Instagram Marketing Guide: 2023 Strategy (With 28 Hacks)

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Instagram Marketing Guide: 2022 Strategy (With 28 Hacks)
Profile photo of Lynn Corbitt, author

Lynn Corbitt

Last Updated: Sep 29, 2023

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Whether you like it or not, Instagram and other social networks are a critical piece of just about every marketing strategy.

Maybe it’s the center of your plan, or maybe it’s a tool that you use just to build connections with your audience.

However you choose to use Instagram, it’s important to be consistent. Consistency is key across social media marketing, and marketing in general, but it especially is important on a platform like Instagram.

That’s just one piece of the Instagram puzzle, though, and trying to understand how to use Instagram can be difficult.

This guide will walk you through every step you can take to elevate your Instagram marketing game in 2023.

Why Should I Market On Instagram?

There are about one billion Instagram users. That’s about 12% of the world’s population. Beyond that, 90% of people on Instagram follow a business.

Chances are very, very high that your audience is on Instagram, just waiting to find you or for you to find them. About 57% of the app’s users are female, and since that number is roughly in the middle, there’s a good chance you’ll find your audience no matter their gender. 

Instagram also offers you many different ways of engaging with your audience. You can create feed posts or videos.

If you’d rather host live video conversations, that’s an option. Short-form video is becoming popular in the form of Reels. Instagram has paid advertising you can use. Stories are still very popular on the app. Instagram is like many different platforms rolled into one.

While this can be overwhelming, you can instead view it as an opportunity to practice the various forms of content creation and get to know what your audience likes.

Instagram also gives you a unique way to easily engage your followers in conversation.

Sure, your audience can leave a comment or send you a direct message on most social media platforms, but Instagram Stories allow you to easily start conversations. We’ll talk more about this later, but you can use polls, question boxes, or just an arrow pointing to the message bar at the bottom to encourage your audience to talk to you.

wedding dress company poll post on instagram

Getting real, candid feedback from your audience is one of the most valuable parts of Instagram.

You can build relationships with your audience and turn them into champions for your brand. You can learn what they love about your products and what they wish your brand did differently. Being able to engage in conversation with your audience is such a gift, and it’s a great way to use Instagram uniquely and to your advantage.

How To Develop An Instagram Marketing Strategy 

Marketing always needs a strategy, otherwise, you could easily get lost in what you’re trying to do. Without a plan, goals, strategies, and tactics, you can lose focus and veer off track, especially with something as exciting and entertaining as Instagram.

Here are the six steps you need to follow to establish your Instagram marketing strategy.

1. Determine Your Goals

This is a question only you can answer.

What are your goals for Instagram?

Do you want to generate a certain number of purchases you can track to the app?

Do you want to have conversations with your audience? Do you want to connect with a certain influencer in your field?

You can choose whatever goal or goals you feel fits your brand the best, but remember to make them specific.

Don’t just say that you want to get a bunch of followers. Be specific about how many followers you want to have. Even if it’s a somewhat arbitrary number, it’ll give you something to reach for and work toward. Without specificity, you won’t be able to decide if your social media strategy was effective or not. 

2. Figure Out Who’s Your Target Audience

The beauty of Instagram comes from your audience, so you want to make sure you’re targeting the right people. If you don’t already know, you should work to identify your target audience so you can use Instagram most effectively.

For businesses that already have customers or a following on other social media platforms, look at your existing audience. What do they have in common? What demographics are your followers? Where are they located, how old are they, what gender are they, and what languages do they speak? If possible, try to discover what other brands they follow, what’s important to them, and why they love your brand.

Some of this information can be determined by looking at your analytics on social media. Sometimes your web analytics will offer this demographic information, too. So, start there and see what details you can learn about your audience.

However, this likely won’t let you know what other brands they love and what makes them unique. If you want to discover this, one of the easiest ways to do it is by simply asking your audience. Create a simple survey online that they can fill out.

They’ll be more likely to fill it out if you offer them an incentive, like a coupon code, for completing it.

local knoxville restaurant photo on instagram

But what if you don’t already have an audience?

Well, take some time to really think and reflect on your brand. Who do you want to serve? How can you help?

