Start With Well Defined Goals

The first step you should take is to understand what you want to do and where you want to go. While it might seem vague, you need the right goals on Instagram to move your business forward. Regardless of your business niche, it all comes down to what targets you are pursuing.

Highlighting Your Goals

You and your team must agree on the goals for your business. If you're a business owner, this is something that you should do first. As an enterprise, get your top management to brainstorm before proceeding. What you do here sets the tone for the rest of the engagement.

• There are a variety of goals you can opt for. Select a few, and then stick to it.

• Ensure that your goals are result-oriented and attainable. It could be anything from reaching influencers to getting more followers.

• Take into account all the tools Instagram offers when planning targets. Use them to your advantage to get to your goals quicker.

Analyze Your Existing Social Framework

Once you have a goal, detail your existing social media ecosystem. Understand your current social media platform integration and how you can improve it through the introduction of Instagram. This can help you find where you should be adding more social media strength.

Tips To Improve Your Social Footprint

Before you start to work on your Instagram platform, you need to find out what your existing framework looks like. Take stock of your existing social media framework. What social media platforms do you use? How many people are involved? How can Instagram fit into this? Answers to these questions can help you improve your existing social media framework.

• Social media analytics tools help you highlight problem areas in your pipeline.

• Google Analytics is the most simple to use and powerful tool. It also helps that it is free to use. Take a look at the below screenshot that shows social platform performance.

• Sprout Social is another tool to give you accurate feedback on your social platforms.

Understand Your Specific Demographic

Every business niche has its different demographics. Through time, these demographics will change depending on different factors. The key for your business is to ensure that you're in reach of your audience. This is a challenging task, but it needs to be done to progress in the market.

Strategies To Find The Right Demographic

Getting the right demographic for your business is the difference between success and failure. This is not just about numbers and ranges. It's about understanding each of these groups' needs and how you can fulfill them.

You can reach other interested parties through word-of-mouth marketing. Doing this can help your brand immensely.

• Instagram Analytics offers powerful metrics that can help. It is built right into the platform and doesn't cost anything. The demography details of an Instagram account appear as shown below.

• HootSuite is a great general platform that can highlight different demographics in your business.

• Iconosquare is another platform that is filled with metrics. You can customize your filters to get the right mix of people.

Customize Your Profile Accordingly

Now that you've got the right demographics for your account, it's time to spruce it up. Your audience will have expectations of what your Instagram account will look like. You need to ensure that it comes as close to it as possible. It can attract people and will help you market your brand easier.

Tips To Customize Your Instagram Profile

There are several key attributes to customize your Instagram profile. The description section is the only place where you can add a text link. Use it to direct to your website.

The screenshot below shows how a brand has used this space to add keywords, hashtags, and website URLs.



Every brand has its Instagram design. This reflects how their audiences see them. Build your key design language.

• Instagram offers several default filters that can change and modify how your images look.

• VSCO is a platform that has powerful design options that can help you improve your Instagram uploads.

• Afterlight is another great tool that you can use to edit your photos.

Focus On Compelling Imagery

Instagram has always been about visual spectacle and grand imagery. Brands on Instagram showcase their creativity to their audience. And this helps entice them to their products and get better sales.

The goal of every brand on Instagram needs to be about high-quality images that are share-worthy. Most brands ensure that their business accounts are filled with only high-quality images, as shown below.

Strategies To Create High-Quality Photos

Since Instagram is filled with images, it makes sense to focus on putting your best foot forward. Several things make a good-looking image. The images need to be on-brand, tastefully done, and taken with high-quality equipment.

Ticking all these boxes is a good start to creating your high-quality imagery.

• If you're clicking pictures for your Instagram, opt for a digital camera. They have a much higher image quality than phones.

• For simple images and infographics, ensure you have the highest resolution selected. Canva is a great choice for creating images. It lets you create various types of visuals free of cost.

• Touch up your photos with the power of Adobe Photoshop. While it is expensive, it's worth the money spent.

Establish A Brand Look And Image

To be successful on Instagram, you need to establish a brand "look" for yourself. Getting a unique brand look is important for your business. For example, Adidas tries to be creative by embedding the brand logo in most of their posts, as shown below.



