How Selling on Facebook and Instagram Has Changed

For years, entrepreneurs on Instagram obsessed over how many followers they had. And there were good reasons for that. Remember the days when you needed 10,000 followers to qualify to use swipe-up links in your stories?

But both Facebook and Instagram have changed and your sales strategies need to change, too. These days, anyone can post stories with swipe-up links. Anyone can access an Instagram business account or a Meta Business Suite account. Almost anyone can set up an online store to sell products via Facebook’s marketing tools.

It’s no longer about the follower count on your social media accounta; it’s about how well you engage with your audience. When you build strong relationships with your most valuable followers, then the sales and conversions follow on. When entrepreneurs struggle to sell on social media, it’s usually because they’ve failed to notice how the platform has changed. Here are the three most common mistakes that sellers make:

1. Only posting promotional content.

If you only ever go for the hard sell, then the algorithm will downgrade your content, forcing you to pay for ads. Instead, you can reach a larger audience by posting a mix of educational, social, and promotional content for the feed.

2. Sending spam DMs without any personalization.

Users have gotten used to changes on the platform, too. These days, they expect personalized messaging and valuable offers. If you can’t supply those things, stay out of the DMs.

3. Never asking for the sale.

Some entrepreneurs overcorrect. Instead of promoting too much on Facebook and Instagram, they never promote at all. The secret is about making the right offer, at the right time, to the right person. Here’s how to use your Instagram business account to successfully attract and convert people on using Facebook and Instagram.

So with all this is mind, you might be wondering how do you sell on Facebook and Instagram? Nowadays to sell on Instagram and Facebook, you need to get your content and promotions on Stories. If you are not already selling to them through the use of stories, then you need to shift your strategy toward converting your audience on stories. Why Stories? Because it’s the best medium for building personal, informative connections with your followers.

A Facebook or Instagram post can reach your followers but they’re static and often contain less visual information than stories. Reels are great for reach but they’re a better strategy for finding new followers than nurturing the audience you already have. Stories are the happy medium: entertaining, at the top of the feed, packed with information, and targeted to your followers. The trick is to sell to people who already want to buy. This one change alone can make a hug difference to the effectiveness of the content that you are putting out there.