In the last years, Instagram has grown into one of the biggest and most used social media platform. Recent research shows that there are more than 500 million people who are using Instagram today. The more reason to use it in your own advantage. So, how do you use Instagram to promote your merchandise? Well, the answer is actually not that difficult. 

 



Besides the fact that you can post pictures of your merchandise on your Instagram account, there are some other things that can help you. First of all: you can start by posting Instagram stories on a regular basis. Not only will your story appear at your follower’s page, but you can also add some handy things to it. For example, add an “swipe up” feature to it, whereby your followers directly be sent to the page of your merchandise. If you don’t want your story to go away after 24hours, you can add it to your “highlight stories”, where your followers are able to see your story as long as they want. 

Another thing that will help you, is using the right hashtags. You can use popular hashtags that are relevant to your merchandise. When you use the right hashtags, it becomes easier for your target audience to find you. Instagram even has a feature that allows people to follow a certain hashtag. This can lead to an increase of your sale. 

Try to make more live videos. You can see a live video as a big video conversation with all of your followers, or at least, the one who are watching. Your followers can directly communicate with you by comments, and this will also stimulate the relationship with your followers. The best thing of a live video is, that after you are done and you finish the live stream, the whole live stream is still available for 24 hours. So, you don’t have to worry about the followers who aren’t available at the exact moment. In the Instagram live stream, you can talk about your merchandise, but also show it. But actually, you can do whatever you want to do. 

 

If you want to bring your promotion to another level, you can also choose for advertisement by Instagram. This is not free, but it’s definitely not that expensive either. Good to know is that this is only possible if you have a business-related Facebook account that is linked to your Instagram account.