A strong Instagram feels like an asset, and in most ways it is. It is also rented ground. You do not own the audience, you cannot export it, and the reach you had last year is not the reach you have this year. That does not matter at all until it does.
You are renting the relationship
The follower count is not a customer list. You cannot email those people, you cannot see who they are, and whether they see your post is decided by a system that changes without notice. Businesses discover this the week a post that used to reach thousands reaches a few hundred.
Search does not look there
When someone new wants what you sell, they do not scroll a feed. They search for it, on Google or increasingly by asking an assistant. If everything you have is inside an app, you are absent from the moment a stranger is actively looking to buy, which is the most valuable moment there is.
The things you cannot do
- Take an order at two in the morning without a conversation
- Show a full range properly, rather than whatever the grid surfaces
- Send a message to your customers that does not depend on an algorithm
- Tell people which of your locations is nearest and what is on there
- Prove to a supplier, a landlord or a lender that the business is real
When it starts to matter
Usually at the second location. One shop and a busy feed can coexist happily. The moment there are two, customers need to know which is which, what is on at each, and how to get there, and a grid of photographs cannot answer that.
It matters again when you start selling beyond the people who already follow you: wholesale, events, delivery, anything where somebody needs to look you up rather than stumble across you.
How it went for Berry Boys
Berry Boys built a genuine following in Manchester before they had a website at all. When the second store opened, we built a site that could carry both, with room in the structure for the next one, so opening a location does not mean rebuilding anything.
The brand did not change. What changed is that it now exists somewhere they own, and somewhere Google can read.
The short version. Keep the Instagram. Just stop letting it be the only place your business exists, because search, second locations and customer lists all need ground you own.