Instagram: Content Creation

In our last blog, we talked about how to expand reach and engagement on Instagram. This week we’ll be looking at best practice for content. If you didn’t read last week’s blog here’s a little recap about the value of Instagram for your brand:

It was reported at the end of 2015 that Instagram had more monthly users than Twitter. Around 50% of users log in daily and at least 50% of users follow brands. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses to engage with users. We can track Instagram and the impact of utilising it through Meltwater’s media monitoring tool.

Upload great images

Instagram is a visual platform. Use high resolution, well-edited photos to attract followers. Try to avoid obvious product photos and tell a story instead.

Content ideas:

• Show off brand culture
• Repost user generated content (making sure we credit the original poster)
• Images showing how diverse the product is
• Behind the scenes at our offices/warehouses/events
• Events we host or attend
• Infographics

Now, Instagram isn’t just for B2C businesses, but also B2B. FedEx and CBRE have strong Instagram profiles- they use colourful, visual images that tell a story. FedEx could have simply posted pictures of parcels, but instead they have shown their couriers in beautiful locations.

Stay up to date with new features

Instagram is constantly launching a new feature. More recently, we’ve seen Boomerang attach itself to the social channel’s app. Boomerang is a feature that allows us to shoot mini videos that loop back and forth. Such platform features provide us with alternative ways of displaying our content, keeping things fresh for our audience.

Keep an eye out on Instagram’s blog. It’s filled with posts on new features, how to guides and lots of top tips. They’re currently running a feature called ‘Weekend Hashtag Project’. Instagram’s Community Team chooses themes and hashtags each weekend, where we can post something around the theme with a chance to be featured. Using these hashtags is a great way to increase reach and can provide us with inspiration of what to post.

They also have a dedicated blog for businesses featuring information about advertising, audience studies, case studies and ways businesses can use Instagram in their marketing efforts.

Use your customers to create content

Don’t underestimate the power of user generated content. Encourage the audience to tag their photos using a branded hashtag. For example, #shareacoke received over 235,000 tweetsusing the hashtag in 2014. The campaign encouraged users to post stories, selfies and photos with a personalised coke bottle. Not only will this expand the reach of our brand (as our product will appear on the timelines of our audience), but it will also create a community surrounding our brand once the image is made discoverable amongst our audience’s audience.

Use analytics

Finally, we shouldn’t forget to analyse our efforts. Track the success of our Instagram posts and social media campaigns by analysing media exposure, sentiment and social reach. We can use our analysis to improve our strategy and create content that our audience appreciates. We can even use media monitoring to find inspiration for content. By searching for trending themes and topic momentum we can discover what is trending surrounding our brand, product, event or topic.

That’s a wrap for part 2/2 in our Instagram best practice mini-series. If you’re interested in how media monitoring can be used to track your Instagram activity, contact: hello@meltwater.com