How to Make Sales on Instagram

Instagram is a great, FREE way to sell your handmade products online. If you're a beginner or an expert at Instagram, we have some tips for making sales via your profile. With more than 800 MILLION users, Instagram is the third most-used social media platform in the world. So take advantage of it!

A STRONG IMAGE

The very first step is to make sure you have a strong image. After all, Instagram IS all about photos. Read about how to take stellar product photos with your smart phone here. The photo of your product is what is going to draw your buyers and future clients in, so make sure they are good ones. Bright, minimal images with lots of background space and a single color background are shown to capture more likes.

DIRECT LINK IN BIO

Instagram only allows users to have one link on their profile, so make sure you use it wisely. Make things easy for buyers with a direct link to your website, Etsy site, Shopify site, whatever you use for e-commerce. Alternately, you can get a free linktree, which will allow you have multiple links in one space and you can put your linktree site in your bio and reference multiple listings or sites in your posts. 

Here is an example of what Linktree looks like when you click on it from Instagram. The first one is a paid Linktree account (you can customize the background, etc.), the second is a free account example:

CALL TO ACTION

Instagram captions should be engaging and have an action the buyer can take. For instance, if you're posting a photo of a pair of earrings you have for sale, you want to invite shoppers to "click the link in my bio to purchase" and/or "tag a friend you think these would look fabulous on".

A 'call to action' is a great way to invite the shopper to do more! 

HASHTAGS

Using hashtags is a must. It is one of the only ways to search for products on Instagram. We pulled a 'super-secret hashtag receipt' from Social Media Examiner:

• Choose three to five popular hashtags. Popular hashtags have around 300,000 to 1 million posts for a specific hashtag. Anything over 1 million generally is irrelevant to you because it’s so saturated with content that the only thing you’ll attract are spambots. And you don’t want that!
• Select three to five moderately popular hashtags. These are the hashtags that fall in the 80,000 to 300,000 range.
• Pick three to five niche-specific hashtags. These are super-targeted specifically to your industry, what you do, the solution you provide, and what your customer is looking for.
• Include one or two of your branded hashtags.

Having 12-15 hashtags or less is the way to go. You can add these hashtags in a comment on your post instead of in the actual copy of the post, so as not to distract from your message.

 We hope this article helped you on your Instagram journey! 

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