Why You Need an Instagram Strategy and How to Build One

Instagram is an exceptional platform for marketing and enhancing brand visibility, with its large customer base (especially effective in reaching Millennials and other younger consumers, as you can see below), highly engaging, visual elements, the many effective advertising tools offered by Meta (parent company), opportunities for pinpoint targeting, and wealth of data provided to assess performance. Thus, building an effective Instagram strategy will significantly help your small business reach its goals, whether your aim is creating awareness, building a community, generating leads, or consummating sales. In this post, we’ll show you Instagram strategy recommendations from the experts, focusing on account setup and posting content. In the next post, we’ll expand on strategic development with the goal of building a community of young professionals for your small business, although most elements of the strategy work equally well for any business wanting to succeed on Instagram. So, read on!

Image courtesy of Hootsuite

Why you need an Instagram Strategy

Highly visual platform

Instagram only allows visual posts, with text forming a less visible part of each post, as you can see in the recommended post elements in the image below. According to the Nielsen Group, consumers process visual elements more effectively, which makes them perfect for a variety of marketing tactics as a means to influence and share information with the company’s target market.

In addition, visual content enhances engagement and makes it easy for consumers to understand your message in the few seconds visible before scrolling to the next post. Data suggests consumers process visual content 60,000 times faster than text, making Instagram an ideal environment for communication and marketing. Businesses can showcase products and brand personality through various creative strategies.

Massive, engaged user base

As of March of this year, Instagram’s user base topped 2 billion, and it has a significant presence on the global stage, led by the US, India, and Brazil. Many are younger consumers, evenly split between men and women, and most are reachable through Instagram Ads implemented via the Meta Business Platform.

Engagement rates on the platform are especially high for businesses with a smaller community, but overall, Instagram boasts higher-than-average engagement rates. Engagement rates play the dual role of spreading your message across the platform and improving SEO (search engine optimization) to bring more organic traffic to your website.

Strong influencer and creator ecosystem

The incentives offered by Instagram to influencers and content creators across various niches, including fashion, beauty, travel, fitness, and technology, entices them to create engaging content that continues to draw in new users. By appealing to these influencers, your brand can gain even more traction on the platform and reach more users. Collaborating with influencers allows brands to access a wider audience, fostering genuine relationships, and encouraging authentic engagement that increases brand loyalty. Often, influencers expect some type of compensation for their brand posts, although that might simply involve sending free products to review. Meanwhile, content creators are incentivized to mention your brand when you offer superior products or post engaging content, as these creatives are always hungry for new content to share.

Effective advertising tools

Instagram ads can appear in various formats, including regular posts, Stories, or Reels, allowing advertisers to reach their target audience naturally and interactively. Rich tools enable advertisers to target their ads to select groups based on demographics, geographic variables, usage factors, including content the user engages with on the platform, and a host of interest categories. Advertisers can also choose “look alike audiences” as the target for their ads, as well as a few other targeting options. This not only reduces wasteful spending, but allows advertisers to create highly targeted messaging likely to convert specific users based on these factors. Another type of targeting uses a tag called a pixel to identify Instagram users who visited the company’s website. By targeting these individuals, brands can achieve much higher conversion from their ads.

Instagram allows users to use interactive features such as polls, stickers, contests, and Call-to-Action (CTA) prompts, which enhance user engagement with advertisements by encouraging participation and interaction. Because Instagram Ads shares a parent (Meta) and advertising platform with Facebook, creating cross-platform ads is a snap. These tools not only capture the audience’s attention but also foster a sense of community and feedback, ultimately leading to improved ad performance and effectiveness.

Reels and stories for virality

Reels, which are short-form videos, and Stories that only appear for a short period before disappearing into the ether, provide brands with unique content options to keep the Instagram account feeling fresh and vital. These features allow brands to showcase their creativity, foster authenticity, and build relatability with their followers, ultimately enhancing their digital presence and connection with consumers.

Reels have the potential to go viral, significantly expanding their reach by engaging users who are not part of your existing follower base. When a Reel gains popularity, it can be featured on social media platforms’ Explore pages, which showcase content tailored to user interests, further increasing visibility and interaction with a broader audience.

