Hey, it’s Wes from Printful!Marketing your e-commerce store can get overwhelming– you want to be everywhere at once, but sometimesyou just don’t have the time to keep upthree or more different channels. So, if you don’t know where to begin, concentrateon one, make it great and then you can addother channels later. Right now Instagram is the platform wherebrands of all sizes can easily connect withtheir current and potential customers. Many of our clients have made their salesbecause of how successful their Instagramaccounts were. Because the t-shirt and apparel industry isso visually based, Instagram has been my numberone marketing tactic or sales tool. I’ve dabbled with Facebook ads, email marketing,but Instagram has given me the most returnon investment. If you stay until the end of this video, you’lllearn five easy and important steps that willset you up with a pro-Instagram account forselling products. Before we begin, make sure you subscribe toour channel and tap on the little bell iconto get notified about our latest videos andnever miss out on new ways to make your storemore successful. STEP ONE: SET UP INSTAGRAM BUSINESSFirst, it’s not enough to have an Instagramaccount – you also need to get serious aboutwhat and how you post. Setting up Instagram Business will help youmanage your work – it will show you the bestupload times and other important statistics,like who your audience is and what are yourtop-performing posts. You will also get a lot of extra options forposting – like tagging your products and schedulingand auto-publishing posts with apps like Lateror Planoly. You can switch to Instagram Business on yourmobile device – under your profile settings,go to “Account” and choose “Switch toBusiness Account”Instagram is going to ask you to connect YourFacebook page. We recommend creating one even if you don’tplan on posting on it regularly. You’ll need to have a Facebook page in orderto make your posts shoppable – we’ll talkmore about that later. If you don’t have the time to keep up withboth a Facebook and Instagram page, you caneither make the Facebook page secret afteryou have connected it to your Instagram profile,or you can plan all of your Instagram poststo go to Facebook automatically, so you willhave fresh content on there without any extraeffort. If you don’t connect a Facebook page, Facebookwill create one for you and you will havethe ability to claim it and add informationlater. You can find a link to a detailed step-by-steptutorial on switching to Instagram Businessin the description below. STEP TWO: MAKE YOUR INSTAGRAM PROFILE YOURSECOND HOME PAGENow, if there ever was a platform where yourprofile needs to look good, it’s Instagram. Let’s start with your name. While it is important to put your store nameon here, you can also add your top keywords,as this part is searchable on Instagram. Next, your website. It is crucial that you put a link to yourstore here, so that people can actually goto it to buy your products. But you can also use this space to directyour followers to specific products or otherplaces you want them to see. We’ll talk about this again later, so keepthis in mind. And then, your bio. Be clear about what exactly it is that youare doing – so that your followers don’thave any questions about what kind of a profilethis is. Next, use this opportunity to add a uniquebrand hashtag your customers can use to showoff your products. Before you add it to your profile, though,post some pictures with it or ask your customersor friends to post some for you, as you don’twant it to be empty when people click on it. You can also tag your personal profile inthe bio, giving the business a bit more personalityand you can use emojis to spice up your bio. It’s not possible to start a sentence ina new line on Instagram, but for that, youcan prepare the text somewhere else and copyit in this field when you’re done. When your profile is filled in, you can moveon to the content. It’s very important to post regularly. You can post to keep your customers up todate on any new product releases or otherannouncements, find new ways to showcase yourproducts, and create variations for your mockupsthat will appeal to different customers. Ideally, you should post a photo a day ifyou can. If you feel like you don’t have the timefor that, with Instagram Business you canuse third-party apps like Later or Planolyto schedule your posts for the whole week. You can also plan your feed there and makesure that it will all fit together nicely. You can find the links to all of the resourcesin this video in the description below. If you don’t want to take the pictures yourself,you can use Printful’s mockup generatorfor your product photos for free, or subscribeto Placeit or a similar service. Next, it’s important to work on your captions. Engage with your audience when you can, askquestions and answer any comments they make. Add relevant hashtags to your posts – youcan use a service like Display Purposes togive you the most popular tags, similar tothe ones you already have in mind. You should try to use a mix of popular andless popular hashtags – that way you willget a big audience with the popular tags andalso have a greater chance to appear on thetop of the less popular ones. If you are using a lot of hashtags, try puttingthem in a comment, and start the comment