Beginner's Guide: How To Start Online Store On Instagram

Among the sites where you can sell a product or service, Instagram stands out especially. The capabilities of this social network are optimal for trading, so online retailers choose the Instagram store format: a variety of promotion options, the ability to demonstrate product features, and convenient display of content. The competition is also high: there are many stores on Instagram, and for successful trade you need to stand out from others and interest a potential client.

Create an Instagram store profile

Before opening an Instagram store, you need to think over its appearance and presentation method. The only way to stand out is to create your own style, brand and identity that sets you apart from others. There are no step-by-step instructions here: you need to focus on what image you want to create in the eyes of the client.

Brand. Formation of the image is called branding. It includes a huge range of actions: from choosing color combinations that users will associate with you, to choosing a speech style for communicating with clients. All these characteristics are described in the brand book - a book that gives a complete picture of your style and the way of self-presentation.

Remember, a brand is how people see you.

Identity. Identity refers to the very means of expressing identity: colors, slogans, fonts and stylistic elements. It depends on how competently they are selected whether your Instagram store will be unique or will turn out to be a clone of numerous others. You can pay attention to what competitors are using: a clothing store can be decorated in pastel colors, communicate with customers in a soft and imaginative language, if, for example, it sells ball gowns. Or talk with bright youth phrases and combine catchy colors with harsh shapes, if it represents youth fashion. Identity development is the creation of avatars, templates for inscriptions, thinking over the subject of images and the appearance of your feed. Pay attention to her: this is the only way you can stand out.

Create a profile. Technically, to open your store on Instagram, all you have to do is create a business account, fill it and launch ads. But you need to think over branding, identity and behavior strategy even before this step. The registration itself is simple and almost does not differ from the standard one: only in the profile type you need to select "Business".

Brand positioning on Instagram

An Instagram store is not only about visual elements, it's also about how you behave and communicate with users. All this forms the image on which recognition and attractiveness depend.

Remember, customers love honesty.

- Tell us about the product itself, how its price is formed, give interesting facts and features of use.

- Be honest and loyal to your customers and try to please them. Even the best advertising campaign will not hide the obvious problems with the service, which will turn even interested customers away from you.

- Don't hide the prices. Some people still think that this intrigues the visitor, but in reality, the user will simply lose interest and go to another store, which will give him more information.

- Tone of voice. Watch your language and speech. Want to be perceived as a friendly and informal company? Use a conversational style, slang words, do not use complex constructions. Conversely, want to give the impression of a serious premium store? Communicate with restraint, use words with appropriate coloration

- Features of communication. Do not ignore visitors with their questions, be active and communicate according to the chosen behavior strategy. Decide how you will respond to user requests, handle negativity, and deal with positive reviews. Once you have thought through this step, you can begin to draw up a content plan.

Content that surprises

Publications play a key role in modern marketing. Whether you're selling cosmetics, clothing, unique handicrafts, or gadget accessories, you need quality posts that make you stand out.

Remember that the user sees many posts of the same type in the feed, and your task is to make sure that it is your brand that hooks him.

Unusual photos. There is no need to say that images and photographs should be of high quality. Hire a photographer or learn the craft yourself to showcase your merchandise as profitably as possible. Photos of poor quality, blurry, with inappropriate processing will only distract the visitor. But even high resolution and thoughtful composition are no longer enough to make the promotion of an online store on Instagram successful.

Now the trend is unusual:

- use street aesthetics. Upload photos taken outside the studio and look for the interesting and unusual in the usual things;

- you can be inspired by examples of well-known brands that successfully combine style elements that do not match at first glance;

- remember to have a sense of humor and do not forget to delight readers with something funny, if your positioning allows it.

Animation. Sometimes you can use high-quality animated pictures instead of photos. To do this, hire an artist who does the job properly, takes into account your style and does not allow the image to look cheap.

Absurdity or seriousness. Two completely opposite directions are gaining popularity:

- expressing your attitude to things, phenomena and events through advertising and commercial content;

- emphasized absurdity and meaninglessness, which has its own aesthetics.

Content plan creation

To create a successful insta-shop, you need to publish regularly. If account posts appear frequently in the feed, this is beneficial both in terms of visibility and in terms of algorithms: Instagram is more active in promoting those who deliver regular content. To avoid chaos, you need to think ahead about what, when and how to publish on the page.

Content types. There are several main categories:

- selling, pursuing exclusively commercial purposes;

- news story about the latest events;

- entertaining, aiming to please or amuse the user;

- training, helping people to use this or that product;

- communication, designed to establish contact with the user;

- reputational, working for the brand image.

One can argue about the ratio of different types of content for a long time, but there is no universal recipe for any company. Much depends on the positioning, style, activity of the store and the life cycles of the organization, events in the world and within the company. During a campaign, for example, it is better to focus on selling records, while conducting advertising campaigns - on interesting entertaining and educational publications that will attract people, convince them to stay and involve them in the discussion. As for the format, for Instagram it can be:

- photo with signature;

- story;

- gallery;

- video;

- stream.

Heading table. To make planning easier, create a spreadsheet that takes into account the frequency of posting for different types and categories of content. Highlight several headings, give each specific day of the week, or roughly determine how often content will appear in it. At this stage, it is not yet necessary to define specific topics: they are planned after the table has been drawn up and the headings have been approved.

