind and they are using a screen reader & you have included ALT text in your post, the screen reader will read the description you have written out loud. This feature makes Instagram more accessible AND it gives you an AMAZING opportunity to use keywords! In order to add ALT text to your posts on Instagram, create a new post, scroll down to the bottom of the page on which you write comments, tag other accounts, and tag your location, click on advanced settings, and then scroll down and click “write ALT text.”

Tip #2: Tag your location

This tip may seem a bit obvious, but tagging your location on Instagram can increase your reach the same way that hashtags can! When you tag your location, your post will show up on that location’s explore page and therefore, will show your content to an entire audience that may have been missing out on it. You do still have to rank to show up at the top of the page; however, the same rule applies to hashtags.

Tip #3: Use all 30 of your hashtags

If instagram didn’t want us to use all 30 hashtags, they wouldn’t have given us the option to! A great way to grow your instagram account is by using hashtags & using them correctly! You HAVE to do hashtag research if you’re going to use hashtags. Make sure you’re using hashtags specific to your business & your post. Use as many as you can because the more you use, the more of a possibility your content has of being seen by someone that wouldn’t have seen it otherwise!

Tip #4: Use reels

I know you probably hate Instagram reels, but you HAVE to start using them. People that post reels regularly grow exponentially compared to people that continue only posting static graphics. Instagram always pushes their new features & rewards users that give them a shot. So, get inspired and start recording!

Tip #5: Do engagement before and after you post

DUH! If you want people to engage with your content, you have to engage with theirs! If you engage for 15 minutes before and after you post by replying to instagram stories & liking/commenting on people’s posts, your post will show up in more active user’s feeds and will be engaged with more than it would have been had you posted and ghosted!

Want more instagram tips & tricks? I post them daily on stories & my grid, so follow me on Instagram to keep learning! Don’t have time to manage your own socials? Fill out a client app and let me do it for you!

The topic of the century! Do I need to have a blog for my small business? Do I need to have a blog to market myself on Pinterest? Short answer, it will definitely help. In this blog I will cover all of the benefits of having a blog & why YOU should be blogging in your small business.

Blogging gives you an additional opportunity to optimize your website with SEO

Having a dedicated blog makes it that much easier for you to incorporate more keywords onto your website. This is an amazing benefit of blogging because it increases your chances of ranking higher on google & other search platforms. The main goal of having a website is ranking on google, being searchable, and giving people a place to come back to and learn more about your business. So, why not increase the likelihood of being found by writing a keyword optimized blog post every once in a while?

Blogging makes your Pinterest marketing more successful

If you’re marketing your business on Pinterest, you probably already know that Pinterest values fresh content more than anything else. This means that if you’re linking all of your pins to the same home page or about page on your website over and over again, eventually, you’re going to begin ranking lower and lower on Pinterest search results. In order to be successful on Pinterest, you need to be creating fresh graphics, key word rich 500 character descriptions, and links each week.

It makes creating Instagram posts a piece of cake

Blogging makes creating Instagram posts a piece of cake & vice versa. I encourage all clients to re-purpose either blog content for Instagram or Instagram content for blogging—whichever comes first. If you are already doing one thing, it is THAT much easier to begin doing their other because you can LITERALLY just repurpose the content for the new platform. In fact, if you want to see an example of this, you can cross reference this blog post with my Instagram, where it initially lived.

Want daily Instagram tips & tricks or daily Pinterest tips & tricks? Follow me on my instagram! Want someone to manage your blog, Pinterest or Instagram for you? Fill out a client application & let’s work together!