Using Instagram Collections for Your Business

Did you know you can save posts you like on Instagram to your own ‘saved’ area?

Instagram came out with a new feature called Instagram Collections and this is a cool way to organize any saved posts into categories.

Why would you use the new Instagram Collections feature? I’m going to share with you four ways to use for your business.

Inspiration

This is probably the most basic way to use Instagram Collections, but using Instagram to collect different images that inspire you or get you motivated, posts that are reflective of your brand, posts to check out when you need a little pick me up or you need to read some great quotes.

Many people use Pinterest in this way, saving cool and fun things to boards, and you can now do this within Instagram.

Monitor Brand Mentions

You can use tools to monitor brand mentions, but now you can collect those images in an organized folder within Instagram.Now number two would be to monitor any brand mentions and I know you get a notification saying that someone tagged you in a photo or mentioned you or whatever and

If someone tags you in a photo, you will get a notification, and you obviously want to engage with them, thank them, etc. but now you can save that image and repost it at a later date when you need something to post onto Instagram.

Let’s say for example that you’re a floral shop and someone posts a really beautiful picture of a bouquet of flowers that they got delivered to them from a friend and they tag your shop. You can save that photo and then in a week or two when you have no content to share on Instagram you can repost that.you could go to your collection that’s titled great mentions or a company mentions or whatever you title it as and you could pull from

Using user-generated content is amazing, because it is social proof that people enjoy your product and service, and it’s much easier sharing someone else saying you are amazing, than trying to promote yourself.

Competitive Analysis

If you are following some great brands and find some really cool posts that inspire you to do something on Instagram, you can now share those onto a new collection to look at later. I’m not telling you to steal or copy, but sometimes you can get some great insight into what is working well engagement-wise with bigger brands.

You can also get a feel for what other local businesses are doing in the area, what kind of engagement they are getting and what content is getting the most views.

This is a good way to see what other people are doing amazing on Instagram and to get ideas for your own account.

Collaboration

One of the best ways to use Instagram Collections would be to collect images of accounts you admire and love and reach out to those accounts to see if you could collaborate in some way.

Again with the floral shop example, if you find a local tea shop and you love their account, you could reach out and ask if you could supply them with some free bouquets and then in return post a photo on Instagram tagging your business. Then you would save that image and repost at some time.

Finding great accounts to collaborate with on Instagram is a great way to build community, support other businesses, and reach a whole new audience.

How to Use Collections

Not sure how to save an Instagram post or collections? Here is a step-by-step guide.

Find a post you want to save. Click the ‘flag’ image underneath the photo

This will save the image.

Now, go to your profile and click on the same ‘flag’ save image.

This will bring you into all your saved images.

To create a new Collection, simply click on the plus symbol, create a name for the collection, and you can choose which photos to save into that collection.