Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms globally, and over 25 million business accounts use it to increase brand awareness.
And to stand out among your peers, you must know Instagram best practices for growing your account.
This article will show you top Instagram practices for all types of content to grow your audience.
Importance Of Instagram In Marketing
There are more than one billion active users with different interests and needs, which make Instagram a perfect opportunity for brands and businesses to gain customers. No matter what service, you can definitely reach your potential customers on Instagram. Here are some of the main reasons that Instagram is essential for marketing:
- Gaining engagement on Instagram is more accessible than on other social media platforms.
- Business accounts can access in-depth insights and analytics to know your audience better.
- Hundreds of brands and businesses are joining Instagram daily, and this number is increasing.
- You can target your audience easily by running Instagram ads.
- Multiple features and tools are available on Instagram for creators to design and share eye-catching content.
- You can build up user-generated content on Instagram better than anywhere else.
Instagram Best Practices For Feed Posts
Keep An Eye On Instagram Updates And Changes
Instagram and its algorithm are constantly changing, and the ranking tools are getting updated monthly. Other than that, once in a while, something new becomes a trend on social media, making it a perfect opportunity to go viral.
If you want to beat your competitors and be a step ahead of your competitors, you need to keep an eye on the latest trends and Instagram changes.
Set Your Goals
Every great social media marketing strategy needs planning before getting started. The most important part of planning is setting measurable goals. Do you want to use Instagram to sell products? Are you using it to increase brand awareness? Or monetize your content?
Engage With Your Audience
To reach the highest engagement on Instagram and grow your account, you need to create and share content your followers like and engage with them. But it’s easier to make great content if you know who they are and their interests. Keep in mind Instagram is a social network means your audience expects two-way communication. So engaging your audience, answering questions in the comments, replying to their DMs, and more is one of the best practices Instagram 20232 you need to consider.
Find the Best Times For Sharing
There isn’t any universal best time to post on Instagram, and it’s different for each account. Based on your followers’ location and age, they are different hours when most of your audience is online. Finding these times and sharing your content can maximize your reach and receive a higher reach. If you have a business account, you can follow these simple steps to access your optimum hours and use these Instagram post best practices.
- Log into your Instagram account and go to your profile.
- Tap the “Professional Dashboard” button.
- On the “Account insights” section, tap “See all.”
- Select “Total followers.”
- Scroll down and view your “Most active times.”
Use Relevant Hashtags
Instagram hashtags work similarly to keywords for a search engine and allow you to put your content in front of potential users with the same interests. Almost every professional Instagrammer is aware of the power of hashtags to maximize your reach and boost your followers. You can include up to 30 hashtags in your post captions and even more in the comments ( they work the same way). But we recommend you use only 5-10 of the best ones so you won’t look spammy. There are different types of hashtags you can try for your posts to have hashtag best practices Instagram strategy:
- Industry Hashtags: Industry hashtags fall under the category of high-competition hashtags, but using them correctly increases your visibility.
- Niche Hashtags: Using this type of hashtag, you can add more specificity to your business. They are less popular than general Industry hashtags but can increase your engagement with people who have more specific search terms.
- Branded Hashtags: Most brands and businesses create their own branded hashtags to promote products and engage with their current followers.
- Event Hashtags: Using event hashtags allows you to find others attending the same events and create viral content during the event time.
- Location Hashtags: People in your locality can find your posts quickly, and there is low competition for location hashtags.
So using a mix of hashtags on your caption is one of the best practices for Instagram posts you need to consider.
How To Find Top Hashtags?
There are different ways to find the trend and top hashtags in your niche, such as searching on google, monitoring your competitors, using the Instagram autofill tool, etc. But keep in mind that these hashtags are changing every day, so you need to spend energy and find them for each post. But there’s a better alternative!
AiGrow’s growth team can help you create and design your content(know more about AiGrow’s content creation service) and also help you with your hashtags, caption, and monitoring your growth.
Book Your Meeting With AiGrow Team Now!
Add Location Tags
Many people search for nearby locations to find products and services available in their area. So if you want to be seen and increase your posts’ reach, make sure to add a location to Instagram posts, stories, and IGTV videos. After a while, you can compare the content with a location tag and the ones without it to see the magic of this Instagram best practices 2023.
Partner With Other Brands And Influencers
For brands and businesses who want to reach a new potential audience on Instagram, working with Instagram influencers and partnerships with them is one of the best practices for Instagram growth. Another reason that makes Instagram a perfect place for influencer marketing is the high engagement rate on this platform. The average engagement rate on Instagram is 3%, while it’s 2% and 1% for Twitter and Facebook.