This is important because it makes you stand out from the rest of your competition. It also makes it easier for your audience to recommend you to other people.

Finding Your Unique Look

Because Instagram is a visual medium, there are several ways to get the right imagery for your brand. It could be anything from clicking pictures at a certain angle to applying a specific set of filters. You create your separate niche within your niche.

• Creating a signature look is important not just for the brand image but also for your revenue in the long term.

• It can help you appeal to people from your competitors too.

• The most important thing here is to remain consistent with your brand look. You can evolve, but suddenly changing your look can be problematic.

Use Relevant Hashtags And Captions

Businesses should use hashtags effectively to get the most out of their Instagram account. Hashtags are really useful on Instagram because they can help your audience discover posts. When people click on a specific hashtag, all posts related to that hashtag are displayed.

Take a look at the below screenshot showing the number of posts that ‘a hashtag’ has been used.



Captions also need to be creative to attract audiences.

Tips To Improve Hashtags And Captions

Hashtags are a great way to group people interested in the same topic. Captions are where brands can showcase their creativity. The best-shared tip to improve both is through relevancy. If you can keep both relevant and creative, you will attract the right crowd. Check your competitor posts also for inspiration.

• Hashtag Generator can help you analyze and develop good hashtags for your business.

• Brainstorm with your writing team to come up with creative captions. Remember to be creative and quirky to become viral.

• Remember to occasionally add emojis and CTAs to your captions to improve relatability.

Engage With Your Audience Regularly

Instagram marketing is a powerful way to engage with your audience. But, like any other form of social media marketing, it requires a constant effort to stay fresh. Keep your audience in the loop. Ensure they know when you'll be posting, and keep them interested with your responses. Don't ignore people who ask you something on your Instagram profile.

Strategies To Improve Engagement

To get the most engagement out of your posts, ensure that you promote them. The option is provided right below each post help users promote it within an instant.



Promoted posts reach a lot more people than ones that are not. It also helps to schedule your posts so users understand when you're going to post. Check your Instagram profile regularly and monitor them for replies and tags.

• Regularly check your DMs on your Instagram account. Chances are higher that you receive messages in your inbox.

• Tools like ManyChat allow you to automate your responses. This can help improve your response rate.

• Create Instagram Story topics based on audience questions. It can make them feel heard.

Leverage The Power Of Stories

While Instagram Story isn't a new addition, it has captured the audience's attention. Brand and people alike use Stories to create content with high appeal and a massive shareable quotient. You can use a story to promote an event, campaign, brand, or product. If you want to improve engagement and clicks, Stories are a great way you can get it done.

Take a look at the below screenshot showing even the brand Porsche leveraging it.

Using Stories To Broadcast Your Message

Instagram stories are a great way for businesses to engage their audience and tell a story. Stories feature content that lasts only for 24 hours. They are ideal for brands looking to build a stronger connection with their audience. It also adds a bit of FOMO to marketing which helps increase clicks.

• Don't cram your feed with Stories. Use it only when you have something important to share.

• Over is a tool that makes creating Stories easy. It has several ways you can maintain consistent branding.

• If you're looking for something made for editing Insta Stories, take a look at Mojo. Create branded videos that excite your audience.

Use The Poll And Gift Card Options

If one of your key metrics for your Instagram campaign is engagement, this will help. Polls and gift card options are highly engaging on Instagram.

People love to participate in polls and see what the outcome is. The below image shows a poll that users can click on their choice.



Gift cards are also popular with them. People receiving gift cards are likely to share them with other people.

Engaging Your Audience

If you're looking to increase engagement and traffic to your account, consider adding Instagram polls and Instagram gift cards to your strategy. And this is not just about engagement. Polls can answer very important questions about your brand. Gift cards can improve sales of a product that you've just launched.

• Ensure that you have a good talking point to address before starting a poll. Don't flood your feed with multiple polls.

• Instagram has several attractive stickers to make your gift cards attractive. Use them creatively for the best results.

• Use attractive background images for both options to get the best results.

