Don’t they say a picture is worth a thousand words? No statement could be more truthful, if used effectively your business Instagram is a great way to publicise, market and sell your business to your clients. Whether you are directly selling products or creating a mood for your business, its essential to work out how you want to be portrayed.

The biggest mistake people make with Instagram, is not creating a look and feel from the outset. It’s best to find your ‘voice’ by creating mood boards and looking at other examples of how other businesses run theirs. It’s also not fair to say that it doesn’t suit your business, one look at the newly formed Instagram business blog will change your mind. All the big guns from Coco Cola to Audi to Qantas all have their place in the market.

Here are a few pointers to help you get started:

Have a variety of images and be sure to balance this with ‘fun’ images

Take advantage of the increased real estate you have and tell a story with your images. Be fun, create a voice for your business by having a healthy balance of fun images and business or product pictures.

Create a following

Make sure you connect your Facebook account to your Instagram to ensure you are getting the most out of every post. Use relevant, popular hashtags and use your imagination to come up with your own. Many businesses create unique tags to do with their posting plan. This may be something like “Tasty Tuesdays” ( thedesignfiles.com.au) or Motivational Monday. It’s also a must to engage by following others and liking their photos. It may seem minimal but it really does help to broaden and promote your brand. There is also opportunity here to create competitions and ‘regram’ posts once you build up this following base.

Have a flexible posting plan in place

The ‘feed speed’ on Instagram is still somewhat slow paced compared with FB, so don’t feel like you need to post every day, as this can saturate your followers’ feeds and create harmful clutter. Decide what you have ready to post and create a schedule to help you remember what to post when and to track what is working once you get going. Have a backlog of posts too so if you are busy, you are ready to go and wont be absent from your feed.

Share your business view of the world

For brands to be successful on Instagram, it needs to not just be about selling and instead share a distinctive view of the world. You want to create a visual story board of who you are, what you do and what you as a company ‘look like.’ Cultivate a unique visual sense and capture things that are interesting to your brand and most importantly, the core target customer. Last but not least, make sure your Instagram account is managed by someone in the organisation who understands how to align images with the interests of your target customer.