Just in case you skipped over the section above and plan to dive into the rest of the Instagram marketing tips while using a personal account, here’s why you should reconsider.
A business account gives you access to features you can’t use with a personal account, including:
All social platforms are tools. But you can’t use those tools effectively unless you know what it is you’re trying to build.
Instagram marketing can mean different things to different marketers. Are you looking to:
A little preliminary research can help you figure out who you can best reach when you’re thinking about how to market on Instagram. For example, our Instagram demographics shows that:
In just 150 characters, your Instagram bio needs to make a great first impression, convey your brand personality, and tell people why they should bother following your Instagram account.
That’s a lot to ask from a small space.
Fortunately, you also get a few other fields on your Instagram profile to showcase what your brand is all about and make it easier for people to find you. These include:
Instagram is a visual medium, so your posts have simply got to look great. You don’t need professional photography equipment, but your photos and videos do need to be sharp, well-lit, well-composed, and in focus, at a minimum.
If you’re using images other than photos, like infographics or animations, make sure they’re crisp, clear, easy-to read, and eye-catching.
Even more important, your visual content needs to be compelling. Great photos are nice, but if they don’t tell a story, or get viewers excited, they’re not going to engage followers.
Not sure what to post? Here are a few ideas:
Behind-the-scenes posts: Give followers a look at your office, your storefront, or your manufacturing process.
Quotes and text-based images: Play with text to create visually interesting content with no photos required.
Regrams and UGC: User-generated content is by nature authentic and compelling.
Instructional posts: Teaching followers how to achieve a goal is about as compelling as it gets.
Videos: The maximum length of a video post on Instagram is 60 seconds, but you can go much longer with IGTV.
Reels: A short new type of Instagram feature
Hashtags are a key way to increase your visibility and discoverability.
You can use up to 30 hashtags in an Instagram post. But, realistically, you probably don’t want to do that.
We recommend using between five and nine hashtags per post. More than that can look like hashtag stuffing, a spammy tactic that turns followers off. Worse, if you use irrelevant or repetitive hashtags, users can choose not to see your content for that tag.
To get the most benefit, choose hashtags that:
10.Post at the right times
Did you know that the best time to post on Instagram varies based on your industry?
We analyzed 258,956 posts from 11 different industries and found that there really is a best time to post, even though Instagram feeds are no longer chronological.
Here are the best times to post for each industry we analyzed:
11.Expand your audience with Instagram ads
The surest way to get your content in front of a new audience is to run an Instagram ad.
Back in Tip 3, you defined your target audience. Now you can use that information to target your ads based on:
You can also upload custom audiences of people you have existing relationships with, and use these to create lookalike audiences.
You can advertise in the Instagram feed, Stories, or Explore.
We do that for you in NGDC
12.Refine your strategy with analytics
No matter how good you already are at Instagram marketing, you can always be better. The best way to improve your results is to learn from what you’ve already done.
And the best way to do that is to study all of the information available in Instagram Insights.