How Do I Use Instagram for Marketing?
To help you make the most of Instagram for marketing, we’ve gathered insights from marketing professionals and business leaders. From balancing profile content and stories to automating posts for consistency, discover 11 expert tips on how to use Instagram for marketing effectively, shared by CEOs, founders, and marketing managers.
- Balance Profile Content and Stories
- Utilize Instagram Stories Strategy
- Leverage Instagram Reels for Engagement
- Post During Peak Audience Hours
- Create Effective Sponsored Ads
- Maintain Coherence in Messaging
- Repost User-Generated Content
- Use Pinned Posts Strategically
- Collaborate With Influencers
- Focus On Quality and Relevance
- Automate Posts for Consistency
Balance Profile Content and Stories
One of the worst mistakes many companies make on their Instagram accounts is that they rarely find a good balance between posting content directly on their profile or in the Stories.
Usually, it’s one or the other, which may work only once you’ve already amassed a lot of followers. You want your profile to be visible, and that means you ought to use everything in your Instagram arsenal, not limit yourself.
Upload photos or graphics, post content in Stories, and save some of them so they remain on your profile.
Natalia Brzezinska
Marketing and Outreach Manager, ePassportPhoto
Utilize Instagram Stories Strategy
Marketing products on Instagram can be a challenging and competitive task. To overcome this, I suggest using Insta stories as a strategy.
These features enable users to share photos that disappear after 24 hours. The stories are at the top of a user’s feed and can be viewed by their followers and selected groups.
Users can add creative elements to their Instagram Stories, such as text, stickers, filters, music, etc. They can also use unique features like polls, quizzes, and question stickers to interact with their followers and receive feedback.
Instagram Stories can be an essential marketing tool for businesses to increase brand awareness, showcase new products, and engage with customers.
Overall, using Instagram stories offers a fun and innovative approach to sharing content on the platform and connecting with others.
Peter Bryla
Community Manager, ResumeLab
Leverage Instagram Reels for Engagement
Instagram offers small brands the chance to interact with a highly engaged audience if they can leverage the power of reels on the platform. It is crucial to develop a reel creation strategy that enables you to churn out 3-5 reels weekly to keep your audience engaged and help you achieve your overall marketing goals.
Liam Liu
Co-founder and CMO, ParcelPanel
Post During Peak Audience Hours
Posting at the right time is key to successful Instagram marketing. To generate the most engagement, one must post when their audience is most active.
By posting when everyone is online, your new post is guaranteed to be at the top of the feed over older ones. For most Instagram users, peak hours are usually between 9 and 11 in the morning.
Alexandre Robicquet
Co-founder and CEO, Crossing Minds
Create Effective Sponsored Ads
Advertising on Instagram can be a great way to reach a large audience and promote your products or services. You can create sponsored ads for users’ feeds or stories to get started. When creating your ad, choose eye-catching visuals and write an interesting caption that clearly states the benefits of your product or service.
Target the right audience by using demographics, interests, and behaviors. For example, if you’re selling handmade jewelry, you might target women interested in fashion and have recently engaged with similar accounts.
Using Instagram for marketing, you can reach potential customers where they spend time and increase brand awareness. Just remember to track and adjust your ad campaign regularly to ensure it’s delivering the best results possible.
Saneem Ahearn
VP of Marketing, Colorescience
Maintain Coherence in Messaging
Whether it’s visuals or your core message, to make your Instagram feed attractive, it’s crucial to be coherent with your approach. Therefore, it’s best to plan out your strategy to the very last detail—from fonts and colors to your communication strategy, it’s best if everything is uniform and coherent so that your audience resonates with your campaign and knows who you are at your core.
Effie Asafu-Adjaye
Founder, Beautiful Sparks
Repost User-Generated Content
Instagram offers our company a unique type of social media marketing, promoting our product and overall brand identity to a broad audience. This tool is ideal for our video and photo content and advertising. We have followed our success on this platform closely and, in doing so, learned several practices that have proven beneficial.
One tip for using Instagram for marketing is to watch out for customers who tag you and your product. These are often the best people to reach out to and request to re-post their videos. Showing your product being used by actual customers and doing real things can be a big draw for people on the Instagram platform. We have found that most people are flattered and would love for you to share.
Ashley Kenny
Founder, Heirloom
Use Pinned Posts Strategically
Instagram, like other platforms, has a feature that allows you to pin certain posts to the top of your feed. This feature enables your audience to find certain content that is usually related to FAQs, business hours, or other important information pertaining to your business.
Pinned posts are a dominant strategy for marketing via Instagram because it allows consumers to find posts with ease instead of having to scroll through your whole page.
It also allows you to highlight certain things that can help to increase sales, for example. The first posts on your page are the ones people are more apt to click on, so it can be a great way to increase coverage for a new product, service, or new information.
Daniel Climans
Senior Manager, Digital Marketing and Partnerships, Sticker You
Collaborate With Influencers
A social media user who has a large following and the ability to influence others is known as an influencer. Influencers are not just models or brand ambassadors who assist brands in reaching a larger audience. Companies often base the price of their service on a variety of elements, like their audience, reputation, etc.
Almost all brands, from well-known giants like Audi to start-ups, collaborate with influencers. Nearly every platform has influencers, but Instagram is thought to be the Mecca of influencers because it is credited with creating the field.
Alex Constantinou
Managing Director, The Fitness Circle
Focus On Quality and Relevance
As a visual platform, Instagram allows you to post images and videos that can share your message and connect with potential customers. Use high-quality photos and videos that apply to your brand and consider creating content that is entertaining, as this will help to create an emotional connection with your audience.
Try to focus on quality over quantity and make sure you post consistently to keep your followers engaged. You can also get creative with hashtags, stories, and other features that will help your content reach more people.
Michael Dadashi
CEO, Infinite Recovery
Automate Posts for Consistency
Automated posts on Instagram are a really helpful marketing tool. It’s not always easy to remember to post content on certain days for specific times. You can use Instagram directly or use a platform to control all of your social media posts.
You can select a date and time and then just sit back and relax! Automated posts allow you to have better control over your marketing efforts and ensure your audience sees your posts.
You can experiment with the days and times of your content to know what gets the best engagement from your customers.
Allen King, CEO, Fun Join
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