Instagram's 'Meta Game' 2017 and how to succeed
Introduction
I first joined Instagram in January 2011, 3 months after the app first launched. Over the past 5 years I have used the platform to help connect with customers through several different businesses. This guide is based on my experiences, my failures and my successes. Despite the power of Instagram, due to an ever growing user base it’s more important than ever to have a clear strategy to maximise your success. Whether you’re looking to promote your product or personal brand, deploying the information in this guide will help to increase your growth rate while maintaining highly engaged followers. So let’s get started!
Firstly a quick note on numbers. A big mistake is putting too much emphasis on follower count, it’s a quality over quantity game. Your main aim is to grow on quality and quantity will follow, you’d be surprised how powerful a community of just a couple of hundred, well engaged followers can be.
Image Quality
The quality of your images is one of the biggest variables to success on Instagram. In this context ‘quality’ refers to the image content itself, not specifically it’s pixel count. Native discovery through the use of hashtags will be the biggest contributor to your follower count, so you’re aiming for arresting and intriguing imagery to grab users attention. That being said it doesn’t necessarily mean every image has to be an epic shot from the top of a mountain with the morning sun just breaking the horizon. But on the opposite end of the scale, a blurry iPhone image isn’t engaging enough to warrant a like or share.
By its very nature ‘quality’ is a hard metric to measure. The best advice I can give to increasing the quality of your images is to be subjective, be highly critical of your own content and take a very objective look at your account as a whole. Same input, same outcome. If you feel you’re not getting the results you’d like, make changes!
Additionally, at any time a snapshot of the last 9 images on your profile should represent your business, what you do, who you are and your values. This is important for anyone who lands on your profile page
Let’s get practical. I’m going to use the example of a jewellery business throughout this guide to give you some real world perspective on various topics and ideas.
Example: The jewellery business may use static product shots on their website to great affect, showing details and sizing. On Instagram however showcasing their products in the real world, being warn and enjoyed is far more effective.
Engage with the community
For one of my businesses, with each order that shipped we included a postcard asking people to share images of our products on Instagram with a chance to win a $30 gift card. Every person that shared an image we made sure to not just like it and move on, but to check out their feed and comment with something specific to them.
How did the job offer go?, Congratulations on the new house, We hope you had a great time on your vacation etc. Just make them aware that you care, like truly care!
Remember Instagram is a Social Network too and you should focus a huge amount of time and energy into being part of the community you’re representing.
You should like, comment and share without any expectation of a reward. You have an advantage the larger companies can’t afford, and that’s your time and patience. Being thoughtful doesn’t scale for big businesses but you can really stand out being part of the conversation.
Discover Page
Instagram’s algorithm was introduced in early 2016 which means timeline posts appear out of chronological order, the new sorting system displays posts which are deemed most relevant first. This caused a stir among the platforms users but has also lead to one of the most powerful trend research tools in social. The discover tab (magnifying glass icon) utilises the algorithm in the same way to display content that has been most shared, most liked and most commented. This is where I spend 90% of my time on the app. It is a great resource to see what is most popular among your followers as well as the hash tags you use regularly. Depending on your business these trends may not affect your product/service directly but they can still be used to adjust the type of content you post.
Example: If Autumn themed images are grabbing peoples attention, the jewellery business could capture images of their products in some crispy golden leaves.
Again this is something that is specific to your business and the market it falls into, but by being observant to the content shifts will help you to maximise your effectiveness with your posts or changes in the products themselves.
Video
Video is gaining a lot of traction right now. You’ll notice full width videos showing up in the discover tab and with the increase to 60 second clips it’s a better time than ever to start sharing more video. If you have a YouTube channel that compliments your business, Instagram is a great place to post a teaser. This not only gains yo exposure with your audience, but when used in conjunction with long tail hashtags (more on that later) can gain you additional reach.
It’s also worth noting that by default sound is off when a user lands on a video, so adding subtitles is a great way to increase retention. This is something that’s very popular right now with Facebook video and has a dramatic effect on average watch time.
As with images, quality is super important here. Make sure your video’s are creative, engaging and bring value to you users.
Example: The same Jewellery business could create video’s on interesting ways to store their pieces or share tips on the best cleaning methods.
Multiple Daily Posts
The algorithm has had a negative impact on the effectiveness of any one post you make. To maximise your reach the current meta is to post several times a day. We like selecting 3 posts spread out along the day (morning, lunch, early evening) each covering a different aspect of the business.
Example: 1 Product shot image - 1 Behind the scenes image - 1 User submitted image.
