Instagram has already reached over a billion users. Every day, over 95 million photos are shared on this app. We can’t ignore these facts. Our Instagram content ideas can be used as a prime tip to effectively reach the right audience and establish a positive brand reputation.
Knowing what types of Instagram content ideas perform well on Instagram has become even more important since the newsfeed algorithm rolled out. This algorithm automatically prioritizes content that it believes users will find most relevant to them. How does it determine this? There are a number of different factors, but the factor that’s weighed most heavily is Engagement.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at what works on Instagram and Instagram Content Ideas that will probably help your business grow, and what people actually look for that will help you get the results you’re looking for.
Table of Contents
1. Sponsored Ads
Instagram Sponsored Ads are posts or Stories that a user/business pays to promote to users’ Instagram feeds. They can look just like regular Instagram posts but are always identified by a “Sponsored” label. They can also include a call-to-action button to drive traffic or conversions.
Our Sponsored ads work like magic, drive awareness, increase customers and share your story amongst a highly engaged audience. With sponsored Instagram posts, you use organic posts on your page and pay to promote them. It can be any post you’ve published on your Instagram account. You don’t create a new ad with the same creative, but rather, promote what is already there.
Like Instagram ads, you can target specific people to see your promoted content. For example, you can target by age, location, and interests, but the targeting is somewhat limited. The goal of promoted posts is to generate more engagement on the original post by reaching people interested in that kind of content.
Your sponsored Instagram posts will only appear on Instagram. You can, however, add an outside URL to direct people to specific pages on your website. Instagram also allows you to include a call to action (CTA) button to drive traffic to your site. When you run sponsored Instagram ads, you use the ad system. This is where you can add your CTA button and URL.
Instagram-sponsored posts include scalable pricing, plus they’re self-serve and launch instantly. This feature puts your business in control and allows you to guide your Instagram campaign toward success.
2. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placements from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field.
Instagram posts that feature industry-relevant influencers perform well for several reasons. Users love seeing big names endorsing your brand, even if you’re the one to share the post.
Before collaborating with influencers, decide how you want to expose your brand (a product review, a giveaway, a special event or give some tips) and reach new followers. Choose influencers whose values are similar to yours and that have a good connection with their followers.
Note that you also need to have a certain budget for this, or offer the influencer the ability to try your products for free in case you cannot afford to pay for a sponsored post that highlights your brand and directs followers to your site.
3. Pictures and Videos
Since Instagram is all visual content, the visual qualities of your posts matter even more on Instagram than they do on most other platforms (aside from Pinterest). Tell your story through a clean, simple, and beautiful creative canvas. Photos can be in square or landscape format.
Your pictures and videos are your ambassadors. They go places you can’t get to. There are used to showcase your products/services, so if your pictures are bad, people automatically believe that your products are bad.
A high number of people do not know that posts with good pictures are easily shared by people, and posts that have videos in them are viewed twice as much as posts with pictures. Instagram users are attracted to bright, light images; skip out on the darker ones, or manually lighten them up before posting. These images will instantly stand out more, which will always work in your favor.
Your pictures should be of good quality so also your videos have to be very good for you to be able to connect with people. A lot of people have had little or no sales on Instagram due to poor picture/video quality. It is best to also write a good caption for your pictures if you know you can’t do videos.
4. IG stories
Instagram Stories are a great tool to tell your story and spark interest in your brand. The advantage is to tell more than you can do through written posts. It looks like a first-class ticket that sits at the top of the feed, so followers can easily notice them. Update your stories once per day if you want to keep your followers engaged with your brand.
Users are increasingly watching Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories offer a wide range of great features like polls, interactive live broadcasts, etc. You can run ad campaigns, teach people how to use your product, give discounts and special offers, create contests and giveaways, and highlight new and featured products. It doesn’t take much time and preparation to record your story. You can use a mixture of photos and videos, and give a link to certain blog posts, websites, or profiles. Just make sure that the URL is short so followers can remember it and visit it later on. Make sure that stories are temporary and disappear after 24 hours.
With IGTV you get a lot of interactions and views. Instagram is trying to push engagement to IGTV. For Instagram Stories, you’ve got a 15-second limit per individual Story. It is also necessary to make your video a minute and one second (1:01). However, if you upload a video that’s longer than 15 seconds, they will chop it into 15-second pieces for you. Yes, you can do more than that, but at least a minute and one second, so that you can have the option to post to your feed.
5. Actionable Advice and Tutorials
6. Share Customer Testimonials
It’s one thing when you recommend your products to your followers because they are awesome – and it’s totally another thing when your customers recommend your products. Just collect as many testimonials, reviews, stories, and videos as you can about your products, and post them on Instagram. Customer testimonials show off how others benefited from your products, and serve as a powerful tool to establish your brand authenticity and make potential customers take action.
7. Direct Message feature
Use the Direct Message (DM) feature effectively without being “spammy”. Once people learn about this feature, don’t instantly start sending direct messages like “Hi, you have a great profile!” Would you love to buy something?” Surely, it will make you get blocked. If you want to use the DM strategy, create some value in your DMs and send them out to people that really want your product or service. When you build a great connection, say thank you in your message and ask to tag them in your thank you post. Stay real, sincere, and grateful. It creates more customer value.
Conclusions
Instagram skyrocketed to a major player in social media marketing very quickly, and all businesses and brands should be caught up on how to use it. Instagram users decidedly respond best to posts that contain certain types of content and certain visual qualities, and combining the two will help you increase engagement and followers, while simultaneously building better relationships with your customers.
