Instagram, the most-loved social media platform of today, especially for marketers. It’s quite appropriate to call Instagram the top trending platform as more than 13% of the worldwide population is having their profiles, and amongst them, more than 82.3% follow different brands and products.
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The Engagement ratio on Instagram is sedated by comments, likes, shares from users. Seems that user engagement is increasing at a rate of 4.21%, which is near to 84x times greater than Twitter, 54x times greater than Pinterest, and 10x times greater than Facebook.
Apart from all this, various challenges are coming along the way to Instagram’s marketing potential because of the gradual decrease in the new updates and arrival of new competitors.
Against this backdrop, far-sighted marketers are searching for ways, following some failures, to improve Instagram interaction. That’s why here are 7+ tips to ensure your organic and paid marketing campaigns continue to mark up their presence – and safeguard your marketing campaigns on Instagram now and in the future.
Let’s get started –
Post – Consistently –
To attract followers and raise engagement rates, brands need to be active – but how can they be active?
As per different strategies, it’s a soft spot to post twice a day. It keeps your feed fresh and interesting, and you have more chances to draw eyeballs to your brand. The best time to post on Instagram depends upon its algorithm timeline.
The posting time usually varies, depending upon the brand and its customers. Usually, it’s prudent to post at 8 AM – 9 AM, and second, between 2 PM – 5 PM, the incoherence can generate real uncertainty for content planners.
You can also look around to the top brands and follow their posting practices. As there’s no such best time to post the content on Instagram. One of the best Instagram best practices is to keep a check on your followers or niche audience, their active, and inactive time, it will help you schedule and manage your posts accordingly.
Have A Visually Consistent Instagram Feed
Instagram is a fun-filled photo-sharing platform that rewards aesthetically pleasing content.
Users today gravitate to honest speech and diverse viewpoints.
Ocularly crammed filters and perfectly garnished french toasts are nowadays changed with candid shots, subdued earthy tones, and low-key editing types.
A common style is to highlight and increase photos’ brightness without changing too many of the colours themselves, resulting in a natural appearance. Some also opt for a “no-version” picture (post).
One of the most important and Instagram best practices is to follow a particular style that shows an optically appealing feed.
Select A Suitable Hashtags
Choosing the best hashtags for your Instagram posts will create the difference between emerging as a top post or falling without a trace to the bottom of the list. Try generically creating your hashtags, for example, #august or #monsoon – using these hashtags your post may face a lot of competition from millions of people all across the world.
Alternatively, you can mix your specific generated hashtags with the trending ones, using which you can get the best hashtag that helps to connect your content to the related audience.
To get the best results you can search out all the hashtags which you have used, if you get content similar to yours, then it’s a win-win, your content will reach the right audience in no time.
Instagram approves posts with a maximum of 30 hashtags, but a lot of hashtags below your caption may look unprofessional. That’s the reason most of the top trending brands use eight or seven hashtags to drive a huge number of engagements.
As per some surveys, posts with more than 11 hashtags gain a higher engagement ratio. Therefore, choose the best hashtags to increase likes and comments as one hashtag can bring up to 12% of engagement.
To check the right number of hashtags for your brand check out the top competitors and influencers in your niche. It will also help you to know about the top trending, most used hashtags in your niche.
But also make sure as Instagram’s algorithm penalizes spammy content so make sure you use different numbers of hashtags for different posts.
Create a Brand Oriented Hashtag –
Using branded hashtags in your posts plays a vital role in a successful Instagram strategy.
A common, branded hashtag is the best starting point. It should be short, unforgettable, and somehow have your brand name. A branded hashtag has various benefits of making your content more discoverable, increasing traffic to your profile, and building a stronger community around your brand. It makes your content quickly trackable and findable.
Add your brand hashtag in the bio section, to make it clearly visible to everybody. And also, brand owners can create different hashtags for different posts or campaigns depending upon the theme of the campaign.
Emphasize On User-generated Content
Another Instagram best practice is to share user-generated content. It not only benefits advertisers but also the users to associate with the brand in a better way. It also helps users to avail themselves of many more brand services and offers quickly.
It helps in driving more organic engagement to your brands and can also attract other potential customers and make them enter your sales funnels through a variety of means. It will also help create trust in your brand, drive more interaction, and eventually boost your bottom line.
No matter the size of your company, encourage your customers to share content and share it if they already are!
Share Attractive and Appealing Stories
Nowadays, most marketers prefer Instagram to target audiences. Higher the number of followers, the higher the engagements.
Hence, enhance the engagement ratio by sharing stories, instead of proclaiming by videos, images, and posts in your profile.
Nowadays, people crave communication, and story-telling related to your brand or another is one of the best ways of creating that experience. People are much more likely to buy into it and share it with their peers when people have an emotional connection to your content.
An easy way to add elements to your brand stories is by sharing the user-generated content that clanks well with your brand. Another easy way is to tell stories with your caption.
Lengthy captions with narrative and authenticity elements are especially powerful as they allow brands to appear more human and to create deeper ties with their desired audience. Attractive wordy captions will also stop scrollers in their tracks and maximize their time looking at your message.
Look Into Different Range of Inst-Video Ad Formats
Sharing an image may attract thousands of people, but a video can attract millions.
Using Insta-Stories, images, and stills can be combined into one commercial. Try using the strengths of the video formats, to create independent 60-seconds videos, along with the comprehensive features.
Lets, take an example, Insta-stories live option for a questionnaire or launching new services or products, using the pre-shooted ad to show authentication and more about the brand to their followers to enhance engagement.
And now, Instagram has come up with the latest Reels feature, which invites you to create fun videos to share with your friends or anyone on Instagram. Record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools.
Along with Insta-fans, this feature also helps marketers, brand promoters, and influencers to showcase their products and features. If you are the first person to start using this feature, you are much likely to have minimum competition. In addition, it works uniquely, has a mobile-friendly layout.
Use Insta-video Brand Captions And Subtitle
Videos are continuously dominating the online space. As per stats, nearly 60% of Insta-stories are watched with volume up, which means 40% of them watch without volume up. Hence, it’s the primary reason why providing captions and subtitles have become an essential thing. As it enables core messages to deliver big-screen alongside visuals.
Facebook data (the parent company of Instagram) reveals that video captioning increases the average viewing times of content by 12%. Messaging performance is also dramatically improved, boasting an 82% effective rate as opposed to 18% with sound on and no captions. Another study found that 80 % of people said captions would make them more likely to watch the video in its entirety.
On Facebook, you can make an auto-captioned video that you can save and share on Instagram or, similarly, make your own dedicated captioning script. Although no one can dispute captions’ attention-grabbing ability, they are not officially part of story best practices for Instagram.
Most stories continue to be viewed with sound on. And once a consumer allows sound, it’s on until they disable it — making it vital to continue investing in providing a great sound experience.
Also Read –
Top 7 Social Media KPIs to grow your Business
10 best Instagram hacks to use in 2020
And Our Special Bonus Tip?
Instagram’s journey is never over!
As it might seem intimidating, but the fact is your Instagram profile is like a business – an enterprise that is constantly growing and evolving.
By following the above-mentioned tips for Instagram best practices, you can enhance your Instagram channel’s potential. And no matter how the network progresses, you will increase your engagement with Instagram and keep those likes, shares, and comments coming.