Create Authentic Live Video Experiences

Instagram Live is perhaps one of the hottest trends to hit the social ecosystem. People all over the world are creating live videos. It forms a large part of the engagement on Instagram as well. Live video is popular with people of all ages. But you need to remember to keep it authentic to your brand image.

Take a look at below live streaming example below where the chef authentically cooks in front of the audience.

Strategies To Create Awesome Live Videos

Instagram Live videos can engage your audience and promote your brand, so no other content platform can. It effectively connects with your audience and creates brand awareness. The two things you need to focus on with Live video are consistency and authenticity. Your audience can spot if you're not being real with them.

• To create effective live videos, you need the right hardware. This includes tripods, lenses, lights, and more.

• You can adjust the privacy settings on your Instagram app. This can hide your live video from specific users.

• Turn on comment filtering to prevent unwanted comments from your video feed.

Create An Instagram Store

Instagram shopping has picked up in a big way. People worldwide are choosing to get some of their shopping done on this platform. It has a lot of advantages for business owners compared to other social storefronts. It is more visual and can get more people interested in your products. Its conversion rates are also higher. Thus, it’s crucial to market products/services through shopping options, as shown in the screenshot.

Tips To Setup Shopping On Instagram

Shopping on Instagram can be a hugely rewarding experience for people. It is slick and user-friendly to work with. You also don't have to leave the app and log in to your eCommerce account. People prefer to do this because it's convenient, and you also get feedback from people who've already bought it.

Creating a Shop is easy. Just got to your Instagram Business profile and tap on signup for Shopping. Shoppable Posts are what you should focus on. Create appealing images along with clickable buttons on it.

You can create easy shoppable images with Like2Buy. It's easy and customizable.

Creating Poor Quality Content

When you create Instagram posts, you need to keep the quality consistent. Poor quality content like captions or hashtags can negatively affect your entire brand. Before any post goes live, it is important to validate it for your brand. Ensure that it is on-brand and does not have grammatical errors.

Improving Content Quality

As a business, your content should never compromise regarding quality. Only use content that is created by experts and after considerable thought. The same goes for text with a lot of errors. Avoid all these if you want a professional-looking Instagram business account.

• You can opt for tools like Grammarly and Hemingway App for auditing text. These can deliver high-quality content. The below screenshot shows how effectively it helps enhance the content.

• Focus on getting the right hashtags for your business. Get insights from tools like Supermetrics.

• Have several options for your captions, and choose the best one with a vote if possible.

Using Bad Quality Images

Image quality matters when you're on Instagram. The better the quality is, the more people are inclined to click on it. The problem is that some businesses post just for the sake of posting. This can lead to bad-looking visuals. These can turn people off and lead to losing followers or even revenue.

Tips For Better Image Quality

The best part of improving image quality is probably the easiest thing to do. The rule of thumb is to focus on a few simple things - good hardware, software, and creativity. If you've got their attributes, you are set to go. Showcasing images is all about creativity and capture.

• Use only high-resolution photography. If you don't have a camera, try stock images from Shutterstock or free images from Pixabay by searching with keywords as shown in the below image.

• If you want to add filters or manipulate the images, only use professional software like Adobe Photoshop.

• A cheaper, more friendly photo editing tool is PhotoWorks. Smaller companies can use this instead.

Posting Too Much Or Not Enough

Success on Instagram is directly tied to posting schedules. While this is true for most social media platforms, Instagram folks are more varied. Find out how often people in your specific demographic check their Insta. This should be your baseline when you're posting content on Instagram.

Finding The Right Posting Schedule

The simple way to find out the right posting schedule is to understand what your audience is doing.

How often do they check their Instagram?

What times do they usually flick through their feed?

What accounts are they looking through at different times?

Answers to these can help you find the right schedule.

The below screenshot shows how to plan your Instagram posting schedule on each day of the week to enhance user engagement.

• Your best bet to find more about your audience is using Instagram Insights and tools.

• Union Metrics provides a great view into your audience and their browsing habits.

• Sprout Social is another platform that can help you understand user behavior.

Ignoring Metrics And Analytics

All social media platforms and how people use them have evolved. What flawlessly worked before probably has next to no chance of working now. Because of the competition in the market today, you need the power of metrics to succeed. Without them, it can be tough to beat more entrenched competitors.

