How to Advertise on Instagram using the Power Editor.

With over 400 million users, Instagram is now a serious contender for businesses and brands to spend their advertising dollars. Up until now brands have found it difficult to drive traffic to their website as there has been nowhere to add a URL to an individual post. This has been a huge frustration for businesses and the only place you could add a URL was to your Bio or the Geo Tag field which is not clickable.

Many of us have been wondering how Instagram were going to monetize their platform but as usual the best solutions are simple and Instagram's easy fix was to add a clickable link to advertiser's posts. So now if you advertise on Instagram you can effectively drive traffic directly to your website.

Instagram Ad's are now available to businesses large and small and once you know how, it's as easy as 123 . Advertisers can now advertise to more of their target audience and with the call to action buttons they can direct their audience to where ever they like on the web. What better way to visually promote your product to your target audience than with a beautiful image.

It takes a while to familiarise yourself and navigate around the Power Editor so I thought I would try and save you some time by offering this little tutorial.

1. 1. Firstly if you have not already got an account with Facebook and Instagram then you will need accounts on both platforms.

2. If you already have an Instagram account then you need to link it to Facebook. Go to Settings on your Facebook page and then click on Instagram Adverts and follow the steps to link your account

3. Next go to Facebook's Power Editor https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor and go to Manage Adverts

4. Next under Choose a campaign click Create New add your campaign name

5. Now select the Buying Type, Auction

6. Then Choose your objective. With Instagram Ads you can choose out of 3 ( See below)

Clicks to Website
Mobile App Installs
Video Views

7. Then under Choose and Advert Set select Create New and name your advert set

8. Under Create New Advert add the name of your Advert and click Create at the bottom

9. Next Click of Advert Set (1) then tick the Advert set box (2)and then the pencil icon (3) ( See diagram below)

You will then arrive at the section below and this is where you set your budget, schedule your adverts ,choose your audience, choose where you want your advert to appear ( this is where you select Instagram)

Budget You can select either daily budget or a weekly budget.
Schedule This is where you schedule your advert start and end time or you can run as ongoing. If you are running a lifetime budget you can let your adverts run all the time.
Audience ( see below for image) You can select a new audience or choose a custom audience or App Activity ( people who have taken a certain action on your app) . If you select a custom audience you can choose from a Customer List, Website traffic ( A list of people who have visited your website, to do this you need to install the Facebook pixel on your website) If you are choosing a new audience then you can select your Location, Demographics ( Age, Gender, Relationship, Education, Work, Home. Ethnic Affinity, Generation, Parent, Politics, Life Events) and then you can choose your connections ( how people are connected to you through a page, app or event) language, Interests and behaviour.

Placement Next you choose your placement, this is where you choose Instagram and then All Mobile Devices. If you were advertising on Facebook this is where you would choose where you wanted your advert in the Desktop or Mobile Newsfeed.

Optimization & Pricing Next you choose how you want your advert optimised Link clicks to website/Pay per impressions is recommended.
Advanced Delivery. You can choose from Standard or Accelerated (show your adverts as quickly as possible)

10. Once you have selected all your options you can create your advert. Click the Advert Icon 1, tick the Advert 2 and click on the pencil icon 3 ( see Image below)

11. You will need to select the URL you want your people to go to and then add the text for your advert. You can only add up to 300 characters and you can include hashtags in this text here if you like.

12. You can then select whether you want to add an image or video. With an image you image size should be ideally 1080 × 1080 pixels and as with Facebook you are not allowed to include more than 20 % text. make sure you add a really beautiful attention grabbing image. You can crop your image in the power editor too. The recommended format for a video add is mp4 or .mov with at least a 720 resolution and the maximum length of your video should be not more than 30 seconds. Here are Facebook's Guidelines for ads, it's definitely worth reading [Click Here for Facebook's Advert Policy ]

13. You can then add a call to action Apply Now, Book Now, Contact Us, Download, Learn More, Shop Now, Sign Up , Watch More. You can also add your own call to action, for example Take a selfie, tag a friend/your friends or sign up to a newsletter.

14. You can track your URL by adding URL Tags and Facebook's Tracking pixel to your Website.

15. Lastly you need to cheque all your settings, review your changes by clicking the big green button on the top right and then submit your advert for review.

16. To get the most out of your campaign it's a good idea to test a few Ad's by either using different images and text or choosing a different audience within your target audience. For example, you could choose different demographics for the advert or select different interests or behaviours.

I hope you found this blog post useful and Good Luck. For more information on how to make Instagram work for your business. Please click here bit.ly/123instagram

Are you planning to advertise in Instagram? Or maybe you have already tried, have you had success? As usual I would love to hear from you in the comments below.