Today internet users are bombarded with a lot of information. They have to glance at their different social media accounts, text messages, emails, and more. Because of that, they’re unlikely to read each sentence or word in your post.
Business owners and marketers can use Instagram to grow their brands. Creating an effective Instagram content strategy can help your business flourish on this dynamic social media platform. It can help you know what, when, and how often to publish your content. You can create quality Instagram content your followers can engage with because their attention span is as low as 8 seconds.
However, generating Instagram content that your audience craves is not easy. As a result, brands that want a huge following may opt to partner with companies offering instantly delivered likes because that increases their visibility.
Here are 9 tips that can help you create unique and varied content to engage your followers.
Know Your Audience
Successful brands and marketers on Instagram are the ones that understand their audience and provide them with compelling and high-quality content. They know how their target audience uses the platform, the accounts they follow and frequently engage with, and their interest.
Such deep insight does not come easily. You have to interview members of your audience regarding your brand, its products, or its services. For instance, you can ask questions and run polls on Instagram stories or in the captions of the in-feed posts to find out what posts your followers want to see more often. With such information, you can easily create quality Instagram content to engage followers.
Plan Your Content
Now that you know the type of posts your followers want to engage with, you can proceed to create a content plan for your Instagram account. Usually, marketers create a plan to keep themselves organized and help them to track results and make improvements.
There are multiple Instagram management tools that you can use to set up your plan. Most of them have a calendar, feed preview, a drag-and-drop grid, scheduling, and much more. These great features simplify the planning, visualization, and execution of your Instagram content strategy.
Engage With Your Audience
An audience poll is a tried-and-true way to stimulate your audience’s interest in social media platforms such as Instagram. You can create polls and publish them as Instagram Story. People participate in polls because they find them entertaining and want to know how others have voted.
Since polls get a lot of attention, they’re a quick and easy way to identify your target audience’s interest. After that, you can create social media content to elicit a high number of responses or engagement.
Create Compelling Caption
Some marketers have been stuffing their Instagram captions with hashtags in the hopes that they will increase their visibility. However, you can use captions to communicate a compelling story about your brand’s end goal.
The first step is to create a compelling caption. The second step is to improve it after monitoring your Instagram analytics and identifying patterns linked to various caption formats and reach. Your captions should be worth reading and should spread your content narrative.
Vary Content Types and Medium
As mentioned, Instagram users have a short attention span of 8 seconds. Therefore brands and marketers must be creative in order to attract their target audience’s attention. One of the best ways is to mix mediums and post different content types.
Some established brands post mixed mediums on their Instagram account, including surreal images, short funny videos, etc. They have a content strategy for their feed, stories, live, reels, and IGTV. You, too, can use all of them to increase visibility and use metrics to identify the performance of the top 3 posts. In other words, allow your target audience to tell you the type of content they want to create and engage with.
Leverage User Generated Content
Customers can create content in regard to your brand, products, or services. User-generated content is important because it serves as an endorsement that motivates prospects to try your brand and its offering. It also provides you with new content you can repost on your account.
You can use certain Instagram monitoring tools to score the platform for your brand mentions. You can analyze these mentions to ascertain whether they qualify as user generated content and re-share it on your own account. Your target audience will appreciate reading high-quality user generated content that they consider authentic.
Add Call to Action
Brands and marketers want to create content that serves a double purpose. They want to grow their reach and, at the same time, engage with their loyal followers. They also want to encourage their audience to follow their brand through other mediums.
You can use your brand’s Instagram as a gateway into a closer relationship with your existing customers and prospects. Posting compelling calls to action can drive your customers to take the next step. You can place your good call to action in an Instagram caption. But, it must be relevant to your content and should entice your followers to explore your other mediums and website.
Partner with Influencers
Effective brands have an influencer marketing program. Partnering with influencers can help your business to build not only a bigger but a more engaged audience. The right influencer can help your brand create quality Instagram content to engage followers because they know your target audience well. Therefore pick a good influencer who is conversant with your niche and target audience.
Use Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags are incredible but don’t overuse them in your content because they might confuse your followers and drive the wrong audience to your account. Usually, these keywords organize your posts and enable your target audience to identify your brand through your published content easily.
You can use different types of hashtags, including branded, location-based, community-related, niche, or general hashtags. Such hashtags can enhance your brand, products, or services.
Conclusion
There are many tips that you can implement when generating social media content for your clients. The article has highlighted 9 ways that can help you create quality Instagram content to engage followers. Followers want to engage with brands that put value in the content they post on Instagram. You can build a large community and gain a massive following when you consistently create and post engaging content on Instagram or any other social media platform. They’re also most likely to share your posts with others, which can generate more engagement, traffic, sales, and followers.