Instagram (IG) is a mobile-first photo and video sharing platform offering two types of publishing formats, one is a post featuring an image or video with a description, the other is a story, featuring an ephemeral image or video with face-filters, stickers, polls and more all embedded in your story so there’s no further text attached it.
Since the launch of its Stories feature aimed at battling it out with Snapchat moments, Instagram seems to have unilaterally conquered the stories market, good move Zuckerberg 👏
Throughout 2017 Instagram has added an enormous amount of features aimed both at user engagement and business and advertisers. Features such as face-filters during live-stream and direct BigCommerce shopping integration, hmm.
Setting up your IG business account is pretty straightforward, as can be reviewed here and here. Make sure to fill in all your details (below) so leads can easily find and engage you.
* Profile picture - 110x110 px, circular
* Website (URL) - The URL can be changed throughout your account lifespan to feature specific campaigns and landing pages in place of your homepage.
* Bio (description) - you may use *#hashtags*
* Email
* Phone number
* Address
* Connected accounts - FB, twitter, etc.
* Start following - industry influencers correlating to your brand keywords.
A standard post contains either a picture or video attached to the description with text, #hashtags, @mentions and a geo-tag. IG allows you to run these posts through a color-filter giving images a distinct style. while private users tend to use these filters to give each image a unique style, successful brands use them to give their entire brand that same unique vibe by choosing a standard or custom filter and applying it consistently to each of their posts, allowing their content to be instantly recognizable, in time.
Posts may include up to 10 images and videos allowing for a broader story to be told through context.
Stories, which have a 24-hour life-span and are then deleted, feature face-filters, stickers, #hashtags, @mentiones, interactive polls, geolocations, text and a lot more all embedded in your picture/video making them standalone, with no description attached to them. Here’s a complete guide to this feature-filled medium.
While stories aren’t long lasting you can leverage popular stories you’ve posted via screenshots you’d then post back to IG or even use them as stickers in another story.
The live stream feature available via stories comes naked from all those amazing features we were getting used to from the regular stories. So it’s a plain live stream with the possibility to make it available for the next 24 hours. You can take screenshots of your story after the fact to post it back to IG or use’em as stickers in another one of your stories.
Since Instagram is such a limited platform in terms of functionality, marketers have to be exceptionally creative in order to create audience engagement with such limited resources.
Sprout article - There’s a lot to learn from the brands presented in this article, from multi-account segmentation to brand engagement. Do take time to look up the actual brands on IG and not just sift through the article.
Adobe - featuring artists using their products and hosting competitions such as #PeekAtProccess and #AdobeRemix, Adobe is hot with a capital H, do take some time to review their IG profiles.
TechCrunch article - since most of these are celeb brands which are not so akin to the brands you’ll be working on, please focus on storytelling techniques and branding user-generated content (UGC) which are a surefire way of engaging your target audience.
Community reach is extremely important in IG, as we mentioned you can @mention users in your post description as well on your stories. Also when commenting on user stories you can attach a photo of their story and use it as a sticker in yours, which is an amazing way to have a visual and engaging conversation with your audience.
Since you can’t attach URLs to your posts or stories, marketing efforts are practically non-existent on IG thus they are dependent results of your branding efforts and your profile set up i.e when you have engaging brand content on the IG platform and properly filled out your profile with a website URL, phone number etc. leads will come, unfortunately for us we can’t really force it as with other platforms where it’s possible to construct posts with calls-to-action (CTAs), links, etc
What you can do is change your website URL to a specific campaign or landing page at certain times when your branding efforts shift from your homepage message. You can always change it back to your homepage when these efforts come to an end.
One exception to this grim reality are IG Verified accounts who can attach URLs to their stories. The problem appears to be that there’s no genuine manner in which to request or attain an IG verified account, they’re just a Fugazi.
The second exception to this rule is instagram’s BigCommerce integration allowing you, as an e-commerce advertiser, to post your product catalog on Instagram where users can click and shop right from IG 🤑
The second and only exception to this rule is instagram’s BigCommerce integration allowing you, as an e-commerce advertiser, to post your product catalog on Instagram where users can click and shop right from IG 🤑
While understanding our competitors is quite important, understanding our audience is valuable as well.
Instagram offers in-depth insights regarding the audience engaging with our brand. Starting from 100+ followers you’ll have the following information at your disposal:
Gender
Age group
Top Locations (cities) of your followers
Follower Hours - Hours of day your followers are engaged.
Follower Days- Days of week your followers are engaged.
Below are several suggested OKRs & KPIs aimed at measuring your continuous success on Instagram.
* Account Followers
* Post Impressions / Reach
* Profile Views
* Account Website URL Clicks
* Account Call Clicks
* Account Mail Clicks
* Account Mentions
* Branded #Hashtags in user posts
* Post Likes
* Post Comments
* Post Saves
* Video Post Views
* Story Impressions / Reach
* Story Exits
* Story Replies
* Measured on our own domain via GA, Mixpanel etc.
For suggested KPIs check SMM Fundamentals.
There are many different tactics available for you to try out and optimize in order to best reach and engage your audience. Below are several of those for your inspiration. I’d advise against counting on them alone but continuously research what sort of tactics have worked or might work well for your brand, industry and audience, and do not forget to measure the result of the tactics you engage against your original OKRs, in contrast to counting on any and all available metrics which might result in a focus on vanity metrics with no real impact on the business.
Unlike other platforms, IG is very visual, thus your polling story should be visually engaging as well. Opinion polls are available via IG Stories, allowing for two-predetermined-opinions, and viewing polling results per user. Though the story, as well as the poll results, disappear after a short 24 hours.
Once your polling is almost done, and before your story is deleted, make sure to take screenshots of the poll results along with your story to post back to IG once more, This should re-engage the same user base within the same context, it couldn’t get better than that.
Asking users for content such as images or #hashtagged stories could be an awesome, growth-driving endeavor if done with authenticity, and user-centric thinking. It could also easily backlash if done with a brand-centric perspective. Turns out users like feeling included but now feeling used, shocker.
This HubSpot article features several success stories for UGC generating campaigns on IG.
There could be no better way to engage your audience, generate hype, leads, subscriptions, conversions, and even UGC, like a prized contest. You may choose your winner in any number of ways, either editors-pick, most engagements collected, at random, or even give a prize to all participants as a promotion. Your prize must be something that users find valuable, but also something that’s connected to your brand. You can even give out coupons for your services at reduced prices.
Live streaming is a great way to engage your audience, offer live prizes and promotions, direct to your website URL or campaign landing page, and get more followers. Before streaming, make sure to publish posts and stories promoting the live stream at the time & date.
Social users love useful content, you could try uploading stories and or bulk-posts with multiple images to explain how to do something related to your brand.
| TYPE | PRODUCT |
|---|---|
| Account & Audience Analytics | Instagram Analytics (Available inside the mobile app) |
| Account Analytics | SimplyMeasured |
| Account Analytics | Squarelovin |
| Account & Keyword Analytics | Keyhole |
| Account Analytics | Websta |
| Account & Competitor Analytics | INK361 |
| Account & Audiance Analytics | SocialRank |
| Suggested KPIs | SpreadShare SMM KPI Cheatsheet |
Instagram is a very different platform from both FB and Twitter and is much closer to Snapchat than anything else. While converting users can be challenging, it can be done by having an i distinct brand image, engaging visual conversations and full-features posts telling a real story about your brand and it’s users.