As of 2018, Instagram has catered to one billion active users monthly, making it one of the most valuable social media marketing tools to date. The numbers alone give your business greater imperative to create an effective content marketing scheme in this prominent social media platform.
Here are some quick hacks to aid you in your Instagram content planning:
Narrow down your goal
Increasing brand awareness, boosting engagement, and gaining more followers, these are some of the goals that you definitely want to tick off your checklist altogether. And while achieving all these goals simultaneously might seem advantageous, you can save more time planning your Instagram content if you aim for one objective at a time.
By choosing one goal for a pre-defined period of time, you can identify which daily activities to focus on. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness through your Instagram content, then you should focus on creating consistent and fresh posts on a regular basis. You can treat your content and posts as a kind of replacement for word-of-mouth advertising. As opposed to choosing the goal of increasing engagement where you might need to spend more time interacting with your audience in the comments section of your posts.
Have a hashtag (or two) in mind
Instagram blogs have, in a way, replaced some website blogs because of their ease of use and the immense user-base of the application. While you can create a website blog in less than an hour, you can create an Instagram “blog” in less than 5 minutes on the app itself.
Hashtags in the world of Instagram is comparable to your keywords in SEO. If you want a streamlined approach to your content planning, then you also need to be ready with the hashtags you want to associate your posts with. But before you go ahead and maximize the thirty-hashtag limit that Instagram has set per post, keep in mind that your brand and business will benefit more from smaller-volume ones. With that in mind, narrow down your chosen hashtags. Choose more specific hashtags that are closer to your brand’s line of interest and values. If you need a more professional approach, just as any online business would hire an SEO specialistoranalyst to run their link building campaign or overall SEO campaign, numerous companies that specialize in social media are available to help you plan, draft and execute your Instagram and social media content.
You can conduct your own hashtag research before planning your Instagram content. Get to know the trending hashtags and your competitor’s hashtags. You can also start your very own brand campaign hashtag. If you have a brick and mortar store for your business, you can even leverage the power of location tags and other location-related hashtags to associate your business to the geographical area being identified.
Once you see the turnout of users who follow your hashtag, you will have an idea on what other related content you can produce to further fuel that following. On the other hand, you can also revise and change the hashtags you target once you see that there are fewer app users that find them appealing. Either way, when you choose the hashtags you want for your posts, your content planning is made much more efficient as you go along the way.
Finally, to avoid running the risk of appearing unprofessional, take time to consider what you want to include in your Instagram feed. Not only will you benefit from an organized and planned routine, but you will have more time in your hands to get down and do other crucial matters for your business.
