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Gaurav Sharma of Attrock makes a point all brands must take note of:
"Social media is witnessing an astronomical growth with more than 4 billion users. And that’s because the massive world of social media has made it incredibly easy to make fruitful connections with your potential leads. But even in this crowd, there is one specific platform with tremendous potential, leaving its competitors behind. I need not bicker with you about how addictive Instagram is these days!
Another opinion reinforces the same idea that brands do best on Instagram – it’s from Caitlin Hughes on the Iconosquare blog:
"Instagram actually has the highest average engagement rate of all the main social channels, beating Facebook and Twitter. In fact, it even has a higher brand engagement rate, which shows the audience on Instagram is more open to branded content than they are on other platforms. A good starting point for generating engagement is to follow people talking about your brand or your products and comment on their photos and videos."
Moral? It’s clear that if you have a brand that craves massive audience attention, you must be on Instagram … and you can’t just put out a few images with skimpy captions. Give it the best of your business blogging skills, and your brand may take off!
Creating an Instagram account is free and takes just a few minutes. Get started by downloading the Instagram app from Google’s Play store (Android) or App Store (iPhone).
Once you’ve installed it on your mobile, tap the Instagram icon to open it. Sign up with your email address or phone number if you’re on an Android. If you have an iPhone, select Create an Account and enter your phone number. You’ll get a text with a verification code to enter. Or, you can use a single sign-on by selecting your Facebook login.
You’ll then receive a prompt to create a username and password. The step that takes the most thinking from you is deciding on a good username. You can change your username later, so it’s not binding if you choose the wrong name.
Now comes the question: should you go for a personal Instagram account or a business one? Or should you go for the Creator account that lies somewhat between the Personal and Business Accounts? I have some points for you to ponder.
Your Instagram bio should ideally tells users who you are and what your business offers. It should be informative, concise, and written in brand tone and style. Your headshot should be personality-rich. It has to help you build your brand authority.
Here’s one from Marie Forleo that’s just about perfect to use as an example. Incidentally, Marie says of herself: “I seemed passionate about a multitude of seemingly unconnected things: writing, hip-hop, psychology, entrepreneurship, creativity, spirituality, fitness and philanthropy, just to name a few. After a lot of angst trying to choose just one thing to be in life, I realized that my unusual combination of interests and skills was a strength, not a liability. So I later coined the term “Multipassionate Entrepreneur” because I didn’t (and never will) fit into a conventional box.”
If you already have a brand that’s been around for a long time, you may already have a niche that you are exploiting on your website’s blog, and in other content marketing, including social media.
But there’s one thing you must think about a lot when considering extending your brand’s niche to Instagram: will your niche allow for an extravagance of imagery? Instagram is primarily an image-oriented social channel.
Some niches, like travel, fashion, food, or the arts, naturally lend themselves to great photography that holds the eye. Some other niches may not be so hot for supporting with images.
The secret is to think of images as parts of “stories.” Do you have a story to tell about your brand, customers, backstage events, team members and their passions, or social causes? If there are stories to tell, choose an angle where you show off many images over a long time.
Gary Vaynerchuk (also known as Gary Vee) is a Belarusian-American entrepreneur, author, speaker, and Internet personality. First known as a wine critic who expanded his family’s wine business, he is now more known for his work in digital marketing and social media as an investor in various disparate businesses.
See how his Instagram niche is about his multifaceted personality and strong opinions …
As you may have noticed, four types of images are at play on Instagram. These are still images, videos, carousels − and of course, those mighty engrossing reels.
According to Later, the relative engagement rate in 2021-22 for images was 2.76%, for videos was 2.60%, and for carousels was 3.11%.
But all these 3 − images, videos, and carousels − have had a declining interest recently. Why? Because REELS have taken over Instagram by storm.
What are Instagram Reels? They are short-form, vertical videos that can be up to 60 seconds long and can be created from a mix of video and images. Brands are now flexing flex their creative muscles with Reels. What’s more, Reels can be seen in feeds and from a Reels Tab that shows content from all Instagram accounts.
ToastTab is a terrific brand with a really differentiated tone and style. It is an educational repository for anybody wanting to start a restaurant. It has a platform with many features and functionalities that budding restauranteurs can use.
Look at their uber-simple but stunningly powerful Instagram reel to sell their lesson on “Opening a Restaurant 101” …
If you want to start brand blogging on Instagram, every image you use has to give a brand story a starter. It can be a trailer for a story that promises to be intriguing. It can make readers wonder when and where it was taken and what it’s trying to say. Either way, the reader must want more …
Another point to note about images used for a brand in different posts is that the color palettes of all the photos should be in brand shades. If, for example, your brand logo is black-and-white, you may even want to go for very classy grey monotones. If your brand colors are green and yellow, you may have to find images (or shoot them) to match your brand color palette.
Further, if you’re using images that are not your own but sourced, see if you need to give them due credit.
Also, images on Instagram must be of pure quality – no loss of quality, achieved by downgrading the images to make file sizes lighter, will be tolerated by Instagrammers.
If you’re unsure what pictures to use for your brand posts on Instagram, get some inspiration from some of the most famous photography brands who regularly post their work there. Some of them are so rare in their way of seeing things they are precious sources of brand ideas.
See this image from photographer Victoria Siemer (@witchoria) … her pictures conjure up a range of physics-defying scenes for us all to get riveted by …
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An Instagram blog post is also known as a caption. As we said at this article’s start, your captions must be limited to 2,200 characters. But most serious Instagram bloggers get away by posting the first 2200 characters and then, after publishing, adding more in the comments section.