If you’re a local business, meaning you don’t sell something online, so your audience is primarily limited to those in your city, you can look at the demographics of your region to help generate some ballpark numbers.

Try to be as specific as possible. Saying, “Oh, our product is for everyone” sounds great, but it doesn’t actually help you when it comes to marketing. Be specific so you can write messaging that resonates with your audience.

The most important factors to know about your audience are demographics (age, gender, location) and interests (what other brands they love or topics they enjoy).

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3. Decide On A Posting Schedule 

You get to choose how often you post on Instagram. No one needs to tell you that you should post every single day if that’s not realistic for you.

However, you need to decide on a posting schedule and stick to it. At the very beginning of this article, we said that consistency is important on Instagram. This is where it’s important.

best times to post chart for instagram

If you want to post on your feed twice a week and your stories five days per week, great. If you want to post to your Instagram feed five days a week and go live once a week, awesome. Whatever your schedule is, stick to it. You’ll keep yourself in the habit of posting, and you’ll continue giving your audience the content they want to see from you. As you post on Instagram, you’re teaching your audience what to expect. If you break your pattern, they might wonder what’s going on. 

Having a posting schedule also helps you to plan your content in advance. When you know how many posts you need for a particular week, you can more easily batch content and create your posts ahead of time. This way you can rest assured knowing that your Instagram marketing will go as planned. Consistency is much easier to achieve if you use automation tools. For instance, an AI voice generator will help you to create tons of reels, so you can schedule them weeks in advance.

4. Grow Your Instagram Followers & Engagement

Growing your following isn’t an exercise in vanity. You may have heard that followers are just a vanity metric and that engagement rate is the only important thing on Instagram. Well, it’s true that engagement is important. After all, that tells you that you have real followers and your numbers aren’t being inflated by a bunch of bots. However, if you only have 20 followers, you’re only marketing to 20 people.

Marketing is a numbers game.

Not everyone who sees your posts will feel compelled to make a purchase. This goes for social media, Google advertising, billboards, TV ads, and any other type of marketing or advertising. No one has a 100% conversion rate.

So, you need to have more people at the top of your funnel who can hear about your brand so that you can share information with them and eventually lead them down the funnel to become customers.

We briefly mentioned this, but it really is important to make sure that your audience is engaged. If you have a following of hundreds of thousands of followers, but only five people like your posts, you’re likely doing something wrong.

In order to truly market to your followers and potentially convert them to customers, they need to be real people who are interested in your brand.

The best way to determine if a follower is interested in your brand is to see if they’re engaging with your posts.

If your engagement is low but you know you have a good following, consider reviewing your content strategy – you might need to change up your posts. But, if you know your posts are good, you might want to check your followers and make sure they’re real accounts and not bots or ghost accounts.

5. Create A Professional Instagram Account 

One of the most important parts of using Instagram for business is being able to check your insights and analytics. However, you’ll only be able to do this if you have a professional or business account. A normal, personal Instagram account doesn’t allow this.

The good news is, making your account an Instagram for business account is fairly simple – we’ll talk about it below.

With an Instagram business profile, you’ll have access to some extra settings, like shop buttons, business categories, and more.

We’ll go deeper into how to choose those in the next section. Having a professional account means you’ll be able to provide additional contact information to your followers right from your profile. You can see insights into how your posts are performing and about your audience as a whole.

You can create promotions and ads to reach more people. Having a professional Instagram account is important for any business.

6. Optimize Your Profile

Now that your account is properly set up, let’s add the finishing touches.

Optimizing your profile is important in taking your presence on Instagram from “good” to “great.” It’s easy to create a normal Instagram profile since the app walks you through how to set it up.

But, it takes just a few more steps to really bring it to life and provide the information your followers and potential followers will appreciate. 

First, did you know that your bio can contain clickable hashtags?

Just like your posts, you can include hashtags in your bio. These hashtags can come up in search, which means you’ll be more likely to land on the explore pages of people searching for these hashtags. 

Taliyah Brooks athlete instagram profile

Speaking of search, your name on Instagram is also searchable. We’re not talking about your handle here, but rather the actual name.

You likely have the name of your business there now. If you’re a service provider, especially, it’s a good idea to include a keyword or two here, as it can help your account show up when people are searching for those keywords. 

