Recently, Instagram released a new feature for shops and brands on the site. This feature allows you tag your products so that shoppers can readily identify the item, its price, and purchase it. As exciting as this is for brands everywhere, the rollout hasn’t completely caught on for every single business. Instagram is still working the bugs out of this feature and only a select number of brands currently have it.

So, what do you do if you’re one of the many Instagram Business profiles that don’t have this feature yet? You may not be able to take advantage of this great update just yet, but there are still a number of ways you can draw an audience to your Instagram page and your products.

Creative Content
“Content is King.” You’ve heard this time and time again, but we’re going to say it one more time because it’s true. “Content IS King!”  Whether it’s on your website, a blog, or your social media, the content of your brand goes a long way in the constant struggle to effectively communicate with your intended audience. One way Instagram helps tell the story of your brand where other sites fail is through visuals. Yes, other social media sites allow you the ability to post photos and write captions, but none have focused their sole attention on the development of engaging visuals quite like Instagram. With the largest group of Instagram users ranging between 25 – 34 year olds, the photos you post to Instagram need to be creative, vibrant, and most of all engaging.

Social Influencers
Reaching out to social influencers can be a daunting task, especially if you’re a new brand. Enlisting the help of local agencies, such as some of the notable public relations firms in Philadelphia, a great hub of social influencers, can go a long way. Social media influencers are a great resource to have in your back pocket. For one, they have nailed the nuances of social media for them to reach the point of visibility that makes you seek out their help. However, if you don’t have the big bucks to land a major social influencer, micro influencers can help just the same. Micro influencers are those users who have between 1,000 and 100,000 social media followers. They are typically less expensive to work with and have an audience who is more likely to engage with their posts rather than simply skip over.

Hashtags and Geotags
Hashtags have been misunderstood for as long as they have been used. What originated on Twitter has long sense spread to Instagram and now Facebook over the last few years. Though they still haven’t quite caught on nor are as effective on Facebook, their usefulness on Instagram is proof enough that brands still need to incorporate them into their strategy in one way or another. Relevant hashtag research and usage can help create visibility for your brand long after the post has left the main timeline of users. In addition to your own brand’s hashtags and the other industry-related hashtags you find, there is also room to use location-driven hashtags such as “#newyorkcity” and the larger conversation hashtags such as “#motivationmonday” or “#nationalpizzaday”.

There is no such thing as a “one strategy fits all” approach to any brand, especially on social media. What may work in one industry, will not always directly translate to results in another. However, these are simple, across the board strategies that can help set your business up for success so whether or not you get the new updates first or last, your business will always boom.