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How to Build Your Brand With Instagram: 11 Tried-and-True Strategies

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How to Build Your Brand With Instagram: 11 Tried-and-True Strategies

Instagram has demonstrated tremendous growth, with its community reaching over 2 billion monthly users in 2021.

Despite its impressive reach, many business owners are still overlooking its marketing potential. As a result, they’re leaving high levels of engagement, brand awareness, and even profit on the table. But why?

In just 12 months, we used Instagram to gain 400,000 followers for Foundr — which translated to over 70,000 email subscribers. At the end of that period, we were averaging 30,000 call-to-action clicks per month from Instagram, and converting 30% of the users who landed on our website from our Instagram page into email subscribers.

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We’ve seen it work, now it’s time for you to get in on the action. In this article, we’ll show you how to build your brand with Instagram. (If you’re looking for more marketing tools and resources for your new business, check out our comprehensive guide on how to start a business.)

1. Build an Instagram strategy.

We listed this as the first step because it is the most crucial step in building a brand on Instagram.

If you lack a clear strategy, you’ll end up with low-performing content and a scattered feed as you struggle to brainstorm new ideas.

To build your Instagram strategy, you’ll need to do four things:

    • Determine your goals.
    • Narrow down your target audience.
    • Research your competition.
    • Develop your content plan.

2. Experiment with the platform’s features.

Instagram is constantly evolving. In fact, every week, the Head of Instagram shares a video discussing new features and product updates on the platform.

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In one of his latest videos, he announced that they were testing a subscription feature that would allow people to subscribe to their favorite creators and get access to exclusive Lives and Stories.

In addition to all the new features the social platform tests, there are a lot of established tools, such as Live Rooms, shoppable posts, scheduled Lives, and hashtags – just to name a few.

Our advice is to choose one to two features to test out every month. This will prevent you from getting overwhelmed and allow you to measure the impact of each feature.

For instance, hashtags can help you reach users who don’t follow you but could be interested in your products and services.

Don’t know how many to use? Data from our latest Instagram Engagement Report suggests brands should only use one hashtag per post.

Having 8 or more hashtags reduced engagement by 70% compared to the optimal number of hashtags: one.

Another reason to test Instagram features is that it can help you reach more users. The platform has admitted to prioritizing accounts that use features the brand wants to highlight, such as Reels.

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It’s a win all around: You stay ahead of the curve, discover which features work for you, and you can expand your reach in the process.

3. Jump on trends.

On social media, all it takes is one person’s video or sound to go viral for the rest of the world to join in with their own version.

Most of these trends are fun and harmless with a lifespan of about three weeks or less.

Why should you join in? Well, it’s an opportunity to connect with your audience in a creative and fun way. If you jump in as the trend is rising, it can also give you a quick boost in engagement and reach.

How to Build Your Brand With Instagram 11 Tried and True Strategies

When considering joining any trend, there are two things you want to ask:

      • How can I bring this back to my business and/or industry to make it relatable to my audience?
      • What is the origin of this trend and could it go against our company values?

4. Invest in high-quality creative assets.

A great Instagram post can be boiled down to a formula and requires two elements: beautiful imagery and engaging text.

Beautiful Imagery

Choose images that tell a story or elicit emotion. This image we shared is not only compelling and interesting, but it also elicits emotion and therefore drives engagement from our followers.

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What this will look like for your business will depend on your industry, but think outside of posting images of your own products and services.

Posting about yourself repeatedly on social media is like being that person at a party who talks constantly about themselves. Also, beware of copyright issues.

If the image is not your own, request permission to use it or source non-attribution-required photos. (Check out this awesome list of royalty-free stock photos here.)

Engaging Copy

While you don’t have to add text to your Instagram posts, doing so packs a punch that just an image won’t provide.

the sweet spot for caption lengths to get the most engagement are in the 500-1,000 and 1,000-2,000 characters range

Think of your caption as an additional way to reel in your followers and keep them engaged. It’s a place to add context, share more information, ask a question, and invite comments.

5. Leverage strategic partnerships.

One of the biggest frustrations for most marketers delving into Instagram is that they don’t know how to build a following. After all, without a large number of followers, how can it possibly be an effective marketing channel?

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There’s one tactic in particular that we used to quickly grow our Instagram following to 10,000 in just a couple of weeks: partnering with other Instagram accounts.

Are we talking about co-marketing or influencer marketing? Both because they lead to the same result: Expanding your reach.

In addition, both require you to:

      • Conduct research to see if their audience aligns with yours.
      • Review your business goals and determine the KPIs for the partnership.
      • Collaborate on a content strategy.

For example. HubSpot recently teamed up with @ntwrkto celebrate Women’s History Month and promote the Grow Better mission.

1649699538 909 How to Build Your Brand With Instagram 11 Tried and True Strategies

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Now that Instagram allows the same post to be shared by two profiles, brands can co-market easily on the platform. Followers from both accounts will view the post, increasing each one’s reach and engagement.

6. Foster a community of highly engaged followers.

Engagement on Instagram comes in many forms, including followers sharing your content, liking and commenting, tagging their friends, and clicking on your calls to action. In this section, we’ll go over some of our tactics for fostering a community.