There are different types of Instagram influencers you can work with based on your budget:
- Nano influencers: 1,000–10K followers
- Micro-influencers: 10K–100K followers
- Macro influencers: 100K–1M followers
- Mega or celebrity influencers: 1M+ followers
Most people think they only need to work with macro influencers to get good results. But influencers with 0-25K followers showed higher engagement rates than others, regardless of their genre, target audience, or topics. So if you want to build trust for your brand, find Instagram influencers in your niche and start a long-term partnership with them.
Run Contests And Giveaways
If you are recently facing Instagram engagement down issues and it’s decreasing, hosting contests and giveaways is one of the best Instagram practices 2023 for you. Contests and giveaways can drive instant traffic to your page and boost your engagement in a short time. If you are using Instagram to sell products or offer a service, you can set some of your products as the prize. You can also provide discount codes or free trials to all the participants to increase your entrance.
The next step after choosing the prize is setting your conditions to help your engagement rate. Here are some examples of good Instagram contest conditions:
- Like recent posts and leave a comment on the giveaway posts
- Tag three friends in the comments
- Use your branded hashtags on their posts
- Send you user-generated content using your products/service
Note: Make sure to find and use top Instagram giveaway hashtags in your caption to maximize your reach.
Analyze And Improve Results
Tracking your Instagram performance using analytics and insights is one of the Instagram best practices you definitely need to pay attention to. You need to find out what works best for your audience, what campaign type is better for you, and what types of posts to gain Instagram traction.
Instagram business profiles have an option on their insights that sorts their most popular to least popular posts. It’s perfect for discovering what is more successful and creating more content. Here is how to switch your account from personal to business to access deep Instagram analytics:
Use Third-party Tools To Increase Posts’ Reach
In the last parts, we showed you how to use Instagram for business best practices, but only some have enough time to create the content and grow their Instagram page. If you are one of those users who only have a little time to create eye-catching content, find top hashtags for each post, share them at your best hours, and engage with your audience, you can get help from professional account managers.
AiGrow is an Instagram management and growth service with multiple features to help you get a reasonable Instagram growth rate and increase it over time organically. AiGrow doesn’t use any bots or automation tools that can risk your account getting banned, shadowbanned, or action blocked. Instead, you will be connected to a dedicated growth team ( including content creators, designers and growth managers) who plan a winning strategy for your page. Here is a summary of AiGrow features:
- Dedicated Growth Team (content creators, designers, growth managers)
- Live strategy & onboarding meeting
- Scorecard and growth hacks
- Organic and real followers: 300-500 monthly new followers
- User targeting – Hashtags, locations, competitor accounts
- Analytical report (daily and weekly)
- 14-day money-back guarantee
- Cancel Anytime
- Premium Bio-link tool
- Content Scheduler (Posts, stories, IGTV videos)
- Premium DM Marketing
- Advanced Content Creation
- Safe and Secure (Risk-free)
- Priority 24*7 Support
- Advanced Influencer/Brand Promotion
Instagram Best Practices For Stories
More than 500 million Instagrammers use stories daily to share content and contact their friends. It is an excellent opportunity to increase your audience, but you need to know Instagram Stories best practices.
Get Creative By Adding Stickers
One of the best practices for Instagram Stories is getting creative by adding different stickers, GIFs, and emojis to your content. Instagram stickers come in different types and functions, such as regular stickers, location stickers, emoji sliders, poll stickers, GIFs, questions, chat, shopping, etc.
Knowing when and how to use each of them is an Instagram Story best practice you must consider for a winning content strategy.
Hashtags: Make your story discoverable to a wider audience.
Location tags: Similar to hashtags, adding location to Instagram stories expands its potential reach with people in your area.
Music: Add music to an Instagram story with an automated caption to create eye-catching content.
Links: If you have a verified account on Instagram or more than 10k followers, you can connect your stories to an external link. and if you don’t just learn how to get verified on Instagram for free in a few minutes!
Product tags: If you have set up your account for Instagram shop, you can use the sticker to create shoppable stories.
Engage Viewers By Asking Questions And Running Polls
Using Instagram polls and Instagram questions on stories is one of the best Instagram practices for business that allows you to know what your audience thinks about a particular subject. You can quickly collect helpful and valuable information about your audience to improve your digital marketing strategy.
Share Stories Everyday
Based on the latest Instagram algorithm, the more content you share on the platform, the more chance you have to reach the Instagram explore page. So make sure to keep your consistency on the platform by sharing daily stories. But keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity, So design stories before sharing and avoid low-quality content.
