Important tips to help you make your Instagram content more interesting

When you are in the world of marketing, you may probably be familiar with the setbacks of traditional marketing systems. They tend to have less effectiveness in terms of their reach – for instance, 70 percent of users on average dislike mobile ads. With this development, a question arise – how do you capitalize on your audience, but using non-traditional methods?

The answer is surprisingly simple, yet has its complications – social media. Among the many platforms you can explore, Instagram is among the best in terms of the exposure it gives you and your brand. In fact, the audience on the social media platform has increased at a rapid pace, and current estimates show active users numbering close to 700 million, with total users being 800 million.

Another interesting fact to note is the length of time Instagram users spend on sites of e-commerce: average times of 192 seconds, making them the longest out of any social media platform (three times that of Pinterest and two times that of Facebook).

It is therefore important to answer the question – what strategy works best in making sure you get maximum benefits from this audience? Just note that you need to know the needs of your audience so that you create content that they find suitable.

Increase your frequency of user-generated content

Instagram is filled with a young audience, made up of teenagers and young people in their 20s, for the most part. Therefore, the traditional methods of creating lengthy videos alone will not work on them – they want something funny and relatable.

One of the best ways to endear yourself to them is through creating and sharing user-generated content, and encouraging the users to respond with their own content. This can also feature your message or product to increase brand awareness.

Exhibit your products and brand I creative ways

One mistake many brands make when marketing themselves on social media is to focus on selling the product, when they forget to create a strong bond with their followers by providing solutions. Avoid this approach as much as possible; otherwise, you will not make much headway when you are trying to sell your brand to new people (including users that do not follow you).

The hallmark off Instagram is visual beauty, so make sure you are giving your followers solutions to their problems while looking interesting and pretty. If the business is a service-oriented one, then show your followers the process behind the scenes, to give them a more inclusive feel.

For instance, you can include aspects of your company culture in your posts, share how-to do posts for the DIY followers of your audience, sharing your mission with them ad your aspirations, as well as uploading photos, videos (up to one minute long) and Instagram stories.

This will also help you avoid using the route of buying auto comments on Instagram for the sake of increasing your engagement statistics; and it helps you grow organic engagements as much as possible.

Incorporate Instagram stories

There is a reason these are so popular in the world of Instagram. They have a format of a slideshow, and they are only live for 24 hours, although you can save them to your device if you want to see them later on.

It is touted as a direct competitor to Snapchat stories, and Instagram users have embraced it wholeheartedly. They have a wider engagement rate compared to the other posts you make (both videos and photos), so when you use them you are sure people will comment and like them more than you expect.

One of their advantages is their prominence, as they are displayed just below the logo of Instagram. Their prominence is further aided by the use of hashtags and geolocations, making it easy for people to find you when they search these hashtags or locations in the Explore Page. They also help you to capture content that the photos and videos posts fail to capture effectively, such as content that is from behind the scenes.

Instagram stories also make it easier for you to experiment vastly with different types of content. For instance, you can use Boomerang (which makes images similar to GIFs), short videos, photo compilations, live videos (where you go live and engage with your followers directly), and Rewind (videos that are filmed backwards).They also allow you to add extra content like stickers, hashtags, and text and face filters that make your content look fun, while allowing you to edit images as you go about your day. Tagging other accounts is also possible, which makes them an excellent way of collaborating with other users, and tag Instagram influencers.

Create contests and host giveaways

There is no secret why giveaways attract the interest of users, both those who follow you and those that do not. When you decide to incorporate user-generated content in this, it gets more powerful and you get greater engagement levels. If you want to capture the attention of your audience, you can use another hashtag, which combines your message and raises the attention on your giveaway.

Hashtags

In addition to Instagram stories, hashtags are good ways of increasing the reach of your brand, but the condition is they must be relevant to what you are promoting. Instagram has an allowance for a maximum of 30 hashtags, but you don’t need to go with all these – just enough to keep your post under high engagement.

Ensure that you include the hashtag of your business name, the campaign it is in (if there is any), and a few hashtags relating to the industry it is under. Use them wisely and sparingly, otherwise, your post will look cluttered and an eye sore.

Their purpose is to help people find your posts easily without the struggle of searching for them for too long, as well as your account. The best number of hashtags you can use is three to five, although you can experiment with this as well.

Final thoughts

Setting your brand up for success on Instagram requires that your marketing strategy is on point – and that means you need to be creative with your posts. This will help people be drawn to you and your business, in turn making them loyal customers.