Instagram has 800 million monthly active users to date. If you are a social media marketer, you already know exactly how valuable Instagram can be to your brand.
Instagram marketing is a prime way to connect with more people, engage with them, and ultimately sell to them. But how do you know if Instagram is the right fit for your business? More importantly, if you already have an Instagram business account, how can you make the most of it?
One of the most common challenges in social selling on Instagram is that it allows only one link in the bio. But that is not stopping thousands of businesses from engaging in social selling. It should not stop you either.
In this blog, we will be going through 17 awesome Instagram hacks for social selling. Using these simple hacks, you can improve your user base, boost your engagements, bring in more referral traffic, and even increase direct social sales.
Intrigued yet? Good! Follow along as we show you exactly how to get it done.
Reorder Your Filters
Prioritizing is the name of the game on Instagram in 2019. One of the most crucial aspects to social selling is to have a perfect brand identity and this includes the filters that you are using.
Reordering your filters might not seem like the incredible advice that you were looking for. But it makes a huge difference to the overall aesthetic of your brand profile.
Here is how you can reorder your filters:
- Select an image to edit
- Hit the ‘Next’ button
- Go to the Filter options
- Drag and drop your filters to rearrange them.
It is that simple! Now, you have a consistency to your own brand’s online presence (at least on Instagram). This consistency will make your brand easy to recognize and help you become instantly more familiar to your prospects.
Hide Photos that You Have Been Tagged In
There are way too many people on Instagram who post NSFW content and tag your brand to it. The content itself may be funny, or even relevant to your brand but there are times when you cannot allow that to ruin the brand image.
The same goes for controversial content that you want to steer clear of. Instagram actually gives you the option to hide from these tagged photos.
Here is how you can untag yourself from photos on Instagram:
- Click the tagged photos icon in your profile.
- Select the picture where you would like to untag yourself.
- Tap on the image.
- Click on your username.
- From the popup, click on ‘Hide from my profile’.
Et voila! You have successfully removed the picture from your profile.
Keep up appearances might seem pretentious to you but think about it – controversial pictures can offend a lot of people. People who might have been your prospects before they saw that you were tagged to that photo.
Edit Tagging Settings
Once you get past the initial avalanche of untagging yourself from each picture individually, you will probably want to set up your account to prevent unwanted tagging.
Save yourself the time in the future by editing tagging settings.
- Go to your profile.
- Click the tagged images icon.
- Hit the Settings icon.
- Select ‘Photos of you’.
- Select Tagging Options.
- Tap ‘Add Manually’ to manually add filters to stop unwanted tagging.
This one hack can save you a ton of time in the future.
Upgrade to a Business Profile
Are you using a business profile to promote your business on Instagram? Most likely, your competitors already are!
Using an Instagram Business Profile, you get access to Analytics, the ability to set up ads, and you can make it easier for your prospects to contact with you.
Here is how you can enable your Business Profile on Instagram:
- Head over to your profile and click on ‘Account Settings’.
- Select ‘Switch to Business Profile’ at the bottom of the list.
- Sign in with Facebook.
And you are done! Upgrading to your Instagram Business can open up a lot of possibilities for your business in terms of online branding and advertising. Make the most of it today!
See What Posts Your Friends Liked
How often do you run out of ideas to post on Instagram? With this neat little trick, you can check out what your competitors and followers are doing.
Not only is this a great way to start social listening, but also a great way to keep getting ideas for fresh content.
So, how do you check out what posts your friends like?
- Click on the heart icon on the bottom navigation.
- Select the Following Tab.
That is all you need to do! Now you can get inspiration about your posts from posts that other people already like.
Find Related Hashtags
All things Instagram need solid hashtags for that extra push. Related hashtags will give you an endless supply of new content and increase your audience reach as well!
Be careful about the hashtags, though – you want general hashtags, not branded ones.
How can you find related hashtags from Instagram?
- Search for posts with a relevant hashtag for your niche.
- In the results page, you can see related hashtags on the top of the screen.
This method is highly effective because you are suggested only trending hashtags. If you end up finding a bunch of branded keywords, you can use them for competitor analysis. The best part? This method is completely free!
Turn On Post Notifications for Your Competitors
Ever heard the saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? I guarantee you that your top competitors are all trying to find your Instagram strategy.
The real question is, what are you doing to keep tabs on your competitors? Turning post notifications on is one of the easiest ways to keep track of your business rivals.
How do you turn on post notifications for certain profiles?
- Go to your competitor’s profile.
- Click on the three-dot symbol.
- Click on ‘Turn on Post Notifications’.