Strategies To Getting The Right Metrics

Analyzing metrics and statistics can help you find the right audience for your marketing and sales. It can also help you to determine the effectiveness of your advertising and promotions.

Ensure that you analyze your analytics to understand how your campaign is performing. Keep a close tab on interactions, impressions, profile visits, etc., as shown in the below screenshot.

• You can use many tools to get metrics for your Instagram account.

• Hubspot is a generalist platform that can improve your insights for your Insta profile.

• Keyhole is another Instagram reporting tool that can deliver detailed metrics.

Unclear About Branding

As a business owner, you need to be clear about your brand. Your brand message to your audience is an important part of your business. For branding to work, understand your strengths and how you want to be seen by your audience. Some learning about what makes your brand unique can help.

Brand Strategies And Tips

Your business is tied strongly to your brand and audience sentiments about it. If you've noticed - a strong brand elicits strong audience emotions. This is one of the secrets of branding. Find out what makes your audience members tick and work on creating a brand around that.

• The first step to establishing your brand is through visual identity. Create a specific "look" for your brand images. For instance, Nike is known to promote their products through sports. It means Nike products are perfectly suitable for athletes.

• Improve your reach by approaching influencers in your niche. They can amplify your reach and get you exposure.

• Engage with your audience when they ask you something. Brands that ignore user questions lose brand sentiment.

Irrelevant Hashtags

Brands use hashtags to direct people to a specific series of posts. You can also be creative with hashtags and get people talking about your brand. But you need to ensure that your hashtag is relevant to your brand and posted content.

Tips To Hashtagging

Brands need a solid strategy to ensure that they are consistent with the brand when it comes to hashtagging. The wrong hashtags can direct users to other Instagram accounts and away from your brand. Also, make sure that you put in a bit of creativity with your hashtags.

• Analyze your competitors before you fix on a set of branded hashtags.

• Don't overuse hashtags on your posts. Ideally, the number of hashtags you use must be between 5 - 8 on a post.

The below screenshot shows how bad it looks when irrelevant and more hashtags are used.

• Some brands also use hashtags on the first comment rather than the post.

Ignoring Comments From Followers

All businesses today are built on engagement from your fans. Which makes ignoring comments from your followers a huge issue they are not likely to put up with. When you engage with your followers, you create new business opportunities. It will also act as social proof of how responsive your brand is.

Responding To User Comments

Responding to comments you get on your photos is quick and effective at gaining social traction. It is important to be polite and say thanks to people who comment.

Be careful when replying to people. Try not to write too much. Keep in mind that people don't want to read long replies. You should respond to each comment you get on your photos.

• A good idea to not miss comments on your Instagram account is to opt for tools.

• Hootsuite is a great general platform that you can use to track users' comments and questions.

The below screenshot shows how Hootsuite allows responding to all user comments from a single window.

• Iconosquare is another great response monitoring tool that is available.

Sharing Links That Are Too Long

Links are a huge part of Instagram for business, and you need to ensure that you streamline the length of the links. People are less likely to click links that are too long. This will also reduce their brand recall to some degree. The solution here would be to keep the links you add to your profile short.

Shortening Links For Instagram

Long links look bad on your Instagram profile. People do not want to click it either, which can be problematic for you. One way to avoid long links is to use link shorteners on your profile and feed. These are especially useful when you want to add links to your videos or Stories.

• The most used tool for link shortening is Bitly. It can also help when it comes to recording metrics about the link. The below screenshot shows how it helps with shortened URLs.

• TinyURL is another app that can improve links and make them readable.

• Short.io can help you classify visitors based on various aspects.

Hootsuite

Pricing

About

Hootsuite is popular at all levels of business - big or small. It is a comprehensive foundation for building better Instagram marketing without needing too many other tools.

It works with multiple social platforms and can integrate one with the other.

Features

• Integration - You can use it to publish on multiple social media platforms. It does the job with marketing using different platforms easier.

• Analytics - It offers detailed analytics and insights which you can use to improve your Instagram profile.

