Karen Tucci: Instagram Tips for your Direct Sales Business

Hello friends! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! You all know how much I love Social Media and sharing my knowledge with all of you so I couldn't wait to talk with you today about my latest obsession...Instagram. I feel like using Instagram for your Direct Sales business has really taken off recently with the new Instastories feature and I couldn't wait to share a few tips with you. Instagram is an amazing visual social media platform that allows users to connect equally. It levels the playing field to allow everyone an equal opportunity to connect with others through their pictures.

Tips for Using Instagram for your Direct Sales Business

Share only positive and compliant images. Always be sure when posting a photo that you are mindful of any rules that you could be breaking with your company's policies and procedures and, of course, always keep things positive!

Mix it Up: Share entertaining and attractive images of your daily life along with product images which keeps your feeds engaging and relatable. Even though you may have set up an Instagram account with the sole purpose of selling products, you do not want to only post your products all day, every day. Your followers will start to tune you out or unfollow you all together.

Share your Excitement: If you follow my journey on Instagram, I am sure you could just feel my excitement and passion leaping out at you through the screen of your smart phone. Excitement breeds excitement!!

Tag another Instagram User: Tagging others on Instagram is a great way to promote another user or encourage engagement on your account. For example, you can congratulate one of your top leaders who earned a promotion and tag them by using the @ symbol. Not only does this invite engagement, but it will also bring attention to your leader's Instagram account as well.

Use Hashtags: Adding hashtags to your photos is a great way to find new followers and share your photos with more people. A hashtag is a symbol that allows web search engines to find and categorize messages, keywords and in the case of Instagram, photos. When you use them on social media like Instagram, you can search on them and see who else is using the same hashtag. Using hashtags is also a great way to brand yourself on Instagram. I always use the hashtag #karentuccibeauty on every photo that relates to my business tips to group all of my business related photos together. If a user were to click on that hashtag, they would find every photo related to my business.

Optimize your profile: Your Instagram profile says a lot about you so make it a good one! This is where potential followers will determine whether or not you have enough in common or that you portray a certain quality that will make someone want to follow your account. Try not to be too specific when writing your profile as you will want to attract a large pool of users not related to just one area of your life.

Engage with your Followers - I click on every user who likes my photos. Follow them back and engage with them. If you can, stay active in their feed through your own likes and comments.

Cross-promote - Post your Instagram photo on Facebook or Twitter with a catchy phrase to entice readers to click over. A great tip is to also use the same Instagram name as your Twitter handle for easy brand recognition.