Your bio is also one of only a few places on Instagram that can include a live, clickable link. When possible, use a link that goes to a page with additional links so you can easily capture what your audience wants to see.

You can use a link-in-bio service, or you can keep a page like this on your own website.

Highlights are also an important part of your Instagram profile because they’re one of the first things your audience will see. You can create specific highlights like “Company 101” or “How to Use this Product” so they can easily find the basic information about your brand and product. Highlights can help you answer FAQs, and you can use them to save really valuable stories.

We also mentioned choosing your business category. Instagram offers many different categories, which you can access by tapping “Edit Profile” and choosing “Category.” Choose the category that best describes your brand. 

instagram categories page

While you’re at it, take a look at the two options below “Category.” The first is “Contact options.” Here you can add an email address, business VoIP number, address, or Whatsapp number. These are great ways for your audience to be able to connect with you off of Instagram.

contact options page on instagram

The next option is “Action buttons.” These are really helpful buttons that allow your audience to easily take an action with your business.

Depending on your specific offerings, you might be able to activate the order food, book now, or reserve buttons.

Finally, don’t forget about the actual copy of the bio itself. If you’re stuck and you need Instagram bio ideas, there are plenty to choose from.

At the end of the day, you can always try to explain what your business is, what you do and who you help. That’s a good start, at the very least.

How To Set Up An Instagram Business Account

Setting up an Instagram business account is very easy.

First, go to your Instagram profile and tap the three lines in the upper right-hand corner and choose “Settings and privacy.”

Then, tap “Account type and tools” near the bottom of the page.

Then, click “Switch to Professional account.”

(Note: if you’re starting a brand new account for your brand, you can choose “Add new professional account” instead.)

From there you follow the prompts to establish your professional account.

Making your account a professional account is truly very simple to do, and it offers you plenty of great benefits when it comes to knowing your data and connecting with your audience in a meaningful way.

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How To Safely Grow Your Followers

You already know that growing your follower count is actually an important part of your Instagram marketing strategy.

Follower count isn’t just a vanity metric – it tells you how many people you’re potentially able to reach with your posts every time you hit publish, which means you’re generating that much brand awareness. But as with every task on Instagram, actively growing your following can take a lot of time.

One of the best ways to grow your following is to use engagement marketing to connect with potential followers.

In this method, you’ll interact with your ideal followers’ pages so they know your account exists. Then, if they’re interested, they can visit your page and decide whether or not to follow you.

Kicksta is an automated growth marketing service that uses engagement marketing to help you reach more real, active users.

When you work with Kicksta, you supply a few sample accounts whose followers are similar to the accounts you want to have following you.

Then, Kicksta will take it from there, targeting those followers and other accounts that are similar to them.

To gain awareness for your account, Kicksta will engage with your target accounts on your behalf. This will generate awareness and engagement for your account, leading to overall growth.

Maybe you think it’s strange that you’d automate your follower growth, but think about the rest of your Instagram strategy.

Many companies use tools to automate account elements, such as their analytics, and their posting. Why should your growth strategy be any different?

A growth service like Kicksta is safe, and effective and can save you time while delivering quality results.

Top Instagram Marketing Tips To Follow

Alright, now that we’ve made it through all the initial steps of establishing your professional Instagram account and creating your Instagram strategy, let’s dive into some additional Instagram hacks you can follow to make your marketing stand out.

In this section, we’ll take a look at several tips you can add to your strategy.

1. Content Creation Tips

Curating a content plan is an important part of posting consistently and creating quality content that your Instagram audience will want to see.

Having a plan also helps you understand what type of content performs best with your followers. After all, just because a certain kind of content is performing well in general on Instagram doesn’t mean that your followers will necessarily want to see that kind of content.

sorority rush delta gamma carousel instagram photos

Be diverse with the kinds of content you post so it’s not always the same.

You can create normal feed posts with images or graphics, mix in some videos and try out carousel posts that are informational. We’re going to walk through some Instagram post ideas here in a moment – keep in mind that any of these ideas can be made into videos or used in a traditional image post.

