Instagram marketing has become a necessity in social media marketing for brands, even with limited ad options and other challenges. The platform passed 300 million monthly users in Dec. 2014, so its social stronghold can’t be ignored. The visual focus, simplicity and popularity of the app all combine to make it a powerful, yet difficult, platform for brands.
We at Lightspan love a great challenge and have been in the Instagram game since the beginning. We’ve collected what we’ve learned and are sharing it in this four part Instagram marketing mega-article.
Skip to certain topics:
Hashtags
Tools and Apps
Content, Color and Composition
Instagram Marketing Secrets
Instagram marketing basics begin with mastering the hashtag. You’ve seen them before on other platforms, but there are nuances to using the infamous # on Instagram.
Recent (April 2015) headlines about hashtags include being able to search with them on the desktop version of Instagram and being able to search emojis used as hashtags (except the eggplant one, but don’t make me explain that to you).
Keep them relevant and descriptive
Just like on Twitter or G+ (R.I.P.), hashtags serve a descriptive purpose that help categorize content by topic. Keeping them relevant helps users organically discover your photo and account.
There’s no such thing as too many hashtags on Instagram
Since Instagram doesn’t have character limits, doesn’t cut off off long posts and is primarily used to discover photos, users are much more tolerant of hashtag stuffing than they are on other platforms.
In fact, Lightspan President Mana Ionescu spent three months testing the performance of posts with 8+ hashtags vs 4 and found that she got more double taps and followers when she used more hashtags. During the period of January 4 through January 24, she used the TagsForLikes app to pack 8+ hashtags onto each post. From January 25 through February 14, she only used on average of 4 hashtags per post and saw a dramatic drop in engagement per post.
Don’t bother using them in your bio
They don’t show in searches so it just looks silly. Use that space instead to feature keywords so fans can find you.
There are plenty of articles and lists for this. The problem is that a lot of the “best” hashtags are overused, cluttered, irrelevant and get you likes that don’t mean anything because they come from spammers or people looking to get more followers themselves. So I’ve combined multiple lists and took out useless ones for you!
25 popular hashtags to use (if relevant to your picture) in no particular order:
The problem is that there’s a difference between “popular” and “best”. Popular means it’ll be hard to stand out so you may get likes but you may not get fans. Best means that it’s effective, your fans use it and are likely to follow accounts that use it well.
Every niche has a set of popular hashtags that are also effective. For instance, people who love pugs will regularly search #pugsofinstagram #instapug and #puglife, which are much more targeted than the (still relevant) #cute and #dog options. Do some social listening and research to discover yours.
There are a number of research tools can help you get started on your listening and discovery of which hashtags will resonate with your market. Some of my favorites include:
Ritetag
Used to see what hashtags are popular and find suggestions for related ones, RiteTag is actually for Twitter. We have found the relationships between and popularity of hashtags to be comparable across both platforms and use it for Instagram as well.
Tagboard
Tagboard lets you see what other content is being shared using the same hashtag and how often it’s used. This is good to see the relevancy of posts, which is something that many marketers don’t think to do. Just look up the difference between #naturalfood and #natural! Actually, don’t– #natural gets pretty NSFW, which is exactly my point.
Instagram marketing is more involved than many other platforms. From finding a subject, taking a good picture, editing, hashtag research and finally posting, it’s easy to waste a lot of time. That time could be better used engaging with your fans. So here are suggestions and reviews of Instagram marketing tools to save you time.
Some of these tools are already staples in social media marketing, but you may not know they have capabilities to integrate with Instagram, too.
SocialBro (a Lightspan favorite)
Use to: Manage your followers, track growth and see popular community hashtags.
Iconosquare
Use to: Collect analytics such as average likes, your best hashtags and follower growth (until they try to charge $200/month again).
Simply Measured
Use to: Collect analytics such as engagement, growth and competitor comparisons.
Justunfollow
Use to: manage your followers and fans. Their TakeOff app also helps you find the best time to post and suggests hashtags.
Hootsuite (a Lightspan favorite)
Use to: Interact with your home stream (like you would on the desktop version of Instagram) and set up search streams.
Sendible
Use to: Interact with your home stream and collect some analytics.
I’m sorry, but these tools are too good to be true. All of them. Because Instagram’s API isn’t public, any tool that can “schedule” for you is actually either done manually (or with robots) behind the scenes, only send you reminders to post yourself or involve unofficial hacking into the platform. That means, at best, your login data is exposed and there’s plenty of room for error. I’d rather spend a few minutes of my weekend posting for a client than waste time dealing with one of these apps.
Hyperlapse
Use to: Speed up videos to fit in Instagram’s 15 second timeframe.
VSCO
Use to: Enhance images with more professional and subtle filters.
Whitagram
Use to: Put a horizontal or vertical image on a white background to avoid cropping.
Layout, Instacollage, Clipstich
Use to: Create a collage of multiple images and videos. Just stay away from the tacky, cartoon-ish frames please.
Repost, Regram
Use to: Easily share others’ Instagram posts (like an RT on Twitter). This is great for sharing UGC, just remember to ask for permission first!
Afterlight, FaceTune, Snapspeed, Photo Editor by Aviary
Use to: Edit your photos. Everything from teeth whitening to color balance and curves, these apps offer a wide range of Photoshop-like functions.
Just like with scheduler apps, I’m wary of anything automated with Instagram. These kinds of tools regularly get you locked out of your account or create awkward moments with minimal positive return. Plus, they’re mostly paid services so my official stance is: roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. This makes engagement more authentic and lets you vet every user you reach out to.
Your instagram marketing efforts can only take you so far with editing apps and correct hashtag usage. The real key to succeeding on Instagram? Posting quality photos. You don’t need to be a pro or take an expensive photography class, just learn these basic rules that keep the likes coming!
