This article has been contributed by Mitt Ray.
Many people like to overcomplicate Instagram marketing. But it basically boils down to two key things:
sponsored message
- The content you post
- The way you set up your account
The content you post is what gets you engagement with your followers. If you get enough engagement, your post will rank on the explore page and for hashtags. More people will discover it in their feeds and check out your account. If you set it up properly, they will follow you.
Get these two Instagram fundamentals right, and you’ll generate more engagement and get more followers. If you incorporate your website properly, you’ll also generate more leads and sales.
A good Instagram account is easy to set up. But creating quality posts requires a lot of effort. You need to outcompete the 95+ million posts that are published daily.
This is why we’ve created this step-by-step guide to creating the perfect Instagram post that stands out in the feed….
1. Choose a Goal
Different images will help you accomplish different goals. Before you publish a post, determine what you plan to get out of it. Do you want more engagement, impressions, or sales?
sponsored message
Pick one goal, and then create a post that will help you reach it. If you want more engagement, you can publish something funny or educating, while for sales, you can share a product video or photo.
I recommended that you make both types of images a part of your strategy. 80% of your posts you publish should aim to generate engagement, while 20% can sell.
If you can publish posts focused on engagement 100% of the time, that’s even better. These posts should make up the majority because most people don’t use Instagram to look at products. They want to see posts that will entertain or educate them.
If you only publish sales-oriented posts, your engagement levels will dwindle, you won’t attract new followers, and your current followers will abandon you.
For some inspiration on how to get this right, check out @napolina. It’s a company that mainly sells Italian cooking ingredients such as pasta, sauces, and olive oil.
sponsored message
To engage followers, it shares posts like this one containing Italian recipes most of the time.
View this post on Instagram
These posts get interspersed with promotional posts like the below one less frequently.
View this post on Instagram
2. Research What Works
One of the keys to generating more engagement or sales from your posts is to know what your audience craves. Start with an analysis of your account to see which of your earlier posts generated the most engagement and sales. You can do this manually or with a good analytics tool.
After you analyze your account, you should examine your top competitors’ accounts. This will help you check which of their posts did well. You can easily find competitors by searching for hashtags in your niche.
After that, check out the top-performing posts and accounts that posted them.
You can analyze these accounts either manually or with a good analytics tool. Researching manually takes more time, while a tool will save you hours (but it will cost more).
If you plan to create ads, you should also use an ad spy tool to see what types of ads your competitors are running. You can also analyze ads manually by visiting competitors’ websites and then logging in to Instagram as they’ll retarget you with ads. Save the ads you like most.
You can also use Instagram polls to directly as your followers what they want to see.
3. Create an Aesthetic Image or Video
sponsored message
Once you have a goal, know what your audience wants to see, and know what works, you can create the visual. There are mainly two types of visuals you can share – videos and images. You can also share a combination with a carousel post.
Decide on the type of visual(s) to create depending on your skill and the amount of time available. Videos drive more engagement than images, but they take more time to make.
If you have the tools and skills to create videos at scale, you can make more video content. But if the time investment isn’t worth it, you can stick to creating images.
They won’t drive more engagement individually, but you can create more images in a short period and publish more content instead and reach similar engagement levels.
Another alternative is to create images and intersperse them with videos created by others. But make sure you credit the video creators. This will help you reap the benefits of videos and build strong relationships with other creators.
You could also try publishing more user-generated content (UGC) as @gopro does.
View this post on Instagram
These posts help them generate a lot of engagement and build strong relationships with their customers and followers. It can also drive sales as it shows customers using your products.
4. Write a Good Caption
The visual is the chief component of the post, but the caption plays a key role too. After people see the visual, they’ll read the caption. It should give them direction on what to do next. If you want to get more likes and comments, you should write something witty or the story behind the visual and add a call to action that asks them to like the post or comment on it and follow you.
If you want to generate sales, you should write a more persuasive caption that describes the product’s benefits. You can follow this with a call to action that asks them to visit your website and buy.
Here’s a post with a good caption from @clinique.
View this post on Instagram
Clinique clearly describes what the product does, what it contains and informs readers about a discount. Captions such as these can play a vital role in generating more sales.
5. Add Relevant Hashtags
Every post you publish must contain hashtags if you want to reach people beyond your followers. More people will see your posts if they follow the hashtags you use or if they search them. A good number of hashtags to use is between 15 and 20.
But don’t just randomly add hashtags with the most mentions. Instead, use three types of hashtags – low, medium, and high competition. High-competition hashtags are those with more than 100,000 uses. Medium hashtags are those with between 50,000 and 100,000 uses, and low competition hashtags are those with less than 50,000 uses.
