10 Tips to Elevate Your Brand’s Instagram

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Post regularly

Frequent posting is one of the most important, and easiest, things you can do to boost your profile, gain followers and receive engagement on Instagram. Posting at least three times a week on your feed, and potentially daily on your Instagram Story, keeps your brand in your customer’s head, and means that you are constantly staying up to date and current.

Create a theme

Keeping a consistent theme on your feed is incredibly important on Instagram. As it is a highly visual app, aesthetics are paramount, and having a definitive theme is a super simple way to make sure that your feed flows. You can create a custom theme on apps such as Lightroom, or use a ready made one on VSCO. Having a feed that flows, and works well together, makes your feed look instantly more professional.

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Comment on posts

On Instagram it is very easy to be so swept up in creating your own content, that you forget to engage with other people. Engagement with your audience, and other businesses in your sector, is equally as important as generating professional, high quality content, and commenting on posts is something you should be doing on a daily basis. It is one of the easiest ways to network online, and help you build connections with similar companies.

Every time you access Instagram, take time to comment on the first five posts on your feed, and comment on the most recent post of anyone who has engaged on your posts too. Another great commenting tip is to comment on the top nine posts of each hashtag you use in your captions, as this generates wider engagement.

Use your Instagram Story

The Instagram Story feature is one that is under-utilised by a lot of businesses. It has been proven that stories are becoming increasingly popular, with people now more likely to interact with their top five stories over their top five posts. You can share behind the scenes content, announce sales, link to products (if you have over 10K followers) and much more over on stories. Plus, it gives people a chance to really relate to the brand, and build up a personal connection.

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Use Link Tree

One of the most annoying things about Instagram is the lack of links. You are unable to use links in your caption, and swipe up links on stories are only available to those with over 10K followers, so that only leaves your link in bio. Traditionally, this means being able to use only one link across your entire profile, which with a business that is probably offering more than one product, or wants to promote different channels, is a bit rubbish. However, with Link Tree you get a landing page that launches from the link in your bio with lots of different links on that you can customise to include whatever you want.

Check it out here.

Use hashtags

Hashtags allow your content to be seen by a wider audience, and will hopefully gain you followers through exposure. I recommend using a mix of different sized hashtags, that are specific to your niche; so use some that have a few hundred thousand posts on, a few with a few thousand posts on and some more specific, targeted hashtags. An example of this would be: #plumber (very broad hashtag, not very high chance of your content being seen) #affordableplumber (slightly smaller hashtag, more specific) #plumbersuttoncoldfield (combining the location with the niche will make it a much more specific, search-worthy hashtag).

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Always reply to direct messages

If another user has direct messaged you, always, always reply. You never know who could turn into a potential customer, so it’s important to always engage with anyone who interacts with your profile. Whether that’s liking their message, offering them advice, or having a chat, that engagement will help build a bond between them and your business. Always try and reply as promptly as possible, there’s nothing worse than waiting days for a response.

Use a feed planner

If you are serious about curating an aesthetically pleasing feed, then it’s important for you to be able to plan out what your next few posts are going to look like when seen on your profile. I use a feed planning app called UNUM, that allows me to plan out up to 18 posts, completely free of charge. I can move the posts around to see which ones fit well next to each other, and I can even draft captions or hashtags. This was honestly a game changer for me and my feed!

Check it out here.

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Never buy followers

In a lot of these sort of posts I see people recommending ways of fraudulently gaining followers, or faking engagement, but I’m here to tell you the opposite. Forcing engagement, or falsifying it all together, is a sure fire way to make your business unsuccessful.

Here’s why: if you buy followers then you are buying bot accounts. Bot accounts aren’t programmed to like your posts, comment under your captions or engage on your stories, so they are effectively dead following, which not only looks extremely dodgy, but also brings your engagement rate down. When big businesses and platforms look at smaller business accounts, engagement rate is something they will check, and if it is worryingly low, or the use of bots is picked up on, then that’s a big NO next to your name. Plus, bots aren’t going to be buying your products, so what use are they to you?

Buying a fake following isn’t worth it; all it brings is a risk to your reputation and a large, yet very useless, dead following. Building up a genuine audience, full of customers who actually want to purchase your products is much more rewarding, and will work out much more beneficial for your company.

Utilise Instagram Ads

Ads aren’t always the best way to grow your business on Instagram, I’d definitely say that building an audience first is definitely a priority, but as your business grows you will want to get your name out there, and Instagram Ads are a great way of doing that. As with any form of investment, make sure to educate yourself on the cost of the campaign, and how many people it will reach, before purchasing an ad.

At the moment, Instagram Stories ads are probably the best way to go, as stories are becoming readily more and more popular. Make sure to choose an eye-catching image to use for your ad; this could be a photograph of a product, or a graphic you’ve created in Canva. Instagram is a highly visual platform, so choosing the best imagery is essential.

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