There are over 800 million Instagrammers — with more than 500 million using the platform every day, sharing more than 250 million pieces of content. Instagram can be a powerful tool but as most business owners will appreciate, it can be hard to get engagement and reach in an already saturated market. So how do you cut through and stand out among the millions of other images, videos and stories posted each day?
If you feel like you’re ploughing too much time, energy and money into Instagram with little return, then read on for our hot tips that will help transform your account from meh to amazing.
1. Quality over Quantity
Instagram has evolved to become a curated platform where businesses and individuals only post the best photos according to specific themes, instead of every photo they take. So the best accounts (and remember, that’s not necessarily an account with the most followers, but rather one with the most ENGAGED followers) are the ones that post a regular, consistent stream of quality content that speaks directly to their following and encourages them to engage by liking, reposting, saving, tagging and commenting. Remember, the more people that engage with your content the more people that are likely to see it.
It’s essential that you post the very highest quality content that you can achieve if you want a presence in this space competing for eyeballs alongside big brands with even bigger budgets. That might mean employing a professional photographer, a shutterbug friend or staff member to take some high quality images, or even training yourself up (you’d be surprised at what you can achieve with a smart phone!). It’s definitely worth the investment.
2. Give the grid some love
What’s the first thing you do when you visit someone’s account? Chances are, you scroll up and down the grid and then decide whether you’ll give them a follow. If you’re getting plenty of profile visits but it’s not converting into followers, then take a look at your grid and ask yourself if it’s a true reflection of your business. There are many different ways to do grid design, from tiling (where three images in a row are a social graphic), alternating content (every second image is food, for example) and colour themes (where you pick three or four colours). The trick is to pick the one that’s going to work for the kind of content you generate. If you have content that doesn’t fit with your grid, then post it on Instagram stories.
3. Update your bio
You only have 150 characters, so make sure it counts and tells the story about what you do as succinctly as possible. Don’t forget your bio is the one opportunity you have to include a link and drive some traffic back to your website. If your hashtag, URL, location, contact details and short description aren’t in your bio, then go and update it – RIGHT NOW!
For more tips on how to write an effective bio, check out our post How to write an Instagram bio that rocks.
4. Get hashtagging
If you harness hashtags in the right way, it can be the key to unlocking new followers and more engagement on Instagram. It’s also how you can find your ‘tribe’ – those people on Instagram that are passionate about your industry, niche, product and service.
Instagram recently rolled out the ability to follow hashtags which means that instead of a user having to search for an Instagram hashtag and scroll through an endless feed to (hopefully) land on your content, your posts could now show up automatically in the feeds of potential new followers.
It’s best to change up hashtags each time you post to Instagram; posting the same hashtags over and over might be seen as spam by the Instagram algorithm and could affect your post’s visibility.
For more tips on how to use hashtags effectively, check out our post How to Harness the Power of Hashtags.
5. Have a clear vision and strategy
Do you know what your business goals are? Have you set your social media strategy goals in line with these? If you’re on Instagram without a strategy, chances are you’re throwing it all at the wall to see what sticks, which probably means all that time you’re spending isn’t seeing any return. If this sounds familiar, don’t despair, we can help!
At SOMO Creative, social media strategy for small business is something we love doing. We’re experts at taking your brand’s values and goals and transforming your social offering with a custom designed social media strategy that includes all the insider tools, tricks and apps you need to succeed.
We offer consultation and strategy, team training and end-to-end set up and management, so if you’re ready to leverage your social to bring in more business, talk to us today.
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