Most people use high competition hashtags, unbeknownst that it is hard to rank for them if you have low engagement levels. You have a better chance to rank for the low and medium hashtags. If you do well with hashtags and rake in some engagement, your posts might eventually rank well for the high competition ones. Eventually, you could hit the explore page too!
So, use hashtags of all three varieties. Try to use more low and medium hashtags if you have less than 10,000 followers. As your following increases, you can focus on high competition hashtags.
You might also want to throw in one or two branded hashtags.
For some ideas, check out @mackiesofscotland.
View this post on Instagram
You’ll find a good mix of hashtags in its posts. There’s even one branded hashtag #mackiesofscotland.
6. Tag Products
If you run an eCommerce store, Instagram lets you tag products in your posts. Take advantage of this as the journey to the link in bio can be a trek to many people, especially on the mobile app where they can’t simply open a new tab.
If you tag products, users can simply tap the visual to see the products tagged, click the tags and visit the landing page. It’s very convenient! This is why Natori increased its Instagram traffic by 1,416% when it implemented shoppable posts.
When you use this technique, make sure you’re very strategic and only add one to five products per post and space them out properly. Adding too many products can make it hard for people to click on the right one. It can also lead to the paradox of choice and lower the CTR of your posts.
7. Schedule Your Posts for the Best Time
As I mentioned earlier, people publish millions of posts every day. You should be strategic about the time you post if you want more engagement. You must find the time when most of your audience is online and in the mood to engage.
There are many studies online that show you the best time to post on Instagram, but they’re too generic. They offer a good starting point if you have a new account or published very few posts.
But the best option is to use Instagram scheduling software like Tailwind to find the best time to post. It’ll analyze your past posts and suggest the times. You can add them to your calendar and add posts to it.
8. Promote Your Post
The above tactics will help your posts perform well. But no matter how much care you take to create the perfect post, you won’t reach maximum people. For that, you need to promote it a lot.
Here are a few ways to do it.
a. Outreach
When your post goes live, reach out to as many top Instagram influencers as possible and ask them to republish your post and tag your account. Let them know that their followers might like it too and how this will benefit them (engagement, followers, etc.).
This will lead to a few free mentions. Some people might ask for payment. You can pay them if you feel their engagement levels are worth it. For best results, reach out to these people with email as most people message them. It’ll help you stand out.
b. Promote Posts with Ads
You can also convert some of your posts into ads and promote them. Do this only to the best performing posts as if the post did well with your followers and you know who to target, you can get even more engagement.
When you run Instagram ads, you can also add a link and send traffic to your website. If it’s not a promotional post, you can link to a blog post or lead magnet or not add any link at all. Instagram likes it when your ad doesn’t direct people away from the site. This will get you more impressions and engagement.
c. Use Stories
You can link to your posts in stories. After you publish your post, you can record a quick video or create an image and publish an Instagram Story that links to your feed post.
I also recommend that you offer a sneak peek before you publish the post, as this will drum up a lot of interest.
Promoting can seem like a lot of work, but the top Instagram users spend more time promoting than creating. Good promotion will ensure your post thrives on the explore page and brings in engagement and sales over the long term.
d. Embed Post in Your Newsletter
You can also embed your Instagram posts in your email newsletters. Your subscribers will discover your post, like it, and follow you.
Another way to combine Instagram and email marketing is through retargeting. You can run curated ads (promoting your posts) that retarget people on your list. This way, people on your email list will see your posts multiple times. You won’t email them repeatedly and risk people unsubscribing.
9. Respond to Comments
If you want people to come back and check your posts in the future, you should respond to all the comments or as many as you can. This will show them that you care about their opinions. They’ll want to comment again on your next post or at least like it.
It can seem like a colossal task, but you can easily do this on the mobile app when you have some free time.
One company that understands the importance of responding to comments is Ben & Jerry’s.
It regularly responds to comments. This minor activity to show that it cares helps it build strong ties with customers and followers.
Conclusion
There are over a billion Instagram users. More people are joining this network rapidly. This increase in usage is coupled with Instagram’s fiddles with the algorithm to reduce reach. If you want to outcompete all these accounts and beat the algorithm, you have to make an extra effort to get better results. Just publishing anything and everything won’t cut it anymore.
Therefore, use the step-by-step process above to create posts that will get the results you want. It’ll take more time, but it’s worth the effort.
_
About the author: Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing and Creatiwitt.