Firstly you need to decide your intent for your Instagram presence, such as:

• - Drive traffic to your website

• - Build a community

• - Increase awareness of your brand

• - Showcase your products

• - Share your company news

With clear goals you can plan your content accordingly.

Make sure you have a great Instagram profile that explains your brand, appeals to your audience, uses your brand tone and lastly use a recognisable profile image. You want people who land on your page to easily know what your business and brand is all about. You can use links in the bio to drive people to not only your website but to things such as blog posts, offers, competitions and even your Facebook page.

Be consistent with your style of photos, brand colours and fonts to be memorable and recognisable.

Set yourself a realistic posting schedule and endeavour to stick to it. The consistency of your posts will enable your audience to learn when to expect content from you. If you need help with scheduling there are plenty of good apps out there, that will schedule your posts for you!

Beware of posting too much as this can have a negative effect on your account by overwhelming your followers with content you may lose them.

By attaching a Facebook page to your Instagram account you gain access to the analytics, which, can show you the time in which your followers are online. Use this as well as you own observations to determine an optimal time to post.

Get to know your followers, and engage with their content as well as responding to comments of your followers. Following hashtags, liking and commenting on content from other users is a great way to get people to interact with your account, boost profile visits and engagement of your own content.

This can be used to capture content that you do not wish to be seen on your feed. Shoot behind the scenes footage of your business and let your audience get to know you better.

Decide on how you will use your captions. Whether it is storytelling, micro-blogging, use of quotes, questions or short statements. Both long form and short form copy can have an impact on Instagram, however, don’t make your caption longer than it needs to be.

By using relevant and popular hashtags you will be able to expand your reach. Using a company hashtag is a great way to let your followers latch onto your brand too #carrierbagshop!

Use the video function as well as photos to get a good mix of content. Varying your content also keeps you interesting. Make use of the auto-play feature on Instagram. As someone scrolls past your content on their feed they’ll see at least 2-3 seconds of your video so make it interesting to keep them engaged.

Happy Instagramming!