Is your Instagram looking repetitive and tired? Are you struggling to come up with new ideas for your Instagram marketing strategy? Instagram marketing is fast-paced, especially as more new features are released, and changing your strategy is essential to stay relevant on the platform. But don’t worry, Giraffe is here to help with that! In this guide, we’ll go through 10 ways to refresh your Instagram marketing strategy and grow your account.
1. Conduct an audit of your competitors on Instagram
To refresh your Instagram strategy, it’s a good idea to conduct an audit of your competitors to gauge what is working and not working in your industry on Instagram. Performing an Instagram competitor analysis helps you “benchmark your performance against the industry standard, stay on top of industry trends, improve your Instagram content strategy, and identify opportunities to outperform your competitors.” As you use your competitor analysis as a benchmark for your own audit, you can more easily spot industry trends, gaps in your current content, and areas you may need to improve upon.
2. Analyse your current results
Once you’ve performed a competitor analysis and have the data you need, you can then perform an audit of your own Instagram channel to analyse your current performance. Choose a timeframe that suits your business — we recommend looking at the past 3 months if you post frequently or 6 months if you post less often, to make sure you have a sufficient dataset.
Start by checking the information available on your Instagram profile in terms of your bio, name/title, contact information, profile photo, the linked website, and more. Check out our Instagram bio below – we’ve clearly labelled that we’re a Social Media Agency, put relevant bullet points (using emojis) in our bio, are contactable, our logo is our profile photo, and we have a taplink in the website section to share multiple links in just one tap.
Once you’ve updated your profile, it’s time to check out how your content is performing. Look at your insights within your chosen timeframe and try to find patterns with what content of yours is performing well, and what content is falling short. Implement more of what performs well into your Instagram strategy going forward, and sponsor/promote the best-performing posts to boost them even more. For content that falls short, consider whether this content is necessary for your business or if it can be changed up. If it can be changed, great! If not, experiment with elements such as captions and hashtags to improve the performance of low-performing post types.
3. Create a cohesive grid theme
Your Instagram feed or ‘grid’ is the main thing to see when users visit your profile. Make sure you have a cohesive grid theme, with the same colours, fonts, and photo style for each post. Uploadingjumbled and mismatched content will hurt your brand awareness as new users won’t stick around on a profile that isn’t aesthetically pleasing or cohesive. Consistency is key when it comes to Instagram posts as it is such a visual app. However, this does not mean you should post identical photos! Create templates to use for different post types and purposes (i.e. videos, quotes, testimonials, educational images, promotional offers, etc) to maintain consistent branding.
4. Produce a variety of content
Are you only posted single images to your Instagram feed? This tip is for you. Posting a variety of content across your social media channels is important, especially on Instagram. Capitalise on as many Instagram features/content types – and there are a lot of them – that you can with your budget, time, and target audience’s preferences.
Your Instagram marketing strategy should include feed posts (including static images, videos, carousels) on top of other formats such as Reels, Stories, Live, IGTV, Guides, and Highlights. Not all of these may be relevant to you, IGTV for example is only suitable for brands sharing longer video content, however, you should experiment with as many as possible. Use your Instagram audit to help inform which content types to focus on.
5. Devote time to daily community management
Community is key on Instagram. Make sure that you devote time every day to community management, engaging with other Instagram accounts. This includes replying to all comments you receive on your posts, liking and commenting on other accounts’ posts (within your industry or target audience), and following new accounts. The goal here is to build a relationship with your audience and other relevant businesses.
6. Repurpose your existing content
If you’re stuck for content ideas, take stock of content you have created for other channels. Does your website have a blog? Do you work with influencers? Have you recently created a promotional video? Do your customers tag you in product photos? These are all super engaging sources of content to repurpose and repost on your Instagram account (just make sure you have permission to repost any user-generated and influencer content!) One blog post could create a series of Instagram posts and/or stories, and an ongoing influencer partnership means new content being frequently created.
You can also repurpose within Instagram by posting Reels videos to both your Reels feed and your main feed, expanding your Reels’ reach, and saving Stories as Highlights on your profile for users to view again and again.
7. Create content in advance and schedule it in
Creating content in advance helps you stay on top of content creation, minimise posting gaps, and stay organised for seasonal trends and events. If you tie your Instagram profile to your Facebook page, you can schedule Instagram posts from within Facebook Business Suite. Don’t have a Facebook page? You can still schedule posts using a variety of third-party social media management tools. This will significantly free up your time to focus on other channels!
8. Humanise your Instagram content
In most industries, your audience wants to see the human(s) behind the business, even in B2B. The soaring rise of influencer marketing especially supports the idea that marketing is turning very personal and relationship-focused. Ultimately, you’re trying to connect with other people and the more you can personalise and humanise your brand on social media, the better. Real-time marketing content types on Instagram, such as Stories and Live Videos, help you achieve this goal and share more behind-the-scenes, personalised content with your followers.
9. Conduct hashtag research often
When was the last time you updated your keyword strategy on Instagram? If you’ve been using the same hashtags for a while now, especially if you use the same ones on every post, it’s time to rethink your keyword strategy. Conducting an audit of your competitors’ accounts will hopefully have helped you discover new hashtags being used in your industry and by your target audience. You want to have a mix of high volume and low volume hashtags in your repertoire, and it’s important to keep on top of which hashtags are still being used frequently and which are dying out.
10. Keep up to date on new Instagram features and insights
If you feel out of the loop with new features for not only Instagram but all social media platforms, you’re not alone. With the importance of social media marketing nowadays, it’s key to stay on top of the latest news and updates for social media, but you need to know where to look!
For Instagram, we highly recommend following the Head of Instagram’s (Adam Mosseri) on the platform at @mosseri, as well as checking the Instagram blog for announcements and news. Instagram is becoming more and more transparent in sharing how the platform works (and thus how to succeed with it) with users. This is a fantastic chance to learn new things about the platform, right from the horse’s mouth, and put them into action in your Instagram marketing strategy.
Besides this, it’s important to experiment with Instagram yourself to discover new features and ways of doing things. Try out the features you’ve never used or that you see other accounts using but never had the confidence – especially ones that are hot in your niche. For example, if all your competitors are using Reels and doing well, it is worth trying out Reels for your brand and finding ways to make Reels your own.
If you feel like you’re out of your depth with growing your Instagram account, it may be time to get in touch with Giraffe to find out how we can help you.
