Instagram is widely known for its photo and video sharing feature. This makes Instagram a perfect platform for brands to showcase their products and services. Individuals come to Instagram to check out content from brands and personalities they care about. There are over 15 million business profiles on Instagram and millions of advertisers worldwide use Instagram to share their stories and drive productive results. If you want to make more sales on Instagram without having to spend millions on advertising, stick around. This article is for you.

Here some of the amazing ways you can optimize your Instagram accounts to increase sales and boost your conversion rate.

1. CREATE AN ATTRACTIVE INSTAGRAM BIO

Instagram BIOs are used to convey key information about a brand or business. An effective bio should showcase the brand’s identity, promote it, and convince the profile visitors to follow and patronize THE BRAND.

An Instagram bio consists of the profile picture, the name field, profile description, and a clickable link.

• The Profile Picture: Uploading a clear and high-quality profile picture should be a top priority as this is the first thing people will see, and oftentimes, it determines whether or not your profile page will be visited. As a brand or business owner, your business logo is a perfect profile picture.

• The Name Field: This is different from your Instagram handle. It is logical to feel like inserting the name of your brand or business here. But to attain maximum visibility, the name field has to contain keywords relevant to your niche, location, and services you offer. 
  
  For instance, a digital agency named EpowerNg, can have their handle as @epowerng, while the name field has “digital agency in Ibadan”. This way, when people input “digital agency in Ibadan” in the search field, EpowerNg is guaranteed to pop up.
  
  You can check out Social Sugar on Instagram to see what ours say.
  
  It can get a bit tricky though. This is because the name field can accept nothing more than 30 characters. So, you have to be creative.

• Profile Description: The profile description is the core part of your Instagram bio. You’re allowed just 150 characters in this section, so this should be where you provide your visitors with a summary of what your business entails.

• Clickable Link: Instagram also allows you to add a link in your bio. Here, you can add a link to your website, blog, or a specific social profile. Meanwhile, if you have multiple links you’d like your visitors to have access to, you can make use of tools like Linktree, Disha, and linkinbio.

2. USE RELEVANT HASHTAGS

When used rightly, hashtags are the foundation for the success of any post on Instagram. Hashtags facilitate the process of searching for specific content on social media. Posts with hashtags have 13% more engagement than those without hashtags. With the help of hashtags, a post uploaded month ago still tends to perform well; it will remain fresh and invite new users to the page daily. Hashtags also help the Instagram algorithm categorize your accounts into the right communities.

However, 70% of Instagram users use hashtags wrongly and that’s why they have not been able to enjoy its gold mine. Using generic, unrelated, or banned hashtags, or repeating the same set of hashtags over and over, are possible reasons why hashtags don’t work wonders for most Instagram users.

3. MAKE USE OF THE RIGHT TOOLS

A good number of tools have been made available by creatives to make Instagram optimization easy. Some of these tools include scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Coschedule, etc. which can be used to publish posts automatically; they save time and ensure your posts are consistent even when you’re busy to publish yourself. These tools are also designed to track the analytics of Instagram accounts with ease. Tracking your analytics will help you to keep records of your progress and help you identify what’s working and what’s not.

You can also explore several video editing tools like Quik App, Adobe Premiere Clip, InShot App, KineMaster, WeVideo, and PicPlayPost, to enable you to create professional marketing videos for your business, as videos are proven to have more engagement than regular content.

Utilizing the proper tools is a necessary step in the successful optimization of your Instagram account to increase sales.

4. ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

“Content is King” while that saying is true, when it comes to Instagram, “Engagement is Queen”. This is because valuable content on Instagram, without good engagement, amounts to nothing. 

Engagement is paramount on Instagram for any account that wants to grow and make massive sales. There are several engagement strategies to try, but today, we’ll look at;

• The Reciprocal Engagement Strategy; this strategy is all about engaging with posts and comments from other brands in your niche. By leaving reasonable comments on their posts, you’ll gain their attention, become recognized, and they’ll, in turn, return the favour.
  
  
• There is also the 502-Engagement Strategy: This involves engaging in people’s posts within your niche 20 minutes before and after you post any content.

If you feel we’ve left out any steps, do let us know in the comments.