Instagram is virtually at a J-curve of user acquisition and growth. Since there has been more inclination and acquaintance among the users for social media engagements, it is growing to connect with people more persuasively than any other platform.
Even the much-celebrated parent project Facebook has lost its active user-time and traffic scores to the engrossing photo sharing and networking app in the past couple of years. As this platform proves to be much more responsive, uncluttered, and lucrative for users and businesses lately.
Anyone who is looking to target the most involved and receptive users around should explore Instagram planning the right content around it.
So, what you can do here to get the most response from your Instagram promotions and how to create a staunch content plan that drives results. Here are the best practices to get the most value and better conversions with Instagram:
Shape your content-mix
The first thing to get you the head-start here is having a content-mix plan. And this is as much needed as you would need marketing mix to formulate and execute traditional campaign drives as a conventional marketer. This gets them to cover all the fundamental plans of action, tactical resources, and communication drives, within a consolidated marketing framework that gets them to attain their conversion goals rightly.
So, with content-mix, you get to create the outline and bind the whole tale of the campaign together in an inclusive, cohesive, and impactful communication targeting your audience.
Here, there’s an expert rule that you can follow while drafting your plan.
Split your content pieces into 9 weekly engagement blocks that get you a whole perspective of coordinated communication that is strategically built to best work with your audiences. Here, the ideal practice is to go by the 4:3:2 rule.
1. Four posts should be creating some value for your customers. Some general insights, tips, helpful guides, around your products or services.
2. Three posts to keep them interacting with you. Throw quizzes, contests, opinion polls, or greetings.
3. Two posts should be around promotions and sales. Flash your product to them. Offer discounts. Show customer stories. Promote plans.
This content-mix would help you comprehensively establish a better reach and connection with your audiences.
Use relevant hashtags
For your content to reach the most users and with the maximum impact you need to follow the conventions of promotions on Instagram. One of the most followed techniques used on the platform to get more visibility and reach across the platform are hashtags.
Example of a Hashtag: For this post #InstagramTips #ContentPlan can be relevant hashtags.
Using the hashtags selectively and rightly makes your content more discoverable and reachable by your audiences. There are different tactics you can apply here to get the most of the content hashtags.
Trending Hashtags: The hashtags that are built using the catchphrases that are in current buzz. These can be anything around different trending ideas and practices.
General Hashtags: These are the hashtags that have the most commonly used words that are much popular with people. Something that takes expressions about love, motivation, or greetings.
Niche Hashtags: These are the domain-specific keywords that use the industry-related terms to help you cover the keywords that are targeted towards your niche.
You can use up to 30 hashtags for a post. However, five to nine hashtags get you enough coverage and are considered ideal for any post.
While you attempt hashtags do proper research. For better results try tools like Seekmetrics or Hashtagify.
Be Creative with your Images and Captions
Instagram is a lot around creativity. If you are not doing something appealing and interesting you will be lagged on this platform.
When you are planning your content on Instagram, make sure you take up something that is out of the clutter and gets your post a high creative value.
Work on creative ideas to design your posts, make your captions intriguing, align it with some rare though or great humor, get it high on interactivity, and make it aesthetically beautiful. Aim at grabbing the attention of your audience with something stirring and unique.
This is going to get you an advantage over other posts and will steadily work towards creating a loyal audience base for your profile. And this will go long in proving your relevance as a progressive and compelling brand on an edgy and discerning platform like Instagram.
Manage Your Posting Time
The time you post your Instagram stories and feeds has a lot to do with their performance. You need to know when the audience is most active and what time they are ready to respond and engage with your posts.
As per a SproutSocial report, these are the best and the worst times to post on Instagram:
Best Time – Wednesday at 11 AM. And Friday between 10 to 11 AM.
Most Consistent Engagement – Tuesday through Friday. 10 AM to 3 AM.
Worst Day – Sunday.
Least Engagement – 11 PM to 3 AM any day.
You can see a slight variation in these timings depending on the niche or category of service. Also, the location and the target age group can get you to see a different response with the same timings.
You can have a better idea by looking through Instagram analytics. With this, you can get the closest perspective of the time that best serves your case. Just tap the bar-chart icon placed on the top right of your profile and you will go to the Instagram Insights. Select the Audience tab and check with the Followers to get your user engagement and performance metrics. This will let you know better about the time that best works in your situation.
To Conclude
These are the standard practices around planning your content to get the most response from Instagram promotions. Just treat them right and they will take care of you with getting the desired benefits from the most empowering social media platform – that gets highly rewarding when the content gets right. Here, taking help from expert digital marketing company providing Instagram marketing services can get you to achieve assured results with it!