This is going to be a long guide on how to manage a Limo Service profile on Instagram. I recommend you to open your note-taking program because this post will contain a ton of useful information.
So, let’s begin:
First of all: a detailed guide to Limo Service Instagram profiles
In this part, we will be making our profile, which is going to be separated into 5 very important steps. It is important that you decide whether you need them on your profile because chances are that you already used some of them.
1. Make the name of the profile clear
Okay, so I’ve made a testing profile so I can explain what you should do more easily. For starters, here’s what it looks like:
The first thing we will do is change the name of the profile. In our case, it’s ‘@w3_lab_limousinee’.
Make sure that the name is direct and clear. What does clear mean? It means that you should avoid repeating the same letter (in our case, that’s ‘ee’), underscores, periods and everything else that is not the name of our limo service.
We’re changing the name into ‘@w3_lab_limousine’.
Now we can choose our profile picture.
2. Changing the profile picture
Your profile picture, along with your name, is the first thing your clients will notice when they open your profile, so it is crucial to leave a perfect first impression.
The profile picture of a limo service cannot contain:
- The owner
- The fleet
- The team
- A vehicle
- The city the limo service is located in
The profile picture must contain one and one thing only: your limousine service logo. Make sure the logo is visible and that the contrast between the logo and the background is high enough. Here’s how we did it on our testing profile:
Can you notice how much more professional and serious your profile appears with the logo on your profile? It’s starting to look like a real company. Let’s continue.
3. The title of the profile should contain the name of the limo company and the keyword
People can find you on Instagram via a few parameters:
- The name of your profile (username)
- The title of your profile (we’ll explain how in a little bit)
- And the description (even though the odds are slim)
The title of your profile is located below your profile picture and number of followers. It is very important that it contains two things:
- The name of the limousine company (in this case, W3 Lab Limousine)
- Limo Service location (the city, the district, the state)
Here’s how we did it:
So, the title of the profile contains the name of the company and, in this case, the capital of Serbia.
4. What kind of description do you want?
This is the penultimate step when it comes to making your profile, and it is the description. It is very important because when someone opens your profile, your description is your pitch. It is the first thing people read and if the first 2-3 sentences don’t convince them to purchase your service, they will close your profile.
You probably have a few sentences already prepared that match your taste and company. Just like with the title, there are two rules when it comes to limo service descriptions.
Emoji: I would advise against the use of emojis. They are usually used when we want to say something funny, so when it comes to a professional limo service, there’s no room for them.
Keywords: Do you remember when I mentioned that the description can affect people finding you on Instagram? Include your keywords in your description and increase the chances of people finding you through them.
Now, we have only one step left when it comes to making your limo service Instagram profile. Afterward, we will be moving on to tactics for managing Instagram for a limo service.
5. Delete all the bad photos
Let’s say you completed all the previous steps and people like your profile when they visit it. But as soon as they start scrolling down, they might notice some pictures that don’t match your professional limo service.
Get rid of all the bad photos that can harm your brand.
You should get rid of the following:
- Images of dirty vehicles
- Photos of the owner of the company on vacation (because really, who cares where he went)
- Everyday object photos, such as newspaper, because they don’t contribute anything to the company
- Old visuals for discounts that look cheap
- Bad quality images that could make someone change their mind about choosing your service
- Everything else that does not contribute anything to the image of the company
That would be in about creating a profile. Now we can continue onto the rest of the guide for the limo service Instagram profile.
The best way to use the Story feature for your Limo Service Profile
Whenever I’m explaining to someone how to manage a profile for a brand, I usually first tell them about posts and then Stories. But this time, it’s different. Your clientele are preoccupied business people who don’t have time to read your every post and scroll through your profile in its entirety. They are going to open your profile, read your description, look at 1 or 2 Stories that you posted and will immediately decide whether they want to contact you and do business with you.
This is the very reason why I think Instagram Stories are so important.
I also want to mention that Stories shouldn’t be too serious. Yes, you are a premium limo service, but using the Story, you want to show that behind all the luxury and professionalism is a human who loves doing their job.
You should put your best stories into Story Highlights, so future customers can see them, too.
I’d recommend you to have 6 Story categories:
- The chauffeurs
- Extraordinary places
- Your fleet
- Topics
- Announcements
- Referrals (the most important part of Stories)
Let’s look at each group separately:
Chauffeurs
Everyone wants to know some basic information about who is driving them. Additionally, this type of Story where you will show your chauffeurs can have a huge social effect on the person looking at your profile, which is very important.
Bonus tip: Make a Story template for your chauffeurs in Photoshop. In these templates, you can include their basic information, which will convince your client that you and your company can be trusted.
Here’s how I would do it:
It took me only 15 minutes to make this Story and the template, and once you’re done with it, you can just swap out the text and image with another chauffeur. The whole point of the chauffeur group is to create trust in a potential customer.
Extraordinary places
In this story type, you can show all the beautiful places through your lens. This way, you are showing where your service could take your client: stunning nature, amazing city views, the main square, places of historical importance, chocolate fair, and everything else that you think your clients could be interested in.
Not everything is about business, there’s a lot in beauty, as well. And who wouldn’t like to get to know the city they’re visiting?
The fleet
Aside from chauffeurs, your fleet is the most important thing for the client. The better the fleet, the better the picture you are painting for your clients. And trust me, hiring a photographer to take photos of your chauffeurs and fleet is absolutely worth it. Professional photos mean a lot when it comes to image.
The photographs of your vehicles can include them separately or in groups, whichever you think is better.
Topics
You can also use Instagram Stories to promote the articles that you post on your blog.
