Hi there, welcome to T-shirt Helpdesk.com
My name is Gary. I have been working as a brand graphic designer for 20 years now, and here I am to share my wealth of knowledge with you. I teach people to design, market, promote their T-shirt business.
I can see that a lot of people are searching for ways to promote their t-shirt business over Instagram.
Therefore, I am putting together this blog on “how to promote your t-shirt business on Instagram.”
So, let’s get started!
The first step is to have an Instagram account. In most cases, you would have a personal account. And, you need to change it to a business account. You can follow the steps below:
Set up your Instagram Business Account
1.) Following is one of my Instagram accounts, you need to click on the 3-lines button, as shown below:
2.) Go to settings:
3.) Click on “Account” as shown below:
In the account section, click on “switch to professional account”:
4.) On the next page, you will the options of being a creator or a business account, choose the business option:
Now, click on “continue”:
5.) Under the select category section, click on “clothing”:
Now, add your business information, as shown below:
Once you have your Instagram Business account ready, then you need to connect this business account to your Facebook fan page. Let me show you the steps to create a fan page.
Creating a Facebook fan page
- Go to the top bar and, under the “create” option, select” page.”
- Select the option of “Business or Brand”, click on “get started”, as shown below:
Provide your business name, category and click on continue:
- Click on “upload a profile picture”:
Navigate and select your profile picture:
- Next thing is to “upload a cover photo”:
Navigate and select your cover photo.
Note: In case if your cover photo doesn’t get uploaded the first time, then you can try reuploading it using the button “Add your cover” in the cover section of your Facebook page.
Connect your Instagram Business Account to the Facebook page.
- Go to your Instagram account, click on the 3-lines button
On this page, click on “settings”:
- Click on “Business”:
- On the next menu, click on “connect a Facebook page”:
- Select “connect an existing page”:
- Select your page, as shown below:
That’s it, the Instagram account is connected to your Facebook page now.
Now, complete your profile and you’ll notice that you only have to give a link back to your business. Therefore, I am going to some insider trick i.e. have multiple links to your Instagram account.
Adding multiple links to your Instagram account:
As you can see that there is only one spot for you to have a link on your Instagram account:
It’s cool to have a link back to your business. But while running a T-shirt business, you may have to promote more than one link on Instagram account.
- Let me introduce you to this service called Linktree.
- On the main page, click on the sign-up button, and then choose sign-up with Instagram:
- Provide your email address and select categories (I selected fashion/beauty and brand) for your business. Everything else would be taken automatically from your Instagram account:
- Agree to the terms and conditions:
5.) I am going to select the free plan, but you can choose the paid one if it fits your requirement:
- Verify your account via verification email received on your registered Id.
- Once your account is verified, click on continue as shown below:
8.) Under my links section you can add a link by providing the title and the URL accordingly:
9.) Click settings and, you can select the color for your page. I am choosing black because it goes well with my logo:
Now, we are ready with an Instagram business account, Facebook page, and the links.
It is time for you to start creating some content: I strongly suggest that you start creating content in bulk and, you create a content calendar. So, you can create content for weeks or a month maybe and create a content calendar to post all of it on Instagram.
Let me show you!
Following is one of my Instagram accounts, and it is not a t-shirt brand, I also don’t post regularly. But it has all kinds of content such as inspirational quotes, T-shirts, etc.
One service that I would like to introduce is Later.com. This is a very valuable resource that allows you to automate your posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Here, you can plan two weeks to a month of content in just 20 minutes.
Please note It costs $0, which means that you can start for free.
Creating the content calendar
To start creating content, there are several ways to create content. You can curate content, which means that you can look at what others are doing for an idea.
Remember that if you do this, always give credit to the source where you got the content.
When it comes to creating your content, let me introduce to you a service i.e. Placeit.net.
Here, you put all your designs on templates. Just upload your artwork and, you can change background colors, t-shirt colors, and everything.
You do not need to do any photography or hire models; you just upload your designs and, it is done:
Placeit.net also provides videos:
You can chooe templates based on ethnicity. For Instagram, you can have professional images that specially crafted for Instagram.
All this will help you in saving a lot of money, time, and effort. Now, for all the T-shirthelpdesk.com readers, I have a special 15% discount for you at Placeit.net.
Start Posting your content:
Once you have the content ready, then its time to start posting your content.
Now, do not start posting content for the sake of it. I mean that you should be strategic!
Make everybody know that you’re here, you need to understand the hashtags.
You need to be aware of the trending hashtags and how they work.
Let me show you an amazing trick here:
- Go to your Instagram account, click on the search icon on the bottom. Start with # and begin writing about your niche, just like I am putting #tshirt. You can see posts that are in millions, thousands in number.
- However, I want you to focus on the hashtags between 2000 – 5,00,000 range. So, you can put in ” #tshirt “, and start adding alphabets such #tshirtt, #tshirte, see what appears on the search menu:
- The next thing that I did is that I went to somebody’s Instagram account who is already selling T-shirts which is karmaloop.
I went to their latest post and I see that they have all these hashtags in their first comment:
- Now, I copied them and put them on a notepad to use them later. Now, I am going to copy some of these hashtags and put them in your post as shown below:
Please note: You can only add 30 hashtags at a time on Instagram.
Once, you get strong in this Hashtag game, now it’s time to understand the next concept which is “Influencer Marketing”.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing means that you find someone influential who represents your core target audience and you pay them to wear your t-shirts and promote them.
A lot of times, these influencers have their prices. Also, some of these upcoming influencers can do it for free in the starting phases of their careers as influencers.
There are a lot of influencers around, just look for them and make it happen!
