It is important to have a consistent style, plan content, and know when to post. Try to use these Instagram best practices to grow your account in 2023.
Table of Contents
- Instagram marketing best practices
- Instagram Reel best practices
- Instagram Stories’ best practices
- Instagram posts best practices
- Instagram ads’ best practices
- Instagram bio best practices
On Instagram, it seems like nothing ever stays the same. The network’s features are continually changing in order to compete in the increasingly crowded social media landscape. So, do Instagram’s best practices from 2022 still apply in 2023?
While the fundamentals of your Instagram marketing strategy should remain unchanged, some of the strategies you’ll need to achieve your goals are shifting. Continue reading for a list of best practices for thriving on the platform in 2023 and beyond.
– Instagram marketing best practices
1. Set clear goals
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again. Every successful social media marketing plan starts with a solid set of measurable goals.
Do you intend to use Instagram to increase brand awareness? increase product sales? Do you engage with your community? Maybe all of the above?
What you want to get out of Instagram will determine how much time you spend on it. Consider how the platform’s various surfaces—feed posts, reels, and stories—can contribute to real-world business goals.
2. Post at the right time
According to ARF Services’ research, the best time to post Instagram photos is at 11 a.m. on Wednesdays. Monday to Thursday, Reels is active between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. Remember that the average Instagram business account makes 1.71 main feed posts per day.
That is a good place to start. But, in order to figure out the best time to post for your particular account, you should first understand your targeted audience’s Instagram habits.
ARF Services Analytics provides a heatmap that shows when your followers are most likely to be online. It also recommends the best times to post to your followers based on your Instagram objectives.
3. Schedule your content in advance
When you’ve found the best times to post, you can start planning and creating content ahead of time and then scheduling it to go live at the appropriate point.
This allows you to create high-quality content in blocks of time, optimizing your creative resources. It also allows you to fully modify and review your work before it goes live.
ARF Services makes it easy to post consistently. It allows you to plan Instagram posts, Reels, and Stories alongside other social posts, offering you a complete picture of your social posting schedule in one content calendar.
This also gives you a good overview and allows you to check that you’ve planned the ideal mix of photos, videos, and carousel posts.
4. Engage with your followers
Keep in mind that Instagram is not a broadcasting platform. It’s a social networking site. This suggests that your followers expect two-way communication and a sense of community. You should engage with your Instagram post if you want others to engage with it.
When you’re first starting out, it’s simple to reply to DMs and comments on your own. It could be challenging to keep up with your increasing following. It’s a good idea to bring in some tools (and team members) to help manage your Instagram communication at this stage.
5. Tag your products
Nearly half of Instagram users shop on the platform on a weekly basis.
On average, brands that tag their products in feed posts see 37% more sales. In fact, brands that tag two or more posts each day see a 117% increase in revenue.
Tag across multiple surfaces, including reels, stories, posts, and even ads. Sixty-one percent of weekly Instagram users say ads with tags inspire them to shop.
6. Analyze and improve your results
We’ve already mentioned that you’ll need to experiment to determine what works best for your particular audience. This will be a frequent theme throughout this post.
You must use Instagram analytics to see the results of your experiments. To get you started, the native Instagram insights tool provides some helpful information. It’s a good idea to incorporate professional analytics tools like ARF Services to take things up a level and get a richly detailed picture of your results.
ARF Services’ Instagram analytics include downloadable and exportable charts and graphs that make it simple to understand what’s working and what’s not. You can also compare your Instagram efforts to those on other social media platforms.
– Instagram Reel best practices
7. Make more Reels
Not using reels yet? It’s time to start.
Instagram is leaning hard toward video in general and Reels in particular. Reels already account for 20% of platform time spent. According to ARF Services’ research, reels receive up to 300% more engagement than regular Instagram videos. The Instagram algorithm loves Reels, too.
So, this is a simple but essential method for using Instagram. Simply make more reels.
8. Show your human side
Reels with people have a 25% higher clickthrough ratio. They’re not the right format for stuffy product videos. Show real people using your products and be dynamic. Get your team involved. Show some personality. Be human and have fun.
9. Make the most of the first 3 seconds
Capture visitors’ attention right away with dynamic motion and teaser titles. (Just make sure your title delivers on its promise; watchbait is a big no-no.)
In the first three seconds, show and tell people what they’ll get out of your reel and why they should keep watching. On that note…
10. Add text to your Reels
There are several benefits to adding text to your reels. For example, it makes your content available to the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. It’s also important for the 20% of reel views that happen with sound.
Closed captions are now enabled by default on Reels unless you deactivate them. Users can always adjust this on their feed if they don’t want to see captions, so turning them off on your end is useless.
You may also use timed text to draw attention to important points in your video.
11. Use trending audio
Adding trending audio to your reels is a great strategy to increase your exposure. The little arrow next to the name of the sound in any reel shows trending audio.
