Instagram Marketing Strategy How to Build One the Best Way (Template)

Instagram Marketing Strategy How to Build One the Best Way (Template) Instagram has the potential to be a powerful part of your brands overall marketing plan. However, you can’t just post, sit back, and wait for success to happen by magic. You need to create an Instagram marketing strategy that establishes your goals (and lays out a game plan to achieve them). That involves everything from finding your target audience, to outlining a clear content strategy for the platform, to actually creating posts and measuring their performance. Read on to learn how to plan it all effectively. You might want to get some coffee now, because we have a lot of ground to cover. Grab Your Free Instagram Marketing Strategy Template Planning an effective strategy doesnt have to take a lot of time. Download this editable deck and complete it as you read. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a full strategy ready to present to your team. Pretty slick, right?Instagram Marketing Strategy: How To Build One The Best Way (Free Template)Did You Know You Can Schedule Instagram Posts In ? It’s true! Using the mobile app (available for iOS  and Android), you can create and schedule Instagram posts alongside all your other social media content. Check out this live demo recap to see how it works: Then, try it yourself free for 14 days. We think you’ll be impressed. How Can Brands Benefit From Instagram? Instagram is an incredibly popular platform with a large user base and high engagement rates. In fact, according to the PEW Research Center  as of 2016, 33% of adults on the internet are on Instagram. And according to TechCrunch, as of April 2017, Instagram has over 700 million active users. In other words, you have a big audience to reach. That audience is active, too. Over half of Instagram’s user base logs into the app daily according to the same PEW research study. Over half of Instagram's user base logs into the app daily.While Instagram is particularly popular with Millennials (about 59% of its overall user base as of 2016), 33% of its userbase is between the ages of 30-44, and 18% between 50-64. So if your target audience is above the age of 50, Instagram may not be your best platform option. However, if your target audience is younger, Instagram could be a goldmine for your brand. Recommended Reading: How to Get Way More Instagram Followers With 20 Easy Tactics Step One: Set Your Goals The first step in creating your Instagram strategy is to set overarching business goals and select metrics to track progress toward them. Start by setting goals for your business. These goals are what help keep the lights on and the company up and running. Examples of business goals could include: Increasing Brand Awareness: How many people know your business exists? Encouraging Customer Loyalty: What keeps people coming back to you (instead of your competition)? Driving More Revenue: Businesses need money, right? Some example business goals that your team could create are: "Increase brand audience by 55% by end of the year." "Increase sales of x product by 35% by the end of Q1." The next step in your goal setting process is selecting metrics to track. Some metrics we could select for the goal above might include: Follower growth. Are people finding you and following your profile? Post engagement rate. From there, are they actually engaging with your posts? Leads generated from profile link clicks. Finally, are they taking the next step and trying your products or services? The key is select Instagram marketing metrics that directly tie back into overall business goals. Your Instagram goals also need to be S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely). So let’s break down an example: â€Å"We want to increase our Instagram engagement rate by 25% this quarter.† Here's how this goal fits into the SMART framework: S: It’s specific in the fact that your team knows what needs to be accomplished. M: The 50% is a numerical measurement which can be calculated based . You know immediately if the goal was met or not. A: Depending on your current engagement rate growth, your team will need to assess if 25% is   a realistic goal. For example, if you are already experiencing a 17% growth rate 25% is not necessarily out of range. R: Growing your engagement rate on Instagram makes sense because the more your fans engage with your content, the more likely they are to remember you. T: You have a set deadline (one quarter)  to complete your goal. Recommended Reading: How to Set Social Media Goals to Crush Your Business Objectives Once you have a series of social media goals set you can then look to your Instagram strategy to see how the channel can help you accomplish your goals. For the sake of this post, we’re going to pretend we’re a local bookstore called ’s Corner. Three smart goals that our marketing team created are: Increase the number of younger people following us on Instagram by 50% in 6 months. Increase the brand awareness of our store in the area in 3 months by 25%. Increase engagement by 50% on each photo that we post. How can Instagram help your team accomplish those goals? The first one is simple. Instagram has a high number of young people in its user base. Therefore it would make sense that your team utilizes that channel to reach a younger audience. To prove the strategy is working you can check the in app analytics or Google Analytics and pull demographical data for your Instagram channel. The second goal requires a bit more strategy and analysis. Brand awareness  can come in many forms, and there are many different tools like Google Analytics, Brandwatch  and more that can be used to track that growth. The final goal is quite easy to connect to Instagram due to its nature of being an incredibly visual platform  and highly engaging platform. But how can you calculate the engagement rate of each of your Instagram posts. The formula is: So if your team has 157 comments and likes on one photo, you would divide that number by your total current followers and multiply by 100. (100 likes + 57 comments) / 2569 followers x 100 = 6.11% engagement rate. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Instagram Engagement With 15 Tips Step Two: Find Your Audience On Instagram The next part of your Instagram marketing strategy will be to find your audience. Finding your audience is a key part of your strategy because without knowing who your content is targeting you end up throwing it into the massive pile of Instagram posts with no direction to get it out. How do you find your audience? First,  you need to find the demographic data from the audience you are currently attracting. This will help your team determine if Instagram is the right channel for your target audience. If you’re on Instagram, open your app and click the analytics bar graph in the upper right-hand corner: Scroll through the in app analytics until you find followers: Click on See More to see a full breakdown of the age range of your audience: If your Instagram is pulling in the age range of your target audience it would make sense to maximize your resources on the channel. If not, Instagram could be a secondary awareness channel for your team. Once you know whether or not your target audience is utilizing Instagram, you can begin to tailor your content based on what your audience is interacting the most with. It could be content centered around: Problems they are experiencing. People are turning to your company for answers to issues that are surfacing in their daily lives, whether they’re looking for a plumber to fix a clogged drain or a dress to wear for their next event. Center your content around ways that you can help solve those problems. Information they're seeking. Maybe they need to know about the best type of chew toy for a new puppy, so your content could feature different chew toys with captions on what age and breed would enjoy them the most. Company culture and recruiting. People love seeing what’s going on behind the scenes at your office. Not only does it help humanize your brand, it can also help recruit new team members. Recommended Reading: How to Find Your Target Audience And Create the Best Content That Connects Step Three: Optimize Your Profile The way you create your company profile on Instagram plays a significant role in your success on the social media site. There are three main pieces on your profile that need to be 100% completed otherwise, you’re going to miss out connecting with potential customers. Those pieces are: An Instagram Business account. A profile picture. A snappy bio. Make Sure You Have A Business Account You may notice that your standard Instagram account doesn’t have a space for links. That’s because website links and analytics features are only accessible if your Instagram is operating under a business account. Setting your business account up is easy (and free). Log into your company profile and click on settings: Scroll until you find Switch to Business Profile: Toggle that switch to on, and Instagram will walk you through how to create your business profile. Once your account is set you should see business settings in your profile: Optimal-sized profile picture The standard profile picture on Instagram is 110px by 110px. It’s also important to note that Instagram’s profile pictures are round and usually quite small, so the less detail you can include in your profile picture the better. Many companies stick to using their logo like this: Optimize Your Bio The second step in optimizing your Instagram profile involves creating a short and snappy bio that encompasses who you are as a company in 150 characters or less. Some tips to help your team craft that bio are utilizing your tagline  (those are already short), pulling three descriptive adjectives that encompass your company or shortening your mission statement down to a sentence. Check out how Nike got their bio down to three simple words: So how do you create a really awesome snappy bio? Start with the following fill in the blank exercise: _[Company]_ is [adjective], [adjective], and driven to provide [issue your company solves or service your company provides]. Filled out it would look like: Corner  is a local, creative bookstore that is driven to provide a welcoming environment that fosters a love of reading for all ages. (Note: Corner is not an actual bookstore, but that would be cool if it was!) The final character count is 142. Now let’s say that you’re over in count, how can you fix it? Cut out your company name, they can already see it in your username: A local, creative bookstore that is driven to provide a welcoming environment that fosters a love of reading for all ages. Still over? Cut as much fluff out as possible. Words like â€Å"that† can almost always be cut out: A local, creative bookstore, driven to provide a welcoming environment fostering  a love of reading for all ages. Once you’ve edited out the fluff, your bio is ready to go. Recommended Reading: How to Increase Visibility With Social Media Optimization Include A Link To Your Website It’s important to note that Instagram does not allow links in posts, so the only chance your fans will have to see your site is if it’s included in your bio. You can change up the link based on what types of content you’re posting and what you want to drive your fans to: Step Four: Find Your Voice And Tone Instagram is prime space to show off your brand’s voice and tone. Why? Because Instagram is a personal platform which means the more that you can bring your company’s personality into the better. But how do you develop your voice and tone? Voice is the overall sound and personality of your business. It encompasses who you are as a brand and allows your audience to establish a connection with you. How can you develop your voice? List three adjectives and then find its opposite counterpart like this: Intelligent but not cocky. Humorous but not silly. Professional but not stuffy. Check out this list to help you get started: Mailchimp’s voice and tone  brand guidelines are a great example of how to format your voice adjectives. So you covered voice, but what about tone? Tone is the inflection of your voice, which details how you say something. Think of it almost like subtext. Your tone will change depending on the situation. So what does a solid Instagram voice and tone sound like? Starbucks Starbucks is known for its friendly, conversational language. They’re also great at integrating emojis and hashtags into their content as well: When your coffee matches your city. #IcedCaramelMacchiato Regram: @yogafawzi A post shared by Starbucks Coffee (@starbucks) on Aug 4, 2017 at 9:16am PDT Barnes and Noble Barnes and Noble works hard to foster a love of books through positive language and inspiring imagery: Best. Year. Ever. Get ready for the new school year with fun supplies, book bags more must-haves! in bio A post shared by Barnes Noble (@barnesandnoble) on Aug 21, 2017 at 1:39pm PDT Lowe’s Home Improvement Lowe’s Instagram focuses on DIY home improvements which means their voice and tone is usually helpful and insightful: @ourhappycarmonhome gave an old dining buffet new life with a fresh coat of paint. Let's see your creative storage solutions using #lowesproject. A post shared by Lowe's Home Improvement (@loweshomeimprovement) on Aug 23, 2017 at 8:27am PDT