Instagram Post Ideas

Behind The Scenes

With a behind-the-scenes post, you can invite your audience into your business. Show them a secret look at how your team works, how your products are made, or something else that’s interesting and special.

star trek behind the scenes instagram photo
Motivational Posts

Everyone loves a good piece of Monday motivation, right? Spread that love throughout the week with a fun quote or another piece of motivation that’s easily shareable.

instagram motivational post
Product Posts

This might be obvious, but make sure you’re posting about your product. Share the new innovations, ask for feedback, and promote different ways to use your product.

instagram product post
User-Generated Content

Sharing posts that your followers have created and shared on their own is a great way to build trust and loyalty with your audience. This UGC repost will also encourage people to post about your brand in the hopes that you might share their post next.

instagram user generated content post airbnb
Educational Posts

Teach your followers something about your industry, brand, or product. Or, if you’re a service provider, share a hack or a tip that’ll help your audience make progress. You can even source information for these posts from your blog if you have one.

instagram educational post national geographic
Tutorial Content

This is slightly different from your educational posts because tutorial content is more step-by-step. Show your audience how to make something, do something, or otherwise reach a goal. Tutorials can build your authority as an expert on the subject matter.

hack tutorial to keep a ring on
Trending Holiday Posts

Have some fun and jump on the trending train. You’ll get bonus points if you’re able to relate the holiday back to your brand. Share something fun and exciting, and you might find your audience is sharing your posts more often.

instagram trending holiday post starbucks

Create An Instagram Content Calendar

When you’re planning to write content consistently, you should create a calendar in advance. You can take time to thoughtfully plan out your content so you know that you’re sharing everything you want your social media audience to know. When you just try to post at the last minute because you know you need to put something on Instagram today, your posts can be rushed and simplistic. Planning them in advance helps you stay in control of the situation.

content calendar example by the social server

When you’re creating your content calendar, begin by planning out what days you want to post. Then, fill in any holidays or major events that you want to acknowledge on social media. From here, decide on what you want to talk about on Instagram. Create a few different categories, like product promotion, education, about the company, or anything else your audience might want to know. Then, spread out those categories over the days you want to post.

When you create your calendar, you can decide how detailed you want to make it. Do you want to actually write out every post for the week, month, or however far ahead you’re creating your calendar? You can, but you don’t have to do that. Instead, you can refer to your calendar each morning to see if you’re supposed to post that day. Then, you can write a post about whatever category is featured that day. Or, you can have your posts written in advance so you can just post and go.

As you’re building this calendar, take a look at the best time to post on Instagram. It varies (like everything does) by industry and by audience.

Just because your competitor is always posting at 9 a.m. and gets lots of responses doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll generate your best engagement at 9 a.m.

Test different posting times and see what works best for your audience.

How To Write The Best Captions

Your caption is where you’re able to communicate the most with your audience, so make sure you’re making the most of it. If you’re looking for tips to write great Instagram captions, you’ve come to the right place. First of all, start with an engaging hook that will capture your audience’s attention and make them want to hit the “read more” button.

Nike emma raducano instagram post

Then, make your point quickly. Don’t leave out important details, but don’t add extra fluff, either. The sooner you can get to your point, the more likely people are to actually read it. 

Make it easy for your audience to engage with you.

Create a mini-poll and ask your audience to comment one of three emojis. Don’t ask them to divulge their deep, dark secrets. Chances are they won’t want to, and you’ll lose out on precious engagement. 

Finally, focus on your call to action. End with something that asks your audience to engage with your post in a specific way. Ask them to share it with a friend, leave a comment or simply like it.

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Instagram Photo Editing Tips

Well, now that we’ve talked about caption tips, it’s time to focus on the photos. Instagram is a visual platform, so your images need to be eye-catching and scroll-stopping. Here are a few of our favorite Instagram photo editing hacks.

When you’re first getting started, use presets to edit your photos. Use a program like Adobe Lightroom and purchase presets from your favorite photographer or editor.

This makes it easy to add the same vibe and editing style to all of your photos.

Another great idea is to change the color of the photo. Make it black and white or add one pop of color to an otherwise grayscale image. This will catch your audience’s attention because it’s different from the majority of what you see on Instagram.

Speaking of Adobe Lightroom, you can use the platform’s adjustment brush to remove shadows from people’s faces. This is also great if you’re showing off your product and the shadows are falling in an unflattering way.

