For some businesses, crafting a fun and engaging Instagram feed can quickly devolve into an unwelcome burden. Posting becomes a chore, the content goes stale, and the lack of enthusiasm translates into poor audience metrics.
But don’t give up on Instagram just yet. Experts are projecting that worldwide Instagram users will top one billion by 2023. Can you really afford to abandon or ignore a marketing channel with that much reach? Especially considering that your competitors are statistically likely to be active on Instagram, with more than one in five profiles classified as business accounts.
When we learn that 90% of users on Instagram follow at least one of these business accounts, we can also admit that Instagram has incredible potential for audience growth. So instead of losing hope in your lackluster social presence, set your account up for success with a solid and appealing foundation. To get started, here are three ways to level up your Instagram feed.
1. Use Your #Hashtags Strategically
Hashtags are used to catalog your posts and make content more discoverable. When someone clicks on a hashtag anywhere on Instagram, they will see a list of other posts that have used the same hashtag, creating ever-evolving categories for users to explore.
To promote your content effectively, hashtags are key. However, you don’t want to throw them around willy-nilly. Try these quick tips to use your hashtags more strategically.
- Choose hashtags that appeal to your audience. Hashtags won’t help your brand if they’re only driving traffic that doesn’t care about your product or service. Find out what your audience cares about, and build content with hashtags that will attract your ideal demographic.
- Don’t overload your post. Using more than 8-10 hashtags in one chunk — usually, at the end of a caption — can make your content look spammy or salesy. Prioritize the most relevant and popular hashtags for your post, and leave off any that are less important or widely used.
- Separate your hashtags from the main caption. You can also mitigate hashtag overload by adding line breaks between your text and the hashtags for your post.
- Make sure your branded hashtags aren’t already being used. If you’re trying to start a hashtag that’s unique to your brand or a specific campaign you’re running, search for it on Instagram first. Otherwise, you may be accidentally associating your brand with a trend or competitor you’d rather avoid.
2. Curate Your Aesthetic
Sometimes, you get so wrapped up in the look of a specific post that you don’t think about where it fits into your feed. But when an interested customer visits your profile, you want to greet them with a well-crafted, brand-appropriate aesthetic.
Your profile says a lot about your business, so don’t undermine yourself with a feed that comes across as cluttered, sterile, or inconsistent. Instead, ooze professionalism by presenting a cohesive vision.
Afraid this will make your profile boring? Only if you let it! You can still get creative and have some fun with your profile by mixing up the types of posts you feature. Consider working with a range of different media, such as:
- Lifestyle photos
- Educational infographics
- Eye-catching typography
- Testimonials from satisfied clients
- Beautiful product shots — in moderation
3. Automate Your Posting
On any social media platform, Instagram included, posting time can have a huge impact on your content’s reach and success. However, it can be massively inconvenient — and tedious — to manually upload your content at specific times each day.
Fortunately, marketing automation can ease the burden of manual posting. With marketing automation platforms like Factoreal, you can pre-schedule your posts to publish at exactly the right moment to reach your target audience, so you can still hit peak engagement while focusing on other tasks.
With Factoreal, you can also access strategy-informing audience insights and manage all of your marketing channels from one convenient interface. From Instagram and Whatsapp to email and SMS, Factoreal empowers your team to streamline your content and grow your audience exponentially.
Ready to up your Instagram game? Contact the Factoreal team today to find out how we can revolutionize your digital marketing across the board.
