How to Use Instagram for Business: A Comprehensive Guide

With its global user base, Instagram can be a great place to grow your business. In fact, in a Link in Bio survey of social marketers, 60% said that if they could post on only one social platform for the rest of the year, it would be Instagram. Plus, Instagram’s social commerce features are making it easier than ever to sell directly on the app.

A solid Instagram content strategy for business can help you expand your brand reach and boost sales. Here, learn how to set up an Instagram business account and run it successfully, with tips from expert entrepreneurs. 

How to set up an Instagram business account

You’ll need a Business Instagram account to unlock the best of Instagram’s marketing and selling features, including analytics platform Instagram Insights, Instagram Shopping, and more.

Once you’ve determined that you meet the requirements to sell on Instagram, you can get started.

Here’s how to create an Instagram business profile from an existing Instagram account:

1. Head to your personal profile and tap the menu icon in the upper right corner to open the Settings and activity menu. Select “Account type and tools.”

2. Select “Switch to professional account.”

3. A screen outlining the benefits of professional accounts will pop up. Select “Next.”

4. Choose between a Creator account or a Business account, then select “Next.”

5. Add the business information you’d like to show on your profile, such as your business email, business address, and business phone number. You can also leave these fields empty and add contact info later. Select “Next.”

6. The next window will ask if you’d like to connect to Facebook. If your business has a Facebook page and you want to connect it, select “Login to Facebook.” If you don’t want to connect right now, select “Skip.”

7. Next, a window will show a checklist of steps to finish setting up your account, from completing your profile to getting Meta Verified. You can select one of the checklist prompts or click the “X” in the top right corner to exit the window and start using your new business account.

How to use Instagram for business: 11 strategies for success

• Optimize your Instagram business profile
• Develop a content strategy
• Define your audience
• Set goals and outline KPIs
• Experiment with different formats
• Plan and schedule your posts ahead of time
• Use Instagram Insights
• Engage with your followers
• Increase sales with shoppable posts
• Try influencer marketing
• Run Instagram ads

Ready to start using Instagram for your business? Implement these strategies to get the most out of the platform: 

1. Optimize your Instagram business profile 

Once you’ve created your account, it’s time to optimize your Instagram bio. This is a key step in executing an effective Instagram marketing strategy. It will help potential customers know they’re looking at your real account and make it easier for them to buy from you. 

Consider these key elements: 

• Profile picture. Use your store’s logo or an image of your company name with your brand colors.
• Username. Choose a simple username, also called a handle, that matches your brand name. If your brand name is unavailable, consider adding a word to it. For example, the olive oil brand Graza uses the handle @getgraza. 
• Name. Use your full business name in the “Name” field. This will appear below your handle.
• Bio. Write a concise, compelling description of your store. Include your unique selling proposition and consider adding a call to action (CTA). Graza uses the unique selling proposition “Crazy fresh olive oil” and excludes a CTA—instead, the brand includes a link customers can click to purchase.
• Website link. Add your store’s URL to the dedicated website field or use a link-in-bio tool to add multiple links.
• Category. Select the most appropriate business category for your store, such as food and beverage, clothing, or home décor.
• Contact information. Many ecommerce brands leave this section blank, but if you wish, you can include your email, phone number, and physical address.
• Highlights. After you’ve posted Instagram Stories, sort them into Highlights to showcase product categories, customer reviews, or promotional offers in one place.

Take a look at Graza’s well-optimized Instagram profile. It includes the company’s name, a short, concise description noting what the company sells (olive oil) and its value proposition (its products are “crazy fresh”), links to purchase the products, and a selection of organized Story Highlights about different products.

2. Develop a content strategy 

A content strategy is a document that outlines the types of content you’ll create, who you want it to reach, and what you want it to achieve. Developing a thorough Instagram content strategy also requires auditing your existing content, assessing your competitors’ Instagram presences, and building an editorial calendar to plan your posts. Find more on these steps below.

3. Define your audience

Knowing your audience is crucial to turning marketing efforts into sales. Take time to envision your ideal customers. What do they like? How old are they? What makes them tick? With a clear picture of your target audience, you can tailor your content and tone to create Instagram posts that resonate with the people most likely to buy your products.

Research your ideal customers’ demographic information, interests, and shopping behaviors by conducting surveys or analyzing your existing sales data. Use the insights from this exercise to create buyer personas. Personas can help guide your Instagram content strategy, because instead of asking yourself, “Will this post resonate with our audience?” you can ask, “Will this post resonate with Jill, a 32-year-old software engineer and marathon runner?”

4. Set goals and outline KPIs

Setting clear goals for your business’s Instagram marketing strategy provides direction and helps you measure progress. First, consider what you want to achieve, whether increasing brand awareness, getting more followers on Instagram, driving website traffic, or boosting product sales with Instagram’s shopping features. 

