Keep reading to learn more the way to build your Instagram brand.
3) Create compelling content that’s worthy of being shared by others.
An Instagram strategy that includes creating beautiful, easily digestible content that not only resonates with your audience but also drives them to share and interact with your brand is crucial, and can explode your growth.
A great Instagram post can be boiled down to a formula, and requires two elements: beautiful imagery and engaging text.
Beautiful Imagery
Choose images that tell a story or elicit emotion. This image we shared is not only compelling and interesting, but it also elicits emotion and therefore drives engagement from our followers.
What this will look like for your business will depend on your industry, but think outside of posting images of your own products and services. Posting about yourself repeatedly on social media is like being that person at a party who talks constantly about themselves. Also, beware of copyright issues. If the image is not your own, request permission to use it or source non-attribution-required photos. (Check out this awesome list of royalty-free stock photos here.)
Engaging Text
While you don’t have to add text to your Instagram posts, doing so packs a punch that a plain image won’t provide.
Text can range anywhere from a compelling question to a powerful, motivational quote. We encourage you to experiment with the latter, as a study conducted by Jonah Berger, author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, shows that “high arousal” emotion causes us to want to share far more than things that do not elicit such emotion.
To create a stunning visual using text, you don’t need to hire a designer. In fact, we use an app called WORDSWAG to quickly and easily create images like the one you see below. (If you’re an Android user, try Phonto.)
One of our images was even shared by the rap artist LL Cool J:
While you’ll notice that someone cropped out our logo and added their own attribution in the photo shared above, we always make sure to include our branding as part of all of our posts.
For example, if we post an image with a popular quote, we’ll include our logo at the bottom of the image.
This small step has not only built brand awareness to our Instagram followers, but it also spreads as our Instagram content is shared on other platforms.
After you’ve nailed your Instagram content, and you have systems in place that will generate followers and email subscribers, it’s important to ensure that your followers are engaging with you to maximize your reach.
4) Foster a community of highly engaged followers.
Engagement comes in many forms, including followers sharing your content, interacting with it some way, tagging their friends. And clicking on your calls-to-action. In this section we’ll go over some of our tactics for fostering a community of highly engaged followers on Instagram.
Post When Your Followers are Online
Have you ever posted something to social media that you think will do really well. Then, nobody liked post, nobody shared it with their friends, and the only comments you landed were from spambots.
While it’s easy to assume you miscalculated the potential of the post, it could just be that you posted the update at the wrong time. After all, networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are simply feeds. The newer the content (with some exceptions), the higher up it will be in your followers’ feeds.
To avoid this happening again, develop a pipeline of automated updates to be posted when your followers are actually going to see them. We use Iconosquare to find out when most of our followers are online. The service analyzes your followers’ activities and reports back with the best time to schedule your posts.
Posting when the largest portion of your followers are online will ensure your content is working overtime for you.
Ask for Engagement
A lot of brands will start Instagram accounts and their big frustration is when people aren’t engaging with their photos.
It seems so obvious and simple, but sometimes actually asking for your audience to engage makes all the difference. You can either include the action you want your followers to take as part of the image itself. Or include it in the description of your post.
The best tactic? Both … as long as it’s specific and actionable. For example, ask them to “double tap” if they agree with your post. Or tell them to tag a friend like we did in this post:
Instagram is a social platform with tremendous potential for businesses in almost any industry. And if you use Instagram strategically, it can have a significant impact on your reach, brand awareness, and ultimately the revenue of your company.