You can repost content from similar accounts if you run out of Instagram story ideas.
Highlight Top Stories
Instagram stories have a 24-hour lifetime limit and will disappear automatically after that. But if your Instagram story views are more you expected, you can highlight it on your profile. Each highlight can contain as many stories as you want to showcase your content.
- If your story is less than 24 hours old, open the Story from your feed page and tap the “Highlight” button at the bottom.
- In case your content is older than 24 hours, go to your profile and open the Instagram archive. Select the story, open it, and tap the “Highlight” button.
Instagram Best Practices For Reels
If you are a TikTok videos fan, you will love Instagram reels, its copycat. With this cool feature, you can record creative and fun videos set to soundtracks to engage your audience. Based on a study by Socialinsider, reel videos make the most engagement compared to other content types. So if you want to boost your Instagram growth rate, you need to know Instagram reel’s best practices to use it like a pro.
Avoid Low-Quality Videos For Reels
Instagrammers expect to see high-quality, funny, and interesting videos when they open the reel tab. Let’s take a look at Instagram reel specs and requirements to create great content:
- The aspect ratio for videos is between 1.91:1 and 9:16
- Minimum frame rate: 30 FPS
- Minimum resolution: 720 pixels.
Avoid Cross-Posting From TikTok
Cross-promoting your TikTok videos to Instagram seems a perfect way to keep your Instagram page fresh with new content. But the problem is that reel videos need at least 8% more screen space than TikTok videos. So you should consider creating an original video to avoid quality loss.
Note: If your Instagram page is connected to your Facebook account, you can easily publish your reel video on both accounts with the same quality.
Pay Attention To The First Seconds
Reel videos don’t allow users to see the length of the content, which shortens the time a user is willing to watch the content. That’s why the first seconds of a reel video is essential to attract new users. Even though you have 90 seconds to record, use the first 5,6 seconds to grab attention with an eye-catching intro.
Include 3-5 Hashtags
In recent years, hashtags have been used more for categorizing content since people enter keywords into the Instagram search box instead of using the # sign. However, similar to feed posts, using 3-5 hashtags on a reel video is one of the Instagram reel best practices to serve your content to the relevant audience. So while searching for hashtags, consider the keywords you want to be found for so you can focus on appearing in searches.
Get To Know Your Reels Algorithm
Instagram Reels feed is made of suggested content, so knowing its algorithm is the best practices for Instagram reels. There are two ways to access reel videos except for your feed page:
- Explore tab: Next to the posts and stories that the Instagram algorithm serves up to users, you can find reel videos too.
- Reels tab: Similar to TikTok’s for your page, it’s an endless tab of videos selected by the algorithm.
The reel algorithm on both tabs considers how people engage with your content (likes, comments, shares, and saves), the popularity of its audio, and your interaction history with the creator.
Instagram Best Practices For Ads
Instagram ads are one of the coolest features added to this platform in 2015 to help brands and businesses reach their potential audience. With this feature, professionals can pay for their content to be served to their targeted audience. There are four different types of ads you can try:
- Story Ads: These ads will appear between users’ stories and on full screen.
- Explore Ads: These types of ads only display after someone opens a photo/video on their explore.
- Collection Ads: When users click on an item within a collection, Instagram redirects them to an instant experience, an e-commerce storefront within the app.
- Shopping Ads: with this feature, you can promote shoppable posts as ads.
Now let’s take a look at Instagram ad best practices to know how to run effective ads and save money.
Test Different Formats
The most essential part of running an Instagram ad is choosing your objective. “Your campaign objective is the business goal you hope to achieve by running your ads.” You have six options to choose from:
- Awareness: Shows your post to people who are most likely to remember them.
- Traffic: Send social media users to other platforms such as your website, app, etc.
- Engagement: Receive more messages, video views, post engagement, page likes, and event responses.
- Leads: Collect leads for your business or brand.
- App promotion: This helps you to find new people to install your app and continue using it.
- Sales: Find people likely to purchase your product or service.
So one of the best practices for advertising on Instagram is changing your ad objective to see which one works better for you.
Target Your Audience
The best practice Instagram ads is targeting your audience with different options that Instagram provides. This step is essential since it finds the users that are most likely to view and engage with your posts. You can target users by hashtags, locations, age, gender, years, and interests.
Keep in mind that you can’t target users under 18 years old.
Try A/B Testing
A/B testing your posts and targetings is one of the Instagram ads best practices for sure. While creating your content, we recommend you take multiple shots and different edits to check which one works better. If you use Facebook ads for Instagram followers, you can turn on automatic A/B testing using ads manager. Otherwise, you must do it manually by running two ads and tracking their performance.
