Instagram is the playground for both businesses and consumers. If you’re serious about reaching your target audience, then this is the…
How to Create High Quality Engaging Content for Instagram
Instagram is the playground for both businesses and consumers. If you’re serious about reaching your target audience, then this is the place you need to be.
There are currently 1.3 billion monthly active Instagram users. And about 71% of businesses use this platform to connect with their customer base.
But how effective is Instagram for brands? Well, 80% of Instagrammers are following brands. And more than 120 million of them visit brand websites, obtain directions to businesses, DM and email companies, and call businesses.
Needless to say, Instagram users are very friendly with brands and are looking to interact with the ones that are engaging, interesting, and relevant.
If you can display these qualities, then you have a higher chance of getting them to not only follow your page, but convert as well.
Let’s see how you can create high quality content that engages your Instagram followers.
Keep it Interesting By Varying Your Content Formats
Instagram is versatile when it comes to the types of content you can publish on its platform. Make use of several to keep your content fresh and engaging.
For instance, one day, you can upload high-quality photos of your products in use by models, then the next day a funny GIF that’s relevant to your brand.
Credit: instagram.com/stylelobster
Throughout the week, you can continue mixing up your content formats. Your options include:
- Videos
- Stories
- Slideshows / Carousels
- Photographs
- GIFs
You don’t have to use them all, but definitely test out the different types to see which get the best response.
The benefit from mixing it up is to ensure your content appeals to the different groups of followers you’re targeting.
Don’t Just Post Content — Share Experiences!
When social media users are browsing through their feed, they’re drawn to other people’s lives. This can be their vacations, family time, meals or recipes, stories, and so on.
Offering an experience can make the different between content that’s boring and content that’s engaging. For example, you can take a snapshot of a meal you’re getting ready to eat, but by including a caption with the recipe and details about the occasion makes it a bit more interesting.
Then include a slideshow of photos of you and your family (or even homeless people at the shelter) enjoying the meal and you transform the post into something interactive.
The key is to be genuine with the experiences you share — don’t try so hard to create them. Naturally incorporate your life’s events into your content strategy and it’ll entice Instagram users to learn more about your brand.
There are many ways you can share experiences with your audience — here’s an example of how Airbnb does it:
Credit: Instagram.com/airbnb
It shows an intriguing image that shares an experience about one of its hosts. It’s an excellent way to capture the attention of followers.
The post received nearly 20,000 likes and thousands of comments.
Learn Your Audience and Deliver On their Expectations
Instagram marketing is just like any other form of digital marketing. It requires careful research to learn everything possible about your target audience.
In this case, you want to learn what it is your followers are looking for from your brand. This way, you can continue delivering on their expectations.
For example, your followers may enjoy your Stories showcasing your wild adventures on world travels. Or maybe they enjoy your comedic GIFs about relationships or family life.
If you have themes you’re using to connect with your followers, then pay attention to which perform the best. The idea is to be consistent with your content — if your theme is working, switching it up could be detrimental to your Instagram status.
Again, Airbnb does an amazing job of providing a consistent flow of content that engages its followers. If you look at their page, it’s filled with gorgeous photographs of unique homes in locations all around the world.
But they don’t just show off properties, they tell stories and experiences behind them.
Credit: instagram.com/airbnb
Crowdsource Your Content
Coming up with your own content is time-consuming, so why not take a load off by crowdsourcing your content? You can do this by implementing user-generated content into your strategy.
One way to go about this is to find and share content posted by other brands. Or you can share content that your followers create specifically for your brand.
For instance, you can put out a contest or simply ask followers to publish content with your product or service as the theme.
All you need to do is come up with this theme and a clever hashtag to go along with the posts. This way, it’s easy to find the content to repost to your page.
And maybe — just maybe — some of the posts will catch steam and go viral. Here’s a great example of how Lenovo did this with their #ihackedlife campaign.
Credit: instagram.com/lenovo
Once your followers start publishing content, you can search through it all to find the highest quality, relevant posts to share with everyone. Crowdsourcing content gets your followers to interact with your brand and by choosing their content to repost, it helps to instill gratitude and loyalty.
Boosting the Engagement for Your Instagram Account
Is your Instagram account a little lonely? It’s not entirely your fault — after all, there are over a billion users on Instagram, so it’s easy to get lost in the sea of content.
But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and make your brand page stand out. By focusing on delivering engaging content, you can boost your visibility and potentially earn more followers.
Everyone wins in this case — your brand gets more engagement and Instagrammers get amazing content.
Give the above tips a try to see if you can integrate them into a successful strategy. Let us know what works for you and what didn’t!