Looking to increase website traffic and lock in more sales than ever? Then get excited about Instagram. 

Instagram has proven itself to be a hub for sales opportunities for any business. With over 1 billion monthly active users, there’s no shortage of interested potential new customers for your business to attract to its products. And the demand for trustworthy and fun brands is abundant on the app – over 80% of accounts on Instagram follow at least one business account that they trust.

But getting views on your Instagram profile isn’t enough to develop the success you’re looking for. You need profile follows, link click-throughs and possibly assisted conversions to see a return of time and effort. So is your Instagram profile optimized to convert your visitors?

If done right, Instagram optimization is a quick and easy way to gain more traffic to your site from your profile visitors. 

Let’s talk about eight essential must-haves for any and every business Instagram profile. No matter the products or target audience, any business looking to enhance its social conversions will want to follow these tips.

1. Switching Your Profile to Business

Making the most of Instagram means making sure your profile is set up to be an Instagram Business profile. You are a business after all!

If you aren’t aware, Instagram offers two different types of profiles for users to choose from – personal and business. Why is this important? By selecting to set up an Instagram Business profile, you’re signing up to receive a variety of extra features and data-tracking tools to make your life easier. 

The Instagram Business profile allows business owners to post contact information, tag shoppable products for viewers to purchase within the app and track insightful data such as post engagement, impressions, likes and comments. This helps businesses learn more about their demographic and overall performance.

If you’ve already created an Instagram profile, you can easily switch your profile to Business by visiting the settings tab. Just open up settings, scroll down until you find “Switch to Business Profile” and click on the arrowed tab to start your setup process. 

Making sure your business is set up with the right type of Instagram account is the first step to perfecting your profile. 

2. Lock In Your Branded Username

Once your profile is set up as a business profile, you’ll want to make sure your audience can actually find you. Being creative and imaginative with how you set up your profile is part of the fun of Instagram. But for those looking to attract and retain a following that could potentially turn into a customer base, you’ll want your creative efforts to match your current brand. This is why your profile should have all of the things necessary to recognize its affiliation with your business. 

The first step is to make sure your Instagram username is one that matches your brand. This could be any variation of your business’s name, depending on the availability of that username within Instagram’s database (remember, one billion active monthly users!). 

You can choose to add different punctuation to your username to help you stand out or achieve the name you want, so long as the name aligns with your business to prevent any confusion from visitors. 

3. Follow Up With a Branded Profile Picture

After choosing your username, you want to select a profile picture that matches your brand aesthetic perfectly. This can either be a clear image of your brand’s logo, a photo of the business owner or anything business related that you like as long as the profile photo is easily viewable at a smaller size (think about what viewers will see when they see your post on their timeline). Many businesses choose to use their logo or a bright, eye-catching graphic that represents their brand well. 

Both your username and your profile photo can be changed by tapping the “Edit Profile” button on your Instagram profile page. Once you’ve selected the options that work for you, be sure to hit the save button to save all of your changes!

With your winning username and profile photo combo, Instagram users will know exactly what brand they’re engaging with when they view your profile, helping to prevent a confused visitor from bouncing away from your page. 

4. Entice Visitors With Your Bio

Your business’s brand is unique, dazzling and exciting. Why not showcase it through your Instagram bio?

An Instagram bio is self explanatory – it’s a short blurb describing what your brand is about and what kind of content users can expect you to post. Instagram bios can make or break accruing more of a following. If your bio doesn’t capture visitors and let them know what they’re in store for, they may decide not to follow your content altogether.

There’s no one right way to write your Instagram bio; however, there are some helpful hints on how to make the most of the character limit and space on your page.

To start, you always want to write a bio that includes a call to action. Invite your profile visitors to like your Facebook page, check out your website or view a special discount or ongoing sale. Directing them to an action can help increase interaction with your business. 

Keeping in mind the limited text space, you want to keep your message concise but powerful. Think of something that really packs a punch. Keeping things short and sweet can leave more room for line breaks, emojis and other pertinent information. 

As an added bonus, including emojis in your Instagram bio can help win visitors over. Choose emojis that encapsulate the essence of your brand or product and use them sparingly – a little goes a long way in the world of emojis!

5. Enable Profile Link Tracking

As we mentioned before, it’s always a great idea to promote a link on your Instagram profile page. So let’s talk about why link tracking is just as important. 

Many businesses on Instagram make the mistake of forgetting to add URL tracking parameters onto the links they’re using. But without link tracking, you won’t be able to track accurate results of how your link is performing with your Instagram audience.

You can use any URL parameters that work for your tracking needs. Or you can always use handy tools like Google’s Campaign URL builder to help you easily create a tracking link.

6. Enable Instagram Push Notifications

Engaging with your Instagram following is the turning point for directing your audience to your website to further interact with your business, so you don’t want to miss any likes, comments or messages that come your way on Instagram.

As a business running an Instagram page, it’s always a smart idea to enable push notifications directly to your mobile device. This will keep you at the top of any customer comment or other engagement that comes your way. It will also help you build up the habit of interacting with your Instagram audience.

To turn on your Instagram notifications, you’ll have to visit the notifications function within your phone settings. You should find Instagram as one of the options for push notifications. Simply tap Instagram, tap “allow notifications” and choose how you’d like to be notified. 

With your notifications enabled, you’ll never miss a chance to engage with your Instagram audience!

7. Create a branded hashtag

Once you get things going on Instagram and have a steady base of followers, you’ll want a place for users to share user-generated content featuring your products. After all, user-generated content is a great way to not only spread the word about your business but to curate content for your own Instagram. 

Creating your own branded hashtag works well for keeping your content organized and sharing posts from customers looking to interact with your brand. By using your hashtag, your customers’ posts will be pooled into one easily accessible place for you to view and interact with them. It’s a great way to start to develop a community with your business’s audience!

Sit down with your marketing team and start brainstorming clever branded hashtag ideas. You want your hashtag to be unique to your business to prevent non-related posts from showing up when you search the hashtag. Remember, you can’t own hashtags on Instagram, so the more unique and creative, the better shot you have at it being one of a kind to your business!

Once you’ve come up with the hashtag of your dreams, add it to your user bio and encourage your followers to reach you by tagging their photos with it. Then whenever you want to check on what your followers are posting, you can tap on your branded hashtag in your bio and you will be automatically directed to any content using that hashtag. Simple and effective!

8. Follow Like-Minded Accounts

Our last piece of advice is to follow relevant accounts. After all, your social media presence heavily relies on who you surround yourself with. What brands and accounts relate to your business? How can you show profile visitors that you relate to other businesses they know and love?

As a business, it’s important to make sure your branded Instagram aligns with your goals and motives. Following friends and loved ones on your business account should be avoided at all costs if you’re truly looking to build up a brand. 

Instead, focus your efforts on following and interacting with like-minded brands. Think about the industry you’re in as well as your audience – what brands share the same message and goals as you do? What products are your customers also buying instead of yours?

If you’ve been having trouble converting your Instagram audience into actual website traffic or converted customers, these suggestions could be the solution for you. Our list of eight simple optimization steps can take any Instagram profile from shabby to chic in less than a day. We hope you try out some of our tips and transform your Instagram Business profile into a perfectly optimized page for your customers!