Instagram Best Practices For Shoppable Posts
If you are eligible for the Instagram shop, you can use each Instagram post to tag five products. Each of these tags can redirect customers to your website. Let’s see some best practices for using this feature.
Use A Strong Call To Action
Using a strong call-to-action on your posts’ captions is a perfect way to increase your engagement and drive your posts’ traffic to other parts of the app or even other platforms.
So be clear in your caption and include a direct CTA so your followers know what exactly you want them to do, as well as encourage them.
Use UGC Content To Show Products
Besides sharing shoppable posts on your feed page and using shop stickers on your stories, it’s a great idea to showcase your products using user-generated content. Think about UGC content as the best-of-the-best content from around the web and feature it on their own social media or other platforms while giving credit to the original creator.
Sharing and posting photos of your customers using your products can increase brand trust and loyalty. Running campaigns and giveaways are also great ways to ask your customers for UGC content and collect them.
Instagram Best Practices For Direct Messages
Instagram DM is one of the most incredible features added to this platform that allows users to contact each other inside the app. Using this tool, you can send all kinds of messages, including texts, voice messages, links, photos, and videos. If your page is not approved for the Instagram shop, you can use your DM to sell products on Instagram. Now let’s take a look at Instagram best practices for using the DM tool.
Use Instagram DM Templates
Using your Instagram direct messages, you can reach a lot of users organically, but as you can imagine, it takes so much time and effort. But Instagram DM templates can automate some parts of the process.
DM templates are cut-and-paste messages you can customize to send multiple users if needed.
If you are running a campaign, contest, or giveaway, you can design your template to greet the participants and encourage them to follow your account. Another good way to use DM templates is to send a thank you message to all your new followers.
Try The Quick-Reply Feature
One of the best Instagram practices is using the newly added feature to the platform, the quick-reply feature. This new feature helps brands and businesses create replies to your most frequently asked questions to manage their DMs.
This way, you can speed up the shopping process for your customers and take their orders when you are busy. Here’s how to create quick replies on Instagram:
- Log into your Instagram account and go to your profile.
- Tap the three-line icon at the top of your screen and open “Settings.”
- Scroll down and tap on “Business.”
- Select “Saved Replies.”
- Tap the “+” icon at the top of your screen to create a reply.
- In this box, write a shortcut and a message.
- Tap the checkmark button to save.
After creating your quick reply, all you have to do for using is type the shortcut you created.
Categorize Your Messages
If you have a professional account, Instagram added a new feature that allows you to sort and filter your direct messages. In the new update, when you open your inbox, you can see that it’s divided to three sections:
- Primary messages: In this tab, you will see the messages you want to see first. All DMs will appear here until you swipe them to the general box. Notifications for messages in this tab are turned on, but you can turn it off from settings.
- General messages: This tab belongs to DMs you want to get back to them later. You won’t get a notification if you receive a new message in this tab. ( You can turn it on from settings.)
- Message Requests: If you receive messages from users that you don’t follow, it will appear in this tab. After accepting a request, the chat will be moved to the primary tab.
Manage Your DMs With AiGrow
Now that you know Instagram best practices for managing your DMs, let’s introduce you to a tool that makes it much easier for you and beats Instagram DM limits. AiGrow offers multiple features for managing your DMs:
Manual Messages: By using AiGrow, you will be connected to your dedicated account manager. They will help you find your targeted audience and set all the mass DMs for you manually and risk-free.
Automated DMs: Using AiGrow’s auto-DM tool, you can send DMs to targeted users. (You can target users by “Current Followers,” “New Followers,” “Followers of an Influencer,” and “Hashtag Users.”) After writing the message, your manager will change the format and send it to your targeted audience. This way, Instagram won’t notice any spammy actions.
Auto-Reply: This feature works similarly to the quick-reply tool on Instagram. But unlike Instagram, it works for all types of accounts (personal, business, and creator.)
DM To Email: Recieve and respond to your Instagram DMs from your email inbox.
DM Inbox: Access your messages on your desktop and easily search, filter, and answer them.
Share Unlimited Links
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t allow users to include external links in the posts’ captions. The only place you can clickable links is your profile bio and you can only add one link there. But for those with more than 10k followers or a verified business account, you can use the Instagram stories link sticker.
Another place to share links with your followers easily is through your Instagram DM inbox. You can share unlimited links there to drive your Instagram traffic to other platforms such as your website, YouTube channel, Twitter, campaign page, etc.