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Post When Your Followers Will Actually See Your Content

Have you ever posted something to social media that you think will do really well, only to be met with crickets? Low likes, low shares, and the only comments you landed were from spambots.

While it’s easy to assume you miscalculated the potential of the post, it could just be that you posted the update at the wrong time.

The easiest way to know when your followers will be active on the app is to head over to your insights dashboard. If you have a business account (you should), you can learn valuable insights about your audience’s demographics and behavior on the app, including location, age, gender, and activity.

instagram insights dashboard showing follower activity

From there, you can schedule your posts based on your audience’s most active days and times.

Invite the Engagement

A lot of brands will start Instagram accounts and become frustrated when people aren’t engaging with their content.

It seems so obvious and simple, but sometimes actually asking for your audience to engage makes all the difference. You can either include the action you want your followers to take as part of the image itself, or include it in the caption.

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Take a look at this example from clothing brand Grass Fields.

1649699538 592 How to Build Your Brand With Instagram 11 Tried and True Strategies

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In their post, they share design images and ask their followers to name their favorites in the comments. Not only do they get real-time feedback on their product, but they also get great engagement on the post.

7. Post regularly.

When a user is scrolling on the app, you are competing for their attention along with millions of other brands.

Because of this, visibility is key. With so many ways to share content, from Reels to Stories to Lives, there are a lot of opportunities to reach your audience – each demanding a different level of effort and preparation.

This is good news for brands, especially small ones. While it’s recommended that you share on the platform every day, you can choose how you share based on your bandwidth and which methods are offering the beinstst ROI.

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For instance, an in-feed post likely requires more work than a Story since it will live on your profile.

With a Story, you can quickly engage your audience through a quick poll, a question, a reshared post knowing that it will disappear after 24 hours.

A good rule of thumb: Publish an in-feed post three to four times a week and share on Stories every day.

8. Review your data and optimize your approach.

If you’re already following all the tips we’ve outlined above and you’re still struggling to get meaningful traction on the app, the answer could be in your data.

Too often, brands get stuck in one approach and don’t review their data to see if it’s actually working.

Your Instagram Insights dashboard offers a wealth of information on how each post performed, including impressions, accounts reached, content interactions, and profile activity.

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carousel posts overtook both single image and video posts as the most engaging type of post this year, with 62 likes and five comments as the norm.

For instance, say you’ve been posting images for the past month, then you post one video and it outperforms 60% of your previous posts. That’s an indication that your audience may respond better to video content. It’s worth experimenting with more videos.

If you don’t analyze your performance and look for optimization opportunities, there’s a good chance you’ll reach a plateau with no idea how to get out of it.

9. Share your Instagram profile on other channels.

As you work to grow your following on Instagram, you can also drive traffic to your profile externally.

One way to entice users to follow your page on that platform is by hosting a giveaway or sharing exclusive content.

In addition, don’t be afraid to promote your Instagram on other social platforms. For instance, your website could include a section with your Instagram feed along with a call-to-action to follow your page. You can also include a link to your Instagram profile in your email marketing campaigns.

Wherever you have an online presence, be sure to share the link to your profile so that your audience knows where to find you.

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10. Convert your followers into subscribers.

As you know, email marketing is crucial to a thriving business.

Instagram has been an important driver of email subscribers for Foundr, converting around 15,000–30,000 followers into subscribers each month, depending on our promotions.

If you’re familiar with Instagram’s limitations, you may be wondering how this is possible. After all, Instagram doesn’t allow links in photo descriptions.

That’s where a well-crafted bio comes into play.

Many businesses find it difficult to get followers to click the links in their bios because the tendency is to overload bios with … well, junk. Break that pattern by writing your bio like you’d write a Tweet: short, useful, and packed with intention.

Here’s what we’ve chosen as our bio:

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1649699538 27 How to Build Your Brand With Instagram 11 Tried and True Strategies

In your bio, you can include a URL that takes users to a link tree or a direct link to your subscription landing page.

Once you’ve put the systems into place, start driving followers to your bio by including calls-to-action in your content.

11. Optimize your bio.

When it comes to Instagram, many overlook the bios and focus on having great content. But your bio is a key point of discoverability so it’s essential you give it some love too.

Say someone is looking for something specific on the platform, with an optimized bio, you’ll make sure your profile shows up in the search results. This means including a business category, a short description of your brand, and a few keywords related to your brand or industry.

How many followers do you need to build a brand on Instagram?

The beauty of social media is that there’s no minimum requirement to get started. This means that you don’t need any followers to get started building your brand.

In fact, that’s how most brands start. Unless you’re launching a sub-brand or using your personal brand to promote your new brand, you will have to organically grow your followers by using the strategies outlined above.

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The key to success is consistency. Nothing will work if you do it for a month and give up. By remaining consistent, you increase your chances of reaching your audience and building a community.

Best Way to Build a Brand on Instagram

Instagram is a social platform with tremendous potential for businesses in almost any industry.

All it takes is a robust strategy, high-quality content, and the ability to pivot when needed.

It won’t happen overnight, but as long as you stay consistent, you’ll start to see your following grow and your community building.

This can have a significant impact on your reach, brand awareness, and ultimately the revenue of your company.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Dec 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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