Instagram Introduction

Why Instagram?

While just a little over turning 6 years old, Instagram has made huge strides in social media. Consider these statistics by DMR:

• 600 million monthly active users
• 300 million daily active users
• 70+ million photos uploaded daily
• 20% of total internet users that use Instagram
• 89.4 million US users (up from 77.6 million in 2015) and projected to grow to 106.2 million users by 2018
• 51% users are male and 49% are female
• 91.7% of posts are photos
• 90% of users are under 35 YO
• 47% of US users access via mobile device
• 2.2% per-follow interaction (compared to 0.22% for Facebook)

According to Forbes, Instagram is the top social platform for user engagement  – outranking Facebook! That means there’s a ton of potential for engagement. If you are able to identifying what is working and what isn’t with your audience, you’re sitting on a pot of gold.

How Are People Using Instagram?

A study done by Zachary McCune back when Instagram was fairly new suggested that hardcore users are using this tiny app to create art and build beautiful new communities. It’s no wonder why Instagram has become the iPhone photographer’s app of choice.

It’s not just food porn, Instagram users are composing and sharing images, commenting on other user photos, engaging in dialogue, building relationships, and studying the patterns of photo styles, sub-communities, practices and popular trends.

From the McCune study, 6 key trends are identified:

• Sharing
• Documentation
• Seeing
• Community
• Creativity
• Therapy

It seems Instagram users want, more than anything else, to exchange images with others throughout the network, find people with whom they had common interests, document the world around them and see provide “visual status updates” to their friends.

Strategies & Tactics

Leverage #hashtags: Hashtags are one of quickest and easiest best ways to help you stand out on Instagram. You can also use them to find relevant people who aren’t following you and organize your related images and videos utilizing specific hashtags making your content easier to find.

• Never use more than 4 hashtags. If you’re using them just to create comments – you’re doing it wrong.
• Make sure hashtags are topically relevant (and relevant to your audience – something they would search for) unless the hashtag adds clarity to the picture, then a made-up hashtag is totally fine (example: #idontevenknowthisperson).
• Leverage existing hashtags that work across various industries, like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) or #vsco (VSCOcam is a popular photo editing app).
• Do not “troll” hashtags: remember to acknowledge your new followers with a comment, additional likes, and a “followback.”

Use a call-to-action: You need to let your audience know want you want them to do. With Instagram you’ve got a few choices to play with – you can either put the call to action in the caption of the image or create images with the text built right in.

• Try posting a picture of your products and telling your fans to double tap their favorite – any double-tap will result in a like.
• Tell your followers to tag a person, your favorite band, or anything you think they would like. Your close followers will jump on board.

The number one click on all of Instagram is the Profile link. Be sure you’re using this to your full advantage. Rotate the link to different destinations depending on your objective.

• For example, if you are recruiting for new hires and your Instagram reflects your company culture, why not insert a link at the top to the job listings?

Try out different Calls-to-action in your profile description to target all users coming in to view your posts.

Collaborate with others: It may sound creepy, but users of social networks will spend time browsing your profile – even if they don’t follow you. With the introduction of photo-tagging, Instagram has made this even easier. Clicking on “tagged” photos is the quickest way to get a sense of what someone looks like, who their friends are, and what they like doing. This means the more you’re tagged in other people’s photos, the more potential “click through” to your profile page. By collaborating, you are creating an organic and natural way to increase followers for the both of you.

Experiment with captions: Capture your followers attention with a beautiful picture and tie it into some brilliant storytelling. There is room for 2,000 characters so experiment with your captions and make every character count.  The most successful advertising campaigns are driven by a combination of images and powerful words.

• Experiment with shorter captions.
• Don’t forget to mention your bio link. Instagram prohibits the use of clickable links within your captions but you can change your bio link at any time and use a call to action to drive traffic to that link.

Promote your content on other networks: Letting your audience know across multiple channels you’ve got new (relevant) content is a great way to build your reach and encourage new people to discover what you’re sharing.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr all have cross-promotion buttons built-in that tie directly with Instagram when you’re posting a new image or video. But don’t let that limit you, you can engage your fans on virtually any platform to drive them toward your Instagram account. You need to be creative with your marketing.

Try using Periscope and Snapchat to inform your audience you’re on Instagram with more great tips, advice and more awesome content.

Be active: You need to be the one to initiate a conversion. If you want to boost your engagement – you’ll need to go for it.

#hashtags aren’t only for content distribution, you can use them to find relevant conversations too,

Add commenting to other people’s posts. The OP will receive a notification when you do. They’re likely to check your profile and if they like the content you’re sharing, as well as how you engage them, they’ll probably follow you back – especially if you followed them first.

This tactic can also trickle down to the OP’s followers. If they like the content you’re sharing, they’re likely to check your profile and follow you. This is a great way to build followers organically while improving your reach and engagement.

Tips & Guidelines

What’s Instagram worthy? In short, anything beautiful, awesome, hilarious, or amazing that evokes emotions including but not limited to: laughter, appreciation, jealousy, inspiration.

