I've been playing around on Instagram for the past few months and thought it could make for an interesting discussion to discuss what strategy and tools you use for instagram. Some may not work for adult but I think the discussion of both mainstream and adult ideas could help those reading 
Here?s my recent instagram experience.
Goal - My wife is starting a leggings (yoga pants) company. The goal of the instagram account is to find girls who wear leggings and potential brand ambassadors. That way when the product is ready to launch there is a good test and launch audience for her.
Content - Since the leggings aren?t ready yet there isn?t any original content at the moment for us to post. So instead we decided to go out and find the best photos in the niche that represent the attitude and feeling the brand will have. One important aspect of the content was that it attract the girls who would wear the leggings and not the guys who are staring at them. We had to be very careful about how ?sexy? the content we post was. The first few posts I made didn?t exactly go with vibe she wanted (what can i say old habits die hard). Those initial posts looked great on paper (tons of likes, tons of followers) but they were mostly men and they weren?t achieving the goal. Very important to remember what you goal is and not get caught up in chasing likes.
Since we were aggregating content and not taking original content the plan was to try to make every post high quality and captivating. The first few posts we were guessing what people may like. Then I discovered the Iconosquare competitor tool. It was a game changer. This tool has a ton of data on your competitors? How many posts they make, what time they post, hashtags used, follower growth, like growth, etc etc. But the most valuable part of this tool for me has been seeing the Most Liked, Mose Commented and Most Engaging Content posts by your competitors. In our case here is a snapshot of @BombShellsportswear most commented content.
If you just take the example I?ve posted above. This account usually gets 114 comments per post and their top post had 1400 comments. As long as it wasn?t a contest it clearly was a piece of content that was different and really struck a cord with the audience. By using this tool I don?t have to sift through 300+ posts this company has made. Instead in a quick snapshot I can see their top 4 posts and then make the decision if any of these fit with my goal for the account. Using this approach was huge. Made the account look very sharp and very high quality. The look of the account is so important and often overlooked.
Also, a key thing is to give credit to the photographer and whoever is in the photo. The more credit you can give the better. Tag the location. All of these things help drive more people to you. The more text you can add the better as well. Get your message out to the world people will connect with it.
Hashtags - Once you have the content you need to have a hashtag strategy. Hashtags are going to be the key to being discovered. I?ll be honest the hashtag system on instagram seems like such a crap shoot. It?s a shame there aren?t more tools that can clearly show you how much exposure each hashtag is actually getting you. I?ve used the approach of gathering as many relevant hashtags as possible categorizing them by size and then coming up with a group of 25 to 30 hashtags to use which are a mix of big, medium, and small. Obviously the hashtag approach is far more relevant and useful in mainstream.
How Many Posts - 3 to 5 spread out evenly throughout the day.
Engagement - We used the hard work approach on this one. Comment comment comment. If someone comments on our content we immediately thank them as well as look over their account and find a nice piece of content to comment back on. That is the basic approach. The next level approach has been to find the influencers/brands that our potential market would follow and interact with. Then engage with those influencers and brands and also engage with the people engaging with the brand. So if we take the bombshell account as an example. I?d go to a piece of their content IE https://www.instagram.com/p/BIEJtIADzRf/ find someone who made a comment i.e. https://www.instagram.com/missapesss/ then find a piece of content they posted to comment on i.e. https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ44xxRl...-by=missapesss That gets our account on the radar of a potential customer.
Those are the main techniques we've used so far. I'm nowhere near an instagram ninja but this hard work approach is seeing some slow but steady growth results. I think modified for most industries it could work.
What techniques and tools are you using? What's working best?
If you have an instagram account and would like some feedback or ideas for it feel free to ask or hit me up ;)
Here?s my recent instagram experience.
Goal - My wife is starting a leggings (yoga pants) company. The goal of the instagram account is to find girls who wear leggings and potential brand ambassadors. That way when the product is ready to launch there is a good test and launch audience for her.
Content - Since the leggings aren?t ready yet there isn?t any original content at the moment for us to post. So instead we decided to go out and find the best photos in the niche that represent the attitude and feeling the brand will have. One important aspect of the content was that it attract the girls who would wear the leggings and not the guys who are staring at them. We had to be very careful about how ?sexy? the content we post was. The first few posts I made didn?t exactly go with vibe she wanted (what can i say old habits die hard). Those initial posts looked great on paper (tons of likes, tons of followers) but they were mostly men and they weren?t achieving the goal. Very important to remember what you goal is and not get caught up in chasing likes.
Since we were aggregating content and not taking original content the plan was to try to make every post high quality and captivating. The first few posts we were guessing what people may like. Then I discovered the Iconosquare competitor tool. It was a game changer. This tool has a ton of data on your competitors? How many posts they make, what time they post, hashtags used, follower growth, like growth, etc etc. But the most valuable part of this tool for me has been seeing the Most Liked, Mose Commented and Most Engaging Content posts by your competitors. In our case here is a snapshot of @BombShellsportswear most commented content.
If you just take the example I?ve posted above. This account usually gets 114 comments per post and their top post had 1400 comments. As long as it wasn?t a contest it clearly was a piece of content that was different and really struck a cord with the audience. By using this tool I don?t have to sift through 300+ posts this company has made. Instead in a quick snapshot I can see their top 4 posts and then make the decision if any of these fit with my goal for the account. Using this approach was huge. Made the account look very sharp and very high quality. The look of the account is so important and often overlooked.
Also, a key thing is to give credit to the photographer and whoever is in the photo. The more credit you can give the better. Tag the location. All of these things help drive more people to you. The more text you can add the better as well. Get your message out to the world people will connect with it.
Hashtags - Once you have the content you need to have a hashtag strategy. Hashtags are going to be the key to being discovered. I?ll be honest the hashtag system on instagram seems like such a crap shoot. It?s a shame there aren?t more tools that can clearly show you how much exposure each hashtag is actually getting you. I?ve used the approach of gathering as many relevant hashtags as possible categorizing them by size and then coming up with a group of 25 to 30 hashtags to use which are a mix of big, medium, and small. Obviously the hashtag approach is far more relevant and useful in mainstream.
How Many Posts - 3 to 5 spread out evenly throughout the day.
Engagement - We used the hard work approach on this one. Comment comment comment. If someone comments on our content we immediately thank them as well as look over their account and find a nice piece of content to comment back on. That is the basic approach. The next level approach has been to find the influencers/brands that our potential market would follow and interact with. Then engage with those influencers and brands and also engage with the people engaging with the brand. So if we take the bombshell account as an example. I?d go to a piece of their content IE https://www.instagram.com/p/BIEJtIADzRf/ find someone who made a comment i.e. https://www.instagram.com/missapesss/ then find a piece of content they posted to comment on i.e. https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ44xxRl...-by=missapesss That gets our account on the radar of a potential customer.
Those are the main techniques we've used so far. I'm nowhere near an instagram ninja but this hard work approach is seeing some slow but steady growth results. I think modified for most industries it could work.
What techniques and tools are you using? What's working best?
If you have an instagram account and would like some feedback or ideas for it feel free to ask or hit me up ;)
Comment