I’m sure you already know that Instagram can be used to promote your business. But did you know that you can use Instagram to help increasing your dropshipping business’ sales?
Read on for the top three tips on how to use your Instagram account to grow your dropshipping business.
1. Pick a theme or a message
This doesn’t matter if you’re just starting your Instagram account or you’ve run an Instagram account for a while. Sometimes you need to step back, sit down, and just think about what do you want this Instagram account to do for you.
What do you want your profile to do? Is it going to be motivational? Is it going to be informational or educational? Are you selling? Are you teaching? Are you training?
Find your theme, find your message and stick with it. Nothing’s more frustrating for a user, for someone who subscribes to you and follows you on Instagram. It’s frustrating for them to think that you’re providing on things and then to find out this isn’t the profile they thought that they were subscribing to.
2. Research your hashtags
Now, this can be a time-consuming process, maybe you don’t want to or you don’t know how to get started. First thing’s first, open up your Instagram account, pull up your search and just start typing things in that you believe are going to be related to what you’re going to be posting. Just start here.
Another way that you can do this is by following or finding other influencers in the area or in the same industry that you’re in and seeing what hashtags they’re using. If you’re an eCommerce brand, it would be something like “aliexpress best sellers” or “shopify dropshipping”.
If you’re doing this within the Instagram app, you’ll be able to identify how much search or how many posts are being posted around this particular hashtag. You don’t want to spam, you don’t want to use hashtags that aren’t related to what you’re posting, but find a good healthy mix, maybe even a good 50/50 balance of very common hashtags – they’re used quite a lot, they’re very popular, and hashtags that are maybe less popular, only a couple a thousand posts, something like that.
You’ve got more opportunity to show and show higher for those, but a lower volume of people that are seeing it. So you want to find that balance.
Don’t spam, just be sure to use the hashtags that are related to the content that you’re posting, related to the message that you’re trying to get across and that’s how you’ll be able to be found by new followers that are searching for the kind of content that you’re putting out.
3. Create a content calendar
You can say all day long, “I don’t need a calendar,” “I’ll just post,” “it’ll feel organic,” “I’ll do it when it’s necessary.” But the reality is, no you won’t.
Everybody has the best intentions. Everybody thinks that they’re going to have the time, but if you don’t create a consistent schedule for yourself, you’re going to find that it’s very difficult to maintain, very difficult to keep updated. And that’s what a lot of users will expect from you, especially if you start following individual themes, like Motivation Monday, or Thoughts on Thursday, Friday Fun, things like that.
Any of those hashtags that you want to be a part of, you need to consistently be planning for them, because your users are going to start to expect it and they’re going to start to expect it on the day that you’re supposed to be posting it.
That’s why you need to build yourself a content calendar and start giving yourself ideas of what you want to post when you want to post it and create that content in advance. And if you still want to leave room for that organic side of things and that’s actually where Instagram Stories is valuable, because that’s instantaneous, it’s 24/7s, and it’s in the moment.
You can still be instantaneous with the rest of your Instagram, but really for that part of it, that’s where you can use that content calendar to get the best results. If you want to be spontaneous, that’s stories. It’s not going to mess up your feed, only your followers are going to see it unless you promote it, but that helps you ensure that you’re posting.
You’re posting on a consistent schedule and you’re growing your Instagram account.
Takeaway
It does take extra effort in growing your Instagram to a sustainable level. That’s why you should start small and focus on building a following and engage with them, instead of solely focus on the sales generated
