Spread the word by reaching out online

I said it before and I will say it again: social media will continue to impact the way business is done worldwide, and especially in the UAE.

I receive friend requests on Instagram almost every day from online retailers located either in the UAE or in the GCC.

The trendiest abaya designers, for instance, are available on Instagram, mostly with no physical stores or with designs stocked only in department stores and fashion boutiques on consignment basis.

This is true not only for fashion. You could also order food, have your party planned and get your teeth whitened in the comfort of your home with the push of a button.

I am stressing Instagram today because it is one of the most popular social media apps, if not the most popular, for the GCC youth. Businesses’ social media pages serve as a catalogue to display their products, services and price lists. Orders are then placed using the direct message function or through WhatsApp, after which the retailer and the customer could take the conversation offline.

How are payments made? Simple. Depending on where the retailer is located in the GCC, payments are either made upon delivery or through wire transfer, mostly at money exchange houses.

When my retail clients ask me about social media, I stress that they should be available on Instagram and how important it is for clients to be able to reach you and know about your products. The beauty is it serves as both a marketing platform, where a business could highlight its latest products and services, and a research hub, where it could find out more about market influencers and what the youth are up to these days. It can also be a customer service base, where clients could talk directly to the retailer and provide suggestions or file complaints.

The combination is extremely powerful for businesses.

Some of my entrepreneur friends even opt for having Instagram pages instead of websites, saying it is more than enough – especially if their targets are youth. “Go to them. Don’t wait for them to come to you,” commented a friend who runs a food chain.

Here are some ideas of how to make Instagram work for you.

Before posting photos, ensure that they are professional, clear, and appealing. Your photos serve as the image you want to project to your customers. We worked on that for one of my clients recently, where we scheduled a day to take professional photos of her store, her products, herself and her location. This should not cost much, and you could work with start-up photographers or photography students who freelance on the side.

Start a conversation with your followers. Instagram provides a great way to engage with your clients. Use the post or comment area to ask open-ended questions to engage your clients to converse. This also provides you with insight into what your clients think of your products – what they like and dislike – and you could use this knowledge to enhance the products and services provided. The more engaging you are, and the more your business appears to care about its customers, the more they interact with your posts and keep a lookout for them. If you have a pizza restaurant, you could post a selection of pizza options, and ask your clients which pizzas they prefer and how often they have them.

Make sure your posts provide a tip, share a story or ask for feedback from your clients. To ensure that you cover those areas, you could dedicate Mondays to ask your clients for feedback about a product of yours, Tuesdays to post an image from behind the scenes of your business and Wednesdays for tips on areas of relevance. If you are a dentist, then the tips could be about dental hygiene and how to detect a problem.

Use hashtags to find users and for users to find you. Come up with about 10 to 20 hashtags – ones that are branded for your business and ones that are popular and used by potential customers to search for a product or service that you provide.

Instagram is a powerful tool that could be used for marketing your business, especially when your business is in the GCC. With the proper content strategy and being approachable to your clients, you could build awareness about your business in an efficient and effective way.

Manar Al Hinai is an award-winning Emirati writer and communications consultant based in Abu Dhabi. Follow her on Twitter at @manar_alhinai.

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