Jewelry ECOMM Tech

How To Sell Jewelry On Instagram: 101 Primer September 26, 2018 (0 comments)

If you’re one of those online jewelry retailers who hasn’t received the memo yet, we’re here to tell you that Instagram could potentially be the biggest boon you’ve been waiting for. Yes! With its striking filters and snazzy updates now and then, it’s no doubt that most of the people are hooked. But if you think that it mostly glorifies social vanity, think again. Statistics show that of the top 100 brands globally, 90% are on Instagram. After all, the level of engagement with brands on this platform is said to be the highest among other popular social media sites and is 10 times higher than the king of social media, Facebook. In short, you need to be on Instagram. In this post, we’re going to arm you with easy-to-follow tips on how to sell jewelry on Instagram by making your feed shoppable and your visual aesthetics top-notch, for you to generate long-term followers and — who knows — repeat customers.

Here we go!

1. Create a profile for your brand

While creating a profile for your brand sounds pretty straightforward, make sure that the username you come up with represents your brand. Commonly, companies would use their company names as username, but in cases when the company name is too lengthy, you have to come up with a shorthand version that doesn’t deviate too far from who you are as a brand. Remember, your Instagram name can be any 1-30 characters long and you have the freedom to add additional characters and underscores. However, if your company name doesn’t have numbers in it, it would be good to skip that part. In case your desired Instagram name is already taken, you have to come up with an alternative name that still accurately represents who you are. You can check if your desired name is still available or otherwise via this Instagram Availability tool. Your Instagram name should be straightforward, memorable, and consistent with all your other social media handles. Upload a profile photo Once you’ve chosen your Instagram name, immediately upload a profile photo which is your company logo. By doing so, you strengthen the level of brand recognition. What you want to achieve here is to make your target customers think of your brand instantly every time they see your logo. Add a creative bio Be succinct yet creative when writing a bio because you only have 150 characters to work with. Tell users and followers directly who you are and what your brand is about. You can change what appears in your bio as often as you want. As you can see in the photo above, Pandora uses it to invite their customers to showcase their Pandora jewelry by using their official hashtag #DOPANDORA. You too can do the same. You can use this space to promote your campaigns or announce any upcoming events you may have similar to how the GemLightbox did it below.

2. Create and showcase engaging content

There are two important components of content. The first is text (captions including hashtags). The second is visual imagery like photos and videos. Photo content Instagram photos are said to drive 36% more engagement than Instagram videos, so you’ve to build a balance between videos and photos. Your photos can be any (but not limited to) of the following: — Your jewelry products — Behind-the-scenes showcasing your jewelry creation process. — Promotional/campaign announcements — lifestyle photos or your jewelry products in action — Events you’ve been to — Product reviews — User-generated content When posting photos, it’s important to post professional-looking images that would attract your target customers. Remember to pay attention to the basics of jewelry photography to ensure that your target customers get something of value from your content. For instance, the entire product must be in focus, well-lit, and is free from any distracting background that doesn’t complement what you want to achieve. Take a look at the few of the Instagram photos below. It will also give you ideas on what photo content you can use on Your Instagram feed. And here’s an example of a product review photo that you can reproduce for your Instagram feed. Sales announcements make a great content too as shown below. Your jewelry piece in action doesn’t only provide you with captivating visual aesthetics, but it also allows your target customers to visualize how it looks when work while giving them important visual product information such as the stone’s dimension. Video Content Although photos generate more engagement than videos, this doesn’t mean you can abandon making videos at all. In fact, Instagram videos consumption has increased by 40%. Like the photos above, your video content could be anything engaging such as the ones below: — A sneak peek of your new jewelry collection — A live or recorded video of your events — A live product review from your customers Check out some of the video examples below. Click here to watch @bbdesignerjewellers’ Instagram video. Here’s how a product review video may look like. Click the photo below to watch the video. Overall, your Instagram content should be a combination of videos and photos – each serving different purposes such as enlightening, educating and entertaining your target customers and promoting your products. The statistic shows that product posts beat out other content like lifestyle photos and/or videos as 65% of top-performing content are product posts. However, be mindful of the 80/20 rule where 20% is dedicated to self-promotional posts and 80% is for educating, enlightening, and engaging customers. Further, you don’t need expensive camera equipment to produce professional-looking jewelry images. As we’ve seen, most of the photography issues encountered by jewelers on Instagram has something to do with lighting. Find a better way to diffuse your lighting by using a lightbox. You can make one from the comfort of your home; however, if you’re a professional jeweler who needs to do jewelry photography regularly, it would be more convenient to invest in the equipment.

