Want to improve your Instagram strategy for the next Christmas push?
Although TikTok has taken some of its thunder and there is some misunderstanding surrounding Instagram's larger goal to get more video content into people's feeds, it is still a very popular app and, when used properly, can be a terrific platform for community development and maximum reach.
However, you must enter Instagram with a business strategy in mind. To increase the attraction of your brand, you must understand what works in your niche, what users want from the app, and how to best take advantage of the most recent algorithmic changes.
Here are some suggestions to assist you get your Instagram presence on the correct track if you're wanting to improve your strategy.
Completely fill out your profile
It appears obvious that you have already completed this. But Instagram, like all social media applications, is always changing and releasing updates, so it's possible that you missed anything important that might have had a significant impact on how it now organizes material and presents search results.
Ensure that you switch to an Instagram business account and enter all the necessary information on your company.
With an IG business account, you may run advertisements, access analytics, appear in pertinent app discovery features, and more.
Three further suggestions are also provided by Instagram for people filling out their business information:
- To emphasize terms, use emojis or hashtags.
- Link back to your website or online store
- Select a straightforward photo.
Check out our tools and tutorials for more details on setting up an Instagram business account. There, you can also receive a free, customized Instagram business plan that is in line with your company's objectives.
Gather Key Terms
To help direct your content and hashtag strategy after you've completed setting up your profile and completing all of your details, you need to gain a sense of the major trends in your niche.
Google Keyword Planner and Instagram itself are two important research resources here.
You can use Keyword Planner to find keywords based on Google Search trends. For instance, if you want to sell basketball shoes, you can input the search term "basketball shoes" to receive a full list of relevant searches that you can sort by popularity, competition, trending interest, and other factors.
Building this out can let you start to get an idea for specific content routes, such as making your own video evaluations of new sneakers, lists of the most popular shoes worn by NBA stars, feature summaries based on purpose (running, jumping), and more.
Google Trends is another tool to keep in mind here. Check out the most recent hot topics to see if there are any that apply to your brand.
Although the majority of them won't be important, there might be a brand- or niche-specific angle for your pieces that could assist guide your content strategy.
You can remain current on the latest by frequently monitoring Google Trends and Keyword Planner, ensuring that the material you're producing is pertinent to what people are searching for.
It ultimately leads to Instagram in particular.
You may then enter the most pertinent terms on IG for the themes you've discovered in Keyword Planner to get an estimate of search volume.
The amount of posts that have used a certain hashtag are now clearly listed on Instagram. This is useful for understanding important trends on a subject, and the added listing of related tags also adds more information.
You should also pay attention to the kinds of posts that each hashtag search returns. I've frequently conducted research and discovered that individuals don't truly utilize the same hashtags that corporations use. For instance, many companies in Canberra, Australia, frequently utilize the abbreviated hashtag #CBR, which is actually predominately made up of content about motorcycles.
It's crucial to take a moment to go through and make sure that your hashtags are being utilized and are being used the way you intend.
Your IG strategy may then be built around a list of important topic trends and hashtags from the combined data, ensuring that you're using the best hashtags to increase reach and that your posts are relevant to your target audience.
Best Practices Posting
The following stage is to begin publishing and developing your online presence.
You probably won't get a lot of responses right first, but you still need to build a solid foundation of posts to make people aware of your presence. You want content that people will notice when they tap through to your profile.
When it comes to product photography, you should try to put together a mini-studio where you can shoot pictures against a solid background with the right lighting and staging. Check out these suggestions from Canva to see that this setup doesn't necessarily need to be expensive.
Asking your audience questions will increase interaction. You can also think about posting images or text-based content to increase interest. Optimizing social media posting requires attracting interaction, which you achieve by evoking an emotional response in your audience through your posts.
What are the main problems they face? Which current trends are relevant to your brand, and how?
What topics are being discussed in regard to your industry on forums like Reddit and Quora? By matching up with the most important questions that your audience is likely to have, taking notes on these components will help you both demonstrate your expertise in the field and boost engagement.
Other important posting reminders include:
It may be worthwhile to do more research into what other companies in your industry, especially those that are successful on Instagram, are posting in order to better align with the specific elements that could then see your content highlighted to your target consumers. Instagram tries to recommend content that is similar to the accounts that people have chosen to follow.
To ensure that you're maximizing your opportunities in this regard, you must post frequently. While "regularly" in this context is not specific, you should aim to be posting at least a few times a week initially in order to build and gauge audience response. Freshness' is important within Instagram's algorithmic approach.
Employ Instagram Reels
Reels, whether you like it or not, is the future of video storytelling on Instagram, so it's important to use it to your advantage if you want to make the most of your prospects there.
Instagram will display more Reels wherever it can within the app because it genuinely wants more users to watch more of them.
It does take some research to make sure you are aware of the most recent trends and fashions because creating reels is about catching them early. However, you can also slightly cheat because Instagram allows you to use a well-liked Reel as a template. This implies that you can copy the design and structure of any well-liked Reel you come across.
While you can also use the app's numerous effects tools to spice up your Reels postings, that can ease some of the creative burden. You can also convert still photographs to video assets.
There are many different methods to use video clips to promote your company, so it's absolutely worth thinking about how you might include video in your strategy in line with more general trends in content consumption.
Also take note that films up to 60 seconds long will no longer be divided into 15-second pieces on IG Stories, but rather will now play in their entirety.
Creator Collaborations
Getting relevant producers who are already well-known on the app to assist market your company is the final important factor to take into account when using Instagram.
While there are no hard-and-fast guidelines for how to do this, you can use Instagram's Creative Marketplace to look up relevant creator partners by topic, area, audience reach, etc.
Additionally, you may search Explore by topic to find relevant creators who are posting with your focus hashtags.
Once you have identified the creators you want to collaborate with, you can contact them directly or through Creator Marketplace to offer a collaboration or even just to establish an initial connection by sending them a free sample.
In order to expand your audience and increase brand awareness in the app, getting the correct influencers to talk about your product can have a significant impact.
You might also think about collaborating with nearby companies as a cross-promotional strategy.