What Makes a Good Instagram Post?
Instagram for many, especially those with businesses, find it hard to figure out Instagram. There is really no secret to how to gain likes or followers. What I do know is there needs to be strategy behind an Instagram post when it comes to your business. Whether you see the gain or not, I guarantee you, you will see a difference of improvement by considering the following things.
Before you begin…
Have you identified your audience? A lot of the things that occur in Social Media, has the starting point of knowing who your audience is to build from. In other words, you develop content for your social media based off of who your audience is. If it has been a while since you’ve identified who your audience is, I encourage you to think about who they are.
Ways to Identify your Audience
Develop an Audience Persona: With a quick google search, you will find questions that you answer to help you create an audience persona. What do they do for a living? What are their favorite foods? What is their lifestyle? Where do they go for entertainment? What are their favorite colors? What is their marital status? When you create this person or group of people that represent your audience, it helps you in knowing what kind of content to develop. You want to make sure you are creating content that your ideal person would resonate with.
Think about that one Person… That one person who always comments, likes, or engages with your posts, sends you a DM… Who is that person? What is their lifestyle like? Do they have children? Are they busy moms? Are they stay at home moms? Sometimes just thinking about that one person that engages all the time, is all you need (for the time being) to be able to begin to create content for.
Start with you: If you have no idea who your audience is, have a vague idea of that one person who engages the most on your posts, then start with you! Sometimes, we begin our businesses because of an experience that WE had and wanted to find a solution for. With that being said, sometimes we are OUR ideal customer/audience. Develop content on the things that you would find the most value in.
Identify your Brand Voice
Before you begin developing content for your social media, have a general idea of what your brand voice is. While it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s better to have an idea of how you want your overall brand personality to look like to those stopping by and viewing your content. Things to consider:
Define your Values
Know your Why
What makes your brand/business unique?
What do you stand for as a brand/business?
What values do you want to share with your audience?
What are your branding colors and style? (having an aesthetics for instagram is important)
What Makes a Good Instagram Post
A compelling photo
This may seem like a given, however, do you know how to capture compelling photos? When you are posting to Instagram, the message needs to align with the photo. In order to know what type of content you need to create, you need to know your messaging first. Remember, photos capture a moment in time, so what you say about the photo needs to be relevant or makes sense with your message. Photos also need to be clear. Blurry photos are not the type of content that you want to share. Clear quality photos can be captured with a good smart phone or DSLR Camera.
What are you branding values? Photos that are shared to your Instagram, also need to align with your own personal values as a brand. Finally, think about your aesthetics. How do you want your aesthetic to appear as a first impression when someone visits?
An Eye-Catching Caption
Captions are so important NOW that ever. When I first started blogging, I didn’t think too much about captions as i do today. There are a few ways in which you can write a good caption even if you are not a writer! Here are a few tips:
Consider the Length: Depending on your audience or you as a person, lengthy Instagram captions can be ok. Instagram allows for 2200 Characters in one single post. However, your message needs to be cohesive to the photo that you are sharing and needs to provide value.
Break up your sentences: Don’t have your sentences all scarmbled into one long paragraph, but instead, break them up into sections so it’s easier on the eye.
Emojis: Another way to use enhance your captions is to use Emojis. Don’t go Emoji crazy but using emoji’s can also capture someone’s attention.
Conversational Language works best: Write as though you are writing to a family member or friend. This is the easiest way to approach your caption.
Tone- should match tone of the photo. As mention previously, your image should match the message that you are trying to convey.
Put the Most Important words at the beginning! This is one of the BEST ways that you can grab your readers attention! I like to sometimes start my captions in all caps, post a question, or start with a sentence that is suspenseful where they have to read more to find out the story!
Cut out words that are (clearly) unnecessary to keep (it )as concise. (as possible). The words in parenthesis are the words that are filler or extra that is an example of unnecessary words.
Encourage Engagement with a Call-to-Action (CTA) "Leave a comment, tag a friend" or weight in an opinion
Hashtags: you can use up to 30 hashtags and be sure to mix it up with popular hashtags and not so popular but relevant.
Use photo editing tools
I highly suggest taking a look at these tools to help you automate or enhance your photos with photo editing. This section alone is a whole workshop in itself!
SENDIBLE (Social Media Posting- Low Monthly Fee)
FACEBOOK CREATOR STUDIO (Social Media Posting and it’s free!)
INSHOT (VIDEO EDITING- Free to use it’s basic features)
SNAPSEED (Free to use it’s basic features)
TOUCH RETOUCH (one time payment to use it’s features)
IMOVIE (Free- typically can download with iphones)
ADOBE LIGHTROOM (Low monthly cost)
UNFOLD (For instagram stories- one time payment to use it’s features)
Use the Grid-Feature
I use UNUM, where i upload a few of my already edited photos to see how my instagram feed will look like before manually posting. This is a good way to plan out your content and how it will look like BEFORE actually posting. Remember aesthetics? Yep, these app help with that which feeds into your brand identify. Doing this help you with your aesthetic!
UNUM
PLANOLY
What other things do you do that make a good Instagram post? Leave it in the comments below!
