Instagram is home to countless brands, small business owners, and creators that are connecting with customers, growing their audience, and showcasing what’s for sale, in a non-salesy way. The key is a concrete marketing plan to keep you intentional and on schedule.
Instagram is a photo and short video-sharing social media app with roughly 1 billion monthly active users. For brands looking to capture wide audience attention and convert curiosity to sales, Instagram tops the list of places to be. As a mobile app, users post and view content in the palm of their hands. Together with quality captions and relevant hashtags, eye-catching photos with a primarily upbeat vibe fill user feeds. What is more, in recent years, Instagram has stepped it up for brands and is now a place where people can shop.
Having evolved into a fully-functional social commerce space, there are more reasons than ever before for brands to use Instagram. In fact, a whopping 70% of shoppers report they are looking to shop via Instagram. And what is more, 90% of people on Instagram follow at least one business. Beyond sales, being present on Instagram helps brands build an engaged online community which can lead to brand loyalty. With features such as Instagram Badges, Stickers, Shops, and Product Tags, brands have numerous creative and fun ways to reach, grow and nurture engaged followers.
Deja Foxx is a 20 year old activist, strategist, and future POTUS. She is the founder of GenZ Girl Gang, a student at Columbia University, and a Digital Creator with Ford Models. At just 19, she worked for Kamala Harris as the Influencer and Surrogate Strategist and became one of the youngest presidential campaign staffers in modern history.
Join Deja Foxx in a PLANOLY webinar as she teaches us how to master Instagram Reels.
When setting up your Instagram account, you’ll want to be sure to pick the right account type to meet your brand and content goals.
Personal accounts are the default everyone is set to when they sign up. They are perfect for people who may want to keep their content private and approve who can follow them. These accounts offer a more intimate, controlled audience with access to many of the same content features as Business accounts.
The newest account type, Creator, is best suited for public figures, producers, artists, and influencers. This account has unique features such as message filtering and more in-depth analytics available. Currently, Creator accounts are not available for Planoly auto-posting as well as some third-party platforms.
Designed for brands and influencers who are actively growing a public following, business accounts provide numerous beneficial features. Access to Insights and the ability to launch paid ads are two big benefits of business accounts. Other benefits include contact buttons, Stories link functions and the ability to add paid partnerships.
Creating targeted content that resonates with and grows an audience is just one of the steps for brands utilizing Instagram. Brands also need to be tracking social media metrics with Instagram Insights to ensure the content is meeting the company’s objectives. To get started measuring Instagram success, you’ll first need to set some benchmarks – a starting point of where you are now. Then, write down your goals and map out a plan to achieve them in a reasonable time. After some time has passed, mine the data and analyze it. Don’t be intimidated! It’s really quite simple to access and understand all of the data in Insights. Information on followers’ demographics, their actions and engagement with content, and overall content performance are some of the analytics available. Specifically, Instagram success is measured by looking at post impressions (how many times a post is seen), referrals (how many people click on links in bios to see more about the business), and engagement rate (we’re talking about likes, shares, saves and comments on posts and Stories). With an understanding of Instagram analytics comes the benefit of saving time by knowing what works and what doesn’t so you can produce more of what has the highest return. This ensures you are delivering what your audience wants and keeps them coming back for more.