• Competitor Analysis - Understand who your competitors are and how you can improve their performance. It also tracks your progress compared to them for a specific duration.

SocialPilot

Pricing

About

SocialPilot is another general platform on which you can have all your social accounts in one place. It has options to handle a huge number of clients at your end.

The dashboard is clean and simple, with everything laid out. The notifications are also quick and easy to categorize. It also brings with it powerful monitoring features that deliver detailed insights.

Features

• Collaboration - This platform is all about scaling your engagements. You can have multiple clients and socials all organized in one place. It can help you get the most out of your team as well.

• Link Shortening - You can also get automatic link shortening for your account. This means you don't need to subscribe to other services and improve your ROI.

• Multiple Platforms - Consolidate your social media strategy across different platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Buffer

Pricing

About

Buffer is a social media powerhouse and works well with Instagram. It is preferred by people all over the world. You get powerful features and a fantastic user interface in one package.

You can also add its extensive features through Buffer Publish and Buffer Analyze. All these together make other apps redundant.

Features

• Publishing - The Buffer Publishing add-on makes this a capable platform to share content on your social media feeds. It can give you valuable insights into your keyword choice and content.

• Insights - Get improved insights with Buffer Analyze for your social platform. This is only available on the higher paid platforms, so you might want to check availability.

• Scheduling - Get improved scheduling of your Instagram posts. You can choose what you need to post three months ahead to help you plan better.

Agorapulse

Pricing

About

Agorapulse has been around for a long time and boasts of many social media features. While it does have a free version, it is limited, and you need a paid version to make an impact.

You can scale Agorapulse to any size of business, even enterprise level. Your team can even get certifications on it, which can help them understand it better.

Features

• Social Inbox - The standout feature for Agorapulse compared to other social media platforms is its inbox. It collects all your social messages into one inbox. You can split it according to different categories.

• Scheduling Calendar - You can use Agorapulse to plan your social media posting. You can create content from within the calendar. There's no need to log in to your social media platform.

• Power Reports - The Agorapulse analytics model is called Power Reports. It gives you a more granular look at your metrics. It does cost extra but is worth it.

Crowdfire

Pricing

About

This is a crowd favorite with the marketing community, and for a good reason. Marketers, enterprises, and individuals use it throughout the world.

You can work with an effective yet simple dashboard to post across multiple social media platforms, including Instagram. While priced lower, it offers the same benefits most of the other more expensive platforms deliver.

Features

• Content Curation - One major part of the Crowdfire experience is content curation. Whether text or images, you get various creation tools that can help you get the most out of your socials. It connects you to a large number of blogs as well.

• Price point - A standout feature of this package is the price. It makes this a great choice for growing companies. Other more expensive alternatives do not offer the same features this does.

• Advanced Social Listening - You can get this with your VIP plan. It does cost extra but offers a lot of information and insights about your business.

Plann

Pricing

About

Unlike the other platforms we've reviewed here, Plann is an exclusive Instagram-only tool. Understandably, it has lots more Instagram-specific features than the rest. It offers a great mix of functional and aesthetic tools for your marketing needs.

If you're a company that focuses only on Instagram, this is what you should be getting.

Features

• Time Management - It has a powerful scheduling manager that can automate your posting. It improves posting consistency and engagement on your feed.

• Grid Planner - Another novel feature that no other tools offer is the ability to plan your Instagram grid. Some brands can be creative with this and post a whole image as a grid.

• Hashtag Analytics - This platform also offers a detailed analysis of hashtags for a particular niche. It can help generate good results for your marketing.

Sendible

Pricing - Free

About

Sendible can get you all your social media platforms in one place. It can help you manage them much easier than with separate apps for each social media app you have.

It has several ways to help you coordinate between multiple accounts and platforms. You can also get helpful content suggestions with the app.

Features

• Social Media Automation - This app has several automation features to grow your following and post content.

• Priority Inbox - A good feature of this platform is the priority inbox. It ensures that you'll never miss a notification. You can choose to set different priorities for various social media platforms.

• Content Suggestions - Get ideas from multiple sources for your content. This includes Google Alerts, RSS feeds, and other apps.