If you have a business, a social media account that it’s imperative to be on is Instagram. Instagram is a user-friendly social media networking platform that is driven by images and videos. It’s free to set up a business account plus over 77.6 million people are on Instagram.

Before you begin to implement the Instagram strategy that you’ve created (you did create one, right?), you need to ensure that your Instagram profile is fully optimized. Some industry professionals even say that your Instagram profile is just as important as your website homepage. We agree.

There are a few things that you need to ensure are filled out on your Instagram business profile:

• Username
• Bio
• Profile picture
• Website link
• Activate call to actions buttons
• Make sure that your profile is set to public and not private

It’s never a bad idea to include emojis in your profile and to get creative with how you include them. You also have the ability to create Highlights from the posts you publish to your Story. You can use these Highlights to further educate people on products, services, team members, customers, reviews, media coverage or anything else that you want people to see when they first come to your Instagram profile.

There are a lot of creative ways for you to create posts for your Instagram feed and Stories. As a reminder, posts to your Instagram feed will be visible until the end of time, unless you archive or delete them. Posts to your Instagram Story will only be visible for 24 hours unless you add specific posts to your Highlights.

There are a lot of Instagram accounts that are creating pretty cool content and we want to share with you a few that we think are doing it right!

Optimized Profiles

As mentioned above, you want to make sure that your profile is filled in and optimized. These three accounts have set up really great profiles, which can be used as examples when optimizing your profile. @commentsbycelebs has an interesting bio, has on-brand Highlight cover photos, and links to their other brand accounts. @latermedia and @flytographer also have really great bios, have a brag-worthy stat plus they include emojis.

Cool Looking Aesthetics

Some accounts choose to have specific themes to the posts they make. Sometimes they follow a format that they self impose like having a quote for every 5th post, making sure that every 9th post is a video or that all of their posts follow a specific colour vibe. A big trend on Instagram is ensuring that each post has a colour theme.

jackieoproblems is a social media influencer. Both her and her sister,@girlwithnojob, have a large social media following. Their humour and intelligence make for some really great Instagram content but @jackieoproblems’ account pops off the screen. She uses Lightroom presets which helps her stand out with the post’s bright look. They are so popular that you can even buy them and have a similar vibe. A lot of people use pre-sets to enhance the look of their feed and there are many presets available for free and purchase.

@justajeskova is a Whistler-based photographer that has a really funky look to her Instagram feed. She posts images that follow a certain colour scheme so that when you look at her feed, it has a rainbow-esq feel to it. This type of theme is scroll-stopping and unique. If you are someone who takes a lot of photos/has a lot of content, this could be something that you try you!

Make People Laugh

If you can make your followers, customers and future customers laugh then you are doing something right. Humour is the perfect way to entice people to come back to your Instagram profile time and time again. Funny posts are more than a photo or video and do require a dash of whit and hilarity in the Instagram captions.

@bugerking may not be posting daily but when they do their posts are laced with humour and sass. They made the right decision when delegating the social media posts to whoever manages their accounts.

@mouthbreather_is an account by a comedian named Drew. He makes hilarious mashups and remixes with really old videos (think 80’s infomercials) and songs. This is clearly a passion of his and we are sure glad that he’s created this unique and funny account.

Memes have taken over the internet and there’s almost a meme for everything. One of the leaders of meme accounts is @thefatjewish. He is both funny and provocative. He creates his own memes but also curates memes from other hilarious accounts. @beigecardigan is also another great meme account that we love to follow. If you are going to share other people’s memes, remember to always get permission from them and give them credit.

Artistic Vibes

If you want your Instagram profile to really stand out you can take your creativity to the next level. Although each post is a specific shape, you can play with your post layout so that you aren’t restricted to just the standard grid. This will require you to make a puzzle Instagram gird feed. @simplywhytedesign uses this method to take their Instagram feeds up a couple of notches.

Creating a visually stimulating Instagram account will take some extra effort. This isn’t something that is mandatory but it is something that will make your brand stand out on the platform. We suggest spending some time cruising through Instagram to check out what other brands are doing to see if specific bios, content and aesthetics stand out to you.

 

If this is something you want to do but you don’t know how nor have the time, connect with us and let us take this on for you. We provide full digital marketing and social media marketing services. Remember to have fun with it because if you are having fun, your customers and future customers will see that.

Filed in // Social Media Marketing, Social Media, Brand Identity