In our previous post, we wrote about 5 benefits Instagram can have for your business. Today, we’re listing 5 essential steps for you Instagram marketing routine that will allow you to enjoy those benefits. There are about 55M photos posted on Instagram a day, which requires you to plan long-term and commit. Just like you would in physical-world relationships. It’s a SOCIAL network, after all.
If you are not able to commit as much, still follow the guidelines to your best ability.
1 Post in optimal frequency
Optimal means a couple things. One, you want stay top-of-mind without annoying anyone. You can even post two photos at the same time if appropriate, and five a day if needed. Or just every other day. All depends on your audience – keep track of your unfollow rates and fluctuations in like and comment counts, those will be your best indicators.
Two, you only want to post when you have something worth-wile to post about. If you are a ski resort, you won’t post unless there’s news about snow or events to share. If you are an artist, you will not want to post unless you have something exciting and beautiful to share with your #instafriends.
Three, you want to post often enough to avoid steep drops in engagement. The architecture of Instagram implies an interesting phenomenon – it is easier to get #instalove for a new post if you’re still getting some #instalove for a post from before. You will experience that as soon as you start posting more often, and the way we explain this is that Instagram architects are super smart and want to reward frequent posting. Thence, posting often enough, where your “often enough” is different from us, and different again from your competitor, will keep the pendulum going.
An example of an optimal frequency by a committed #iger is 10 times a week. The #iger will, say, post twice on days like Sunday and Monday, when the network is busiest, and Friday, when the engagement of their unique community is proven to be highest.
Play around and find what works best for you.
2 Post in optimal times
Instagram doesn’t allow scheduling even from external services such as Hootsuite, but timing remains crucial. To start off, do not worry about it too much and base it on intuition. Later on though, use Instagram analytics provided by tools such as Statigram, and find times that work best for you. Instagram is global and you might therefore be surprised – maybe your optimal posting time is when your Japanese followers are commuting home from work. At the same time, you should find times which give you much lower engagement than normal, and avoid those.
Coming back to omnipresence of mobile devices, your optimal posting time will be what you make it. Mix it up, analyze, and organize internally. There’s also one bottom-line rule to remember: combine the proven posting times that work for you with times when Instagram is busiest.
Graph of optimal posting times by Buffer, souce: http://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-stats-instagram-tips
Coming Up
In the next post, we’ll talk about three more powerful posting steps – right hashtags on right photos, consistency, and interacting with the right people. We will bring visual examples of our own Instagram marketing experiments. Stay tuned!
Give Us a Shout
The steps above are here to help you kick-start your Instagram marketing and lead it in the right direction. There is much more to talk about, like features, contests, and all the creative approaches to Instagram … Get in touch with us for a hands-on conversation about your specific social media needs, and ways we can help you. We’ll be excited!
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