We all love following our favorite celebrities on Instagram to get a glimpse into their glamorous lives. Thanks to platforms like Instagram. There are a lot of features that allow celebs to advertise their work, interact with fans, and showcase their personalities.
Some celebrities are better than others at using these options. And there are tons of things that brands can learn from them.
In this post, we will show you eight celebrities who excel at things like creating Instagram Stories, making accessible social media content, and crafting a humorous brand voice.
8 celebrities who are doing well on Instagram
1) The Arkells: Instagram Live & fan interaction
When lockdowns first began the last year and it seemed like every musician was doing Instagram Lives. There was one band that stood out: The Arkells.
For 58 straight days, Max Kerman (the lead singer) hosted an hour-long Instagram Live show known as “Flatten The Curve Music Class”. Each day, Kerman would train the chords to an Arkells song and invite both special guests and fans to join using Instagram’s “request to chat” feature. After every Livestream, the Arkells uploaded the show as an IGTV video so past episodes could be re-watched.
The success of the #FTCMusicClass Livestream came from its consistency (every day at the same hour), intimacy (a one-to-many format that felt like one-to-one), surprise-and-delight (unexpected well-known guests), and exclusivity factors (a once-in-a-lifetime chance for fans to chat with their favorite singer).
What we can learn from them:
Use Instagram Live not just as another channel to advertise your brand’s content. However, to share something valuable, encourage people to ask questions about your brand or products, or simply surprise-and-delight a fan. You can use the request-to-chat feature to invite both planned guests and normal followers.
2) Lewis Capaldi & Niall Horan: Instagram Stories & authenticity
Here’s a throwback: Keep in mind One Direction? Part of what made them so popular was the level of access and personality they shared with followers via their videos and social media accounts.
Fortunately, the 1D boys are applying what they learned to their solo careers. Niall Horan uses Instagram Stories to do AMAs (using the Stories question sticker), Instagram Lives (during which he replies to followers), impromptu performances, direct-to-camera chats, and highlight other musicians he’s listening to. This is how I found another great artist on social media: Lewis Capaldi.
Lewis Capaldi is a talented artist. However, he’s also amazing at letting his personality shine on social media. He always posts Stories that feel like he’s speaking to his friends. They’re casual, imperfect, humorous, and filled with swear here and there.
When Capaldi uses Stories to promote his music, they’re written with his signature self-deprecating humor so fans are still engaged and receptive to whatever he’s promoting.
Both artists do a great job of using the casual nature of Instagram Stories to showcase their personalities. That makes them feel more authentic and thus beloved by their followers.
What we can learn from them:
Lean into the casual nature of Instagram Stories. Humanize your brand and show off your brand’s personality by recording videos with individuals talking straight to the camera and using question stickers to do AMA sessions.
3) Jennifer Lopez: Accessible hashtags and videos
I gotta hand it to JLo, she does a great job of using all of Instagram’s features to their fullest, including Stories, IGTV, Reels, and hashtags.
Although she creates tons of promotional posts, even the most commercial ones have short-and-snappy captions, proper tagging of sponsors and photographers, and eye-catching content (easy to do when you look like JLo, though).
Most impressively, JLo uses proper camel cases for most of her hashtags. This is essential for accessibility because the camel case allows screen readers to read each capitalized phrase in a hashtag as separate phrases.
On another note, JLo also does a great job of posting videos with full subtitles, which makes them accessible and viewable for the many users who consume social media with sound off.
What we can learn from them:
Make your Instagram content accessible for all users by all the time writing hashtags in camel case and adding subtitles to all videos.
4) Taylor Swift: AR filters
From the early days of replying to followers’ posts on Tumblr to announcing two surprise album drops last year (I wrote a separate article on that strategy alone), Taylor Swift is one superstar from which all marketers can learn.
When it comes to Instagram, one noteworthy thing that Swift has done is to create Instagram Story filters. Many artists put lots of work into designing specific looks for their albums and music videos. And in Swift’s case, fans even recreate the looks for themselves. So, creating an AR filter really makes lots of sense as it allows (less ambitious) fans the same opportunity to stylize themselves using their favorite artist’s aesthetic.
What we can study from them: Create your own AR filters for users to check out your products virtually. Some ideas: trying on products (beauty brands), making use of face paint/jerseys/team colors (sports teams), immersing users within a scene (video games/entertainment brands).