• Do not use pictures of food unless you are a food blogger. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: “Will this make someone hungry or sick??”
• Do not post pictures of overused cheesy quotes (e.g., “Keep Calm and ___” to snarky quotes that instruct someone to ___ ).
• Never post pictures of yourself that were published on a website with a watermark are never acceptable. Try pinning those picture to Pinterest.
• Do not post the “circle of feet” (or hands) picture. They aren’t worthy unless everyone has on awesome/unique shoes. Your audience will just assume you wanted to tag people but your friends are ugly. Post pictures of faces instead – they’ll get 38% more likes too!

Video: On June 20, 2013, Instagram released a 15 second video component to their platform as a direct competitor to Twitter’s Vine. The element gained some popularity in its first 24 hours with 5 million videos uploaded, but pictures still account for 96% of daily uploaded content.

The average photo receives an average of 37 interactions per 1,000 followers, while videos are behind with an average of 24 interactions per 1,000 followers. So, sticking with photos to get more comments and likes is a safe bet, however, it’s not to say adding video will lower those interactions. Using Instagram video will only diverse your content mix and strengthen your account in the long run.

Posting: According to TrackMaven, Thursdays are the most active day of posting, but Sundays (and Saturdays) are the most effective for engagement.

That doesn’t mean post during those times, you’ll need to do the research and find when your audience is most active. Adjust your editorial calendar to post around their times to maximize your engagement per post.

Instagram is still a 24/7 platform when it comes to posting photos, but video is another matter. Instagram videos are best posted during off-hours (9pm-8am EST) gaining on average 33.44 interactions. This might be because of the sound component for videos which pose a problem during the work-day or it could be that more people have time to watch videos after work.

All social networks have a right time and wrong time to post. When it comes to figuring out the best time of day or best day of the week to get the most out of your posting strategy, you’ll need to do the research and see when your audience interacts with you the most. By targeting your content to reach them during their times, you’ll not only get more comments and likes but more referral traffic too.

Frequency: Never post more than three photos per day and if you do – take the next day off. There are exceptions:

• Special events (i.e.: vacations, birthdays, events, etc.).
• #regram a picture a friend posted, but wait a few hours. No one wants to see the same image twice in a row on their feed.

Engagement: According to TrackMaven, you’ll receive 1 comment for every 33 likes. Keep this in mind when posting, it might take a while for the conversation start – but, you’re bound to get some of those billion likes that happen daily.

Likes: If your picture doesn’t generate more than eleven likes – take it down because you’re audience didn’t like. If you’re new, then hurry up and get a larger audience. If you’ve had your account for a while, maybe Instagram is the wrong network for you. It is never acceptable to like your own content – PERIOD.

Selfies: Do not post selfies unless:

• You are somewhere awesome.
• Need to showcase something work related.
• Next to Oprah.

And never use a selfie stick. If you’re unable to capture the desired angle, perhaps you should reconsider the picture.

Locations Matter: Before you post your great pic, consider your location. Not everyplace is acceptable for for posting. Avoid bathrooms, emergency rooms, police stations, funerals, any obnoxious or contemptible restaurant, or the gym (unless you’re working out with Oprah!).

Image cheat sheet:

Recommended Tools

Key Features:

• Non-followers – Quickly unfollow users that do not follow you back.
• Copy followers – Easily follow users who follow Instagram accounts that you specify.
• Fans – See a list of users that follow you, but you don’t follow back.
• Who unfollowed me – Get a list of users who have unfollowed you since you linked your Instagram account to Crowdfire.
• Who followed me – Get a list of any new followers you receive.

Key Features:

• Best Time To Post – Quickly see the best time to post based on post history and account engagement.
• Over 28 Analytical Data Points – See complete data on followers gained and lost, average and max post engagement, most engaging filters, and much more.
• Link Multiple Accounts – Link as many Instagram accounts as you would like and easily switch between their analytics.
• New Features Monthly – The Social Insight team is rolling out new features and tools in their app each month.

Key Features:

• Plan & Schedule Posts – Efficiently schedule photos and videos with customized captions from any device.
• Search & Repost – Simply search and post content from the web.
• Add Team Members – Add your whole team to latergramme and make managing posts a breeze.

Key Features:

• Bookmark Photos – Save photos and videos to quickly repost them later.
• Search – Find amazing photos and videos by user or hashtag
• One Tap Repost – Repost and automatically credit the content creator with a single tap.

Key Features:

• Conversion Tracking – Get amazing reports on conversions and clicks from your Instagram bio link.
• Inventory Management For E-Commerce – Deploy a ready-to-use cart that syncs with your Instagram product posts.

Key Features:

• Identify – SocialRank pulls in all of your followers and their profiles.
• Organize – Once your followers and their profiles are in SocialRank, you can organize your followers by sorting and filtering.
• Manage – Create custom lists of your followers, to save on SocialRank, export to Twitter, or export to a CSV file.

Key Features:

• Advanced Targeting – In-depth targeting options of your Instagram ads. These include, location, age, gender, interests, habits, income, and so on.
• Call To Action Button – Each sponsored post gets a dedicated call to action button that can point to any outside URL.
• Flexible Pricing – You can spend as little as $1 a day running ads. However the more you are willing to spend, the larger the post reach and exposure will be.

NEXT: Creating an Instagram Account