3. Write powerful descriptions/captions

Instagram allows you to work with up to 2,200 characters in the caption; however, the text will get truncated after the 125th character so the key is to place the most important information at the beginning of your caption and all the @mentions and hashtags at the end. When writing captions, don’t forget who your target customers are and what your brand represents. The message must be genuine and engage your target customers by asking questions or adding a quick call-to-action. Check out some of the example captions below. Here, the GemLightbox used its space to make an important announcement about shipping schedules and a quick call-to-action that informs potential customers on how to place an order. Below, ELVERD Designs tried to engage their followers by asking a question aside from adding a quick call-to-action.

4. Use tags effectively

Hashtags can help you grow your audience as it makes your posts visible not only to your followers but also to other Instagram users who are using your hashtags as their search terms. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags per post but maximizing it doesn’t always guarantee results. According to a statistic, 5 to 10 hashtags are the ideal number to use in a post.  As mentioned in the infographic above, 70% of the most used hashtags are branded hashtags, so don’t forget to include one as this is unique to your jewelry business. Using a branded hashtag doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to limit it to your brand name. Take a look at the Pandora image above where it used #DOPANDORA as its official hashtag, so feel free to play with it. The most important takeaway here is to always use hashtags in your posts. The statistic shows that an Instagram post with at least one hashtag will do better – attracting 12.6% engagement – than those posts without. This will help you tremendously in increasing product awareness. Another tag you can use is a geotag, as shown in the sample images below. Take advantage of Instagram’s geo-tagging feature as it has been said that posts with a location attract up to 79% more engagement. Geotagging can help you make location-based decisions by analyzing the way your followers react to your posts. For instance, analyze the data you’re getting in terms of engagement and check where you geotag them. Do you notice any low or high engagement based on locations? Does it tell you which locations you get the most engagement?

5. Reach audience through Instagram ads

Instagram is one of the best platforms for connecting with your target audience. It’s said to have 800 million monthly active users with nearly 60% of them aged 18-29. And if merely existing on Instagram isn’t fast enough for you, you can try reaching audiences through Instagram ads. There are several types of ads but the photo and video ads are two of the most popular. Like your regular posts, it will let you tell your story but the ads will allow you to build your brand even more by reaching well-targeted demographics. You’ll also get to choose from different supported call-to-action buttons like “Download”, “Learn more”,  “Contact us”, and “Book now” among others. Unlike other ads, Instagram ads are not annoying as the only thing that distinguishes it from other visual content on the platform is the “Sponsored” label just below the Instagram name, see sample image below.

6. Engage with your audience

Instagram, like other social media platforms, is a two-way street. You have to build meaningful relationships with your followers and target customers by responding to them when they reach out to you. There are many ways you can interact with them. First, through the comment section. Pay attention to what users are saying in the comment section and make sure to address it by responding to them if they ask you a question or simply recognizing them, as seen below. Second, reach out even further by interacting with other Instagram users who are outside your network but are within your industry. For instance, you can like and comment on others’ posts. This is one way of making others know about your Instagram presence and who knows, they might just follow you or you might have some jewelry pieces that would interest them. And there you have it! So, how do you use Instagram in building your jewelry brand or selling jewelry pieces? Feel free to share some tips in the comment section below.