With the arrival in Italy of the Shopping feature, all Business accounts will be able to start selling the products featured in the images on the social network
It’s time to sign up for Instagram and open a Business account: the Shopping feature has been released on the social network, allowing businesses to sell their products directly on the social platform. Instagram adds another feature designed exclusively for businesses that will be able to start selling on the social network, adding to its sales channels a tool that allows you to get in touch with more than 800 million users scattered around the World.
The Shopping feature was introduced on Instagram in November 2016, but initially it was only available to US companies. For the time being, the tool developed by the social network is free of charge and offers the possibility for users to purchase on Instagram the products featured in photos. Companies will be able to add tags to the images with the name and price of the object. Pressing on the tag the user will be transferred to a new page with a full description of the product and will also find the “Buy Now” button to complete the purchase. In order to start selling on Instagram it is necessary for a business to have a Business account and a showcase on the Facebook page.
The guide to selling on Instagram
If you have decided to take the plunge and open a Business account on Instagram, this is the guide for you. The steps to follow to sell on Instagram are not many, but you should not skip any of them. Let’s start with the basics: the Shopping feature is only available in the latest version of the app, so first update the app. Once you’ve completed this step you’ll need to synchronize your Instagram account with the storefront on your company’s Facebook page. If you don’t have a storefront on your Facebook page (identical function to Instagram Shopping that allows you to sell items on the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg) you need to create one (you can do this using ad hoc programs like Shopify). Once you’ve completed this step, which can take quite a bit of time, you can go back to Instagram, enter your business profile and check if the Shopping feature is active among the options.
At this point you can upload an image to your company profile and add tags for shopping. The Shopping tags function is the same as the one you use to tag people in the images you publish on your profile, with the only difference that instead of the name of your friend you will have to insert the name of the product. Having made the connection with the Facebook storefront, just enter the name of the product and Instagram will automatically go to fish from the catalog on Facebook the characteristics of the object. For each image you can tag a maximum of five products. Once you have completed this step, you can publish the image on your profile, adding all the hashtags you need to make the photo appear in your Instagram feed.
All the images with the Shopping tag are inserted in an ad hoc section of the company’s Business profile where users can see all the products (bags, rings, shoes, clothes) that we sell.
The Shopping tags cannot be inserted in Instagram Stories or in sponsored images.