Sometimes it feels like there are just too many social media outlets and so little time to keep up with our own pages. As a busy home builder, developing social media content can seem like an extra rather than a necessity, and the choice on which content to “tweet”, post on FaceBook or Instagram can become an annoyance when it should become a regular occurrence in your marketing schedule.
For the purpose of this post, we are taking a look at ways to maximize your company’s presence on Instagram, more specifically shoppable posts. Instagram has reported more than 400 million people using “Instagram Stories” every day; this is significantly higher than Snapchat’s reported 191 million daily “stories” users. And as of recently, Instagram has added features to its Stories products. Instagram’s shoppable posts feature allows customers to make purchases without ever leaving the app, and it is one of the easiest ways to promote your products and increase sales on Instagram. While this may not benefit your business if you are a service-only based business, you can utilize it if you are in a position to sell certain products (i.e. tile, light fixtures, countertops, interior/exterior décor).
With shoppable posts, Instagram users can go from inspiration to information and purchase your products in just a few short clicks. When you post something “shoppable”, your image will include a small but noticeable shopping bag icon. Users can tap on the photo to get information on the product including a description and price. From there, they just need to tap the “shop now” button to be directly forwarded to your product catalog. In this way, your Instagram post becomes less about “look at what we have” to “look at what you can have”.
Need a little guidance on getting started and posting your first shoppable post on Instagram? No problem. Instagram provides simple step-by-step instructions, and if you already have a catalog set up on FaceBook, you are almost halfway there. Your business profile must be connected to a Facebook catalog. This can be created and managed directly on your business page on Facebook; you can simply go to business.facebook.com/products, and click “create catalog”. From there, you can follow next steps as published by Instagram (Note: Make sure you have the latest version of the Instagram app.):
To enable product tagging:
- Tap the profile icon to go to your profile
- Tap the Get Started alert at the top of your profile
- If you don’t see the alert in the image above, tap the settings icon.
- Tap Shopping
- Tap Continue
- Select a product catalog to connect to your business profile.
- Tap Done
To tag products in your posts:
- Select a photo and add a caption, effects and filters
- Tap the products in the photo that you want to tag
- Enter the names of the products you want to tag, then select them as they appear in the search box
- Tap Done
- Tap Share
You can tag products in both new and existing posts from your Instagram business profile. You can tag up to 5 products per single-image post or 20 products per multi-image post.
As with anything new, it is easy to want to use it in everything you do, but shoppable posts should be used when you have already generated interest in a particular product and are prepared to meet those sales processed by the app. While you won’t want to make every post shoppable, you should most certainly make every shoppable post count.
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