Instagram Best Practices: What You Need to Grow Your Business

Instagram has grown far from being a fun way to share photos or just promote your brand. Instagram is a primary marketing tool for many brands across all industries due to its ever-changing features and interactive elements. 

While the basics of your Instagram marketing strategy should remain consistent, some of the tactics you'll need to achieve your goals are changing. 

There are several Instagram best practices to keep in mind if you want to fully utilize the platform's powerful brand marketing capabilities. In this post, you will learn about some of the best business practices for Instagram, and why Instagram is important for marketing.

There are several Instagram best practices that social media marketers should keep in mind for 2023. Whether you're starting from scratch or want to improve your brand's Instagram strategy, there are many practices to focus your Instagram marketing efforts on. 

Being active on Instagram is much more than just sharing images and videos from your company. Planning your strategy with Instagram's best practices in mind is essential for growing your user base. 

Below, you can find a list of Instagram's best practices for 2023.

Every successful social media marketing strategy starts with a strong foundation of specific, reachable goals.

Do you want to use Instagram to promote your brand or product sales? What you should post on Instagram will depend on what you hope to gain from it. Consider how feed postings, reels, and stories may support your actual business goals.

To promote, advertise, and engage on Instagram, you need to have a thorough understanding of the audience you are targeting and the type of business you run. Everything you do on Instagram is driven by your audience, so it only makes sense to provide material that is catered to their preferences and interests. 

In order to do that, you should first understand who your audience is and the kind of content they enjoy. Start by examining the demographics of your target audience. What are the average ages and genders of your followers? Where are they geographically? 

Consider your knowledge of your audience while evaluating the performance of your existing material. You may learn more about what your followers are interested in by keeping track of the posts that do well. Keep an eye on what your audience is interested in so you can give them more of it.

Instagram is a platform where artistic expression and creativity are valued, and compelling content generally prevails. To get the most response, make sure your posts are related to hot topics of conversation.

An excellent way to find new creative content and give back to your community is by hiring local talent. There are many young, creative people in every city who are simply waiting to be discovered. At a local event, seek out a photographer or artist and give them a chance to provide original content for your company's upcoming marketing initiative. 

Making Instagram contests is another entertaining approach to producing new material. Offer your products as a reward to your followers who contribute creative content linked to your brand. Alternatively, you can post an image and ask that users tag a friend. This increases interaction while also exposing your business to a larger audience.

Maintaining a regular posting schedule is one of the most important practices for Instagram. You need to understand the Instagram actions of your target audience in order to choose the best time to post for your account.

Calendars for content enable you to curate content according to all key events, holidays, and marketing promotions. A clear approach and time savings are provided by stating what and when to post. Your calendar serves as the ultimate planning tool. If you want to maintain consistency, you must stick to every date on your calendar.  Use an Instagram scheduling tool as part of your process to stay on schedule with your posts.

In terms of how often you should post daily on Instagram, it is recommended that you post at least four times per week on Instagram. 1-2 postings each day, according to studies. This increases attention and keeps your feed current and at the top. 

However, the ideal Instagram posting period can change based on the sector. Dive into Instagram Insights to discover when your audience is most engaged with your page in order to truly know what works best for your brand.

Once you are aware of the ideal posting times, you can start preparing your material in advance and scheduling it to go public at the scheduled time.  As a result, you can maximize the use of your creative resources by producing high-quality content in set blocks of time. 

Keep in mind that Instagram is not a broadcasting platform. It is a social network. This suggests that your followers are looking for a sense of community and reciprocated conversation. You must engage yourself if you want others to interact with your Instagram content.

Giveaways and competitions are still important engagement boosters. Contests are a tried-and-true technique to get people to interact with your page.

By making your audience feel challenged and offering them a reward, you may get their attention and boost content engagement. You can post a game or challenge on your feed or story and ask your followers to engage. The challenge doesn't have to be difficult, but it should capture and maintain user attention. 

Try publishing an interesting image that represents your brand and then requesting "caption contest" entries from your followers.

Set competition deadlines in order to motivate participants to act right away, and then share your favorite caption with your followers. The chance to be acknowledged for their work is a very powerful motivator.

As you increase the number of contestants, make sure the award is worthwhile. 

First, you should actually focus on the style of your brand. Once your brand design is established, you can utilize it to inform each and every photo you share. Answering the following questions can help you determine your brand's style:

• What two to four primary colors best represent the business you run?
  
