Instagram is a social network that’s fully dedicated to visual art in all of its shapes and forms. You can use it to promote your designs and draw public attention to your Shop. There are a few things you need to be aware of, though. Here we’ve put together a few key facts for you to leverage its power for your designs and help you promote your shop on Instagram.
Create feelings with visuals
There’s great power of persuasion and emotion in visuals, and getting the visual direction right is key to strengthening your reputation and your web presence. When used effectively, your images, pictures or videos will capture the attention of users and make them engage with you. That’s how you gain a following who’s really interested in what you do. Before you post on Instagram, consider your visual aids and how you present your designs or products. Instagram offers photo editing tools such as cropping, exposure compensation, contrast editing and film filters, and you can put them to good use to refine your visual identity.
Do’s and Don’ts
We strongly advise you to refrain from publishing screenshots of your shop products. Above anything, the folks on Instagram appreciate authenticity and original ideas. Publish your designs without any frills, and you’re in the money. You can e.g. take a photo of your sketch or illustrate the various stages of the creational process in installments. This offers a nice way to grant a look behind the scenes and generate interest in your work.
Check out how some of our Partners do it:
Sofia Svärd
J’aime La Grenadine
On Spreadshirt’s Instagram account, we noticed that we can activate more users whenever we publish pictures of our products worn by a person.
If you do not feel like wearing your products yourself, you can always ask friends or family to do it for you. Different genders and age groups sporting your gear in everyday situations will go a long way for you. There’s an article for more tips on how to get the best out of smartphone images for more inspiration.
Sound advise
When you make your introductory bow on Instagram, do it with the same name you use on other social networks so people can easily recognise you. It’ll also increase your chances of being found with google searches.
Instagram doesn’t allow you to add active links in your publications, but you can link to your your shop in your Instagram biography. This way, anyone stumbling over your account may be tempted to just click on the link to discover your Shop.
You can easily publish your Instagram posts on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare or Tumblr. Sharing your Instagram stuff on all channels may generate a bigger following and more subscribers to your Instagram account.
#hashtag4life
Using hashtags is absolutely vital these days. In addition to creating a social bond, hashtags increase your Internet visibility. That’s why it is important to choose your hashtags well, and especially check their use on the web before you post. Apart from a hashtag’s literal meaning, it might be connected to an idea or a movement that you don’t want to be associated with.
Also, please avoid general hashtags like #design. Choose them so as to highlight the subject of your image or video clip. You can also take advantage of a buzz if you identify a cool hashtag somewhere and can relate it to one of your designs. As a rule of thumb, you should never use more than 5–8 hashtags max.
Bonding with your subscribers and followers is bound to improve if you regularly challenge them for contests you either invent yourself or find somewhere else on the net. Of course, you will need to create or add the respective hashtag for the contest then. These measures will provide you with additional content created by the users themselves, and in turn link it to your designs. Ultimately, this will help you gain more visibility.
Final considerations
Both on Android and on iOS, there are many different applications offering a multitude of possibilities to put Instagram to good use. To name but a few: the Repost app allows you to republish your photos on Instagram, and it keeps updating older designs. With Latergramme, you can determine the date of your publication. And to keep an eye on your statistics, Analytics is the application for you. You will find a list of applications to boost your videos, photo editing and more Instagram.
Do you use Instagram to promote your products and designs? Do you have any other advice for other partners to gain exposure? Please do share your experiences below for the community.
