Highlight your Instagram brand personality.

Besides staying up to date with the latest deals and discounts, one of the biggest reasons people follow brands on social media is to learn more about their personalities.

Instagram is not the right place to constantly advertise your products. Potential followers aren't going to follow you if that's your only type of content.

Instead, think about your brand voice – your brand voice, and highlight it in your Instagram content.

If you haven't already, imagine your brand as if it were a person in its own right. What is his personality? Is she playful and teasing? Is she rather inspiring and direct? Stay consistent across all your platforms, whether it's Instagram or your website blog.

Whatever brand voice you choose for your brand, your content should reflect your brand's passion for its mission.

Although they are niche competitors, the voices of these two brands work well to attract and keep their community. So be original and integrate your personality everywhere.

Write original captions

Beautiful visuals help capture your audience's attention – original captions help keep it. Use the 2,200 available characters to give more context to the photo or video you're posting.

Keep important information first.

Incorporate keywords to improve the chances of appearing in in-app search results.

Use emojis and a little humour to highlight your brand's personality.

Encourage people to share their thoughts.

Structure more extended captions with bullet points or emojis to improve readability.

Mention other accounts (where possible) to increase reach.

End with a CTA (see Airbnb example below: “Check out the link in bio to browse the summer catalogue. »

Also, diversify your captions so they don't appear robotic and automated. Try different formats such as Q&As, recommendation requests, personal stories, asking to tag friends, sharing your content, etc.

And while it's best to keep the caption clear and to the point, try different lengths depending on the content you're sharing. For example, storytelling will require a lengthy caption, while a short, punchy caption may be better suited to presenting a product. The most exciting captions are between 500 and 1,000 characters and between 1,000 and 2,000.

Use clever hashtags

Hashtags are similar to keywords in that they help users find content on a particular topic. They are typically used in the captions or comments of a post and, when used well, can help your content reach a wider audience, improving your brand visibility and chances of gaining new followers check now.

With the right hashtags, your content is easier to discover through search or filtering when users tap on another post's hashtag. Users can also follow hashtags on their favourite topics; the best content with that hashtag will appear in their Instagram feed.

For example, if you want your post to reach people who love running but are also mothers, you can use the hashtag #runningmom. As previously mentioned, creating and promoting a branded hashtag (such as Lululemon's #thesweatlife ) in your bio and posts is a smart way to encourage your community to produce User Generated Content (UGC). – free user-generated content.

Therefore, create relevant and targeted hashtags with fewer followers but still significant rather than using all the popular generic hashtags on a broad topic. It's also a good idea to group your favourite hashtags by category so you can easily add a few relevant hashtags to each post.

Collaborate with influencers and ambassadors

Partnering with influencers in your niche is an effective way to gain visibility and new followers. When we think of the term “influencer,” we tend to think of people with many followers with almost celebrity status. However, the prices offered by the latter for promotional posts are often costly and not very attractive.

Collaborating with micro-influencers with a smaller but more engaging audience (between 1,000 and 100,000 followers) and who are considered experts in their field is preferable. Examples include travel vloggers, food bloggers, fitness enthusiasts, etc.

They are seen as more authentic and have more intimate relationships with their followers. They have more significant connections with their community and, therefore, have better engagement rates. Additionally, you can quickly determine whether their follower base and engagement are real or fake.

So, with a micro-influencer, you can have a small budget – you can offer one of your products/services in exchange for a post, and if all goes well between you, the influencer could become an ambassador of your brand. This collaboration will allow you to reach a wider audience and boost your profile's engagement.

Additionally, these partnerships allow you to showcase your brand values ​​and personality because the people you partner with say a lot about your brand.

Promote your Instagram everywhere

Don't just limit your efforts to promoting your Instagram on the platform. If you have other social networks, a decent-sized email list, or regular traffic to your website, try directing those people to your Instagram profile.

Make it easy for people to find your Instagram by adding your profile link to the footer of your emails, the footer and sidebar of your website, in the bios of your other social networks like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, and in the content your employees post on social networks.

Add your location

Lastly, your location on Instagram is a helpful feature to gain more followers if your business is local. Instagram is a platform for discovering new products, travel destinations, retail brands, restaurants, cafes, etc. – and many users geotag their posts.

If you put the location on your post, it has a good chance of being visible when a user searches by keyword or location. You get more local exposure, and posts with a marked location see 79% higher engagement than posts without a marked location.

Therefore, indicate your location in all types of content – ​​carousels, videos, stories, reels, etc. Also, create your brand localization – i.e. with your brand name. Customers can add your business location to their posts, allowing you to see what they say about you.

Any strategy is only as good as its execution. It’s time to put all these elements into practice. While you're there, check out our latest Instagram Engagement report, which features data with critical trends and insights gathered from over 110 million Instagram posts.