Editing tools and Instagram itself have saturation and vibrance tools available in the editing section. Play around with both of these sliders to understand how they work and how they change the photo. You don’t want to make anything too intense, so remember that less is more.

Finally, you can add some extra color to a photo to make it slightly tinted.

Be careful, because this can often affect skin tone, but it can also add a unique look to your image. No matter how you edit it, make sure you’re using the right Instagram photo sizes.

2. Marketing With Instagram Stories

If you aren’t already using Instagram Stories to market your business, get ready. You’re about to unlock a lot of new potential on this app. Brands will use Stories to share quick pieces of information with their audience.

They’ll use Stories to gather audience feedback in the form of polls and question boxes. Stories are also helpful to share behind the scenes and daily life since they can be short updates throughout the day.

You can also use Stories to share other brands’ content that’s relevant to your audience. Oakley Kitchen uses their Stories to share products from their various kitchens and vendors.

Oakley Kitchen instagram story of syrian chicken entree

With Stories, you also have access to additional features like music, stickers, and filters. You can also add avatars, polls, GIFs, links, hashtags and donation buttons to your Stories. These can add excitement and make your Stories a little more fun for your audience to watch, and they can be interactive.

Before you add any of these extras, though, make sure that you’re staying true to your brand guidelines. Social media can be a lot of fun, but you also want to stay true to who you are.

How To Post Instagram Stories

Posting Stories is actually a very easy process. Begin by tapping the plus button at the top of your screen, like you would to add any post to Instagram.

Then, at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see various selections: Reel, Post, Story, Story highlight, Live, Guide and Fundraiser. Tap on Story.

From there, you can create your Story however you’d like. You can add an image from your camera roll or select the camera option in the upper lefthand corner to take a new photo. 

You can add text, create a boomerang, add a layout, go hands-free, or use dual lenses on the left side of your screen. At the bottom, you can also find options to choose filters. Spend some time exploring this screen to see what you can do.

How To Add A Story To Your Highlights

Once you have Stories, you might want to save them to your highlights. Highlights are a great way to store excellent content you created in your Stories.

Also, just because your Stories expire in 24 hours, don’t worry if you haven’t added yours to your highlights yet.

You can go to your profile and view all of your Stories even after they’ve expired for your audience.

To add Stories to your highlights, go to your profile and click the circle with a plus sign in it where your highlights go to create a new highlight.

Then, you’ll see all of your past Stories. Simply tap and select whichever Stories you want to include in your highlight.

instagram stories highlight selection

Once you’ve selected them, tap “next” and edit your cover and add a title for your highlight. Then tap “add” and you’re done!

Stories can be a lot of fun, but they can also be overwhelming. We have over 650 Instagram Story templates you can use to help get your creative juices flowing.

3. Marketing With Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels, or Instagram’s version of TikTok, is still incredibly popular and not going away any time soon.

In fact, Instagram has started classifying any video under 15 minutes as a Reel and promoting it that way throughout the app.

You can use Instagram Reels to showcase a new product, introduce a new team member, or jump on the latest trends. As long as you’re creating quality content, you can rest assured that Instagram is going to try to push it out to more people.

For instance, Jasmine Star uses her Reels as a way to create a series of Instagram Story design tips.

Jasmine Star instagram design tip reel

As with Stories, creating Instagram Reels can offer you some fun extras.

There’s a music library you can choose from, and you can activate various effects or filters. You can also change the speed or layout of your video and, of course, activate hands-free filming to capture your favorite trending dances. You can also employ features such as timer, dual lens and gesture control.

How To Post On Reels

To begin, go back to the plus sign at the top of your Instagram app, and this time choose “Reels” from the options at the bottom. Then, decide if you want a filter effect from the bottom.

Once you’ve chosen that, take a look at the left side of your screen.

There you can choose your music and how long you want your Reel to be.

Along with those two options, you’ll see a 1x, which allows you to change the speed of your video. There’s also a timer, which is very important if you’re filming anything with transitions to ensure that your transitions work smoothly.

Another important option from the left to make note of is the dual lens, allows you to film from both the front and back cameras at once. 

In addition to these helpful features, the left hand toolbar is also where you’ll find the icons for Effects, Green Screen, Add Yours, Layout and Gesture Control.

