I know that for lots of people they are really attracted to Instagram BUT have no idea where to start and it actually feels like a platform that’s quite spammy and all those pouts 😱 It can feel like a bit of a palaver to learn a new platform and get it right.
So let’s look at some of the basics of what we need to be thinking about;
Instagram has, apparently, got 800 million active monthly users ~ it would seem a waste to not get those potential eyes on your business.  Social Sprout has some amazing stats for you to take a look at if you are a staty kinda person >>click here to read<<
Let’s look at some bits to get you going;
NUMBER 1 ~ STATS ~ This is the little area you can hit on in order to have a look at your own stats on your profile. You can look at stats spilt down into the last 7 days, 30 days, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years and can focus on engagement, likes calls, comments, follows, get directions, profile visits, reach, saved, texts & website clicks. You can also see the demographics of your following and how many people are using each & every day.
NUMBER 2 ~ YOUR USER NAME ~ this is your user name and it’s searchable for people on Instagram ~ a little tip on this one is don’t make number 2 the same as number 3 as both are searchable.
NUMBER 3 ~ YOUR NAME ~ again, this one is searchable so make sure that it’s relevant and includes any keywords that you want to be found for. If you are a local business then make sure that you are including your locality in there somewhere as people may well be searching local stuff and you’ll be missing a trick if you don’t come up in there.
NUMBER 4 ~ BIO ~ this is kinda the first look at that your crowd might get at what you do. Make sure you are thinking about what’s in it for them, a little about you and a reason for them to click the link below. You can see that I’ve also used a little finger pointing down to the website click there too.
NUMBER 5 ~ YOUR LINK ~ this is your clickable link in Instagram and you might want to refer people back to “the link in my profile” so think about what you want to include in there. I use linktr.ee  so that I can have multiple locations to send them to. You could also create a page on your website that’s specific for people landing their from Instagram and directing them to the places you’d like them to go.
Your Grid
Lots of people talk about your Instagram feed being like a magazine AND I also know that it then triggers the response “what does that even mean?!” For me I think you need to think about the look & feel of your board. On Instagram it’s important that each post works independently but that they also come together as a grid layout. You don’t have to get overly anal about patterns, unless you want to. I know that if I obsess about patterns then it stops my creativity and makes me resist working with my Instagram feed.
Insofar as the whole magazine thang goes I do think that you can learn a stack from the layout of print magazines. Your Rockstar Homework is to grab some of your fav magazines and look at them from both an aesthetic perspective ~ how do they use imagery, where’s your eye drawn, how much white space is there?
Think about your brand too. For me, POP is a word that we use a lot when we are thinking about the imagery within Rebels & Rockstars and it’s about colours that pop, it’s about dynamic imagery that doesn’t feel 2D and it’s about it popping in newsfeeds. What’s your brand imagery all about? Yeah, you can totally tweak your brand on different platforms but it needs to make sense & work together across platforms so that people recognise your brand with ease.
The biggest thing I’d say here is ~ TAKE WHAT YOU KNOW TO WORK OUT WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ~ this mean that there’s stacks you can learn from what works on your other platforms and start to apply them to your Instagram feed. Take the principles that you already know and ask yourself “how would that work on Instagram.”
I hope that’s given you some handy hints to get started. I’ll be covering hashtags, stories and much more soon. Please don’t hesitate to shout in the comments if there’s anything that you’d like a little help & support with and I’ll do my best 😘