If your limousine website doesn’t already have a blog, I highly suggest you make one. It will give you the change to post about all sorts of stuff, like vehicles, events, places to visit, landmarks, you name it. Having a blog is beneficial not only because people will read it, but also because of search engines, who love original and well-written content.
After you write an article for your blog, make a Instagram Story where you will promote it, so more people will see it. Enable them to swipe up and go directly to the article link, where they will be able to read the whole thing.
Announcements
If you have an announcement to make, don’t hesitate to make it an Instagram Story.
No matter what kind of news you have, feel free to share them with your followers. Tell them all about your new chauffeur, and how amazing and cutting-edge the new fleet addition is.
Announcements are also a great place to post about collaborations and upcoming events and let your followers know what is currently happening with the company.
Referrals
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the Story paragraph, the Referral Stories have the most importance when it comes to your business. Here’s how to do them differently than everyone else:
The first way to do it is just like you did with the chauffeurs: a photo of a client (it would be great if it was someone popular or from a popular company), their name and surname, logo and the name of the company (so people know who they work for) and the recommendation text.
That’s the first way. The second way would be 30% more effective, and that is a video recommendation. Of course, don’t force your clients to take videos if they don’t feel like it. But if they say yes, that would be great!
Here’s how to do it: ask your client to take a video recommending your company, but don’t do it seconds after you pick them up, sometimes you can do it days after they use your service. Unlike the chauffeur and fleet photographs, if the video is not of great quality, that’s a plus because it means that the client took it themselves.
Don’t forget to include their name and surname, as well as the logo and name of their company. Here’s an example:
When the client is in the video, then all the other potential clients can tell if the recommendation is genuine or not. And since you will only be doing the genuine ones, it will bring you more clients.
Bonus advice: use a #hashtag and a location tag whenever you can
You can never know who will be looking at the Stories and hashtags related to a city (for example, #belgradetoday). This is why it’s good to include a location where the picture is taken and a hashtag that describes that photo. This will bring you more followers and Story views.
There’s another huge advantage when it comes to Stories. We’ve already mentioned that your clientele is busy, in a hurry and in need of a limo service.
If there’s a red circle around your profile, this means that you posted a story in the past 24h, which will let your potential client know you’re active and that they can expect a fast response (within 5 minutes). If they need a quick response and you’re there to deliver, congratulations! You’ve probably gained a new customer using Instagram!
How and what to post?
In the part about managing your limo service Instagram profile, we’ve explained the marketing part about some posts. Now, I will show you the kinds of posts you can have on your Instagram profile:
- A picture of your fleet
- A picture of your fleet + background that consists of nature or historic building
- Photos of the part of the city your service is located in
- Interesting stories about the city or surroundings that will make the readers think
- Chauffeurs doing their job (for example, taking luggage from the trunks)
- GIFs of a part of the city
- A video of stunning nature at the outskirts of the city
- A video filmed from the inside of the limousine showing a beautiful route
- A video that contains the trip from the airport to a company
- A time-lapse of the vehicle while waiting for the client’s business meeting to finish (this would make a great Story)
- News about the events in the city – for example, a big conference is being held and you want to let your followers know about it (be careful not to use too much text as not to cover up the entire image and keep a ‘clean’ profile)
- A photo of your staff in the office – show your followers how hard your employees work to make everything go smoothly
- Wish people happy holidays
- Referrals (videos or images)
- And everything else you can think of that will leave a good impression and that you know your followers will like
As you can notice, some of these are also included in Stories. It is of utmost importance to not post the same thing in the feed and Story, so there’s no doubling of the same content. For example, don’t post the same referral twice, your client will think that you are running out of recommendations.
Trust me, you will have enough material to post for both Stories and the feed.
A few more tips regarding posts
Location
When you are posting, always include the location. It is unbelievable how many clients can find you that way.
Hashtags
Just like with the Stories, at the end of the description always include a few hashtags that are related to what is in the photo. Some hashtags that you can use are:
- #nameofyourtown
- #yourtownlimousine
- #limousine
- #limoservice
- #chauffeurs
- #thingsthatareonphoto
Tag the pages that are located in the area you are covering
For example, if you work in New York, tag the pages that are related to it. If there’s a page that daily posts pages from NY, tag them. There are probably dozens of pages like that for every city.
One of those pages will see you tagging them and post your image on their page, bringing you more publicity and followers. It’s no coincidence that all the most popular pages do this, it’s great for more click and traffic.
Use your Instagram to post interesting videos
Video is becoming a more and more popular marketing format by the day. Videos give companies a chance to tell all sorts of stories to their viewers and capture their attention.
This is the exact reason why we’re seeing a surge in websites with videos as backgrounds. Using a video, a company can immediately show a customer what they’re all about and who their employees are, but this is not all.
You can take short videos about almost anything and post them on your Instagram. Here are the most common video types:
- Behind the scenes videos – In these, you can show off your employees taking care of the vehicles or parking them. These types of videos make people relate to your brand more and more easily.
- Vehicle videos – Using vehicle videos, you can show off your fleet and tell people about the commodities of each vehicle.
- Location videos – Take videos of your vehicles in different locations, and show off both the beauty of the cars and the places. You can tell a short story about the history of that place, as well.
- Landmark videos – While you’re at a interesting location, you can also take a video of one of its famous landmarks and post it on your Instagram
- Event videos – If your company is participating in an event, make sure to take a video and post it on your Instagram. This shows your followers both that you’re active and are taking part in interesting and important events.
Conclusion
This was a bit of a longish guide for managing an Instagram profile for a limo service. I hope the read paid off and that the advice I gave you will be useful to your company.
If you are interested in how you can promote your limousine service online, you can check out our case study – How to market limousine service. In it, we show examples of what makes for both bad and good marketing, and we provide some useful advice regarding marketing strategies and good online presences.
Thank you for reading!
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