I regularly do social media audits and training for businesses looking to get more out of their social media marketing. They want to learn how to use it in a way that generates more buzz and excitement about their brand, and that drives more sales. And I’ve noticed that with many of these companies, there are common themes that crop up when it comes to not using social media to its potential.
Here are some of my top most common recommendations that I make for Instagram management during these training sessions:
1) Involve the audience
When sharing content, always consider how can you involve the audience. Social media should be sociable and the more you can get your community to engage with your posts, the more other people will see it and the content will perform better organically. Write captions in a way that encourages the audience to comment on a post or tag someone e.g. usually by asking a question. And when the audience does comment on your content, show your appreciation, and engage with them!
2) And keep engaging
Engagement is such an important part of successful social media marketing and vital if you want to grow your Instagram page. Ideally, a brand should be engaging with its community and target audience every day – not just by responding to comments on its content, but by engaging with content that tags your brand or content shared by accounts that your brand follows, too. The more you respond and engage, the more people will see your brand, follow the channels, visit your website, etc.
3) Share more reels
Instagram announced last year that it’s moving away from being a grid-focused platform and will instead prioritise video content on its feeds to compete with TikTok. One format of content that it’s really pushing are Instagram reels and these always perform well organically for my clients. If you’re not familiar with reels, I recommend browsing the dedicated reels tab on Instagram to get an idea of how they work and then having a practice at creating a few draft reels to understand how it works. They’re fairly simple to create:
4) Use more relevant hashtags
Use hashtags that are relevant to your product so that more of the right people find your content (and monitor and engage with people using those hashtags – see point 2!). You can find relevant hashtags and see how many people have used them via the search bar on the Instagram app:
5) Use the correct image/graphic size
Ensure shared grid post imagery is 4 inches by 5 inches whenever possible. This fills more of the viewer’s screen and statistics have shown the audience is more likely to linger on content that is this size. You can resize imagery quickly via tools like Canva or Hootsuite.
6) Share web links effectively
Link all posts to web links via LinkTree, which is basically a record of all links shared from Instagram posts so if the audience reads an earlier Instagram post, they can still find the relevant link via the bio link. This will help to drive more web traffic. Don’t forget you can share links via Instagram Stories now, too.
