The Top 3 Mistakes Businesses Make on Instagram
What was, not too long ago, a platform for fashion, photography and food brands to take control of the social media market is now a platform flooded with estate attorneys, realtors and doctors. In fact, there are trending hashtags that support almost any niche of business that you may be interested in researching.
Since fall of 2020, our team has seen an increase in Instagram engagement across all of our clients’ profiles (yes, even estate attorneys). Users, we venture, were tired of the politics and conversations happening on Facebook, where we saw engagement - and even followers - decrease significantly.
So as brands from all industries turn to Instagram to connect with their followers, where do you begin? First, just start posting. Second, consider your strategies for avoiding these top 3 mistakes:
Mistake #1: Not Using Stories: If you’re an “elder millennial” (born before 1985) or a gen x-er, chances are you don’t review stories in your Facebook or Instagram feed. This is common. Stories tend to draw the attention of younger audiences first, while those of us in our mid-late 30’s and up, scroll through our feeds first. Posting seems natural to many of us, but don’t forget to use stories. You don’t even have to make something brand new for this. Simply share your post from your feed (or a post from someone else that resonated with you), throw on a filter and gif (if you want) and you’re done. This ensures your content is being seen FIRST by all age demographics of your audience.
Mistake #2: Using Stock Images or Canned Language: This isn’t the place to be commercial. Even if you are selling to your audience, you need to meet them with authenticity in this space. Selfies are perfectly OK - and will always garner more engagement than anything else you post. Brand photos of you, your team, your products are all acceptable, just make sure your content is real, honest and supports a unique brand voice. Emojis are good here 🙌 👩 and so are hashtags. Speaking of…
Mistake #3: Using Too Many Hashtags: You’ve seen these posts before. There is a great photo, some funny writing and then BAM. 600 hashtags. Thankfully, Instagram now won’t let posts have more than 10 hashtags on a story or 30 on a post because it’s spam. People will throw all the hashtags they can think of into their post hoping to get more reach (which sometimes works), but it’s scamming the system. Instead, research 5-6 strategic hashtags that make sense for your industry.
When it comes to social media, thankfully there are very few mistakes that you can’t undo. The key is trying: new hashtags, different types of stories, etc. Just as long as you’re continuing to learn what you’re comfortable with sharing and what YOUR audience responds to. Not everything will be a home run, but the fact that you’re out there and being seen - is the most important part!
Have more questions? Contact us. We’re here to help.