5 Tips For Improving Your Instagram
Instagram is a powerful tool that allows businesses to connect with their followers through the sharing of visual content. However, with a billion active users and a billion different accounts, it can be a bit hard to get noticed. Here are 5 ways to grow your Instagram and be more noticeable!
1) Insta Bio
Profile Picture: Make sure the profile picture you choose is recognizable. Good options are a logo,a mascot, or a portrait for influencer accounts.
Description: When writing your bio think like the customer. What will appeal to your target audience? You want a short summary of your company. Mention who you are, your brand, and what you do. Make sure to utilize your brand tone and voice.
Link: Include a link in your bio. This link can be one of three things: a link to your website; a linktree that allows you to share multiple important links; or a frequently updated link that directs users to the most recent content (e.g. a new blog post or new podcast episode.)
Story Highlights: Use highlights to your advantage. The highlights should be unique and showcase your company’s brand and culture. A few examples of highlight categories are…
Core values: Share your company's values and how you implement those values.
Team: Employee take overs are a great way to introduce your consumers to the people behind the company and give an inside look of the work culture.
Product/Service: Inform your consumers about your offerings and upcoming launches.
Blog: Update your consumers with new blog posts and trends.
Events: Keep your consumers informed about upcoming events and provide sneak peaks at what goes on behind the scenes.
2) Content Theme
Trying to decide what to post is usually the hardest part. As a business Instagram account, you want to stay consistent with the content you post. Share content on your account with a purpose!
When trying to choose a theme, think about what your company represents and what your company’s ultimate goal is. Ask yourself, “Why would someone come to view my feed over a competitor's feed?” “What is the purpose of my account?” Once you have decided what it is that you are trying to achieve with your account, always keep that in mind when creating new content. Make sure your posts always stick to the theme you choose.
For example, at Mishka Collective, we like to use our instagram to promote healthy work life balance and positive mindset. Our posts revolve around helping businesses grow while reminding the people within those businesses to take quality care of themselves.
3) Overall Feed
Instagram is all about visual content. As a business account, it’s important to make sure your content is visually appealing. The best way to showcase your feed is by focusing on your brand’s color palette. Keep the colors consistent and use the same filter on all your photos to keep the photo aesthetic in sync.
It’s important to plan ahead. There are many tools out there that allow you to build out your feed in advance so you can change it and perfect it before posts start going out. Our household favorite is Planoly!
4) Hashtags
Make your content discoverable by using hashtags! Hashtags help connect users to the content they enjoy. As a business account on instagram it is important to use hashtags to gain more reach and engagement.
Use hashtags that are popular, but not so popular that your post will get buried and unnoticed under all the other content within that tag. It’s good to be more specific with your tags! For example, if you’re promoting a new makeup line and you use #makeup, your post could go unnoticed among all the other 326 million posts under that tag. However, if you choose a tag more specific such as #glittershadow, you have the chance of standing out. With 33 thousand posts, your content becomes discoverable by having many users interact with that tag without it drowning under millions of other posts.
You can also add a unique twist by creating your own unique tags. These hashtags are great to use for company awareness purposes. For example, creating a unique tag for a new campaign so your consumers can go to that tag for all updates. It also allows your consumers to be an active part of your campaigns.
5) Posting Schedule
How often you post is a key factor to holding onto your followers. Posting too much becomes spam like and it can annoy your followers, but not posting enough will leave your followers bored and unamused. The sweet spot is posting once per day and no more than twice. Keep your audience engaged with your content, without blowing up their personal feeds.
As mentioned earlier, planning ahead is a good strategy for designing your overall feed. It’s also good for keeping a consistent posting schedule. Using platforms, such as Planoly, Sprout Social, and more, help you find optimal posting times, so your content goes out when your followers are most active. This will help increase your engagement and give you a bit more freedom and flexibility to have control over your work schedule.
Instagram is a challenging platform to become discoverable on, and the more users that join every year the harder it becomes to be noticeable. With these tips you will definitely up your instagram game. However, even with these helpful tips, it can be hard to manage everything on your own. Mishka Collective is here to help you manage and grow your social channels, including instagram. Connect with us and learn how we can help you grow your business!
Up your social game with these few tips…
Social media is a strong tool - you have the chance to make an impact in someone else’s day. Become an impact creator, instead of a mere content consumer.
