There are many reasons Instagram is such a special social media platform. From its high traffic, and low bounce rates, to some of the highest engagement rates among popular platforms, Instagram is pretty much the best place to be. With that said, you may be wondering how you can utilize Instagram in the most effective way to market either yourself or your clients.
Luckily, Instagram expert Jenn Herman gave everyone the key to unlocking Instagram’s potential in a talk at Social Media Marketing World 2020. She broke it down into a few different categories, giving specific and concrete action steps social media marketers can take in each domain.
Everyone’s first step starts on the explore page. The explore page is the coveted landing spot for nearly everyone curating Instagram posts, but in order to get there you must have an intricate understanding of how it works. Fortunately, it functions in the same way much of Instagram does: it’s tailored to each individual user, and the posts that appear are determined by an algorithm. The app will place content similar to whatever a user engages with on the explore page.
In other words, there’s no way to guarantee your content will end up there. But, if you’re creating content your audience likes, other like-minded users will see you there. A better way to guarantee non-followers will see your content is with hashtags. As you may already know, hashtags place your content in one of two sections: the ‘recent’ tab of a specific hashtag, or the ‘top’ tab.
Naturally you’ll want your content to show up in the “top posts” section for any given hashtag. How are you going to make that happen? Herman says use anywhere from 10-20 hashtags. Within these 10-20, there should be: 4-5 popular hashtags, 5-6 moderately popular hashtags, 2-5 niche hashtags, and 1-3 brand-specific hashtags. In generating these hashtags, Herman encourages you to think about what your audience will be searching for, not necessarily what you want to be found for.
Stories, too, are critical to the Instagram game. It is well known that stories are becoming more and more widely viewed, with nearly 500 million people watching them each day. To use this functionality to the fullest, you must encourage your audience’s engagement within your stories. When story viewers interact with polls, questions, or send you direct messages, you’re more likely to appear as one of their first stories the next time you post. View your analytics consistently, see what’s working and what’s not, and move forward from there – always keeping the algorithm’s tendency to place users with higher engagement in more preferable places in mind.
Finally, Herman discussed the importance of Instagram’s predominant page: the feed. Here posts are never hidden, but merely resorted over time. You’re more likely to appear higher up in an audience member’s feed if – as you may have guessed – they interact with your content often. Another factor that influences your prominence in a user’s feed is your own activity on Instagram. Open the app often, engage with other users, watch stories, and post at least once a month. If Instagram sees that you are an active participant on the platform, they’ll reward you.
Central to each of Herman’s points is the fact that Instagram is a highly individualized app. It’s thus fitting that her final message was that it’s truly about your audience, not you. Choose hashtags that they’ll be looking under, curate feed posts they want, and put up stories they’ll engage with. All of this will put you in a good place when it comes to Instagram’s algorithm favoring your content. If you’re lucky, you may even end up on the beloved Explore page.