Instagram has evolved considerably from the days of simply slapping a filter on your photos. Maximise results for your brand by making sure these 7 tips feature in your Instagram content strategies.
Now, the platform offers many features to connect with your customers and fans through rich content. With so many ways to communicate with followers on the app, brand’s need to think long and hard about their Instagram content strategies. To set you off on the right track, we’ve boiled it down to seven considerations to start generating more results 💪
Optimise your header.
Instagram doesn’t give you a lot of space to set out your stall. If someone unfamiliar with your brand lands on the page, they need a sense of what you’re about instantly. That’s a tall order when all you have to work with is a small profile picture and a 150 character bio.
It’s a good job we like a challenge!
In addition to the bio, you get other opportunities to populate your profile with information that will get you found by the right people. These include:
- Your brand’s name. A simple but important one. Including your name will help you get found via Instagram’s search feature.
- Your handle. Pick something that people are likely to remember. Keep it simple.
- Your website. You can change the URL on your profile as often as you like, or by using a service such as Link In Bio, you can create clickable links for each post.
- Business category. This is an important one when running a business page. Instagram is more likely to feature content on its explore page from business pages that include this information.
- Contact details. If you have an email or contact number, make sure to include it on the page. Doing so gives your customers a quick and easy way to get in touch.
- Calls-to-action. Finally, use the CTA buttons to create quick, straightforward ways for customers to visit your store or make an appointment with you.
Our friends at Montblanc are smashing it out of the park with their page.
BRAND YOUR PROFILE.
Establishing a coherent look and feel on Instagram is a challenge. However, nailing a consistent feel can make your profile stand out from the competition.
Achieving this consistency comes through finding a style that suits your product or service and applying it to your visuals across your page.
For example, story highlights offer a great quick start guide to new visitors. Story highlights can provide insights into who you are and what you offer, giving detailed background information instantly. Creating bespoke illustrations or icons to represent each of these will elevate your profile and contribute to its overall consistency.
Similarly, ensuring grading consistency is crucial to unifying visuals with your brand image. By making sure all of the visual elements on your profile tie together, your brand will appear more desirable. This desirability will encourage more engagement and growth.
INTEGRATE INSTAGRAM INTO BUYER JOURNEYS.
Devising Instagram content strategies for your profile can get confusing. Still, one easy way to decide what to post, how you craft your captions and build out your brand is to consider how it integrates with your buyer journey.
Imagine a customer lands on your Instagram page and doesn’t know anything about your brand, but is precisely your target customer. They need to get a sense of who you are, relate to your content, learn what they need to about your product or service, and ideally, transact there and then.
Achieving this requires a 360-degree approach to setting up and optimising your profile. Think about your content in terms of a waterfall. The top is where your customer enters, and the bottom is where they leave – having made a purchase or booking. Along the way, they need to be fed content that informs them, answers their questions, and, most importantly – gets them excited about your brand!
USE POST CAPTIONS TO DRIVE THE ‘RIGHT’ ENGAGEMENT.
We mentioned before the importance of getting your content onto Instagram’s ‘Explore’ page. After all, this is the best way to achieve that valuable organic growth.
Getting there is dependent on many factors (all of which we cover in this blog 😉). One of the major ones is engagement. It is natural to obsess over the number of likes each post achieves but likes only tell part of the story.
Instagram values different engagements on a scale. For example, a save or a share is worth more than a like. Now we know this, there are some ways you can optimise your post type and copy to attract more of these high-value interactions.
For example, say you have created a top tips post or are sharing a calendar of upcoming events – prompting your audience to save this for reference will result in a higher chance of attracting valuable engagement. Once you have, your chances of appearing on the Explore page increase.
SELL NATIVELY.
Building on the point we made about buyer journeys, that splashdown at the bottom of the waterfall is only possible if you are selling natively. Over the years, Instagram has integrated several e-commerce products and features that brands can leverage.
Listing your products via an Instagram shop enables you to get customers excited about your offer before helping them transact there and then.
A massive part of Instagram’s appeal is its visual strength. So stage products within your content to help customers imagine where they fit in their lives. Doing so will help you boost your conversion rates, too, growing your Instagram into a strong sales channel for your business.
INVEST IN VIDEO FEATURES.
Utilising the breadth of content mediums available on Instagram is essential. Again, ensuring you have enough content posted regularly across the platform’s features will increase the likelihood of an explore feature.
We get it. Video is tough. Even more so when you need fresh content for your feed on an ongoing basis.
Instagram favours company pages that are regularly posting content across all of its creative verticals. So make sure when defining your strategy that you have concepts and budgets for IGTV and Reels, in addition to your stories and posts.
GO LIVE!
Live commerce is already a massive trend in some parts of the world. While it is yet to take off in the UK as it already has done in Asia, consumers engaging with brands in those markets will set the tone for future B2C engagement expectations.
The live streaming capabilities of platforms like Instagram are giving rise to a new trend in live commerce. These live experiences give customers and fans the chance to ask their questions first hand, getting an immediate response.
This feature gives businesses the chance to communicate directly with customers. It also creates the opportunity to collaborate with other companies or individuals to create content that audiences want to tune in for. Live Q&As, interviews or conversations can provide excellent opportunities to engage followers in content that brings them closer to your brand. So stay ahead of your competitors by factoring live streaming into your Instagram content strategies.
If you are looking for a helping hand creating killer Instagram content strategies or just some creative heavy lifting to bring it all to life, then get in touch with our team of experts. We’d love to chat with you!