In the bottom corners of your screen, you can also choose to add images and videos from your camera roll or to swap the camera you’re using to film with. In the center of your screen at the bottom, you can also browse the Reel templates that are available.

4. Instagram Live

Instagram Live is a great way to add long-form video content to your Instagram marketing strategy. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but this is a live video option where your audience can watch and interact with you in real time. You’ll be able to see their comments, and you can even invite other users to join you on camera and split the screen with you.

Instagram Live videos are a great way for brands to do question-and-answer sessions and generally connect with their audience. Since you can see and answer people’s questions in real-time, your followers can often view these videos as a chance to get to know you and the brand better. 

Another feature of Instagram Live that is great for professional accounts is the “badges” feature. If your account is eligible for badges, you’ll have the option to enable them in your Professional Dashboard under Settings.

Once you turn on badges, users will be able to purchase badges while tuning into an Instagram Live on your account. 

When a user buys a badge during your Live, you’ll earn money and they’ll get special recognition. Sounds like a win-win, right? 

5. Instagram Guides

If you aren’t familiar with Instagram guides, think of them like a mini-blog. You can use them to create product roundups, FAQs, content guides, and more. There are three types of guides: places, products, and posts. Choose one, and then follow Instagram’s prompts to build out your guide. 

If you create Instagram guides, and especially if you create them as an informative tool, rather than another piece of pure promotion for your brand, your audience will appreciate your insight and likely grow their trust in you.

Guides can be incredibly helpful tools to make your audience’s lives easier.

Living with Landyn Instagram Guides

Blogger Living with Landyn has a few guides to her favorite products and some of the best places around Nashville.

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6. Content Subscriptions

If you’re looking to engage your most loyal Instagram followers a little more deeply, while also earning extra money from Instagram, you can establish a subscription option on your account. Users who choose to subscribe will have advanced access to your account in a variety of ways. 

After paying a monthly fee to subscribe to your account, users will be able to see exclusive content from you, and they will have a special subscriber badge so that you can easily identify them. 

You can also create special Stories, Lives, Posts and Reels that are only available to your subscribers. And, you’ll be able to host private chats with up to 30 subscribers at a time. Finally, there will be a “Subscribed” tab on your profile where these users can go to view all of your exclusive content in one home page. 

7. Broadcast Channels

Another great way to generate more engagement among your followers is to create a Broadcast Channel. Through these channels, you can share voice memos, written messages, polls and questions. All of your followers will be prompted to join a new Channel when you first create it, and then those who join will be notified when you add content to the Channel. 

You can create multiple Broadcast Channels for various purposes, and you can get creative with how you use them. For example, you’ll also have the option to invite other creators to produce content on your Channel, opening a new line of collaboration for your account. And, you can personalize each Broadcast Channel with a unique welcome message and title.

8. Instagram Ads

Instagram, like all social media platforms, offers brands the chance to do some paid advertising.

Types Of Instagram Ads

Image Ads: These are the most common types of ads. They show up in your Instagram feed just like a typical, organic post. If they’re done well, they can be very effective.

Video and Carousel Ads: These also show up in your feed like an image ad. They’re also fairly self-explanatory. Video ads are made of video posts, and carousel ads use a carousel.

Stories Ads: These are very popular ads that show up in your Stories in between your favorite creators’ content. Create Stories ads to look organic, so that users don’t have a jarring experience between normal Stories and ads.

bri morrison instagram story ad

Collection and Shopping Ads: These kinds of ads allow you to shop directly from Instagram. If you have a product-based business, this can be a great paid social tool to add to your strategy.

Explore Ads: These ads are solely placed on the explore page. People on the explore page of Instagram are already looking for new brands and accounts to follow, so this placement can work well.

Tips On Instagram Ads

When you create your Instagram ads, you’ll do so in the Meta creator studio. Before you begin an ad campaign, you have to decide on what your goal for the campaign is. This will inform how Instagram pushes your ad. You can choose from options like lead generation, more traffic, app installs, views, and more.

One of the great parts about advertising on Instagram is how specific you can go with your targeting. You can choose highly-specific demographics and criteria, including interests, behavior, and browsing pattern.

If you want more information on how to advertise on Instagram, check out our complete guide.