Selection of themes and generation of ideas. The plan is usually drawn up for a month, taking into account current trends and events in the world. When compiling it, suitable topics are selected within each heading: it can be descriptions of goods and their advantages, interesting facts about certain objects and phenomena, events that happened in the company itself.

Writing texts. An Instagram post must be no more than 2000 characters in length, otherwise the post will be displayed without text. Keep this in mind when composing a description for a picture.

- Use words that match your brand. For example, they create a sense of femininity and softness if you sell clothes or cosmetics, or radiate confidence and strength if your goal is serious entrepreneurs.

- Be literate. Mistakes turn users off and make it difficult to take you seriously. Make texts bright and interesting, do not abuse heavy phrases.

- Keep track of what your audience likes and shape your content based on trends.

Time of publication. Instagram allows you to track the spikes in user and subscriber activity. Focus on this indicator. If your audience is active in the evening, try to shift important posts to the evening, if in the morning - to the morning. Consider the rhythm of your visitors. For example, after a hard day at work, a person is unlikely to be interested in reading a complex and serious article.

Search for options. Ideas end sooner or later, and subscribers get bored with talking about basic things in different words. To get rid of this problem, you can manually analyze competitor profiles and view world news and news feed lists, or you can use special services. They analyze the effectiveness of competitors' publications, help in collecting statistics on various topics. An example of such a service is Popsters, which works with various social networks, including Instagram.

Using hashtags: is it effective

How to keep your Instagram store even more productive? Use hashtags! Some people still think that the main way to use them is to help with finding publications, but in reality this is no longer the case. They have not worked as a search method for a long time: there are too many active tags, including for the same things. There is almost no reason to expect to be found by some hashtag. There are several problems:

- not all users know how to use tag search, some do not look for new accounts at all;

- bots of commercial organizations are mainly used by popular hashtags: this is how massliking works;

- the growth of new records for common tags is huge, among them it is difficult to find a specific one.

However, hashtags are encouraged for running a store. They have other useful uses as well.

Rubricators. Create a unique tag for different categories, and then it will be easier for the user to find all the posts on the topic of interest in your account at once. These can be informational posts or the goods themselves.

Brands. Another use of hashtags is to increase brand awareness. Use a tag with a title: This uniquely makes your posts unique and helps visitors remember you at the same time.

Geohashtags. With them, the user will quickly understand exactly where you offer a product or service. This will help weed out people from other regions for which your store is irrelevant, and will leave only those who will need it in your account.

Quantity. In general, you should not leave records without tags, but too many of them will be perceived as spam. Use 2 to 10 hashtags that include geographic, branded and navigation hashtags.

Using emoji in text

There is research showing that emoticons make text easier to read, help evoke emotions in the reader, and affect the pleasure center. Commercial posts on Instagram hardly do without emoji.

Smilies are used:

- to indicate a topic or to facilitate perception;

- as separators;

- to replace individual phrases so that the post is not too long (for example, a phone image instead of “call us”);

- as a way to attract attention and evoke emotions in the visitor.

Text with emoticons seems more friendly and helps to erase language boundaries: it is easy to guess from the icons what the speech is about, even if the person does not fully know the language. But do not overuse: a post where emoji is used through a word, on the contrary, is taken hard.

How to replace shopping tags

Instagram “product tags” allow you to tag a particular product in your photos: users' tags work using the same technology. They make ordering easier: the checkbox leads directly to the sales page. The problem is that for Russia the tool does not work yet, and it has to be replaced:

- use graphic editors to sign the cost and name of the goods right in the picture;

- include blocks with the price and name of the product in the text;

- generate product cards using special applications such as "Price List".

Ways to promote your store on Instagram

Creation of an online store and its filling is only the first step. To increase the number of orders, you will have to attend to the promotion, for which Instagram offers several possible directions at once.

Targeting. Advertising on social networks can be flexibly configured for the target audience. If you think over the display parameters and the ads themselves, they will attract to your account exactly those who may be interested in ordering your product. To a luxury clothing store - fashionistas, to a craft store - needlewomen and craftsmen. The key is to use your targeting capabilities wisely.

Collaboration with bloggers. The sheer number of popular blogs on a wide variety of topics is another powerful advertising tool. Most bloggers advertise or collaborate with organizations for money, and by finding a person who makes publications on your topic and has a similar target audience, you can seriously expand the circle of visitors.

Offline subscribers. You can also attract people not through the Internet. If you have a working offline hotspot, you can put a promoter with paper flyers, advertise, or simply print the Instagram account address on your products. This will provide you with additional advertising.

User retention and development

Advertising isn't the only thing to do to keep your Instagram online store successful. The main thing today is content: make it competent, high-quality and interesting so that users will be interested in reading you. Present the product from the advantageous sides, tell about the store, about the customers, about the features of the product so that the interested person is hooked on the text. Do not forget about the style and design of the text: use emoticons and separators. A good choice is interactive: streams, comment contests, and more.

Remember, the only thing that will help you sell successfully on Instagram is constant and responsible work on promotion and content.