From common sense to common humility, follow this guide to freshen up your Insta game.
Instagram is a beast of social media that is still quickly growing and will be here to stay for the foreseeable future. With over 300 million users, it’s the fourth largest social media network in the world, and has a quickly growing presence in developing countries.
With such a large potential audience, it would be absurd for any brand or influencer to ignore the social medium. It can be time consuming to get posts just right, but don’t let that be daunting. Follow some of these tips to get your content started in the right direction. There’s no reason 2023 can’t be your year, and hopefully a year that’s been better than the past few in terms of global happenings! The only way everything can go is up, right?
Choose the right growth strategy
The way brand accounts grow are different. Instagram and social media accounts for a brand rather than individual will grow depending on the product and the brand’s success. For the individual influencer, it will grow depending on the influencer’s success, which is more determined on their likeability and engagement. The brand’s account is tied to their product and a carefully crafted image of the entire team. The influencer has more freedom to define who/what they are and what they “sell”, since they’re selling an image and not a product. Of course, a brand is selling an image to, but only to the point of the successful use of their product or service.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
For a brand account, it’s a good idea to have a full-time social media manager, who focuses on brand engagement and lifting those numbers, because it really is a full time job. Influencers typically handle this themselves until they get too big and need help – and don’t be afraid to ask for it when you get there! The brand’s team is maybe not even a single person, but a small group. For example, the top influencers nearly all have teams assisting their social media, and sometimes even massive teams. These consist of experts in graphic design, video, sound engineering, PR, music, and so on. Though many influencers also take it on their own – it’s very busy and multi-skilled work. Don’t think that becoming an influencer is easy. The competition is fierce and so much is based off pure luck.
Equipment
Don’t slack on equipment. Of course, there’s no need to immediately go out and by all the top-of-the-line stuff there is. You can get by on budget equipment if you know how to use it. So, learn to use the right equipment. You’ll need a camera, lighting, probably some kind of green screen, headset, and microphones, to start. What niche you’re aiming at and how you confront that niche will of course dictate what you need. But start from a point of education and take the time to learn the basics of set up, microphones, lighting, and so on.
Engage isn’t just for Captain Picard
Engage with your audience! Talk to them. People want to know that there are real people behind those brands, that influencers are actually people and not just marketing teams – even though some are just marketing teams. And you should really engage, not just to be friendly. The more you chat/discuss/build relationships, the more the algorithm will give you weight.
There are “engagement groups” or “engagement pods” that you can get into on Facebook. Find ones that fit your niche, and then start using them to get started off. Is it gaming the system? Yeah, kind of. Can you get in trouble for it? Not really, especially if you’re in several different pods. Then it won’t be the exact same people liking your posts, and it will be actual people liking your posts. By all means, do NOT purchase bot-followers, as that WILL get you banned. But pods are a good way to build up to your first couple of thousand followers and then it should take off a bit more organically from there.
Schedule your posts
Schedule your posts. Don’t post at random. Space out your posts, and make sure that you drop a new post whenever your audience is most likely to see it. The algorithm weighs recent content, and recent content with good engagement gets the highest rating. That means it needs to come out when your audience is likely coming online.
Use the right tags
It’s not necessary to use five hundred tags. A few of the *right* tags can get you far. Also be sure to tag people and brands if those are relevant to your post (better if they know ahead of time and they might offer some collabs). The advantage of including other people into your posts is that their audience will become exposed to your post as well. And if the target of your tag has a similar bed of content, that could lead to more profile likes. Also use location tags. With a location tag, more weight will be added for people in that locale than for posts that don’t have a location tag.
Take lots of photos and videos
For the most successful influencers, everything is staged. Every photo on the street, every food pic. They wait around for the right light, the right people in the background (who are sometimes even paid actors), and so on. That doesn’t mean you’ve got to stage everything though, as there is such a thing as a happy accident.
Take your camera everywhere. Take lots of pictures and videos. Take strolls with your friends, use their assistance. Make it a fun activity rather than something where you’re just huddled over your phone clicking around (because then you might lose your friends in real life). Sometimes you’ll manage on the right place at the right time with the right angle.
Even when everything is perfect, there’s rarely the golden BB of a shot. Take lots of shots, experiment with angles and video tricks. One of them will be just perfect enough to later edit and improve. And who knows, maybe you’ll get a batch of good ones you can use to post.
Partner up and take sponsorships
Partnering with other influencers and brands is a top notch, organic way to get more followers, though you tend to already need a chunk before others bite off on yours. When you partner, you either let them take control of your IG for a day, do a blog swap, an interview, or show their product and receive it for free. With the exchanges, you’ll always exchange tags, so that both of your audiences become exposed to the other person or brand.
