Things to Look Out for Before Sharing Content on Instagram (Ultimate Guide 2021)
The importance of social media, or the power of social media marketing, is well known to businesses and marketers. And the two social media networks that have been dominating the social media marketing arena are Facebook & Instagram.
Facebook needs no introduction, as it is the most used social media network. But when it comes to Instagram, it’s no longer a millennial’s platform for sharing pictures, and videos. You simply can’t ignore the power of Instagram for business.
Instagram has over 200 million business accounts. It is the second most popular social media network after Facebook with over 1 billion active users.
Let us walk you through reasons why you should consider Instagram for your business’s social media marketing.
Importance of Instagram for Business in 2021
- Customer reach: Any business irrespective of its size and industry can use Instagram to establish a brand presence. With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram offers a huge customer base to target. With the right strategy, you can expect to generate more leads without spending a moolah.
- Virtual word-of-mouth: Instagram works as the perfect word-of-mouth marketing platform as people tend to like, share, or comment based on their emotions. This enables the brand message to reach millions of users while creating a potential customer base for your brand.
- Sell your brand story: To persuade a potential customer every business needs a story to create an emotional connection with the audience. And Instagram is certainly the best social media platform that is centered around storytelling. Any business can thrive if there’s a compelling story associated with its brand to engage the audience.
- Drive conversions: According to GWI, 54% of people browse social media to research products. Imagine being able to convert more than 50% of your potential customers! Instagram is the most used social channel, paving a great way for conversions as customers can browse and buy products directly from the platform. Especially with the shop tab feature, businesses are putting their best foot forward to interact, engage and convert their potential customers.
- Increase engagement through visual content: Social media platforms are driven by content. Content is what makes a business win or lose. And visual content is the best way to solicit brand messages, industry information, and narrate a story. Instagram is a visual content-sharing social network with over 95 million photos posted every day, offering a plethora of benefits to remember the brand for a longer period.
- Learn from your competitors: Yes you read that right. Businesses today are strategically planning and making the most out of this social media platform to reach the maximum number of customers. And leveraging the social footprints of your competitors can be an asset for your business if planned strategically.
It is content that makes a social media account succeed, and it is content that makes it lose. To this end, it is necessary to make a content plan for your Instagram. But how to do that? What kind of content can you post on Instagram, what do you have to do before posting content on Instagram. We’re going to answer all those questions, just sit back and read.
Building Instagram Content Plan
Right from brands, businesses to celebrities, their kids, and even their dogs everybody has an Instagram account. Now, with such a huge audience base, putting out content that either solves your customers’ problems or makes them resonate with your brand is the secret to winning more following. Here’s how to do it.
Things to look out for before posting on Instagram
1. Set clear goals
Every content piece that you post on Instagram has to have an objective behind it. Brands that are a success at Social media know that content posting just for the sake of being present on the platform never yields returns.
2. Determine your Target Audience
Determining who you’re talking to can help take your marketing plan towards success. It is important to know the kind of people that are following your content, as they’re the ones you might be able to convert. You need to analyze their online behavior, things they follow, popular hashtags, the content type that they engage with. All of this is going to help you better understand your potential target audience.
3. Analyze competitor’s Social footprints
Analyzing the social footprints of people in your niche, such as their followers, content, the kind of hashtags they use, how their audience reacts to their content, and etc, can majorly help you plan your Instagram content better.
4. Create a Content Calendar
A pre-planned strategy to determine the needs of the customers and shaping up your social media and content accordingly is crucial. In short, planning a content calendar will ensure that you are not missing out on any important day, event or information that your customers might be looking forward to as well as help you build a cohesive flow of content that keeps your audience engaged with your brand.
5. It's all about Hashtags
Instagram hashtags are an effective way to reach a greater share of your target audience and categorize your content. With millions of content pieces syndicated on Instagram every day, the only way out to reach your potential customer is by using the relevant hashtags.
Now there are three major hashtag types that you can use to increase the engagement of your content.
