For product businesses, Instagram offers a world of possibilities. There are more than 1.15 billion active users on Instagram, and 90% of those users follow at least one business on the platform.
The average conversion rate on Instagram is 1.08%, with an average order value of $65. When you start to do the math, it’s clear that Instagram is a worthwhile investment for your business.
But establishing your business presence on Instagram isn’t always easy. Most businesses are making mistakes that stand in the way of them growing their following and expanding their reach.
Do you wish your Instagram was doing more for you? Read on to find out the top four mistakes you can make with your business Instagram (and how you can avoid them)!
Mistake #1: Focusing on Quantity over Quality
It’s tempting to post as much content as physically possible—after all, each post is a new chance to attract customers, right? Yes, and no.
Posting often is great, but it’s more important to post quality content that drives engagement. If you post poor quality content often, you’re just filling your grid with things nobody wants to see, and likely losing followers in the process.
So…what should you be posting? The answer isn’t always about promoting your products. You need to post content that teaches and adds value to your audience. If you’re a health supplement company, you could post about easy ways to add Vitamin C to your diet. If you’re a beauty brand, you could post about tips for managing dry skin.
The more that you add value to your viewers, the more engaged they’ll be. That, in turn, leads to more conversions and profits when you do promote your business.
Don’t forget to also post entertaining content. Educating your following is vital, but nobody wants to follow brands that are all work and no play. Add GIFS, memes, or videos to your content to keep things light and fun.
Finally, make sure you create content designed to engage your audience. Create polls, ask questions, and fun contests and giveaways—anything that gets your audience actively engaged in your content!
When you fill your profile up with quality content that educates, offers value, entertains, and engages, your followers will stay loyal and eager to hear from you.
Mistake #2: Not Considering Your Grid Design
You could post the best-looking content in the world, but if it looks bad with the rest of your content, your brand image suffers.
Your grid design is important—you have to consider what each post looks like cohesively when people click onto your profile.
One easy way to elevate your grid design is to stick to consistent brand colors and use the same filter on your photos. Select a palette of several colors and play with the way they look—the goal is to create a unified image without looking stale.
When you create your content, use Canva or a similar design program to experiment with the different ways your color palette can be used. You can create templates in Canva that make future content quick and easy.
Don’t forget to add a variety of content—real-life photographs, product images, graphics, quotes, videos, and GIFs. With your brand colors in place, the variety of content will still be tied into your brand image while offering plenty of engagement opportunities.
Mistake #3: Winging It
It can also be tempting to not schedule your content in advance. Some business owners feel that their content might become robotic and predictable if they use a scheduler.
But the truth is, it’s just the opposite. Scheduling your content allows you to easily see problems with your content—you can look through your posts for the month and see that you didn’t share anything about your products, or that none of your posts encouraged engagement.
If you post on the go, it’s easy to miss those issues!
Use a scheduler like Later, Buffer, or Hootsuite and create your content at least a month in advance so you can make sure you’re bringing your followers consistent, quality posts.
Mistake #4: Not Analyzing Your KPIs
Schedulers don’t just offer a way to lay out your content in advance. They also offer in-depth analysis. Many business owners just pay attention to their followers and fail to dive into their KPIs.
But if you’re not analyzing your data, you’re missing valuable information. You’re wasting time and effort on posts that don’t do well, and losing out on opportunities to grow and expand in a bigger and better way.
The amount of followers is not the only number you need to worry about. Pay attention to your reach—is it as high as you want it to be? If not, what hashtag changes can you make to try to expand the spread?
The same applies to engagement. What time of day are your followers most likely to engage with your content? What type of content do they seem to prefer?
With schedulers, you don’t have to guess—that information is stored in your dashboard so you can see what content is working and what content isn’t working.
When you analyze your KPIs, you can put your efforts into what works for your audience and avoid wasting time and losing money.
How to Get Started
Now that you know what mistakes to avoid, let’s talk about how to get started on the right foot. At Crème de Mint, we offer a social media branding kit designed to lay the foundation for a strong media presence.
The kit includes establishing post categories for your content, designing and writing your first month of posts, creating templates that you can use in the future, and scheduling your posts for you—complete with hashtags to help you grow your reach. We’ll even train you on how to do everything yourself. Our goal is to set you up for success so that you continue your growth on your own!
Want to hear more? Contact our seasoned branding agency today to get started!