7. Instagram Hashtags

How Hashtags On Instagram Work

Hashtags are a great tool on Instagram that you can use to target people who are searching on Instagram. If people are interested in seeing posts about a specific topic, they’ll likely search for that hashtag and see what they can find.

Instagram hashtags are helpful for organizing your posts, too, especially if you use custom hashtags that you create just for your brand.

How To Find The Best Hashtags To Use

One of the easiest ways to find new and high-quality hashtags is to use a free hashtag generator.

With a generator, you can type in keywords associated with your brand or business and see related hashtags. It might take some trial and error, but you can create some great hashtags this way.

Kicksta hashtag generator

Another way to find potential hashtags to use is by manually searching on Instagram. Go to your explore page, and think of a few terms that you’d like to find hashtags for. For example, if you want to find hashtags for business, go to the explore page and type in “business.” You’ll see hashtags that are currently being used that include the word “business.” Spend some time searching, and click on hashtags that you think might be related to your brand. Sometimes the best hashtags are a term or two away from your initial keyword, so keep digging.

Finally, you can always take a look at what hashtags your competitors are using.

Take a look at some of their popular posts to see what hashtags they’re using. Just because they’re using a particular hashtag doesn’t necessarily mean you need to use it, but it might help give you some inspiration.

Instagram Hashtags Best Practices

The first and most important best practice when it comes to hashtags is to use hashtags that are related to your image and the copy in your post.

The algorithm will pay attention to this, and if you use the hashtag puppy on a photo of an ice cream cone, it might not show your post to as many people.

Use as many hashtags as you can without forcing it.

Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags. If you have 30 hashtags that are relevant to your brand and your post, feel free to use them all. But if you only have 10 really good hashtags, don’t feel like you need to invent 20 more.

Incorporate a variety of hashtags into your strategy.

Try not to use the same set of hashtags on every post. Some of your hashtags should be specific to the photo, others can relate to the geographic location of your business, and others can speak more to your business as a whole.

Your hashtags will likely keep changing and refining as time goes on. You’ll learn what your followers are engaging with, and you might discover new hashtags, too.

Don’t feel stuck with the hashtags you begin using. 

8. Instagram Shopping 

What Are Instagram Shopping Posts?

Instagram Shopping posts are a newer type of post that allows your audience to make purchases directly from Instagram itself.

This is incredibly helpful, especially for a small business, because many people who are on Instagram don’t want to leave the app.

They’re on Instagram to be on Instagram, and they don’t want to have to go to some other website. This is a newer way that Instagram is leaning into e-commerce marketing.

Types Of Instagram Shopping Posts

Feed Posts: As you’re used to, shopping feed posts are those that’ll appear directly in a user’s feed. They’re easy to engage with, and if they’re clean and well-designed, they can generate sales fairly easily. These feed posts provide lots of information to your followers when they see them.

nuuly instagram photo

Carousel Posts: These are very effective shopping posts because they allow you to showcase multiple products in one post on each page of the carousel.

You can also show different angles rather than different products if you’d prefer. Carousel posts are dynamic and engaging, even without the shopping feature, so they work well in this case.

These are also a great option for shopping posts as you can create unique captions for each photo in the carousel, and they’ll change as users scroll through the photos in the post.

Tagged Posts: Just like you might gather user-generated content from your audience, you can gather tagged posts, too.

Your audience can now tag a specific product in their post, which acts as advertising for you. This is also a way to create a paid partnership with someone like an influencer.

Shopping Ads: These look and act just like feed or carousel posts, but they’re paid, sponsored content.

If you haven’t been getting the traction you want through your organic shopping posts, consider trying a paid shopping ad.

Product Tags In Reels: Short-form video content is all the rage these days, so it’s one of the best ways to get users’ attention. You can now tag your products in Reels, so that users can easily navigate to view your products after seeing them in a video on Instagram.

Shopping Guides: We talked about guides earlier, but remember that you can create a product guide. Here you can include the products you sell, and you can make it shoppable.

This makes it very convenient for your followers to purchase.

How To Set Up Instagram Shopping

Setting up your Instagram shopping doesn’t have to be difficult. First, you’ll need to check your eligibility.

Primarily, you have to sell physical products. As long as you do that, the rest of the criteria (having a business account, connecting to a Facebook account, etc.) are easy to meet.

