Five Ways to Refine Your Instagram Strategy
Ever wondered why some Instagram accounts are able to double their follower count in a month, and others don’t seem to grow at all?
How can you reel in wave after wave of new fans and get your posts on the algorithm?
The thing is, there’s no magical tactic for Instagram success. You just need to be strategic, organised, and consistent with your posts. Here are 5 things to remember when creating and managing your social media strategy.
Schedule Your Posts in Advance
Our biggest tip is using a scheduling tool to auto post. This means you don’t have to constantly remember to manually upload, and it also allows you set aside time in bulk to organise your grid — which is a must for anyone juggling multiple clients or numerous roles within a business.
Our favourite tool for post scheduling is Plann. As well as auto-posting, Plann lets you drag and drop content into your grid and easily communicate with clients or team members.
When it comes to your social media schedule, it’s always better to be proactive rather than reactive. Ideally, you want to plan content at least a week in advance — even further if you rely on evergreen messaging.
To help, start with some content pillars; things your posts will consistently address. Your goal is to know exactly what content you need to create well ahead of time. Staying organised means you can spend more time refining your strategy and carefully considering the quality of your posts.
Analytics Are Your Friend
Instagram analytics can offer a surprising amount of data and insights you can use to your advantage. You’ll have access to information such as:
The number of profile visits you receive
Your follower count and demographics
The number of clicks on bio links
Your post’s reach and impressions (the number of both followers and non-followers who saw it)
How many people liked, saved, or sent your post to a friend
Your best performing posts
Think of this data as the guidance you need to plan your content and analyse how many leads your post are actually generating. For instance, if you’ve shifted your strategy to target a specific age group, your analytics can tell you if it’s successful. Or, you can compare the posts that perform well with the ones that get less engagement — and so on.
Hashtag Help
If you have a smaller following, you’ll want to start being discovered by new customers on the Explore page. A tried and trusted way to increase your profile’s visibility is through hashtags.
Look for the tags with the highest movement on Instagram, i.e. those used by the maximum users for related posts. To find this out, we recommend making a list of any hashtags that might be relevant to your brand, and searching them in the app to see how many posts have been tagged. Or, use free online tools like Webstagram and IconoSquare.
It’s important to note that the algorithm now crawls your captions for keywords, instead of only looking at hashtags. So, whether you include your keywords behind a # or just cleverly word your captions, the result is much the same. A lot of people will find it easier to list keywords in hashtag format than try and incorporate them naturally within captions (especially if you’re not a copywriter).
Geo-Tag It
Similarly to how you can browse via hashtag, Instagram users can also search for posts by location. Tagging your post’s location is a great way to target an audience from a specific geographic region, literally putting your brand on the map.
The Instagram algorithm also learns to show posts that are geo-tagged to users from that region in the Explore page. So for example, if you want to build a following from the suburbs where your store or service operates, you should keep tagging those locations in your posts.
Your Bio Counts
You only have 150 characters to grab your audience's attention — use them wisely. Your bio should tell people who you are, what you do, and what to expect from your profile all in a sentence or two. It should be straightforward and sum up your brand in an instant.
The best bios will give readers a reason to engage. In other words, WHY should they follow you? Think it over, and then craft something that’s direct, relevant, and intriguing. Don’t forget to add a link to your website or product page. Some people like to do research before hitting that follow button.
Stick To A Theme
Think beyond a post, and about your profile (and you) in general. Your socials should reflect the identity you’ve refined in the branding stage of building your business. It could be your story, values, or visual signatures. Will you focus on high-res product photos because you value quality over quantity? Text overlays and graphic tiles in hero colours? Will you share memes and poke fun at the industry to flaunt your rebellious attitude?
You need to stand out among the crowd, and a user should understand your vibe with a single glance at your grid. What’s your hook?
But now we’re getting into social media content strategies, which is a whole other story…