Upping Your Game on Instagram

If you’ve read anything about Instagram recently, then you probably don’t need an industry report to figure out the photo-sharing app-come-social network is now a serious platform for brands and agencies the world over.

With the launch of Instagram’s advertising API, adoption by the Interbrand 100 reaching 90% and influencers from all sorts of industries using it as their go-to channel to share content, Instagram is obviously here to stay.

Over the past few months we’ve upped our Instagram game for a number of clients – and we’ve learnt a few valuable things along the way.

Make it AWESOME!

With more and more brands, influencers and users joining Instagram every day, competition for hearts, comments and follows has never been higher. Your average user will search a hashtag and scroll through hundreds of thumbnails within minutes.

You need to stand out from everyone else. You need to stop people scrolling and make them click on your content. The only way to do this is by making your imagery totally AWESOME. Photos fair much better than vector based graphics, so we advise sticking to photos if possible. Take time to research your competition and influencers in the industry. Check out what their visual style is like. Stick some relevant hashtags in Instagram and go for a stroll scroll. See what stands out. Then, put careful consideration into your visual style and implement it – consistently.

In keeping with your brand, your visual language on Instagram needs to be consistent. Your fans and audience will come to expect a certain style and level of quality from you – don’t disappoint them.

Hashtags – which ones and how many?

The age old Instagram question is “How many hashtags should I use?” This all depends on whether or not you’re an established brand that can immediately reach out to existing customers or fans through other marketing and social channels, or whether you’re a small brand starting out.

Firstly, there’s no point in posting awesome content if nobody will see it. So yes, hashtags are absolutely essential. It’s important to remember that, unlike Twitter users, Instagram users do not get hashtag fatigue – a much more visual social network, the text is secondary to the images. So if you’re a new or small business just getting started on Instagram, using lots of hashtags to reach a wider audience is totally acceptable. Just remember to make them neat – you can do this by positioning your hashtags (30 max) below the fold.*

Make sure they’re highly relevant to the audience you want to reach. You can easily do this by checking out your competitors or other people operating in the same industry and see what hashtags they’re using. Search online, see what’s trending. As you start to build your presence and become more of an authority figure in your industry, you can start refining what hashtags you’re using, as well as reducing the the overall amount.

Engage with your fans

So your imagery is looking totally amazing, you’ve got a great group of hashtags and the hearts, comments and follows are slowly but surely coming in. Now it’s time to nurture your audience by engaging with them.

If somebody comments on one of your photos, make sure you take the time to reply. What you say will depend on what the comment is, but whatever you reply with, make sure it’s genuine and relevant.

Check out people who are following you. Give them a follow back. Look at their photos. Heart them and comment if they’re relevant to your brand. Build a personal relationship with your audience. Obviously this will take time (and sometimes you won’t have enough of it to nurture everyone), but a simple “Thanks @fan123, we’re so glad you like it :-)” to people who take the time to comment on your photos is the very least you can do.

Helpful tools and tips for Instagram

With the launch of Instagram’s ad API, more and more apps that allow you to schedule content and look at analytics are popping up. This a god send for anyone who has been using Instagram regularly in their marketing efforts – up until very recently, scheduling content has been impossible and content could only be posted from a smartphone. For the majority of people working in agencies, this meant your personal smartphone was also your clients’ Instagram phone…

Schedugram is one of the better and most affordable scheduling tools out there. It’s not as refined as some of the social tools you’re probably accustomed too, but it’s getting there and it does the job for now. Iconosquare is a great free tool that gives you useful insights into your Instagram profile and audience, all of which you can utilise in your overall social media strategy.