Sweet, short and to the point. That’s what we are going for today. Instagram is THE place to be in terms of social media. Don’t get me wrong. I still love Facebook but Instagram is fun, and a heck of a place for a business to show up.

So, as a business owner, you want to craft the perfect post. A good image is a must, obviously. It is Instagram and it’s all about the pictures. But there are three other things that your post must include if you want to maximize your marketing potential.

Numero Uno is hashtags. You want to grow your audience and one of the best ways to do so is to include hashtags. You are invisible on Instagram if you don’t get seen, obviously, and one of the best ways to be seen is through hashtags.

Best place to include them? Don’t put them in the caption. That just looks like you’re an amateur. Put them in the first comment. Even better put them in the comment like this:

Why are we doing it this way? Well, when you post it this way in the first comment, the hashtags are tucked neatly within the post and not showing up like some annoying little sister (not that I have one of those. Melissa, I meant someone else’s sister. Not you. Stop crying.)

The second thing you must include on a post is a call to action. What is the point of posting if you don’t want a little action from your audience? If you aren’t looking for action, you might as well be on a personal account posting about your children or your cat. So, include your call to action to get your audience to click on over to your website, leave a comment, tag a friend in the comments, etc.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a t-shirt on Instagram and all it was was a post of a cute shirt a business was selling – but didn’t have any directions on how to buy the shirt. I always think – what are you bragging that you have this shirt and we can’t?! How rude. No, I don’t think that in real life. I just think how sad that this business is losing out on money and the chance for me to buy that shirt.  And I guarantee you – your customer is not going to go out of his or her way to hunt this shirt down. There are a million distractions online. Make it easy for your customer to buy what you are selling. Post your shirt. Post a short description and tell them to click on the link in profile to buy the shirt. Sold!

Which brings me to another point – the ever so important link in profile. One time I found this cute shirt on Instagram and the business was on their game and told me to click the link in profile. So, I did. I went to their profile and easily found the website I was supposed to go to so I could easily buy this shirt. But I went to the website, and the shirt was nowhere to be found. They had a TON of products. A ton. I clicked on the ‘shirt’ category and I swear every shirt that was in America was on this website. I did a few searches and then I left. It was just too much. Want to know how it could have been really simple even with every shirt in America on their site? Ok. Let me take a sip of water because this is a good story.  Once upon a time, I started using this awesome tool called ‘Link in Profile’. It is a life saver for me because I have three websites for my business. And that means a lot of links. So each time I post an image on Instagram – I can say in my caption ‘click on the link in the profile’ and then when people go to my link and click it they are taken to a site that holds all of my Instagram images. And then they can easily click on the image and it whisks them away straight to where I want them to land on my website. If I wanted to post an image about this blog post on Instagram, then tell my audience to click on the link in profile to read it, they would click on the link and see the image and then click that and end up right on the blog post on my website. I have been using it for about 5 months and it has made my Instagram so much easier to manage, and it has made my traffic increase and my audience ends up in the right place on my website.

***UPDATED: While Link in Profile is a great, reliable service, I have started using linktr.ee because it’s free and I like it.  

So if that business owner would have had Link in Profile – I would have ended up right on that shirt listing on their website instead of lost. And they would have made the sell. And we would have lived happily ever after.  (And, yes, I pay something like $9.99 a month for Link in Profile, but it has made sells for me so it has been worth it).

Want to try Link in Profile free? Click here and get a trial. You don’t have to enter your credit card information so if you don’t like it just walk away. Yes, that leads to an affiliate link but I wouldn’t promote it unless I used it and loved it. 

Do you use Instagram? I am assuming that if you got to the end of this article, you do. You can find me on Instagram here. Let’s be friends. And if you want some of my Instagram business secrets, download my free guide here.

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