Tap on the audio to see how many reels have already been created with that sound. Your best option for a boost is to select trending audio that doesn’t yet have too many competing reels. Aim for 30K or less.
The track already has 285K reels, in this case, so you might want to keep looking for one with less competition.
If you come across audio that you love, you may save it by tapping the Save audio button. If you want to use it specifically for the trending boost, make sure it’s still trending when you’re ready to use it.
12. Try a template
A template could be a great starting point if you want to use many photos and/or video clips in your reel. When you use a template, your clips are automatically synchronized to the audio in the original reel.
To find templates, open the Reels tab and click on the camera icon in the top right, then scroll to Templates at the bottom of the screen. Scroll until you find a Reel you like, then tap Use template.
– Instagram Stories’ best practices
13. Use interactive stickers
Interactive features like the vote button, quiz button, and question button enable you to learn a lot about your audience. They also give you an excellent opportunity to engage your community and improve engagement rates.
Try asking their followers what type of content they would like to see from you. Alternatively, use the Question sticker to conduct a follower Q&A.
14. Save your best Stories to highlights
Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, is a great chance to experiment with new ideas and more informal content.
But there are times when you want your stories to live on. There are Stories highlighted for those occasions.
Highlights show above your grid on your Instagram Page. In addition to saving your best stories, you can use them to make space for more information about your business or products.
– Instagram posts best practices
15. Develop a consistent style
Your Instagram grid should have a visually consistent style, and viewers should be able to identify one of your posts in their feed instantly.
16. Use the right hashtags
While hashtags are less vital in social SEO, that doesn’t mean you must avoid them altogether.
Using specific niche hashtags, in particular, can help you connect with existing passionate communities on Instagram. Creating a brand hashtag can also help with the collection of user-generated content and social proof.
17. Write catchy captions
Yes, the image’s quality will attract attention and stop the scroll. But you can’t forget the power of Instagram captions. Instagram captions allow users to interact with your brand and learn about your values.
Writing great captions for Instagram posts is also one of the best practices because it helps the Instagram algorithm understand what your post is about, which helps with Instagram SEO. When someone searches for content on the platform, the algorithm checks captions as one of the sources for relevant keywords.
18. Use alt text
Another quick way to improve your content’s accessibility while also increasing your Instagram SEO ranking signals
Alt text on Instagram works similarly to alt text on the web because it provides a text description of what is in the image or photo.
Instagram uses artificial intelligence to automatically create alt text for all posts, but you may customize the alt text yourself for better results.
19. Pin your best posts
The top three places on your Instagram grid are prime real estate. Fortunately, you can now customize what appears there. You can pin up to three posts (or reels) to your grid’s top row.
Try pinning your most popular or timely content. Do you have a recent promotion? Or a new product to be released? Pinned posts keep users’ attention focused on the prize.
You can also use pinned posts to tease a new product launch as Rocky Mountain Soap Company did:
– Instagram ads’ best practices
20. Experiment with ad placements
Instagram advertising can appear in the feed, stories, reels, and the Explore tab, with a potential reach ranging from 713.2 million to 1.32 billion for the Explore tab.
According to Instagram data, vertical ads have a 48% lower cost-per-action than non-vertical ads, so Reels and Stories are a good fit for testing if you’re running video ads.
As with your organic strategy, you’ll need to do some testing to see which placements work best for your audience and your goals. The important thing is not to become a slave to a static form and rely on it to fulfill your needs. Since Instagram is always changing, it’s essential to keep testing to see if the effectiveness of various formats ebbs and flows with time.
21. Partner with creators
Working with influencers, also known as “creators,” to create branded content can help your Instagram advertising campaigns gain support.
According to Meta research, 78% of consumers believe influencers assist them in discovering new brands. Additionally, campaigns that include branded content ads with business-as-usual ads have a 53% higher click-through rate on average.
22. Unify your product catalog
Using a single product catalog for Meta ads and your Instagram store simplifies tagging while delivering the most complete Pixel data.
– Instagram bio best practices
23. Make it complete
You don’t have much space in your Instagram bio—just 150 characters to tell users who you are and why they should like you.
However, you can boost this by filling out all of the fields on your Instagram profile, such as your profile image, address, link, and account category. On that note…
24. Choose the right account category
Using the category in your Instagram bio helps people find you and understand what your brand is all about.
It’s also a useful feature for improved tagging. If you work with other brands or creators, enhanced tagging shows the contribution of each account to a post, including the account category.
25. Get verified
Consider getting that blue check and applying for Instagram verification to give your account more credibility. Instagram verification may make your business account look more professional even while preventing impostors from stealing your thunder.
Using ARF Services, you can save time managing your Instagram presence. You can schedule and publish posts to Instagram (and other social networks), engage your audience, and measure your progress. Try it free today.
