If you’re a product-selling brand and you’re new to the business profile Instagram set-up, congratulations for making it this far.

Instagram has enhanced its business offering and business platform hugely over the last year or so, delivering innovative concepts which enable us to view analytics, link websites and other profiles, and set up Instagram Shopping – the latest tool to support the marketing and selling of various products to a social media audience.

This short guide to shopping tags is designed to introduce you to the Do’s and Don’ts of Instagram Shopping…

• DO tag the most prominent products in your photo.
• DO tag between 3 and 5 products in each wide-scale image. For example, if you are a wellness retreat looking to sell your experience and a series of products, consider the setting as well as the products on show, and tag between 3 and 5 of them.
• DO use striking and high-quality visuals, particularly on close-ups.
• DO combine wide-scale photos with single product showcases, for a varied feed. Sometimes customers will want to see and learn more about specific products – sometimes it helps to see different products in situ.
• DO use hashtags to draw the right audience to your shoppable posts.
• DO use Instagram stories as a way of introducing products through images and videos.

• DON’T tag too many products in any one image. Consider how the image will look when the customer clicks to see the shopping tags – if any of the tags overlap, your image becomes confusing and difficult to shop.
• DON’T clutter your caption with hashtags. Instagram allows for 30 hashtags but this is often far too many and ends up cluttering the post.
• DON’T use images which don’t do the product justice. If it doesn’t make your products look great, don’t use it.
• DON’T alienate your audience by only using a very specific type of model or setting.

Still unsure on how Instagram shopping can enhance your social presence? To discuss the benefits and find out how Instagram shopping can help you reach new audiences, get in touch with the Dot Dash Digital team.

All too often we see brands and companies packing their captions full of hashtags – regardless of the platform, and with little consideration for what is actually considered the optimum hashtag activity.

Well, spoiler alert, hashtag stuffing can actually be bad for the visibility and success of your posts.

There is in fact a correct way to use hashtags on social media, and it all starts with the platform you are using.

The Discover tool on Instagram is super useful for getting your content in the discovery feed of those who regularly search for content around your industry or area – and this is determined using the hashtags you share. Here are our top tips to using #Hashtags effectively on Instagram…

1. We have already encouraged you to sign up for a business profile if you are a company or brand operating on Instagram. And now it’s time to use those analytics and insights that having a business profile give you access to. Select one of your posts, go to Insights, and see how many impressions you got from each hashtag to rate its success.

2. Look at what your competitors are using for their hashtags. (Then make yours more targeted, as branded as possible, and better!)

3. Don’t post the same hashtags on every post. It can be super appealing to just copy and paste, but remember that if you stuff every post with the same content, Instagram’s algorithm will penalise you for spam content and your posts won’t show up in as many discovery feeds.

When we think about social media, we often hear that the most important thing to focus on is making content appropriate for the audience and the specific platform. But what about the device that we and our audience are browsing on?

Phones, tablets, laptops, computers… even televisions and smart watches. All of these are perfectly viable ways that your target audience might be accessing your content – and so understanding how to keep your visuals optimised for those different devices is key to social success. Here are our four tips to creating social content which is as great for mobile as it is for a laptop screen.

1. Focus on how each platform posts images. On Instagram, keep your feed content square, and your Stories content vertical, for optimised viewing on a smartphone.

2. Choose simple images that focus on one thing. This could be a spotlight product, a service, or even your logo or a single word defining your brand.

3. If you choose to post videos, keep them short and sweet. Remember that those browsing their social media on a mobile device are likely on the move or about to move onto a new activity, and so are far more likely to engage with something they can watch in seconds rather than minutes. If you do have a longer video to post, use the IGTV added to the platform in 2020.

4. Add text and subtitles to videos so that they can be watched and understood without sound. Not only does this make your videos great for social situations, but it also makes them more accessible for those who may not be able to hear or understand the video completely.

Some of the most effective social campaigns which work across multiple devices and platforms are those with the simplest visuals and the most obvious messages. Remember not to lose your overall goal in a complex campaign – keep it simple!