- Trending Hashtags: These are the hashtags that get the most engagement. And are certainly the best to get more exposure for your brand and content. For example, the best engagement hashtags this month were on the Olympics, like #olympics2021, #tokyo2021, #olympicgames.
These hashtags are majorly based on current affairs, recent incidents or discussions, or news if any. And creating content around these hashtags makes it easier to reach your target audience.
- General Hashtags: These are the generic hashtags that Instagram users add to their content. These terms are usually popular and most used throughout the year irrespective of any news or event. For example, #instagood, #instadaily, #followforfollow
- Industry-specific Hashtags: These are hashtags that are industry-specific or brand-specific. For example, if we search for #gadget then the accompanying hashtags will be #iphone #techgadget #gadget2021 #techfreak #applewatch etc.
Although Instagram allows 30 hashtags in a post, using 30 hashtags at a time will make your content look spammy and will certainly have more bounce rate and less customer engagement. Using 5-9 hashtags can help your content reach your customers as well as gain engagement.
6. Choose the right time to post
The next important aspect to take care of before posting content is the timing. Although we are a digitally active generation and most of our time is spent online. Still, to reach your customers and make them interact with your content, it is necessary to analyze and target the best time to post content on your social media platforms.
7. Make the best use of technology
The most tedious process that marketers often come across is content curation and content syndication on various social media platforms. And with multiple responsibilities in hand, it often becomes impossible to spare time for social media. And this is one of the major reasons brands hesitate to begin their brand’s social media marketing.
The best part about technology is that it can help automate anything. If you are thinking of how you are going to maintain social media presence, then there are numerous social media project management tools that can be your savior. Right from curating content, to scheduling and planning content these SaaS tools can be of great help, and that too at an affordable price.
Now that we have learned what all things require attention before planning and posting content on Instagram, let us quickly go through the types of content that your brand can share and get the best engagement possible.
Types of Content you can share on Instagram
Instagram is the best content creation platform as of now. With a huge number of active users, businesses, influencers and content creators this platform has seen massive growth when it comes to content and business.
For any brand or marketer to have a greater share of content engagement it is important to leverage every content sharing feature that this platform offers. Let us look at some of the best content types that you can share on Instagram.
1. Instagram Feed
Instagram feed content is the content that is going to stay on your Instagram profile. These can be photos, videos, carousels, quotes, or anything that you wish to share with your audience. The Instagram feed content has the longest shelf life as compared to the other content types. These tend to appear as soon as someone starts following you and has a look at your profile.
2. Instagram Stories
Another amazing way to gain engagement is Instagram stories. Approximately 86.6% of Instagram's users post stories every day. Though these stories stay on your profile for only 24 hours, these seem to have more engagement than any of your feed’s posts. With funky stickers and flashy filters, these stories are one of the best ways to get attention and increase your brand reach.
3. Instagram TV
IGTV or Instagram TV is yet another great way to share your brand's insights with your target audience. IGTV works best when you want to share a detailed form of content, information, or have a message to convey. Allowing users to craft longer content than an Instagram video is what makes IGTV an asset.
You can any day use IGTV to share a sneak peek of your business operations, or host an interview and then share as an IGTV, basically any form of content where you’ll need a greater share of time, IGTV is your go-to content type.
4. Instagram Live Rooms
Another best way to interact with your audience is a LIVE session. You can post them later as IGTV videos. Add a human face to the brand, thus making it easier for people to resonate, connect and interact with the brand and brand values. These Instagram live room sessions can be anything right from a live one-on-one interview to direct streaming of any of your brand’s events or announcements that you’d want to make.
5. Instagram Reels
The latest addition to the list of Instagram video features is Instagram Reels. Needless to say, this short-form video content is giving neck-to-neck competition to TikTok. Small biz and marketers are already leveraging Reels to garner engagement and astounding reach. You can utilize Reels and participate in trends to popularize your brand as well.
Wrapping Up
With all of that learning, there’s one thing that can be concluded - Instagram can be a reason for your business’ success. Making the best use of the most user-friendly and engaging social platform can help your brand thrive. All you have to do is plan, implement, analyze and improvise.
