How To Open a Shop on Instagram
Guess what? Prosperity is just a few clicks away from that tempting ‘Settings’ button on Instagram. Instagram’s ‘Shop’ and ‘Business Profile’ features are designed to promote your catalogue to a targeted audience in a manner that you feel is best..
Instagram’s appeal is in its visual nature and if you can integrate your product catalogue with it, you’re in good shape. So let’s cut to the chase — here’s how you unlock Instagram’s complete potential.
The setup
Buckle up, this bit is a tad tedious.
Before you do anything else, make sure to convert your profile to a ‘business profile’ and also look through the commerce policies of Instagram to check if your endeavour adheres to it. One important thing to note here is that Instagram shops derive all information from a corresponding Facebook page, so essentially Facebook is the control center. Which means that you’ll have to create a Facebook shop page too (we don’t make the rules!)
However if you’re already using services like Shopify then it will all be a lot easier to control from its dashboard.
Up next, you’ll have to upload your catalogue to Facebook and then the wait begins. Before you get to call yourself an Instagram shop owner, Instagram itself will review your page and notify you in a few days (or more) if you’ve made it. That’s it!
The working
Here’s where the fun begins. You can now start tagging your products in your stories and posts just like you’d do with your friends. To activate the shop you will need to put forth at least one post tagging your products. After that, the world is your oyster. The reason why Instagram shop works so well is because it shows your posts to the interested audience in a way which isn’t too outright. It reaches a lot of people and more importantly it reaches ‘the right’ people. Remember that you’re selling more than just the product, you’re giving people the experience of enjoying your profile. That means that you can’t just have a profile whose job could have been done by a billboard. Be free, be organic.
Hope this post helps you understand how to go about creating a shop on Instagram. Let us know once you’re up and running, and all the best!
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