How Your Employees Can Use Instagram to Benefit Your Business
Have you thought about getting your employees involved?
In this article, you’ll discover how your employees can use their Instagram profiles to boost your business’s Instagram marketing efforts.
How Your Employees Can Use Instagram to Benefit Your Business by Kristi Hines on Social Media Examiner.
#1: Encourage Your Employees to Use Instagram
Your first task is to encourage everyone in your business to use Instagram for themselves. Happy employees make the best brand ambassadors! If you have a business of one, you should have an Instagram personal profile for yourself and a business account for your company.
While you can’t control the content your employees may post or engage with on their personal Instagram accounts, you can ask employees to keep it professional if they mention anything to do with your business. This is especially important for employees who are using their personal profiles to represent your business in any facet, such as a salesperson or part of the support team.
#2: Ask Employees to Link to Your Instagram Account in Their Profile Bio
One of the easiest ways to boost visibility for your business’s Instagram account is to ask employees if they’ll include the @username for your business in their personal profile bio.
This will ensure that anyone who visits employees’ profiles will also get a clickable link to your account. You may, however, want to monitor your employees’ use of Instagram to ensure that their personal posts don’t reflect poorly on your brand if they do list it on their profiles.
#3: Drum Up Visibility With Employee Engagement
Want more engagement for posts on your business’s Instagram account? Each time you post a new update from your account, be sure to let employees know via company email or Instagram private message.
Why is this important? A boost in engagement for your business’s posts will help you reach more people in the news feed.
This will not only make the content more visible in the news feed of followers of your account, but also more likely to appear on the Explore tab. Anyone who follows an employee who has liked a post from your account may see that post on their Explore tab.
This could result in more people following your company’s account, liking your post, and discovering your products or services.
#4: Encourage Employees to Post to Instagram From Work
Do you want more great content to appear when people view your business’s location page on Instagram? If so, ask employees to take photos or videos at work, add your business account in the caption, and add your address as the location of those photos.
While you can’t control what other people share on your location page, you can ensure that there are more quality posts by getting your employees involved. Suggest that they take photos or videos of your products, activities around your office, other employees (with permission), and so forth.
These posts will improve the content of your location page and help you get more visibility among your employees’ followers.
#5: Show Employees How to Link to Your Business Account in Their Stories
Another way for employees to post about your business is in their Instagram stories. As you know, users can add @usernames and links to their stories. Teach employees how to add your username and link to your site so they can create posts that will drive more people to your company’s account, as well as drive traffic to your website.
Some employees may like this option better because it allows them to promote your business in stories that last only 24 hours. That way, the main content on their profile stays personal.
#6: Ask Employees to Repost From Your Business Account
Asking employees to repost your content is another way to ensure more people see your company’s posts. The Repost for Instagram app makes it easy for employees (both iPhone and Android users) to reshare your posts on their accounts.
As you can see from the example below, the post is credited to the company’s account in both the image and the caption. The caption link to your account is especially important because it can help you gain more followers.
Another way to use Repost is to share great Instagram content that your employees have posted about your business. If your account has a lot of followers and engagement, you can motivate employees to post about your business and reward them by sharing those posts with your audience, helping employees build their following.
#7: Tell Employees to Look for Opportunities to Mention Your Business Account in Comments
Hashtags like #recommendations, #suggestionsplease, and #suggestionswelcome are often used when people want to encourage their followers to share their opinions. Tell your employees to look for posts with these and related hashtags. Whenever they find a post related to your products or services, ask them to share your Instagram account in the comments.
You can even turn it into an internal contest. Each month, award a prize or bonus to the employee who relevantly mentions your Instagram account the most times in comments. This will encourage employees to become the best brand ambassadors possible for your business.
Conclusion
Encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors on Instagram can give your business an advantage by boosting your visibility, increasing engagement on your account, and even driving traffic to your website. If you educate your employees properly, their Instagram activity can do a lot for your Instagram marketing strategy.
What do you think? Do your employees help with your Instagram marketing beyond your official business account? If so, let us know how in the comments!