Just because you’re allowed 2200 characters doesn’t mean you have to use them. Your blogs can even be just a sentence or two if they are ultra-smart brand messages and tell a story.
The most critical lines of your captions are the first line (which acts as a lead-in to the story) … it should be a very attractive scroll-stopper! Make it a short line because we don’t want Instagram’s way of truncating lines to kill our headline.
Your second most important line of the blog should give your Call-To-Action. It can be as simple as asking people to follow or engage with your post or add to your comments section. Or, your CTA might ask people to tag a friend or “like” your Instagram image.
Tentstile, as the name suggests, offer stylish tents for treecampers. This brand uses Instagram to show people its variety of tents through highly picturesque images. But notice the blog copy alongside. They have a Green Friday Sale extension mentioned, as well as their Giving Tuesdays, when they’ve listed all the green causes they give back to.
See how their Call-To-Action asks people to espouse green causes through them by buying their products … and look at their well-chosen bevy of hashtags at the bottom!
What is an Instagram Story? It is a feature that allows users to post photos or videos that automatically disappear within 24 hours (unless you add these as “highlights” that appear on your profile). Stories are visible in a vertical format and are fast, memorable, and fun.
Instagram Stories are a perfect way for brands to experiment with different content. Small brands often use Stories to post unedited videos of their everyday lives, photos of their new products, or short clips of the bosses answering FAQs.
Brands also use their Stories to show customer appreciation by re-sharing their followers’ stories. Some studies show how Stories not only boost brand reach and engagement but also influence purchasing behavior and increase customer loyalty.
The beauty of Instagram Stories is that they allow a lot of creativity. Brands that make the most innovative Stories carry the day. Different types of new usages of the Stories feature have happened on Instagram, and yet the opportunities to exploit the feature are still nowhere near saturation.
If you can’t think of any great ideas, Outback Steakhouse, a restaurant chain, shows how simply combining all the features that Instagram gives you can help create an enchanting and interactive Story. Outback Steakhouse includes images of delicious food and adds polls to engage its audiences.
For example, in their Story below, users are shown multiple menu items for each dinner course and are asked to vote on which meal they want for each course. At the end of the Story, Outback makes an offer for a multicourse dinner deal at a mouth-watering price.
A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#). These hashtags allow users to find messages about a given topic. For example, entering the hashtag #sportshoe in the search field on Instagram shows all content related to sports shoes. You can use hashtags on both static Instagram posts and Instagram stories. You can use up to 30 hashtags on static posts and up to 10 hashtags in a story.
By adding a geotag to your photo, you are pinning your location to that photo. The function of this tag is that it allows your photo to be found anytime an Instagram user clicks on the same geotag on another photo. Geotagging on Instagram is extremely easy. Simply tap “Tap “Add Location” from the “New Post” screen.
Hashtags and geotags allow people to easily search for you by the topic you’ve covered in your Instagram post, and if this topic relates to your brand, it will be a mighty helpful way to get your brand more visibility. Even your non-followers can find your brand if they search for topics related to it (eventually including your brand name).
With hashtags, you also have to choose the most popular version of the hashtag users may search for. How do you know if you should use the hashtag #sportshoe and not #sportingshoe? You can use a tool like Later.com. Providing a hashtag you want to use will give you the most popular alternatives for that hashtag. This tool also tells you when you’ve hit the maximum of 30 hashtags in your entire caption (i.e., blog post).
Hubspot recently released its 2022 Instagram Engagement Survey with loads of tips on what kinds of hashtags work on the platform. The video below encapsulates the best of their survey insights on hashtag tips and tricks …
The tip I found most interesting is that hashtags help people during searches only if the hashtags are in the captions and not in the comments of posts. Remember this when trying to lengthen your posts by adding more content in the comments section.
One of the problems many Instagrammers like me have with the platform is that it offers very poor backlinking to our websites. Usually, just one website link is allowed near the profile info.
But apps like Later.com have helped solve this problem by offering “Linkin.bio”. This is like a mini web page built into your Instagram profiles. The Linkin.bio page allows many links to your website to be created on it. So instead of linking Instagram to your website, you first link it to your Linkin.bio page.
On the Linkin.bio page, you can put many links to your website. You can customize your Linkin.bio page with buttons, featured media, and linked posts, and design your page to match your brand aesthetics.
With every post you make on your Instagram account, its image (with inbuilt links) will also appear on your Linkin.bio page. So you can locate the image on your Linkin.bio page and follow the links to buy shoppable items, browse blog pages, and arrive at landing pages – all on your website.
For those new to Linkin.bio, there’s a beautiful explainer video from Later.com that explains how to set up your Linkin.bio page, customize your page, connect it with your Instagram posts, integrate it with shopping and autoresponder tools, and so on.
See this video to get a full idea of what you can do with Linkin.bio and how your brand can gain even more from its Instagram blogging …
1. Most brands think of Instagram as a playground for creativity, but they don’t take the aspect of blogging on Instagram as seriously as possible. If they do, the results could be outstanding.
2. Instagram allows so many unique microblogging features like Reels, Instagram Stories, and a whole lot of innovation using images, text, video, animations, and so on.
3. Feel free to use my list of eminently practical steps to blog correctly for your brand on Instagram. It’s a plan I have used to grow my clients’ businesses, and it can help grow yours too.
The important takeaway from all this is that blogging must never be done too casually or without a definite goal. If your Instagram blogging is persistent, and based on a solid and achievement-oriented plan, it cannot fail. It will pay in ways you may not have thought of.
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