Instagram’s algorithm does not allow you to see posts in chronological order. Using this trick, you will be the first to know everytime they publish new content.
Bookmark Posts for Future Reference
Would you like to save a competitor’s posts privately? You can do that on Instagram! Over time, you can analyze how their content has evolved.
The best part? You can have all their posts you’ve bookmarked in one place. It could even be some post to inspire your own content.
How do you bookmark posts on Instagram?
- Tap the bookmark icon below the picture.
- To save to a collection, long-press and click on ‘Save to Collection’
- To view the saved items, just click on the bookmark icon in your profile.
Using collections, you can even organize your bookmarked posts!
Use Unique Bio Links for Separate Campaigns
Instagram allows only one link in your profile bio. But this can be a real pain because every time you run a campaign or promo, it becomes really difficult to measure and track the traffic.
The only way to really set up analytics in a way that is easy to follow is to use custom links for each campaign. This should not be a very difficult feat because you want to create separate landing pages for each campaign anyway.
It does not even take a lot of time or effort. Just go to your profile and edit the bio to include the new link.
Post Photos In A Grid
Do you want your promos and partnerships to stay prominent? Try uploading photos as a grid. The idea is simple – crop a big image into a grid, and post them so that they appear as a giant complete picture on your Instagram profile.
Seeing a partial picture can attract a lot of people to your profile and make people go through the rest of it. The good thing about this idea is that each post is a piece of a puzzle. This can make a lot of people click on the profile and find your bio links, promos, and partnerships.
Run Paid Promotions
If you are ever low on exposure, you can give your posts a serious boost by promoting them on Instagram. Instagram ads run in the same way as Facebook ads and can generate a lot of traffic to your profile.
Use your Business Profile to set up and run ads of different kinds on flexible budgets.
Use Hands-Free Stories
Have you ever looked at your Instagram Stories and thought that the selfie hand looks unprofessional?
I bet you have. Good news, though – you can select the hands-free mode to record your video by placing your mobile phone on a tripod.
Just go to your Instagram Stories camera mode and select ‘Hands Free’ and you are good to go!
You can press ‘Record’ to start recording and tap it again to stop, or just use all the time for the recording.
Filter Offensive Comments and Words
Instagram empowers you to make your business profile reflect your brand. You can actually filter offensive comments and specific words from showing up in your profile.
How do you set up comment filters on Instagram?
- Go to your profile.
- Head over to Account Options.
- Click on Settings and go to Comments.
- Toggle the ‘Hide Offensive Comments’ button to ON.
- To set up filters for Keywords, click on ‘Enable Keyword Filters’ under Manual Filter and set them up individually.
Using this simple trick, you can safeguard your profile from a lot of online trolling.
Turn Comments Off
There are certain cases where you might want to disable commenting altogether. This might be because the post is controversial or it may be for other reasons altogether.
Either way, here is how you turn comments off on Instagram:
- Upload a picture.
- Before posting it, select ‘Advanced Settings’.
- Toggle ‘Turn Off Commenting’.
Now, your content is completely safe.
Track Views On Instagram Stories
Social Media Stories are the flashy new thing. But how do you know how effective or engaging your Stories are?
Here is a nice little hack for your Instagram Stories – you can see the number of people viewing your Story next to the eye icon. Swipe up and you will get more details about who is watching you.
Instagram Insights are available for Business Profiles, which makes it a lot easier to get stats on your Stories.
Keep Original Copies of Your Instagram Photos
Anything that you upload on Instagram is instantly resized. As a result, the original high-resolution picture is no longer available.
But what if I told you that there is a way to save original copies of your Instagram uploads?
- Go to profile settings.
- Toggle ‘Save Original Photos’ to ON.
And now all your pictures will be saved in their original form on your mobile device. Neat, eh?
Save Drafts for Later
Whether you use Instagram for business or pleasure – drafts are probably your best friend. You can actually save drafts for review or for a later time to finish editing. What is even better is the fact that you can get it to stay in a single, organized location.
After choosing your filter and caption, go back to the filtering page. When you try to do that, a popup menu will appear. Hit ‘Save As A Draft’ and there you have it!
Review it whenever you want!
Wrapping Up!
Neil Patel only uses Instagram to “keep in touch with his employees”. That might just be true. But then again, he is one of the most successful online marketers ever. For the rest of us commoners, Instagram is a great avenue to generate more revenue.
Hopefully, this list of hacks gave you a lot of insight into handling Instagram better for your business. Keep growing your followers and keep improving your social listening skills. In the long run, social selling will help you grow into an enormous brand.
If you liked this blog, share it with more people and comment below to let us know which hack you found most helpful.
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