Use Instagram to Promote Your eCommerce Website

By Adam  |  26 Jun 2015 08:00:00

When people think of using social media to promote their eCommerce, the first things they probably think of are Facebook and Twitter. I've written about both of those before. However, while those are both very useful outlets, something which is becoming more and more useful as a marketing tool is Instagram. Instagram has the capacity to be just as useful as Facebook and Twitter and, depending on how much time you want to dedicate to social media marketing, this is definitely something you should try to make use of.

Instagram, for those who don't know, is a social media site built around the sharing of images. Images are shared around the internet more freely than text because it is much easier for somebody to consume an image than it is for them to consume a block of text. If your business involves selling a product which is especially aesthetically appealing, then sharing photographs of it on Instagram could be a good idea; if you take photos of your product which look very nice, then these are photos people might naturally like to share and if that's happening it's only going to be a matter of time before your image reaches somebody who will become a customer.

The best thing about Instagram, however, is that you can get your customers to do your marketing for you. If you are on Instagram, and encouraging customers to post about their experiences with the company in their own Instagram feeds, then all of a sudden you may find that you have several people who are sharing photographs of your product; people like to take photographs and be noticed, so you can draw people's attention to the photos that customers have made in your own feed. That means you'd have several images of satisfied customers with a high quality product, which are being shared around Instagram! Free marketing!

Instagram is also especially helpful for marketing clothing. Some people have built up quite a number of followers simply by photographing images of themselves. It is fairly common practice for businesses to send these independent models clothes that they are trying to sell. This works out well for everybody; the models have some new free clothes, you have some free advertisement on a new platform and all the people on Instagram get to see how nice your outfits look! If you know of any of these Instagram models, and you can afford to send them an outfit or two, it can’t hurt to get in touch

So those are some of the ways you can make use of Instagram. Of course, not all products or services really lend themselves to the visual medium and it may not be the best approach for every business, but it certainly has potential for a fair few! If you sell clothes, furniture, book bindings or anything else which is designed to look nice, Instagram might be very helpful.