When running a business Instagram account, it’s easy to feel stumped when it comes to generating great content for your followers to engage with. Today, we’re here to show you what to post on Instagram to gain more followers and engagement. Move on from pretty pictures and create an endless list of content to post with these 10 ideas:
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Photos of your products
This is the most obvious type of content but more often than not we see clients who struggle with this one. Usually, the excuse is that they don’t have professional photos. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post! It’s perfectly acceptable to use amateur photos on social media, just turn your phone camera on portrait mode and shoot away. Or, consider if perhaps manufacturers of the product you sell have professional photos you can use.
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Tips/How-tos/Educational posts
You’re the expert! Share tips and educational posts with your audience to keep them involved. Write it in a caption or post a video with a quick how-to and you have created value for your followers. Don’t get hung up on having to be the very best (impostor syndrome is a real struggle for many entrepreneurs). Could there be someone out there that knows more than you? Most likely. Will your followers still get value from your post? Absolutely!
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National Holidays
With National Holidays running from random to plain wacky (Create a Vacuum Day?), this can seem like a cheesy content idea. However, if you run a coffee shop you should post on #NationalCoffeeDay, and a children’s science museum would want to post on #NationalAstronomyDay. Using the appropriate hashtags for the holiday can help get new profile visits. And then don’t forget to plan for the actual real holidays. Put them on your content calendar and have a plan for how you are going to celebrate on Instagram, so your message stays consistent and branded.
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Client Testimonials
Toot, toot! There’s nothing wrong with tooting your own horn on social media. Testimonials and reviews are valuable and build brand credibility. You can share messages customers have sent you or reviews from Yelp and Google. Use an app like Canva to create a branded graphic to go along with the post.
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Your team
People do business with people they know, like and trust. Instagram is the perfect way to introduce your entire team to an audience that otherwise would never see their faces. It’s also a great platform to give kudos for a job well done or celebrate job anniversaries and milestones.
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Contests/Giveaways
Instagram is an easy platform to run contests on, a simple format “like our page, comment and tag a friend” to enter is perfectly acceptable and measurable. Remember to set parameters for the giveaways such as when entries will be accepted, how the winner will be drawn and notified.
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Inspirational/Funny quotes
As with national holidays, this can be a bit of a rabbit hole to fall into, so make sure to do this right. Our general rule is:
- Brand the graphic so it flows with the feed
- Give credit
- Make it relevant to your industry
If you’re an engineering company, a daily inspirational quote isn’t on brand, but a quote from a famous architect or engineer could be appropriate. Funny quotes can be used if it’s appropriate for your company – developing a social media style guide is helpful in determining that.
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Behind the scenes
Show the product in production, images from inside the warehouse, or even the team at work.
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Statistics
Interesting statistics are easy to curate online and show that you are staying on top of industry news and know how to pick out relevant information to share with your followers. Make sure the caption ties it back to the “why” – why is this statistic important to know?
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Blog posts
There’s no better way to set yourself apart as an expert. Blogging is great for your website as it creates new content for search engines to crawl and can help your website rank better. But it also creates a base for microcontent – pull out quotes from the article and link back to your website in your bio.
In summary, when creating content for Instagram consider who your ideal client is and then tailor content that would attract and be interesting to that person. How can your posts help them? How can you entertain and connect? What should your feed look like in order to attract that person’s attention?
Lastly, don’t overthink it. Get started and then take a step back after a few weeks of regular posting. Notice which posts are getting engagement – it will give you a clear indication of what content to create more of and what posts fell flat.
