Looking for inspiration for your social media marketing efforts in 2023?
During the first few weeks of the year, we’ll be posting a series of tips and notes on how to maximize your efforts online, including advice on new tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, and how these evolving apps can help you with your content planning. process.
We have already covered the following items:
So with the first two major platforms out of the way, we move on to the next big app: Instagram.
That you’ve had something of an identity crisis – here are some key tips to help you maximize your Instagram presence in 2023.
evolving vision
As noted, Instagram has been going through a mini metamorphosis lately, as it works to keep up with the latest trends and remains a key app for younger audiences.
Which essentially means keeping up with TikTok, which has seen IG add more random posts to its main feed, focusing more on short-form video clips in exploration, and leaning into newer engagement behaviors like people sharing posts in DMs and Stories, instead. from the main power.
Taking this into account, Instagram recently outlined its three key areas of focus for 2023.
Those are:
Inspire people to be creative.
Help people discover things they love
Ignite connections between people
From a marketing perspective, a key consideration here is improved discovery, by showing people more content from people and Pages they don’t follow.
This, as noted, has become a key shift in IG’s approach.
Until recently, Meta had been able to dominate the social media landscape because of its social graph, meaning everyone you know is on Facebook and IG. Due to the scale of its apps, Meta has a huge connective advantage and has been able to use it to replicate features of other apps, for example to keep people on their platforms.
But TikTok has changed the paradigm around social media, placing less emphasis on the ‘social’ aspect and more on entertainment. The advantage in this regard is that TikTok can pull the content it displays in user feeds from a much broader group of uploaded posts, not just the users and Pages they’re connected to. And because its algorithm is so good at showing you more of what you like, it keeps users locked into a constant entertainment feed, whether you’re commenting, liking, sharing or not.
So now, all the other apps are catching up, with Instagram arguably giving the biggest push as it looks to prevent users from moving to TikTok.
From a brand perspective, that could give you more opportunities to show your content to more people who don’t follow your brand Page, as long as you create compelling content.
Building brand presence
The first key element to consider in building an IG presence is consistency and establishing a recognizable and identifiable presence with each post.
On this, Instagram offers these three guide notes:
The more specific post note here is to develop a style that stays consistent throughout your posts, based on the colors used, settings, stickers, emoji, etc.
Establish how you want your brand to look on Instagram, which will then help you create a more unique and ultimate brand presence on the app.
In terms of product shots, you should look for a mini-studio, of some kind, where you can shoot against a solid background with the right lighting and scenery. This doesn’t necessarily have to be an expensive setup – take a look these Canva tips.
short form video
Another great focus is short form video via Reels, and that could be the key to maximizing IG performance. If you can create great Reels content, your chances of getting more IG reach increase exponentially, and really, that should be an important consideration if you’re looking for ways to boost your Instagram performance this year.
So how do you come up with great Reels ideas?
Well seriously, you should probably check out TikTok.
With TikTok’s “Top Ads” storefront, which lets you search for the best-performing ads in the app, by theme or vertical, you can get some valuable notes of inspiration, based on the success of other brands in your niche.
Specifically on Instagram, you can also use IG’s search functionality to discover the best performing posts by topic, which is another way to find content ideas.
Using IG’s newly implemented side search bar on the web, you can see how the top related results are displayed once you enter a query, which can help guide your research process. Scan the listings for relevant Reels and you can get a better idea of the hot ideas for your content. When searching on mobile, you can also scan all the top reels related to a topic by tapping on one of the highlighted reel clips in the search results and then scrolling from there.
In terms of specific creation notes, Instagram says that companies should highlight your brand in the first few seconds of your Reels clips.
Also, note the ‘safe zones‘ when recording, that is, when UI elements do not interrupt the video.
Also note that videos up to 60 seconds long now play full on IG Stories and will not be divided into 15 second segments.
Finally, if you’re really out of ideas, you can use other Reels as templates, which can give you more guidance in your creation process, based on popular Reel formats. Meta also has a tool that can convert still images to video assetsso you don’t even need a video to get started, if you find it challenging.
Look, creating engaging short form content is not easy as it is all about the entertainment factor and getting people hooked with your content. If you fail at that, they’ll drift, and being good at constantly creating Reels is no small feat. But there are options and tools available to help that might help improve your process.
Subtitle
In terms of captions, Instagram offers these caption tips:
Lead with the most important information
Use a consistent and personal tone.
Keep copy short and to the point
Encourage action with simple, direct text.
So essentially concise, to the point, and actionable (for branded posts), which means including a CTA at the end, inviting users to take the next step. Your captions don’t have to be epic tales – Instagram caption lengths can be 2200 characters, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them.
Try to be creative and concise, and lead users to the actions you want them to take, i.e. view your content and take actions based on your images.
tags
Hashtags are also important, and you can also search more specifically for related tags in the mobile app, to help you in your discovery process.
Hashtags may not be as critical as they once were in the app, especially as Instagram continues to improve its AI-based recommendations, based on what you see and interact with. But they still play an important role in discovery and highlighting relevant content for users.
But you should research them, many times I have seen brands using hashtags that are generally unrelated to their business.
Tools like Hashtagify can help, as well as Google Keyword Plannerthat will highlight the most searched terms, while scanning through related tags on IG itself will provide more guidance on what’s popular and what’s relevant to your products (note that usage counts in the hashtags in the screenshot above).
Take all related tags into account, sort them by usage (Hashtagify provides data on tag popularity), and eventually you’ll be able to narrow your list down to the most relevant and specific set of tags for your posts.
In terms of how many hashtags you should add to each update, Instagram recommends adding 3 to 5 highly relevant hashtags to reach the right communities, although some research has shown that adding up to 30 can have significant outreach and engagement benefits. There’s no definitive answer, but you want to make sure you’re targeting the right users and trends, so it’s important to choose the most relevant tags. But if you have a collection of 30 relevant tags, that can also drive results.
Experiment, analyze and optimize as you see fit.
Any other key release notes to consider:
Instagram tries to recommend content that is similar to the accounts people have chosen to follow, so it may be worth doing more research on what other brands in your industry are posting, particularly those that are doing well on IG, to better align with the specific elements that could then see your featured content for your target consumers
‘Fresh’ is important within Instagram’s algorithmic approach, which means you need to post regularly to ensure you’re maximizing your opportunities in this regard. ‘Regularly’ in this context is not specific, but you should try to post at least a few times a week in the beginning, to build a presence and gauge audience response.
As for when to publish, according to Sprout Social datathe current best times to post on IG are Monday at 11 a.m., Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m..
As you can see in the chart above, Sunday, according to Sprout data, is the worst day to post to the app. But this is all relative, and there are no universal “highest moments” as such, it’s all based on your individual audience and their in-app behaviors.
Which, actually, is true for all aspects: while these are good guide notes and tips, the real indicator of your success on the app will be your audience and how they interact with and respond to your IG posts.
Use these notes as a starting point, measure your audience’s response, and then double down on the elements that are driving results.
It takes time and research to maximize Instagram performance, but taking notes in the right places and iterating on the results will help you get more out of the app.
Source: news.google.com