Then, determine key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress toward your larger goals. These could include:

• Follower growth rate
• Engagement rate
• Click-through rates to your website
• Conversion rates from Instagram visitors

Make your goals specific and attainable. Let’s say you’re hoping to boost brand awareness. Instead of setting the vague goal of “I want more views,” for example, aim for the specific “I want to attain 10,000 views this month.”

Setting clear goals and monitoring them helps you to identify what’s working and what needs improvement. Taking a data-driven approach to your content strategy and posting schedule ensures your Instagram efforts contribute to your business’s growth.

5. Experiment with different formats

Instagram offers several format options:

• Reels. Reels are videos up to 20 minutes long that show up on your profile’s main grid and Reels tab. They can also display in users’ Reels tabs, a continuous scroll of videos chosen by the Instagram algorithm. 

• Lives. These are livestream videos. Once they’ve aired, you can post them to your profile or keep them hidden. Turn on comments to respond to your fans’ notes in real time. 

• Stories. Instagram Stories are temporary posts that stay up for 24 hours, although you can save them to your Highlights if you want to continue showing them. They appear in your followers’ Stories bars at the top of their feeds. Stories can be photos or videos up to 60 seconds long.

• Photo posts. This is the original Instagram post format. They can be single images or carousel posts, which are slideshows.

Posting different formats can help you achieve different goals. For example, Instagram Reels have the largest reach, but Instagram carousel posts have the highest engagement rate, according to CreatorJet.

If you’re hoping to reach new audiences, Reels are probably the way to go. “Instagram Reels are a powerful tool for small business owners,” social media consultant and author of Link in Bio Rachel Karten says. Rachel explains that this is because the Instagram algorithm favors Reels, potentially showing yours to viewers who don’t already follow you. But it’s important to temper your expectations.

“Don’t expect every Reel that your small business makes to go viral or to get the same amount of likes,” Rachel says, noting that some Reels might take off while others will receive relatively few likes. “It’s a numbers game. Just keep creating content and trying new things.”

6. Plan and schedule your posts ahead of time

To keep your brand top of mind for your followers, you’ll need to post consistently. 

“In those early days, aim to get up three to five posts a week if you can,” Rachel says. To make this more feasible, she suggests mixing harder-to-execute posts with easier ones like trend videos. 

To ensure you never forget to post, create an Instagram editorial calendar. A well-structured content calendar should balance different post types and align with larger marketing campaigns, business goals, and seasonal events (like Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales or new product launches). 

Social media scheduling tools like Agorapulse and Sprout Social can help you develop a robust Instagram content calendar; you can also schedule posts within the Instagram app. Experiment with the best days and times to post on Instagram, too. The best times to post will depend on general patterns and those unique to your audience.

Here are a few post ideas to help you flesh out your editorial calendar:

Product shots 

Showcase your products to inform potential customers about your offerings. Here’s an example from Asian condiment brand Fly By Jing showcasing the brand’s Chili Crisp Ketchup:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Frankie Gaw (@littlefatboyfrankie)

 

User-generated content 

Build trust by featuring content from satisfied customers. Collect user-generated content (UGC) and repost customers who share posts featuring your products. You can collect UGC by creating a branded hashtag or asking users to tag you.

Testimonials 

Share customer reviews or positive feedback (with permission) to build credibility and encourage new customers. Here’s a creative example of posting testimonials: Meat stick brand Chomps posted a Reel asking people on the street to rank its original and jalapeño flavors. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chomps (@chomps)

 

Lifestyle imagery 

Share content that reflects your brand’s ethos. That could include location-specific scenes or aspirational images of people using your products. Clothing brand Finisterre excels at sharing captivating lifestyle shots. 

Behind the scenes and day in the life

Give followers a glimpse into your production process or a typical day for a founder, partner, or employee. Tinned fish brand Fishwife does this in a short Reel showing a day in the life of a brand ambassador.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fishwife (@fishwife)

 

Collaborations

Generate buzz and extend your reach by sharing posts about brand collaborations. These could showcase co-branded products or giveaways. When you tag your partner brands, they can reshare your content, placing it in front of their audience. Here, the healthy soda brand Olipop posts about a joint giveaway with fragrance company ~Pourri and hand sanitizer brand Touchland.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by OLIPOP (@drinkolipop)

 

Don’t feel like you need to reinvent the wheel every time you post. “If you post a photo that does really well, try and think of what the video version of that could be,” Rachel says. “Tell the same story lots of different ways: Try telling it in video format, try telling it in meme format. I’ve found that the best brands actually tell the same stories over and over again in different ways on Reels.”

7. Use Instagram Insights

Analyzing your Instagram account’s performance can help you refine your Instagram marketing strategy over time. For example, if your Reels have high engagement, you might focus on creating more of them. Be sure to monitor the KPIs you’ve already established, but be willing to look at additional data points, too.

You can see important information in Instagram Insights. This is Instagram’s native analytics tool, which you can access with a business account. Insights provides a range of information, including:

• Shares. How many people shared your content in general, and how many people shared specific posts.

