If you want to be able to turn browsers into buyers, Instagram is the place to do it. With the long-awaited arrival of Instagram Business Accounts, you can now put your business in the global shop window like never before.

To get you off to a fast start that will enable you to monetize your following before your competition, we’ve put together an easy to digest 5-minute read that will tell you every-thing you need to know. Then all you need to do is take a look, put the tips into action, and reap the rewards your hard work deserves.

Understand who your customers are, and what they want to see

Before we get to some of the more technical stuff, you need to know how to target your ideal customer by knowing who they are. Analyze who you sell to, and ask yourself why they buy from you? What makes you unique? What makes your customers want to buy?

It may sound like common sense, but you’d be amazed at the number of businesses who skip this stage and jump straight to content creation. The problem is that they don’t have the insights they need to create posts that will resonate with their ideal customer.  

Perform A/B testing to optimize your posts over time

When you want to be able to reach as many people as possible, you need to be able to refine your posting style over time. If you think that small differences to your style and formatting don’t matter, then think again. A/B testing, or split-run testing as you may have heard it called, is the science of iterative improvement. If you want to be able to home in on an approach that works for as many people as possible, then you need to quantify the success of every post and learn from it. Data on Instagram engagement can be easily compiled with any number of different analytical data tools. Put them at the center of your efforts, and your brand will be all the bet-ter for it.  

Optimize the SEO boost of your new social profile

SEO is one of the key things that every social media campaign should focus on, and there’s no easier way to get a boost than linking your profile to your website. If you want to use your social campaign as a lead magnet of sorts, then offer every follower the chance to be redirected to your core homepage. It’ll make more a difference to your Google ranking than you might expect.

Turn comments into dialogue by engaging your customers

When it comes to social media, the importance of engagement cannot be understated. Sometimes companies think about social media in the wrong way — posting content on autopilot and thinking they’ve done a great job. Take a step back and think about things in a different way.

When someone calls your business or meets you at a trade show or exhibition, you wouldn’t stand there blankly when they introduced themselves, would you? That would be crazy, but that’s exactly what you’re doing online if you don’t reply to comments and likes. Turn them into a dialogue, and see how many other people join in. The results may surprise you.

Employ a keyword strategy so that your posts show up in search

An Instagram keyword strategy should be one of the cornerstones of your social media marketing efforts. Without one, you’re effectively just posting content into the ether and hoping to make an impression.

Instagram revolves around hashtags, so you will need to spend a significant amount of time deciding which ones are relevant to you. Some people will hashtag just about every word in their post, but this just appears spammy and irrelevant to their followers. Instead, take a look at the ‘Insight’ tab on your business profile and see for yourself how many im-pressions you get for a given hashtag.

Once you do that, you’ll be able to weigh up the pros and cons of dominating a very niche hashtag or riding on a global one that has thousands of other accounts tied to it. You can also analyze how many total hashtags get you the greatest number of interac-tions. There will be a tradeoff between not being visible enough in search, and appearing spammy due to too many hashtags.

Perform bot audits to give your brand authenticity

Bots are a fact of life on Instagram, and they are present in the follower lists of just about every profile on the platform. Whilst you’ll find it nigh on impossible to block them all, what you can do is undertake a periodic bot audit of your followers. This is important for two reasons.

Firstly, it will ensure that you know how many genuine follows your posting strategy has generated. And secondly, it will help protect the authenticity of your brand. If it’s discov-ered you have a million followers, 90% of whom are bots and fake followers, then this could be the next viral story to spread all over the internet. Your customers will think you’re buying followers just to look good when really you haven’t invested the time to clean up your followers.

Tag Amplifiers to Maximize the visibility of your posts

As well as social media influencers, there are now resources known as amplifiers. These are sites and accounts like BuzzFeed that curate content from all over the internet, and then repost it as news or feature pieces.

The great thing about amplifiers is they’re seen as genuine news sources these days, whereas influencers are still individuals endorsing products and services. Getting some of your content in the hands of an amplifier is a great way to put your profile in the spot-light like never before, whilst simultaneously subtly advertising your business to millions of potential new customers.

Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything re-lated to SEO and blogging. She collaborates with TopWritersReview and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their name in the online world.