How to create an Instagram marketing strategy? A complete guide

If you worked in business sphere before, you know that it`s important to plan every step in your strategy. Even if it was made for a short period of time, you must check everything for a few times and only then start the working process.

Social media marketers are planning their content strategy starting from the simplest steps, because there, in social media, it will depend on their success.

Today, the most popular social media for marketing is Instagram. 8 million business accounts, over 700 million monthly active users. it`s like a golden mine for businesspersons – people are always looking for something, so why not to show them what you have.

In this article, we will go through all main steps that should be completed while creating an Instagram marketing strategy.

Determine your objectives

First of all, you should ask yourself some questions. For example, why you choose Instagram? What will Instagram allow you to do that other platforms don`t? Who is your target audience and which part of this audience is on Instagram? How will Instagram integrate with the other networks in your social media strategy? Remember that you have other platforms besides Instagram – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. If you chose Instagram, you must use all it`s advantages in your marketing strategy.

Create your Instagram profile

Well, you can`t perform good marketing strategy without your own profile. However, it shouldn`t be a typical profile with strange photos and boring stories. This page is the face of your brand on Instagram, so your task is to make it acceptable for your audience and potential followers.

Create your personal posting calendar

If we are talking about social media marketing strategy, we should always remember about posting. It`s probably the most important part of all process, because without it we can`t show our goods to the customers. However, you can`t add your posts any time you want. You must have your best post planner.

With the help of this calendar, you will be able to schedule your posts through all days of the week. Every day, when the time will come, the only thing you should do is to add post to your timeline, so people will see it in their newsfeed. And, if you want to have maximum engagement from your content, you should find the best time to post on instagram. There are some recommendations for each social media with the accurate posting time for each day. You can work with it, but we recommend you to use another method.

Analyze your audience and find out in which part of each day they show the highest activity on Instagram. When you will find this time period, you will be able to form your posting calendar and forget about problems with content. You know that people will see your posts at the right time, so they will surely put likes and leave comments.

Edit your photos with different tools

Visual content plays the main role in your Instagram marketing strategy. With it`s help, you advertise your products, announce new collections, draw users` attention and, of course, make money from purchases. However, you must know that people won`t react on the bad-quality photos. So, you should edit them and add some special effects.

We recommend you to use two basic tools – Photoshop and VSCO. With Photoshop, you are able to work with the smallest details of each photo, change every pixel and delete unnecessary objects. If you are working with the laptop or personal computer, this tool will definitely help you.

However, if you prefer to work with smartphone, you should use VSCO. This tool allows you to work with different filters, change such parameters like sharpen, saturation, contrast, photo tone, temperature, grain and vignette effect. A bigger part of all available filers is free, but you can donate and open yourself new filters. If you know more good photo editing tools, you can use them, too.

Work with user-generated content

Who said that social media marketers must use only their own content? Who said that any other Instagram user can`t use his\her own content?

In fact, user-generated content plays a huge role for all businesspersons on Instagram. Sometimes, when you don`t have prepared content (anything could happen), it will be a smart move to repost someone`s else image to you. However, you must know what to repost.

In most cases, people repost images from the users who are interested in their sphere and who also has qualitative content in his\her profile. Maybe this person writes good posts about your topic, and you found something that can help you and your audience, so why not to share it?

Pay attention to your captions

We know that Instagram is a visual platform where everyone concentrates on images and videos. However, some users also think that the good caption could help marketers to upgrade their content.

You should understand how important your Instagram captions are. For example, if your business is a clothing store, your captions must give user a full understanding about the product. For example, if you posted a photo of a T-shirt, you should indicate its size, price and all available colors. Also, if you put it on a sale, you should mention this in your caption.

Use hashtags

People often forget, but Instagram hashtags could turn into a really powerful weapon for marketers. With at least one tag, you will have twice as much engagement as if you hadn`t use it.

Hashtags allow you to indicate your content in all Instagram, so people will easily find you by searching with the right hashtag. For the first time, try to use different forms of one tag (use capital letters) and look on the result. If you see that it`s not interesting for your audience, it will be better to try another one.