For a busy small business, social media can become an afterthought, a chore, or can drift into the background altogether.
You don’t need us to tell you that Instagram is an important tool for attracting new customers, but perhaps you could use a few pointers on how to freshen things up, and grow your audience.
Join us as we unpack 15 small business Instagram tips for growth (that are actually realistic and useful for small business owners!):
Your audience values authentic, honest, spontaneous and personal small business content. So the best thing you can do for your business’s Instagram account is to show your face!
Within the CREOATE community, we consistently see that posts that include the business owner, or their team, perform better than those without them.
Reintroduce yourself and your business if you haven’t done so for a while, and snap pictures of your team at work (if you have one!). Exciting new products just landed? Jump onto Instagram stories to talk people through them.
Becky’s reintroduction post instantly adds personality and narrative to her greetings card brand, Pebble & Sage. It was also one of the brand’s most popular posts!
As well as showing up on Instagram, try taking people behind the scenes, showing them how you make your products, and how you run your business — you’ll be surprised at how curious your customers are!
If you make your own products, you’re also showcasing the amount of work and skill that goes into making each individual item. So when someone does go ahead and buy one, it will be all the more special to them as a result.
We love getting a glimpse into Laura's days at Handmade Design in Ashbourne! Taking part in these content series (with dedicated hashtags) is also a great way to grow your reach
📚 Bookmark for later: 20 Easy Instagram Content Ideas for Businesses
Time is a limiting factor for any small business owner. You need your socials to pack a punch, without spending your whole week on them.
Repurposing content is key here — and it doesn’t just mean posting the same video to Instagram and TikTok. If you’ve filmed a product demo for socials, why not pop it on the product page itself, for example?
From cutting up longer videos and interviews into bitesize ones, to reposting popular older videos with a different thumbnail, make sure you’re distributing your best content in as many places as possible. And don’t be afraid to reuse the best stuff.
Collaborating with other local businesses is a great way to combine your efforts, and increase your footfall. Make the most of each one by co-creating a collaborative post on Instagram, which will then show in both your feeds, and get both businesses in front of each other’s audience.
We often do collaborative posts with the products businesses that sell wholesale through CREOATE; it's a win-win situation for everyone
📚 Bookmark for later: Managing Footfall & The Joy of Local Collaborations, with mlkwood store
Stepping into the world of paid social media advertising can feel daunting if you haven’t done it before. Boosting successful posts is a great way to get more eyes on your best content, without having to spend a lot of money, or create dedicated ads.
Promoting a post is easy. Just click on the post that’s performing well, and hit the ‘Promote’ button (make sure you have your account switched to a business account). From there, you can select the goal (‘More profile visits’ is likely to be the best fit for brick and mortar stores, whereas ecommerce businesses might opt for ‘More website visits’). Then you can either let Instagram target new followers automatically, or you can select your ideal criteria in terms of demographics, likes and interests.
You set the spend and duration of the promotion, and this can start at just £1 for 1 day, making it a very low-risk way to test this out.
📚 Bookmark for later: 10 Types of Instagram Ads (& How to Use Them)
Before you bring a whole load of fresh faces to your page via boosted or collaborative posts, it’s time to revisit your bio. Ask yourself: is it clear what we sell, and is it clear where you can find us? Does our brand personality come across? If it’s not, it needs some workshopping.
Little Active People’s bio is a clear elevator pitch for the brand, and you don’t even need to leave Instagram to browse their products!
📚 Bookmark for later: 19 Brand-Building Instagram Bio Ideas
Sharing user-generated content (UGC) is a quick win for small businesses. Showing real people enjoying your products out in the wild builds trust in your brand, and makes customers more likely to go ahead and purchase them (79% more likely, in fact!). It also breaks up your feed with new faces.
If you’re reposting, be sure to ask permission from the user first, and tag them in your post as well.
💡 Top tip: Actively encourage people to share images of themselves using your products, either directly on social media, or by sending them to you directly. You can make this part of a shipping email, or a post-purchase follow-up email.
MØLBY THE LABEL' s feed is awash with colourful user-generated images, and it's all the better for it
Okay, okay, we all know giveaways can be annoying — but we also can’t deny that they’re effective. In fact, it’s reported that Instagram accounts which offer regular competitions and giveaways grow 70% faster than those who don’t.
Understand that your audience is probably suffering from giveaway fatigue, so if you want to run a giveaway, it should be both appealing, and easy to enter. Gone are the days of getting people to tag five friends, follow three accounts, and repost to their stories (unless you have something really great up for grabs!).
Videos tend to perform better than static images. They’re more engaging, and are more likely to be promoted by Instagram, consistently getting you better reach.
They don’t need to be a big production, either. You’ll notice some of the most successful video posts have the simplest concepts, and are just filmed on a phone.
When in doubt: add a cat
It’s important to be consistent when posting on Instagram, but it’s inevitable that your inspiration levels (and spare time) won’t be steady from week to week. In times like these it’s helpful to have a bank of images and video clips, and some ‘evergreen’ captions to go with them.
Tools like Hootsuite help with scheduling content in advance, but you might find something as simple as a dedicated album on your phone (plus a captions folder in Notes) a more user-friendly option, especially for posting on the go.
It’s tempting to focus only on ‘Likes’ as a measure of how a post went down — but comments and post saves can actually do more to boost your profile’s reach over time.
So if you’re sharing a roundup of tips, prompt your audience to ‘save it to come back to later’. Or open up a conversation by encouraging them to share their own experience, or their favourite X, in the comments section. Adding these simple calls to action to your captions can make all the difference.
Yes, hashtags are still a valid and useful way to get more eyes on your posts. But to make sure you’re not coming across as spammy, and that you’re getting in front of the right people, choose the hashtags you use wisely.
Instagram allows up to 30, but we’d recommend going for between five and fifteen, and choosing a mixture of popular and more niche ones.
📚 Bookmark for later: How to Use Hashtags on Social Media
To grow your Instagram account, you should be posting regularly and consistently. But you should also be posting content you’re actually proud of.
A content bank can help plug the gaps when your inspiration runs dry. But if you’re really struggling for something to post one day, you’re probably better off giving it a miss rather than posting lukewarm content ‘for the sake of it’.
Regularly review your Instagram analytics to see what your best posts are in terms of reach, engagement, and profile clicks, then build in space for a mix of all three in your content plan.
You should also experiment regularly with the best times to be posting, and whether certain things impact the overall post performance, like the hashtags used, or the length of the caption. Always be learning, iterating, and optimising.
We’re willing to bet that most small business owners with a ‘viral’ post didn’t expect it to go viral. Instagram, and your audience, will continue to throw up surprises, no matter how far into your journey you are. So always leave space to experiment, and for spontaneity. Try out trends. Have fun!
Your audience will love it.
If you’ve tried a different technique to successfully grow your business’s Instagram presence, we’d love to hear it! Drop Hannah an email (hannah@creoate.com) for your chance to be featured in this post.
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