Keep your photos cool, light, and dominated by a single color palette. Detailed texture and low saturation help too, according to a study.
Using this composition guideline keeps eyes and interest within the image– it’s a fundamental of photography that’s easily applied on Instagram. Basically, the rule of thirds means to place the bulk of visual weight within 1/3 of a photo or to place focal points where 1/3 guidelines intersect, often using lines to direct the eyes to those spots. Like so:
See how your eye is drawn into the middle third of the right-most third section of the image? It’s not perfect, but it beats being centered.
Here’s a fun video explaining it in more detail with examples:
The most engaging filters abide by the color rules listed above. Buffer found that, in general, the warmer and harsher the filter is, the less engagements the photo is likely to get. In fact, #nofilter was the second most effective style, lead only by (one of my personal favorites) Mayfair. Keep in mind these statistics have not been updated since Instagram released 5 new filters. Use an analytics tool to find the most engaging filters for your profile, as seen on Iconosquare below:
My personal trick? To keep contrast less harsh, I’ve started using filters at only 50% strength, if I use a filter at all.
It’s a general rule in digital marketing that people respond to people, so always include faces, hands, feet, etc. when you can. Of course photos of food and animals do well too, but you might be surprised that some of the top hashtags are actually #cloud and #nature– so include pictures of nature when you can!
I think you’re ready, it’s time to get dirty! Next up is my collection of Instagram marketing secrets for everything from posting frequency to saving photos.
Mana’s testing found that the ratio of people who follow you back on Instagram is much lower than it is on Twitter, so just following a ton of people doesn’t work. And, just like on Twitter, there are ways to force an increase in followers (if you’re not too concerned with who will follow back). Instead, you have to earn follows, and that takes work.
The best advice to increase organic followers is to keep posting content that’s consistent in style, subject/interest, schedule and quality. That way, viewers will know what to expect and will naturally feel compelled to follow you.
One of Mana’s tests shows that the more she posted, the more engagement she received. Before and during the same period that she tested the number of hashtags to use, she also posted more frequently. Both of those things are assumed to be annoying to fans. But, as you can see, she saw a much higher level of engagement when she posted more often.
You can fix typos and tweak hashtags/captions after posting. When viewing your post, click the “…” button and select “Edit”. Your post will show that it was edited when viewing comments.
Note: It used to be that adding a new hashtag put it at the front of search results instead of pushed back in to reflect when it was originally posted. But it seems Instagram caught on to our trick and put an end to it as of April 27, 2015. So it might be worthwhile to edit and add a new hashtag within a hour of your post (give or take depending on how often it’s used), it’s still best practice to research and pick your hashtags ahead of time.
Switch your phone to airplane mode, edit your photo and click “share.” Your photo won’t post, but it will be saved to your Camera Roll. Do this to create ready-to-go images ahead of time so you’re not making hasty decisions on the fly.
No more screenshots! No more unofficial third-party apps! To save full sized (640×640 pixels) photos to your computer, go to instagram.com/[username], find the photo you want to save and click to expand it in a pop-up.
This is where it gets fun!
Right click the image, select “Inspect Element”. You’ll see a bunch of intimidating website code, but don’t be scared! If you selected the image (or hover over it in the viewer), the source information for the picture file should be highlighted. If it’s not, just control+F and search for .jpg, scroll until you find the right one!
Double click the highlighted code and copy the image file location (it’ll be after “url”, start with “https://igcdn” and end in .jpg). Paste it into a new browser window, and ta-da! You can now right click and Save As!
We’ve noticed that many Instagram pros don’t actually stick to the insta part. Instead, they use professional cameras and editing software to create the images, then send the photos to themselves on mobile and then post. It can take anywhere between a couple of hours and a couple of days!
Really, brands can post any day of the week because people typically have their phones on them and instinctively check it all the time. Webtrends suggest that there are slight advantages to posting on Sundays for higher engagement and avoiding Thursdays because more brands post then. Additionally, TrackMaven found that you’ll have slightly more competition during the workday, particularly during 3-4pm.
You know how Facebook is punishing Page posts that use “Like”, “share” or other spammy asks? Well, it works folks. As icky as it feels to write “double tap if you…”, it really does get my clients more likes. Do it sparingly– I only use it when it’s cute or funny.
The only real estate available to include a link is in the bio, unfortunately. That makes web traffic from Instagram hard to come by and harder to track. For short URLs or easy directions (like “now on the blog”), you can include them in photo captions and hope people search for the page or directly type it into their mobile browser. It’s asking for a lot but can work for the right content.
Another common tactic is to update the bio with a (sourcecoded) link and mention it in a photo’s caption. I recently tried it out on a promotional “buy now” type post, and it generated 33 clicks. Not stellar, but shows some potential.
Short answer:
Long answer:
I steadfastly believe you should never connect Instagram and Twitter accounts. Since Facebook bought Instagram, photos from it don’t appear inline on Twitter. In a time where visuals are so important, it’s quite frankly a waste of a tweet. When it comes to connecting Instagram to Facebook, I also usually say no because content needs to be written differently for each platform. Your caption, hashtags and tagged users won’t cross over perfectly, so I only suggest connecting the two if you really need to save the time.
Instagram is growing fast and reaches many different communities. Using these tips, you can take your Instagram marketing from an afterthought to a highlight on analytic reports. If your brand isn’t taking advantage of marketing on Instagram yet or isn’t faring well, reach out to us to talk strategy.
What other Instagram topics would you like to learn about? Do you have any tips of your own to share?
H/T to friend Nycole H. for the heads-up on recent IG news!
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