You should always be honest with your audience though. If you’re doing a review or sponsorship, you need to be clear with everyone the terms of that sponsorship. You should also always be honest in your reviews or you’ll lose credibility with your audience, and thus followers. No followers, no future sponsorships. On the flipside, if all your reviews are negative, nobody will sponsor you either. That means you should be picky on your sponsorships and only represent things you like in the first place. Have fun with sponsoring products and services. The more you personalize it, the more people will watch it and the more likely they’ll click on your referral link.
You can also have fun with this. Meet up with other local influencers in similar categories as yourself. Hang out with them, take some photos with them, tag them, and make a conversation with them. Appear on other IG accounts, podcasts, and vlogs, discussing and tagging your brand, and so on. Everything to widen your net!
Be consistent and love what you’re doing
Post consistently, keep to a similar color scheme, and stick to your topics. When you branch out too much, things start to become a confused mess and your audience won’t trust you to give regular content on their interests – the whole reason they followed you in the first place.
This means that you need to really be interested in the subject that you’re covering. If you’re not, then you’ll start reaching out to cover other subjects at random. While that’s a fair thing to do for a private, personal page, that’s not a good activity for someone who’s trying to build up a brand. You can generally find enough variety within a niche from keeping you from getting bored of covering it (and keeping your audience bored of you covering it, more importantly), especially if you genuinely love that topic.
Integrate your social media
Make sure that all your social media flows together. More than just a picture collage on your main website. Each social media needs to share the branding, share links, share topics, and so on. Making a travel vlog on your YouTube? Then have a bunch of stills related to that vlog on your IG. Do the same with your FB, along with short bits and insights that relate to your YouTube. Use your channels to spread the marketing out in a way that builds value between each channel. That way people who follow one of your channels are more likely to follow you and engage with you on other channels, and their unique networks of friends on each channel will more likely be exposed to you.
Follow people selfishly
Be very particular on how you follow people with your brand account. While rising up, you don’t want to have no follows like you’re Kim Kardashian, but also you want to keep the ratio to where more people are following you than you are following others. That can be a delicate balance, especially when you’re below 1,000 followers.
When you’re following people, follow with intent. Follow only people who seem interested in your niche, and who follow other influencers and brands. If they’re following other brands, they’re more likely to follow yours. Use tools to keep track of your followers like Followers Plus (iOS), Unfollowers and Ghost Followers (Android). Be weary of brands that follow you, as many will follow a ton of people, and then unfollow them immediately. There’s nothing wrong with following other brands – and commenting on their page – but there’s no reason to reward bad behavior with your follow. Don’t waste your ratio on them!
Use the different IG functions: Post, Story, IGTV video, Guide
Use all the different functions on IG. Easier said than done! But if you’ve got an interested team for the social media, then it can be handled. As I mentioned with integration above, all these things can work together. View stories and IGTV as funnels to get people to like your account, so that they’re more exposed to what you’re promoting. The Stories and videos need to be consistent and on topic, so that you get the right people to like your stuff. Develop a workflow that gives you mastery over shortform content. Make a few templates with transitions, branding, font, and all that already in place so that you can shoot these off quickly and relatively pain free. Having templates laid out for different social media so that you don’t repeat your efforts when posting for TikTok, FB, and so on. When you have templates set up, it’s not a big deal to switch your content to be custom for each channel.
There’s a new feature called “Guides”, where you can give people short tutorials. Use it. It’s best to jump onto the new features quickly so that the algorithm reigning over it will give you an advantage.
Make it easy for people, use a linktree
I can’t stress this to people enough: Make it easy to follow you and to go where you’re telling them. The only place you can post a clickable link is on your bio, so you need to maximize that space. Instead of going to your main work account or webpage, have it go to a “Linktree”. Many services offer this, not just the famous link.tree, or you can even make your own as a sub-page on your webpage.
A linktree should provide links to all your channels, and then to your latest post referrals. So if your last post refers to your last blog, have the link on the linktree. Include the picture from your IG so that it’s clear that’s the right link.
Add fresh music to your videos
Sometimes it’s good to use a famous track, I won’t deny that. But other times it’s good to craft your own, unique music that carries across your brands. For that, you can use our service, Smartsound Cloud, which is full of customizable, royalty free stock music. You can easily change the length of any track, as well as the mix and variation, so that your posts can stay on brand but still sound different. Check it out, there’s a lot of free tracks available too for your use.
Use the tools out there
I’ve mentioned the tools to keep track of your followers. But there are also a great deal of automation tools that you can post things on schedule, find useful hashtags, and so on. They often have some disadvantages, but there are advantages too, as most let you schedule Stories. Also don’t forget about going into the IG native Meta Scheduler, which allows you to post your IG pic/video when you want to, and it gives you insights on when is the best time to post for your audience.
Call to Action
Tell your audience what to do next! You should always have a call to action somewhere in your text, with an easy way to follow through (see above). While we’re at it, make sure to follow our newsletter for more great social media tips and stories.