E-commerce integration

Instagram Shopping features enable businesses to enhance their marketing efforts by tagging products directly within their posts, Stories, and Reels. This functionality allows for a seamless shopping experience, as users can click on the tags to view product details, pricing, and make purchases without leaving the platform. By utilizing these features, businesses can increase product visibility and drive sales through engaging content.

Users can effortlessly browse and purchase products directly within the app, which enhances convenience and ensures a seamless buyer’s journey. This integrated shopping experience minimizes interruptions, allowing for a smoother transition from product discovery to purchase completion.

Hashtags and geotags aid discoverability

Hashtags significantly enhance the visibility of content by allowing users to seek content that fits their interests and location. By using relevant hashtags judiciously, creators can effectively broaden their reach, engage with interested audiences, and increase their chances of being discovered by new followers. Location tagging helps businesses attract a local audience interested in their products.

Community building

Instagram fosters two-way conversations by providing several interactive features, including comments where users can share their thoughts publicly, direct messages (DMs) for private exchanges, Stories Q&A, which allows followers to ask questions directly to the account holder, and various interactive stickers and emojis that enhance engagement in posts and Stories. These tools help create an engaged community by encouraging dialog that generates increased engagement, conversion rates, and loyalty.

Analytics and insights

Instagram offers brands a robust set of detailed performance metrics, including reach (the total number of unique users who see your content), engagement (interactions such as likes, comments, and shares), and profile visits (the number of times users check out your account). These metrics are essential for brands to effectively measure their success on the platform and make data-driven adjustments to their marketing strategies for improved results.

Understanding audience behavior goes beyond your own account metrics. Checking who recently follows competitors, influencers, or industry leaders can reveal emerging trends and potential collaboration opportunities. Platforms such as recently-followed.com make it easy to explore recent follower activity by entering a public Instagram username, helping marketers gather valuable insights when refining their Instagram strategy.

Building an Instagram strategy

Instagram can only deliver on the promise of the platform if you have a thoughtful, detailed Instagram strategy implemented consistently by your marketing team or an outside agency. In today’s post, we’ll assume you’re new to Instagram and focus on setting up your account and developing a content strategy, which is the most significant component of a successful Instagram strategy. In the next post, we’ll expand on this topic with more detailed information and additional elements of the plan, including measurement, advertising, and advanced topics.

Create an account

If you have a personal Instagram account, you can switch to a business account to provide more analytics, additional contact buttons, and a professional profile to your account. Ensure you offer a good profile picture and a concise bio (150 characters allowed) to describe your brand. You’re allowed one link in your bio and, until you reach a certain number of followers, this is the only way for users to find you online.

Content marketing strategy

Don’t start posting to your new account without developing a sound content marketing strategy, which includes:

• Goals
• Review of top Instagram business accounts, especially those related to your business by location or industry
• Determine your content themes, such as behind-the-scenes and educational, showing your values (such as donating to a charity), product highlights, and user-generated content (UGC). Mix these up.
• Your optimal mixture of content types, including posts, carousels, Reels, and Stories
• A content marketing calendar
• Budget
• Responsibilities of team members

Advice on publishing content

One of the most significant considerations when considering your content marketing strategy is maintaining consistency and engaging your target market. That means publishing at least once a day to your Instagram profile. You can exceed the one-post minimum, but don’t post too frequently or you’ll see a decline in engagement.

Using marketing automation tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can help you stay on track without destroying your day, as they let you schedule a bunch of posts at once and then post them on your preferred schedule. While these tools use your metrics to determine the best time to post on Instagram, other tools can help you with best practices to get you started. Filling out a monthly content calendar also helps by coordinating your content across multiple platforms, target markets, and products to ensure you reach your goals.

When publishing content on Instagram, you need to follow best practices and ensure your posts match Instagram post dimensions so the content appears as you intended.

Keep your intended audience in mind as you create content to ensure they see it as “for them”. Don’t get too salesy. The general rule of thumb is a maximum of 20% promotional content mixed with 80% content that’s entertaining, informative, or valuable in other ways to your target market. Keep post content light and informal with a first-person style.

Conclusion

Instagram’s captivating visual nature, combined with its vast user base and vibrant influencer culture, positions it as an unparalleled platform for amplifying brand visibility and achieving remarkable marketing results. With advanced ad targeting, innovative e-commerce tools, and highly engaging features, leveraging Instagram is essential for brands looking to thrive in today’s competitive landscape.

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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.