Instagram Best Practices For IGTV Posts
IGTV is a long-form video added to Instagram in 2019 that allows users to share videos for up to 60 minutes. At first, IGTV only supported horizontal videos (16:9) but now you can also use it for vertical videos with a 9:16 aspect ratio. Let’s see the best practices for nonprofits on Instagram using the IGTV feature.
Create IGTV series
Every different brand and content creator is jumping on board and getting creative with Instagram videos. You can use this platform for serial content with the IGTV series tool to make the most of your video content. So your viewers can browse and pick a video when they are in the mood and engage with your content.
If you don’t have much budget, don’t worry; some of the best video series out there are filmed on a low budget but hook people in with some clever editing. These Instagram video best practices may not work the first days, but you can notice the number of viewers is increasing after a while.
Cross-Promote Your Video
If you are using multiple platforms to grow your business, as well as Instagram, you can use them to draw more attention to your IGTV videos. Copy the link of your IGTV videos, share it on your active accounts, and ask your audience to interact with your content.
Since many users only check their stories every day, sharing the post on your stories to redirect them is one of Instagram best practices.
Share External Links In The Description
Instagram has come a long way in terms of allowing users to share links on the platform. Another place where Instagram enables users to share links is the description of IGTV videos. Users need to tap on the title of their IGTV video to see and click the link. Here’s how to add clickable links:
- Log into your Instagram account and tap the “+” button on your feed page.
- Upload your video, which is at least a minute long.
- Choose your cover photo and tap next.
- Add your link to the description box and post your video.
Track Your IGTV Performance
Instagram analytics are best friends of every content you share on the platform, and IGTV videos are no exception. To enhance your content strategy, watch your analytics and insights closely and experience your videos’ length, format, and subject. Here’s how to access IGTV analytics:
- Open the IGTV video and tap the three-dots button at the bottom of your screen while it’s playing.
- Select “View Insights.”
- In the opened tab, you can see your video’s interactions, such as views, likes, comments, and saves.
Remember to come back to your analytics regularly to check if you are still on track.
Instagram Best Practices For Live Broadcasts
Instagram live is a video option that allows you to record, stream, and broadcast in real-time. Live videos appear at the top of your followers’ feed page and next to their stories with a red circle around it. Here’s why you need to consider going live on Instagram once in a while as a professional:
- You will appear in the number one position of your followers’ stories.
- By going, Instagram will automatically send a notification to your followers, alerting them you are live.
- Live videos allow you to build a stronger connection with your audience and increase brand loyalty.
- It can humanize your brand/business by showing a face behind it.
- The Instagram algorithm gives users who use this feature more chances to appear on the explore page.
Now let’s take a look at best practices for Instagram live to know how to use features better.
Promote Your Live Sessions Beforehand
In addition to planning and setting your goals for your live event, you need to increase your participation by promoting the live stream in advance. Make sure they know when you are going live, your plans, and what you want to do.
Adding a countdown clock to your stories lets your viewers select if they want to receive a reminder about your live stream(or other events). In the story, tell your audience what they can expect in the live broadcast and encourage them to share any questions they have in the comments. It can help your followers feel more engaged, trust your business, and ultimately be more likely to tune in.
Take Time To Plan
Sometimes hopping on Instagram live to talk with your followers can be a great idea to build a bonding with your audience, but it might go differently than you imagined. If you want your content to get the perfect engagement and help your growth, you need to set your goals, and Instagram lives are no different. Before hosting a live show, plan your objectives, the products you want to show, etc. Is it going to be a product launch? Office tor? or just a friendly Q&A event with your customers?
Make sure to set your goals before your next live event and include multiple Instagram live ideas to succeed.
Engage With Your Attendees
What makes Instagram live different from other content types is that you can communicate, chat, and interact with your audience in real-time. By answering their questions and replying, you make your audience feel special and boost brand loyalty. To save time and host a safe live stream, make sure to get rid of offensive comments. There are different ways to track and moderate your comments throughout your live event.
You can prevent comments with certain words, restrict users, or remove irrelevant comments.
To filter and hide offensive comments, follow these steps:
- Log into your Instagram account and tap the three-line button at the top-right corner.
- Open “Settings” and tap “Privacy.”
- Choose “Hidden Words.”
- Under the “Offensive Words and Phrases,” turn on the “Hide Comments” button.
Conclusion
Thousands of brands and businesses on Instagram compete with each other to boost their sales and leads. By knowing Instagram best practices, you can enhance your content strategy on the platform to increase your audience.
This article showed you everything you need to know to grow your account organically over time with real followers.
