Instagram Tips for Building Brands

Wondering whether you not you should use Instagram as a business?

If your audience is using it, of course! Instagram is a growing channel that enables you to grow and humanize your brand, showcase your product/service, company culture, delight customers, and generate new business. With over 400 million users and over 80 million posts per day, it has become a viable tool in social media marketing for business.

Instagram posts are comprised of photos and videos (up to 15 seconds), but no text updates like on Twitter and Facebook. Showcase your people, your workspace behind the scenes, ask your customers to share their photos using your hashtag, feature your office dogs, share events and celebrations, post exclusive offers, etc. Provide a glimpse into your brand’s culture and an opportunity for your audience (and your customers) to be part of your community.

Ready to get started?

Building your Instagram Strategy

Start with some simple research. Look at other brands in your industry (including your competitors) — both for inspiration and competitive intelligence. You’re strategy should be inline with your broader social media strategy and be designed to appeal to your target audience. Keep in mind the particular strengths of visual media for telling a compelling story about your brand. When you combine storytelling with stunning images, your brand will reap the benefits. As with all things branding, consistency is key.

Set SMART Goals

The first step with any plan is to determine your goals. I recommend setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound). Examples might be:

• Gain XX followers per day, week, month, quarter
• Get XX likes per post
• Post XX times per day
• Increase product sales by XX
• Increase traffic to your website by XX
• Increase branded hashtag mentions by XX

Maintain a Consistent Posting Schedule

As with other social media channels, it is best to maintain a regular posting schedule. Most brands release one to three posts per day. As for what time of day to post, you’ll need to experiment to see what types of posts at what time of day work best with your audience.

Analytics for your Instagram Feed

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” right? Maybe, maybe not. What is true, though, is that if you are putting a lot of time and effort into your social media marketing (as I know you are), you’ll want to know what’s working and what’s not.

With a clearly established metric for success and a way to measure your results, you can quantify progress and do more of what is working and stop what is not. Without the data, you’re stuck in a constant state of guessing.

Unlike other social plaforms, Instagram has limited built-in analytics. However, there are a number of third party applications you can use.

The free Analytics for Instragram iPhone app provides you with hourly updates.  Analytics is free to use with your own Instagram account. If you want to monitor multiple accounts, however, you can subscribe to Analytics Pro for $0.99 / month.

You can see how well your posts generate traffic and which ones have the most followers. With real data, making conclusions on how often, what time and what type of content to post becomes easier.  Check your daily, weekly, and monthly growth and keep a running tally.

Other Instagram analytics tools include:

• Iconosquare (formerly known as Statigram)
• SimplyMeasured 
• InstaFollow (iOS and Android)
• Union Metrics
• Crowdfire (formerly known as JustUnfollow) – I use this for both Twitter and Instagram
• Analytics for Instragram iPhone app – I use this for both Twitter and Instagram

Stay on Brand

Choosing the theme and subject matter for your content is a big deal. Consider the visual style you want for your brand. Be consistent and establish a style that will become recognizable to your followers. You’ll also need to decide what the focus of your photos will be. Consider, too, those non-visual elements like common language or style for captions and branded hashtags.

Creative Inspiration

Here are a few of my favorite brand Instagram accounts for inspiration:

National Geographic

Saturday Night Live

This Old Shirt

TED

Marketing Inspiration

Lucy and Co.

Please share your favorites in the comments section below.

Well, what are you waiting for?  Put your business on Instagram today!