Back in May of 2019, you may have heard about the Instagram influencer with 2.6 million followers couldn’t sell the 36 T-shirts needed to launch her own clothing line. Aside from demonstrating how even campaigns run by social media marketing experts aren’t gauranteed success, it also hit home how imperative it is to know the platform you’re marketing on like the back of your hand.
With new updates in the works to be released over the coming months, it’s more important than ever to really understand how your target audience uses each social platform to ensure your marketing campaigns are successful.
To do so, you need a comprehensive strategy for creating Instagram content. With millions of accounts creating content daily, your content needs to stand out from the crowd. Here are 10 tips to help improve your Instagram marketing strategy.
10 Tips to Help Improve Your Instagram Marketing Strategy
1. Avoid being too transparent or too commercial.
No one wants to feel like they’re being sold to, especially on Instagram where people are looking to be entertained and show off their sweet photography skills. They may, however, be interested in learning more about unique products that can help solve a problem in their lives. Create your content from their perspective — they’ll appreciate that you did and that appreciation might eventually result in a higher conversion rate
2. Spend as much time as possible on competitor analysis.
Like we said earlier, there are millions of accounts creating content on Instagram daily. While it’s important to understand what you’re posting for your audience, it’s equally important to know what your target audience is seeing from your competitors. Follow as many of your competitors’ accounts as possible to get ideas for your posts and to think of ways to distance your content from what everyone else is posting.
3. Stick to a set of specific hashtags.
Hashtags are EVERYTHING on Instagram. Your hashtags need to be as specific as possible to help content reach the right audience. You can include as many hashtags as you’d like on your posts, but the more specific you are, the more likely your content will reach an interested audience.
4. Vary your video content.
This is a good rule of thumb to follow for all of your video content, regardless of whether or not it’s posted to your social media channels. You may be tempted to stick with one type of video, but posting a variety of video content can help you grow your overall audience as well as help you determine which types of video resonate the most with your audience.
5. Create and post how-to videos.
How-to videos are a great choice for video content. They’re a fan-favorite across social media because they impart a real skill onto your audience. How-to videos are also one of the most shared types of content, both on Instagram and other social platforms.
6. Keep it short.
Most Instagram videos should be shorter than 26 seconds. With people’s shrinking attention spans and the amount of content available for consumption every day, keeping your content shorter might encourage more people to watch.
7. Improve the overall quality of your videos.
Higher quality videos perform better compared to low-quality videos. Every. Time. Your videos need to be professionally shot whenever possible, polished to a T, and be sure to include closed captions on all of your videos.
8. Keep a consistent posting schedule.
While most people scroll through their Instagram feeds periodically throughout the day, there’s generally a spike in traction weeknights and during the weekend. However, your specific audience’s social media activity may differ.
Be sure to check the analytics of your posts to see which of your posts perform the best and what time they were posted. Posting consistently can also boost your Instagram posts’ performance. If your audience has come to expect you to post to your Instagram Story once a week, be sure to stick to that schedule as closely as possible.
9. Brand your content.
Add logos and watermarks to your content so people can always link the content back to your account. Content gets shared around the internet faster than ever before. Branding your content will help people remember who was responsible for the original post.
10. Read your comments.
One of the best ways to improve the performance of your Instagram posts is to actually engage with your audience. When people like and comment on your posts, like and comment back! Interacting and engaging with your audience is also the best way to gauge what your audience is thinking and can help you understand what types of content they like and respond to the most.