withfive dots, each on their own line. Instagram will collapse the comment, showingonly an ellipsis, giving your post a cleanerlook. STEP THREE: MAKE YOUR POSTS SHOPPABLEYou have probably seen posts like these onInstagram all the time. The good news is, with an Instagram businessaccount, you can join the fun!All Instagram Business account owners cantag up to five products per image, or up totwenty products per carousel to display productnames, short descriptions, and prices. If a follower clicks on the product in thepicture, they’re automatically directedto your shop for more details. Instagram Stories can feature one productsticker per story as well. Now, one of the easiest ways to make producttagging available, is connecting your Instagrambusiness profile to a Facebook page catalog. There is a link in the description to a step-by-steptutorial on how to create a catalog. During the process you will be offered twooptions – adding new products from your storemanually or connecting your account to e-commerceplatforms where you have set up your shoplike WooCommerce, Shopify or BigCommerce,automating the whole process. Choose whatever makes more sense for you. Once your products are added on Facebook,your account will be reviewed. This will happen automatically, but it cantake a couple of days for the “Shopping”option to appear on your Instagram businessaccount. When it does appear, your last step is toenable it on Instagram and then connect thecatalog. Link to the tutorial in the description. Now, when you add new posts, you will seethe option to tag products here. Choose what you want to tag, add an engagingdescription and you’re done!You can now see all of your products in the“Shop” tab on your profile as well. Note that products tags don’t show up on Instagramdesktop, so you still need to send peopleto shop on your website as a backup. STEP FOUR: INTERACT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS WITHINSTAGRAM STORIESWhile your Instagram feed is all about consistency,Stories are less permanent – they disappearafter 24 hours and give you a great opportunityto play around and engage with your audiencewithout spamming the feed. In addition to being able to tag your products,you can add poll stickers, ask and answerquestions and showcase your latest productslive. You can also test some of your designs andask people to vote for the ones they’d liketo see on your store. Use this opportunity to really connect withyour customers and show them the person behindthe brand. Stories are the best place for a call to action– and while the “Swipe up” link optionis only available to accounts with more than10 000 followers, you can always direct yourfollowers to the link in your bio. Don’t change it up too much, as it shouldalways link to your store if anyone is visitingyour profile and want to see what’s up, butyou can link to a specific product categoryor blog post. If your Story happens to be a great success,you can always make it permanent by savingit to your profile Highlights. Keep them organized and give them easy tounderstand titles and you are good to go!STEP FIVE: USE USER GENERATED CONTENTFinally, user-generated content is a big partof marketing for many brands. It gives social proof to your brand, whichis one of the main motivators for customersto buy your products, because it makes thebrand more trustworthy. Using user-generated content puts customersin the center, and lets them tell your story. Plus, it’s free!One way to encourage your customers to postphotos of your products is to promote theuse of that unique brand hashtag in your bio. You can offer a discount for the next productthey buy if they post their review on Instagram,but ask them to be transparent with theirfollowers if they do so. This also gives you a lot of new content topost on your own profile, which is great ifyou are struggling to think of original posts. The rule is – you should always ask permissionbefore regramming posts on Instagram. Once you have the green light from the author,you can download the photo and post it onyour profile or use a third-party app likeRepost for Instagram to regram the post. Always give credit to the original author– it makes you look more trustworthy and createsa positive relationship between you and yourcustomers. Everyone likes to be seen, and this is a win-winfor both you and your Instagram followers. And it doesn’t need to be just around yourproducts. If your brand is connected to a more generalidea or trend, like fatherhood, for example,you can engage with people on any topics relatedto that. People submit a lot of photos of their dads,and people tag their dads and send us videocontent of their dads. We are very grateful and appreciate all ofthe good content we get. We hope to embrace our fans more and growthe community more. Ask your followers to share their storiesand show support for their struggles, celebratetheir successes. Create a community. It can help you grow and reach a wider audience,not just your customers, giving your brandmore exposure, plus your engagement rateswill be over the roof. And that’s all five!You can find a checklist of all five stepsand the resources we mentioned to help youalong the way in the description below. What else would you like to know about sellingon Instagram?Post in the comments bellow to get some more tips!