It’s important to keep a track on which posts/times are most effective. There are plenty of sites offering statistics on which time or day is most effective. Alternatively if you link your IG account to Facebook you can opt for a business profile and get in app analytics.
For one of my businesses Wednesday’s at 5pm is more effective than Monday’s at 8am. These times and days may be different for you and your businesses based on the market you’re in and the time zone. The important thing is to test, test, test. If you’re creating a new account you’ll need to get at least 10-20 images posted very quickly so this is a great opportunity to try different posting times.
Long Tail Hashtags
Instagram has some of the best native discovery of any social platform, and it all revolves around the use of hashtags. However, as of Dec 2016 the app had over 500 million users so you need an effective way to cut through the noise and the best way to do that is with Long Tail Hashtags.
Dog has over 110 million posts, germanshepherd has 4.7 million and germanshepherdpuppy has just over 200k posts. Long tail hashtags are essential not only to avoid getting lost in the noise but also to better target your audience. Using the discover feature mentioned above will allow you to see which hashtags are proving most popular within your network. We suggest using between 10 - 20 long tail hashtags on any one post which not only covers the content of the image but also the position of your business in the market place.
Example: Using location names in hash tags is a great way to gain local awareness and reduce the number of competitors that may be using similar key words.
Example: CustomJewelleryToronto, JewelleryForSale, AutumnJewellery, SummerAccessories, GoldJewellery
In terms of hash tag efficiencies i’d try to select tags that have 50,000 or less posts. You can experiment with larger tags around 100-200k but your post will very quickly get flooded with anything larger than that. What you want is a well engaged tag that has a smaller number of users, that way you’re post has a greater chance of being seen.
Sales Platform
This may not apply to you and your business just yet but we feel its worth mentioning as the more this trend grows in popularity, Instagram may make an effort to formalise selling through its platform as a way to diversify its revenue stream. The sneaker collection movement is an interesting economic case study with Adidas and Nike using limited edition sneaker launches (often referred to as Drops) to build brand awareness and promote its more mainstream products. This has lead to a huge growth resellers creating sneaker related accounts and using the platform to directly sell to their customers (This is mostly done through direct messaging and the exchange of PayPal details). Although you may not want to utilise this approach it is well worth considering using the platform to share offers and exclusive discounts with your audience as a pre curser to using Instagram as a direct sales method.
Bio
Your profile bio is the only place on Instagram where URL links work. If you post a link in the description section of an image, users will no be able to click on it. It’s important to utilise this to your advantage when promoting an offer or a new product addition. The most common method is to use ‘Link in Bio’ within the image description. Be sure to have a strict time limit when using the URL section to link to anything other than your website. This helps to reduce any potential new customers landing on your profile and not being able to easily get to your website.
The text section of the bio is utilised in many ways, but I suggest either a quick summery of your business or your mission statement. Careful consideration should be spent on what to put here as there is a 150 character limit, but In just a few lines of text you can add a lot of context.
IG Stories
If you don’t already have a snapchat account but have a following on Instagram, stories is perfect! One of snapchat’s biggest problems is the lack of native discovery, meaning you have to deploy methods to promote and grow your followers using other platforms. With IG Stories you can easy share content with your current followers and use this feature to further add value. Instagram was adopted early by professional and aspiring photographers leading to a very high content quality level, which in tern lead to a similarly high level of expectation from casual users. Stories allow you to share more relaxed content without the fear of disturbing the quality of your main feed.
Example: You can use stories to create more context with behind the scenes video, meet the team segments or updates on stock level.
The key to stories success is being authentic, don’t over produce your story content. Also if you’re going to use stories make sure you do so daily. Users react well to regular uploads and gives you a greater likelihood of showing up in their top 4 stories that appear on the homepage.
5 pieces of content each day is optimal here. If you flood stories too much users will either tap through it quickly or simply get bored and close your story.
Planning
I didn’t use a content plan for the first several years of running business accounts, and would just snap and upload randomly. As a small/medium business owner you need to think like a multi national company that has a full time social media team. I like to have a week of content scheduled, and although that may sound daunting the key is to be efficient.
Example If the Jewellery business has an autumn themed product shoot, they may generate 5-6 good images. These images can then be spread throughout the next few days or weeks.
Seasons and Holidays are easy to plan for, Halloween/Christmas themed content is always worth creating and can be planned and shot in advance. Depending on your sector there may be other note worthy events throughout the calendar that you can plan for. For example: A big conference, a sporting event, an awareness day.
There are several apps that allow you to schedule your uploads, such as ScheduGram, Latergramme or Instapult.
Thank you for reading! I wish you the very best success with your business on Instagram.