Instagram’s meteoric rise continues, dwarfing the stagnant growth rates of Snapchat and Facebook. Recently, Instagram announced that it has reached 1 billion monthly active users, after passing 800 million in September 2017 with 500 million daily users. So how can you use this platform to your advantage as a small business? Contrary to popular belief, Instagram can work just as well for smaller brands as it does for big brands. Read on to discover how to raise brand awareness and grow your customer base simultaneously.

Engage and be active

It is no use creating engaging visual images if no one knows you have an Instagram account. The first step to utilising Instagram is to let your customers know that you have a social presence. Put a link to your Instagram account on your website and advertise it on any other social accounts you have and include it in email signatures.

The key to a successful Instagram account is consistency. If you are going to post images, you should do so regularly; the more active the company is on the platform the more you’ll get in return. Try and post on at the optimum times each week and stick to this routine. Tools such as Social Insights and Iconosquare both have features showing best times to post for maximum engagement and interaction, as well as a host of other analytical tools that can feed into your Instagram activities.

Have a target audience for your content

Once you have an account set up, it is time to decide what type of content you are going to create to engage your audience. Know who to target with content. Start with your current customer base and from here you can define your target audience in three key demographics; age, gender and location. From this point, your business will not only be able to tailor the content to that audience, but also know the existing channels and hashtags that can be leveraged, putting the company in front of potential and existing customers.

Utilising hashtags these can widen your audience significantly. There are top hashtags that are used specifically for gaining followers on Instagram and you can use these to put your content in front of the audience open for new material.

Above all, keep it relevant and have a theme to your content related to your business. Sons of Sawdust – a woodworking business based in Athens, Ga – operate in a studio space to rework reclaimed wood to create new products. Simply by taking pictures of their work process and posting on Instagram, the company have a natural place for showcasing behind the scenes DIY and woodwork.

Utilise existing material from the company – What’s your USP?

In order to create an engaging Instagram account, it is essential to stand out from the crowd. So where do you start in terms of generating unique content? Your business likely offers a product, service, or experience that is sold to customers through having a unique selling point and you can use this to attract followers.

The London Helicopter has unique access to bird’s eye views of the London skyline every day. The company’s USP lies in offering an experience that people want to see something that very few people have. As a visually led platform, Instagram is the perfect place for the company to showcase these unique views of London and share them with their followers.

Keep the content consistent

Over time your followers will form certain expectations of the content you provide and it is advisable to be consistent in order to keep them coming back and engaging with posts. Knowing your target audience and who you want to put your brand in front of will influence the theme to focus on with content.

One simple way to build and develop a theme is to concentrate on one key colour when posting content. As you can see here, Oreo have kept consistency across their posts with a continuous colour scheme and a house style that has been applied to each post.

Social media doesn’t have to be about customer generation

Social media channels are not simply a quick way to present your latest products to your customer base and boost sales, it is also a great way to excel at customer service and improve customer loyalty.

Instagram has introduced a number of features that makes it easier then ever for customers to communicate with the brands that they follow on Instagram and users can now contact a company directly from the Instagram profile page.

More customers are choosing social media for service requests. According to recent research by J.D Power, 67% of customers turn to social media for enquires and complaints. Here are a few ways brands can benefit from this:

To boost profits—Businesses that provide excellent customer service via their social media accounts will see higher profits than brands that neglect this area. Recent research by Aberdeen Group states that brands who excel at customer service benefit from an annual financial gain of 7.5% while brands that don’t provide good customer service only see a 2.9% rise.

Brand advocacy—A social media presence has the power to turn potential customers into shoppers and shoppers into brand advocates. Customers who have a good experience with a brand on social media are three times as likely to recommend them to a friend and word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool.

Build a positive brand image—Social media channels are a great opportunity to show your customer base that you care. Many brands create separate accounts that are dedicated to customer service and with 74% of shoppers naming social communities as their main influence when making a purchase.

Social media gives your customers a voice, though that voice won’t always be saying positive things about your brand. How you deal with negative comments on social media can put your brand in the spotlight for all the right reasons and how you acknowledge complaints quickly and efficiently can speak volumes. Responding to complaints in a timely manor can boost customer advocacy by up to 25%.

This article originally appeared here.