• Comments. How many comments you received on specific posts and more broadly on all of your content.

• Follows. How many followers you gained and lost.

• Viewers. Who’s watching your content, with demographic information such as age and gender.

• Views. How many views your content received, broken down by followers and non-followers.

You can set Insights to show data within specific date ranges and compare your performance across different time periods. You can also use data from Instagram Insights to compare engagement across post types such as Reels and Stories. This can help you decide which forms of content to invest in. You can also use this data to analyze performance across different subject matters, for instance, comparing behind-the-scenes with interview content, so you know which to prioritize.

Michelle Razavi, cofounder of the protein dessert company Elavi, leveraged data to inform her brand’s focus on authentic content. On an episode of Shopify Masters, Michelle explains that she used to spend a lot of time perfecting her content by focusing on lighting, her appearance, and editing. Then, she started posting less polished content.

“I started being very data-driven,” Michelle says. “What just works? What moves the needle?” For Elavi, that turned out to be organic, authentic content that gave viewers a glimpse behind the scenes. “We learned that people really like that. People resonate with that.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michelle Razavi (@michellerazavi)

 

8. Engage with your followers

Engage with your most loyal followers by replying to comments on your posts and responding to direct messages (DMs). Instagram comments generate a 1.3% response rate, while DMs have a 41% response rate, according to data from Dash Social. Consistently responding can make you stand out and show followers that you value what they have to say. 

Lindsey Carter, founder of athleisure brand Set Active, explains that two-way communication helped her find her first customers. 

“I was posting everything that I was doing and answering as many DMs as I could from strangers,” Lindsey says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “I did that from day one, and I do it today. I think being able to feel connected to me as a founder makes people feel special.”

Business accounts have DM filtering options, making it easy to respond as you wish. These features help organize messages that are unopened, unanswered, or from people you follow. You can also set up automated replies to FAQs and common customer inquiries to improve your response time and efficiency. 

9. Increase sales with Shoppable posts

By allowing many brands to make money on Instagram, the platform has become a significant sales channel. In fact, 29% of Instagram users make purchases on the platform, according to the 2025 Sprout Social Index. 

Shopify merchants can easily turn their Instagram page into a sales channel by installing the Facebook & Instagram app. Note that you’ll also need to create a Meta Commerce Manager account. Once you’ve installed the app and set up your Commerce Manager account, you can tag products in your Instagram posts and set up an in-app shop that Instagram users can browse. When a customer is ready to buy, they’ll be directed to your ecommerce store to complete checkout.

Here’s an example of selling on Instagram from Graza. The company posts a video of its boxed olive oil, then tags the product. When users select “View shop,” they’re directed to Graza’s Instagram Shop. 

10. Try influencer marketing

Influencer marketing can place your products in front of an expanded audience. Working with influencers can also help you generate more engagement with your company. That’s because creators garner six times as much engagement as brands on Instagram.

If you want to start influencer marketing but don’t have the budget for sponsored posts, consider gifting your products in the hope that creators will mention your brand for free. 

This is the strategy pickle brand Good Girl Snacks used when it launched its influencer marketing strategy by gifting its pickle jars to creators. If you opt for this route, just make sure you’re gifting your items to influencers who are likely to speak about your brand.

“We did our research when we figured out who we’re going to reach out to,” Good Girl Snacks cofounder Yasaman Bakhtiar says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “We made sure that we reached out to the girls that we knew would love the pickles. We knew they were either pickle connoisseurs already or they ate a similar snack. So I think naturally it just felt more organic for them to talk about it and show it in a video because it’s already part of their everyday routine.”

11. Run Instagram ads

Instagram ads can help you place your products in front of Instagram users who don’t already follow you, widening your reach. When you run ads, you’ll be able to choose which demographics you want to reach in Meta Ads Manager. This can help you personalize ads to reach your target audience. For example, you could decide to show ads to people in a specific location or of a certain age.

You can also target users who have already visited your website or viewed a particular product. You can set this up with the Meta pixel—a short line of code you can add to your Shopify Store when you download the Facebook & Instagram app.

Repurpose existing photo posts, Reels, and Stories into ads, or create them from scratch. 

Instagram is always evolving, and so should your strategy

The Instagram algorithm is always changing, and as your business grows, your strategy should adapt. Experiment with different content formats and post ideas, track performance analytics, and don’t be afraid to change your content strategy.

Be sure to analyze audience feedback in comments and DMs, too. Consider proactively sourcing feedback by posting polls in your Stories or asking questions in Stories, image posts, and Reels. Your audience can provide valuable insights, including:

• The content they want to see more of
• Their common questions about your products or business
• What resonates with them (and what doesn’t)

Ultimately, your followers are your best source of qualitative feedback, since they form the foundation of your brand’s Instagram community and are invested enough in your posts to keep following you. As you build relationships with curious newcomers, skeptics, past customers, and loyal fans, you’ll create a space where people can connect over their shared appreciation for your company.