• Which tone and mood best capture your brand? Is it traditional and impartial, open and light, melancholy and dark, bold and vibrant, etc.?
  

Now, let your responses serve as the direction for each Instagram post. Keep your brand's colors and aesthetic in mind at all times. Also, try to put one of the many filters on the images and post unretouched candid photos. Keep your visual feed constant by sticking to 2 or 3 editing options.

You can convey a consistent and uplifting brand to your Instagram followers by properly designing and planning.

Weekly purchases on Instagram are made by nearly half of all users. The average increase in revenue for brands that tag their items in feed articles is 37%. Additionally, brands that tag two or more articles each day find a 117% increase in sales.

Instagram Shopping lets clients choose and buy things conveniently from the app rather than sending them from your Instagram account to your website. Tag across media types, including advertising, stories, posts, and reels. 61 percent of weekly IG users claim that advertising with tags encourages them to shop.

Yes, the image's quality will catch the viewer's eye and cause them to pause their scrolling. However, you can't discount the influence captions have on Instagram. Instagram captions enable users to relate to your business and discover your values.

One of the best practices for Instagram posts is to write engaging captions since they help the Instagram algorithm grasp the subject of your post and improve your ranking. When someone searches for content on the platform, one of the places the algorithm looks for pertinent keywords is in captions.

Your Instagram posts will appear at the top of the stream if you choose the most suitable and relevant hashtags. Making use of industry-specific hashtags increases the visibility and impact of your postings. 

When creating hashtags, there are a number of dos and don'ts that you must stick to. The main caution when choosing hashtags is to choose ones with only a few thousand posts instead of those with millions of posts.

If you use generic hashtags like #Christmas your post will be competing with many others. Instead, experiment with combining current trends with niche hashtags to create the most pertinent phrase to engage your Instagram audience. 

Additionally, once your company is well-known, strive to develop a branded hashtag. By using a branded hashtag, you can increase user engagement and make your company more visible.

You only have 150 characters in your Instagram bio to introduce yourself to users and explain why they should follow you. But you can make this more substantial by filling out every area on your Instagram profile, including the ones for your profile photo, address, a link, and account category.  

It's easier for people to locate you and understand what your business stands for when you use the appropriate category in your Instagram profile.

Additionally, it's a crucial component for improved tagging. Enhanced tagging displays each account's participation in a post when you work with other businesses or creators, along with the account category.

Also, consider applying for Instagram verification to earn the blue check and increase the legitimacy of your account. Instagram verification significantly improves the professional appearance of your company account.

Without considering data, we cannot discuss best practices for Instagram. Analyzing the data behind your Instagram post is the only way to know what your audience interacts with and how to differentiate yourself from the competition. You can utilize Instagram analytics to find out the outcomes of your measurements. The built-in Instagram analytics tool offers some useful data to get you going.

Instagram analytics have charts and graphs that are easy to download and export, making it simple to determine what is and is not working. Additionally, you can compare your Instagram efforts to those made on other social media networks. 

By monitoring your best-performing pieces, you can discover a lot about what resonates with your audience. Knowing what works can help you spot chances that your rivals might be overlooking. Maybe a video was among your most popular posts. 

It's crucial to have specific goals when evaluating the performance of your content. Aiming for a higher than average engagement rate or a 50% growth in followers over the course of the following year are both viable options. Whatever you decide to do, be sure it is measurable and that you have the means to evaluate the data effectively.

It takes time to gain a following. However, you'll notice a noticeable boost if you post often  using these Instagram content best practices. 

It seems as though on Instagram things are constantly changing. The social media platform with the most love for advertising still remains Instagram. Brands and influencers are using Instagram for ideal business practices due to the platform's exponential growth.

Instagram has a 0.83% overall engagement rate, which is significantly greater than that of other platforms. Like other social media sites, Instagram serves as a point of contact for consumers. 

Its high level of engagement makes it the go-to promotional tool for companies trying to increase brand exposure and lead generation. It enables you to interact with clients directly, start conversations, develop relationships based on trust, and expand your network. 

This is the perfect time to focus more on creating Instagram marketing strategies and making the most of it because of its expanding user base and engagement rates. 

Instagram is still a great tool for marketers in many business sectors. The whole point of Instagram is to uncover beauty in the mundane. Even their official website exhorts you to create original and captivating content to distinguish your brand.

And occasionally, all it takes is figuring out what works for you. As with any marketing approach, concentrate your efforts on what is producing results. You'll succeed more if you optimize more.