As one of the fastest growing social networks in the world, everyone wants a piece of Instagram. From a brand’s perspective, it’s critical to use Instagram to engage, monitor and track users who interact with your business on the platform.
Why Instagram?
With more than 400 million monthly active users and 80 million photos added to the social network each day, Instagram is skyrocketing to the top of the social media world. In fact, many business experts have found immense success with Instagram as a tool for marketing. This has lead many companies to have multiple Instagram accounts to manage different brands, locations or aspects of the organization.
The only problem is Instagram’s API (application program interface) doesn’t allow users to control and manage multiple Instagram accounts from the native platform. But before we get into how you can manage multiple Instagram accounts, let’s take a look at why you should be on the social network in the first place.
Consumers Spend More On Instagram
If you have a spot in the ecommerce industry, you certainly need to consider the impact of social commerce. Being socially active can pay off tremendously for brands that are already working in the digital marketing space. A Shopify report discovered Instagram had the second-highest average order value compared to other social media platforms.
With an average order of $65, Instagram beat out Pinterest ($58.95), Facebook ($55) and Twitter ($46.29). The highly visual social channel makes it easier for brands to showcase their product. There’s just not another platform like it when it comes to successfully presenting products or services through visual mediums.
Additionally, Instagram users spend an enormous amount of time on the platform. In 2015, comScore released its annual Digital Future in Focus report, which discovered 12 billion minutes were spent on Instagram. That’s a drastic jump from the 6.6 billion minutes from Twitter.
You’ll Likely Have a Head Start
Even though Instagram users have completely surged in the last few years, businesses are still hesitant for some reason. A 2015 American Express report conducted by Ebiquity found less than 10% of small businesses operate on Instagram.
Whether you’re a small or enterprise-level business, Instagram could be a huge place of opportunity because so many brands still aren't adopting the network. As a marketer, your goal should be to exist where your audience is located. More likely than not, you have a large portion of your audience who get on the image-sharing app each day.
Why not use Instagram for social media engagement before your competition gets involved? No matter if you need just one or multiple Instagram accounts, it’s necessary to be present in this social sphere with your brand.
Front & Center With Followers
Unlike Facebook, content on Instagram is hard to miss by your followers. Once you get users to follow your brand, they physically have to scroll through your visuals to get to the next image in their feed. This means your images have much more engagement because they take up the users’ entire screen.
Here's an example of an Instagram advertisement on my iPhone. When scrolling through the feed, this post takes up my entire screen. Instead of suggested advertisement on Twitter and Facebook, which can easily be overlooked, Instagram puts you front and center to practically all your followers. Your images are seen on Instagram because 57% of users access the site at least once a day.
Visual data is easier to digest. When users interact with visual content about your product or service, they are more likely to process and make a purchasing decision. The way Instagram gets users to interact with other visual content is like no other. But for marketers, it has to be a place you’re familiar with or you’ll risk ignoring a major social audience.
Unique Original Content
One of the best things about Instagram is it gives you a chance to show your brand in a new light. Instead of posting typical images of your product or service, you can give users a behind the scenes look into how your company works.
You also have the opportunity to get creative and highlight your product or service in a unique point of view.
In this example, Honda does a great job at showing their product in a new light. You can tell a story with your Instagram images and take a different perspective than your standard marketing campaign. Instagram is all about sharing beautiful images, so why not use this platform to get creative with your images?
Managing Multiple Accounts
Now that you have a better understanding of why you need Instagram, it’s crucial to know how to manage multiple accounts. Several organizations have different aspects or portions of their business, which makes it difficult to manage everything under a single social profile.
For example, businesses with multiple locations might want a social profile for each one. Additionally, some organization leaders like to manage their personal accounts along with the brand’s social profile. The constant back and forth of logging in and out can be exhausting and dangerous for your brand.
You’ve likely seen an accidental Tweet or Instagram post from a brand’s social media manager that was meant for a personal profile. In this scenario, one of the Texas Rangers' social media staff accidentally posted "Fire Charlie" to the team's Twitter. The response was in reference to the University of Texas Longhorn's football coach who had just lost a big game. While the Tweet wasn't the worst thing that could go out, it was certainly not in line with the Rangers' brand or voice. The Tweet brought negative attention to the baseball team and the social media manager was quickly removed from the role.
To avoid these issues, you have to efficiently manage all of your accounts together. That’s why Sprout Social built its Instagram management tools, so businesses could seamlessly manage multiple accounts at the same time.
Sprout’s all-in-one single-stream inbox makes it simple to manage all your social profiles across each network without the pain of logging in and out. Through Sprout's Smart Inbox, you can immediately respond to any comment across all your accounts. This allows you to:
- Increase Instagram engagement: When you’re able to put all your incoming Instagram comments in a single inbox, you can measure your engagement more efficiently. It takes just one click to reply to anyone or any of your collective Instagram accounts.
- Collaborate on social profiles: If you put effort into your social media team, you likely have more than one person who will access these social accounts. With Sprout, you can easily manage multiple Instagram accounts with your co-workers through the Smart Inbox. Your collaboration efforts allow you to create or assign tasks, mark messages as complete and even alert other users with real-time notifications when someone else is viewing or replying to a message.
- Divvy the workload: If your Instagram followers have questions about your product or services, you might want to send their question to your customer support or sales team. Through Sprout, you can assign any message to better work as a team, divvy the workload and ensure every incoming message gets the right attention.
Monitoring Instagram Hashtags & Locations
Keeping a pulse to the social discussion about your brand is essential for as a marketer. Knowing what customers say about you helps you reach and engage with your audience. That’s why monitoring your Instagram hashtags can play a huge role in your engagement strategies.
With Sprout’s keyword search tool, you can monitor hashtags on Instagram to see what common words are associated with your brand. Additionally, you can monitor geo locations as well so you know where your customers and audience are located. Having this information helps you make better marketing decisions with your social channels. It also can show you how well your social campaigns have paid off.
Using Instagram Effectively
Before social media, marketers wanted to reach their audience and know how people felt about the product or service. With Instagram, you take out a lot of the guesswork and have more confidence with your brand decisions.
If you want or have multiple Instagram accounts, you shouldn’t waste time managing both through the native platform. With Sprout Social, you can change your Instagram efforts into a solid tool for generating leads and building your audience. Try us today for a free 30-day trial!
This post How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts originally appeared on Sprout Social.
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