What is Instagram?
Instagram is a photo-sharing service that allows users to post photos, videos, and stories as well as comment on other user’s posts. Over 1 billion people use Instagram every month, making it a great place to promote businesses and reach new audiences.
How can Instagram be useful for a landscaping and gardening company?
Instagram is a powerful tool for landscaping and gardening companies to promote their projects, engage with clients, and gain new followers. Photos posted could help attract future customers who want to be able to see the work you are doing. By posting several photos over an extended period of time, your Instagram can become like a portfolio to show potential customers your past work as well as what you are currently working on. With its powerful tools and vast reach, Instagram can be used to increase brand awareness, engage with customers in meaningful ways, and ultimately drive more sales.
Setting up an Instagram
Setting up an Instagram account is easy and straightforward. All you need to do is:
- Go to Instagram’s website or mobile app
- Create an account
- Choose a username and password
- Enter your business name, contact details and website link
- Choose a profile photo
- Start posting content!
10 tips for using Instagram to grow your landscaping and gardening company
Business account – having a business account rather than a personal one will allow you to view analytics, showing how many people are interacting with, and viewing your posts.
Hashtags – using relevant hashtags allows companies to reach more people, as people can find posts through searching hashtag terms. Be specific with your hashtags to help you reach your target audience – e.g. #landscapingcambridge and use hashtags you know people will be looking for.
Post consistently – Regularly posting updates about projects and client reviews will help keep followers engaged and encourage them to contact your business or visit your website. Ideally, you want to be posting anywhere between once a day and 2 times a week.
Captions – keep your captions short and snappy, use them to provide some extra information about the photo or video and include your choice of hashtags. If your caption is too long, people will not take the time to read it but if written effectively, it can give people an insight into your landscaping process.
Engage with audience – frequently reply to comments and answer any questions people may have to help you build a relationship with a potential customer. Engaging with other similar accounts can also help you to build a following and attract new customers. Encouraging engagement will also help your account to be found by others.
Attractive profile page – if someone likes your content, the first place they will go is your profile page. This should be attractive and include all of the relevant information about your business, such as a link to the website and contact details, as well as a brief description of what you do.
Reels – Instagram reels are a relatively new function of Instagram that is just for video content. They are the best way to gain new followers and tend to be shown to wider audiences than photos. For a gardening company, this could be a short video showing the process of garden landscaping.
Analytics – if you have a business account, you are able to view analytics which show you how many accounts you have reached (seeing your posts) and how many have engaged with your content (likes, shares, comments). Using analytics, you can experiment with different kinds of posts, such as videos v photos, and see where you get the most engagement.
High quality images – if you want to attract future customers with your Instagram, having high quality images that represent the work that you do is crucial. You want your Instagram to show off the services that you offer and the quality with which you do them, so taking the time to get a good photo is very worthwhile.
Location – including the location on your posts can help them to reach people in the local area as well as showing people where you provide gardening and landscaping services.