Next, you need to connect your Instagram to a Facebook catalog so your audience can actually make purchases. Then you can sign up for Instagram shopping within Instagram. Once you’re approved, you can start creating shoppable posts!

For more information on how to set this up and to see examples of brands that are using it, check out our article

9. Instagram Analytics

One of the first things we talked about when creating your Instagram strategy is to have specific goals. In order to see if you’ve reached those goals, you need to access and review your Instagram analytics.

Analytics help you to see information about your followers, but it also shows you how your content is performing. Analytics help you save time by showing what types of content are performing well with your audience and what you shouldn’t waste your time creating. 

There are many great metrics to track, but most importantly you should take a look at your top posts based on reach, and your top posts based on engagement.

These will show you what content is resonating most with your audience.

You should also look at information about your followers. Your follower count is certainly important, but so is the demographic information about your followers.

Even more than those, though, you should pay attention to your audience’s most active times. This will help you know the best times for your business to post on Instagram.

Instagram insights can be a lot to dig through, so check out this list of free Instagram analytics tools you can use for help.

10. Influencer Marketing

Benefits Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is here to stay across all of social media. Influencers are becoming more and more trusted by the public, and they can help your brand reach new Instagram users. Many people view influencers as relatable and trustworthy.

Even if they’ve never met them, they feel like they’re friends with the influencer and want to do and enjoy the same things they do, just like they would with a friend in real life.

Influencers have earned this trust by growing their following slowly and by providing strong recommendations.

This is why many influencers are particular about what brands they partner with for paid promotions. Their worth is tied to the trust their audience has in them, so they can’t break that trust. However, if you find an influencer who’s a good fit for your brand, they can be very valuable in marketing your brand and bringing it to new people.

Micro influencers are actually some of the best influencers to work with.

They tend to have smaller audiences, but their audience is often more loyal and willing to make purchases based on their recommendations.

Julie Romaan influencer on instagram

Macro influencers are one step up, and they typically have between 100,000 and 1 million followers.

They’ve probably been doing this for a very long time (or they became incredibly popular very quickly). Because they have a larger audience, your message and brand name will reach more people if you work with a micro-influencer. Just know that you might have a lower conversion rate since there are so many more people in the audience.

Finally, the biggest influencers are celebrities. These are the people with millions of followers who are sometimes even household names. They can be very difficult to work with unless you’re a major brand, but if you’d like to try – go for it!

It can feel scary trying to find the right influencer, but when you find the right one for your brand it’ll feel like a good match.

How To Find Influencers To Work With

When choosing an influencer to work with, you first want to look for someone whose audience is largely filled with potential customers.

This is important for you so that your product is being marketed to people who are actually interested in it, but it’s also important for the influencer. They’ll want to make sure you’re a good fit for their audience, and they’ll likely turn you down if you aren’t. 

Additionally, you want to look for an influencer whose values match those of your company. While this isn’t crucial, it’s a nice thing to look for.

Again, it’ll make the influencer feel more comfortable introducing you to their audience, which is the goal of this partnership.

Finally, look for influencers who are already working with brands that are complementary to yours. Don’t look for people promoting your competitors.

They already have that relationship established, and they’re unlikely to switch their loyalty to you. Instead, find another brand that’s related to yours and look for the influencers they’re working with. You might find the perfect fit for your influencer marketing strategy.

Wrapping Up

Now you have all the information you could possibly need to put together and execute a successful Instagram marketing strategy in 2023.

This guide has set you up to know how to be successful on Instagram.

From strategizing to bio optimization to influencer marketing, there are so many things you can think about and implement when it comes to Instagram.

Don’t get overwhelmed. Instead, create a marketing campaign, stick with your plan and monitor your analytics to see how you need to adapt.

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5 Comments

  • xclusivedesk says:

    Instagram marketing strategy that you have shared is good to understand how it can help for a growth in marketing. Thanks for sharing the information with us, subscribed your blog.

  • xclusivedesk says:

    Instagram marketing is one of the best way to promote your business and generate conversions. Thanks for sharing this information and subscribed your blog.

  • Incredibly good post. I really liked reading it. Have done some of the things mentioned but reading the whole post let me know how much work I have to do yet

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