Community and Follower: What Does Success On Instagram Mean? All strategies and concepts in Instagram Marketing aim to build a strong and vital community. Especially the interaction, i.e. the frequency of comments and likes, plays an important role. Let’s look at a small example of best practice for the topic of interaction. In our small example, we as a company would like to expand the colour selection of our new product, which was very well received in anthracite. The question, which colour would our buyers prefer?
Your own social media community is a powerful tool for companies. Let’s just look at a few different aspects, the subject of market research and proximity to developments and trends. Anyone who manages to build up a community of over 10,000 fans has access to DeepL’s opinions and developments, which can of course be incorporated immediately into various other marketing instruments, but also into product development. A simple example would be a survey in the Instagram stories. With the question, which colour would you like best besides our standard anthracite? Within a few hours there can be hundreds, maybe even thousands of answers.
But it is also easier, e.g. when marketing a new product. While visitors have to be bought through search engines like Google through expensive advertisements, your own community can be reached quickly on Instagram. That’s success on Instagram, an active and large community. Whether advertising, market research or public relations for their own brand, their goal must be to create such a community. Let’s move from theory to practice, our Instagram Tips!
Inspiration and beautiful photos: Your A&O for Instagram
Big social media stars know it and say it in interviews, personality must be put in the background, Instagram is about beautiful photos!
Texts should almost always be avoided, cheerful people are much better, laughter. But before you start your first photo shoots for Instagram you should always get some inspiration! Instagram Tip, look at similar profiles as well as profiles of successful Instagram Stars. Which visual style is successful? Which kind of photos get more likes and which less likes? If photos have many comments, where does exceptional success come from? Above all, it’s about looking at successful photos and successful Instagram channels to get a feel for what image style and language to use on Instagram. Must? Of course you can always lean against the stream, but Instagram is used by users to provide distraction and a little entertainment. This means that Instagram is not a medium for complex content, such as economic issues or political facts.
Instagram is used by the users in such a way that the app is called, the new photos are looked at in the feed or stories are clicked through quickly one after the other. Each medium thus only gets a moment’s time. Therefore you should also learn from it, constant presence and constant new publications are very important. This is where Instagram Tips comes in later.
Before you start with Instagram, get inspiration from other Instagram channels
Photo with clear subject and focus
Avoidance of fonts and too many details
Photos must be beautiful, not profound
Lifestyle, inspiration is in the foreground
Everyday life and backstage, take people to places they can’t see themselves
Inspired? Save photos on Instagram
Tip! You can save the photos directly in Instagram in an archive. This function is very practical, because whenever you come across something interesting, you can save the photo directly. So you can also show it to your colleagues or employees. Even more practical, multiple folders can be created within the archive. So you can e.g. save inspiration for shootings in the car area, studio, products or even photos of the team.
Filter? No! effects and harmony of the Instagram Feeds
If you take your first photos on Instagram, you will of course stumble over the filters. Filters make photos more colorful, more spectacular, but nobody wants to see that. It is best not to use filters right from the start.
The Harmony of your Instagram channel is very important, because if users become aware of your Instagram channel, look at your Instagram feed, you will decide whether to follow them or not. If you have a harmonious overall look for your Instagram channel, you increase the possibility of making followers out of it with every single interaction with the fans. For this reason, it is worth not using filters right at the start of assembly.
But there are also corrections to the filters. Filters are placed over the entire image to give it a completely new look. Corrections are only slight adjustments, light, heat or even color saturation. To enhance photos directly in Instagram, only small corrections should be applied. A recommendation of our social media agency, hardly to be seen but a slight optimization:
Light correction + 8 % brightness
Heat correction + 8 %
Colour saturation + 8 %
Light correction generally makes the image brighter, warmth makes the whole image friendlier, if you remove warmth from the image, you make it colder. A practical effect for the winter. The colour saturation makes the whole picture a little more colourful, the apple a little redder and the sky a little more blue. By only 8%, however, the changes are so minimal that they leave no image processing effect.
Profile picture, description and regular content
Next in the focus of our Instagram tips, the profile picture and the description comma or on Instagram the so-called biography. Your profile picture should be clear and meaningful, since the preview picture usually has only a few pixels available. The thumbnails in Instagram are small round icons that contain the image of the respective Instagram account. Our recommendation for your profile picture:
Goodly recognizable portrait
Understandable brand logo
Recognition is in the foreground
All other media content does not provide for any recognition. Other details in the picture should be omitted completely. As described above, just a portrait or just a brand logo. The profile picture should not be changed too often, as it ensures recognition as described. So if you fly over four or five photos in the timeline within a few seconds, you want them to quickly and easily recognize that this is one photo of them. This is ensured by the profile picture, which must therefore be kept as simple as possible.
Next up is the biography. The biography briefly describes what you do as a company, services or contact possibilities. The biography is especially for the users who become aware of us for the first time. So you click on the user name Iris Instagram Accounts and land on your Instagram channel. Again, only a few moments remain before the user goes back or further. Here you have to convince the user quickly and explain in a nutshell what they do, what they stand for and why it is worth following the channel.
Another tip, in the biography should definitely be used emoticons. You probably know the famous phrase, pictures say more than a thousand words. It’s the same with emoticons. As a crafts enterprise, you can use a hammer to quickly and easily explain what it is all about. The same goes for food companies, the hotel industry and fashion companies. Here you will find a list with
This is what an exemplary good description in the biography looks like:
? get scouted today, tag @cocaine.models
Model and artist management
office@cmmodels.com
Line 1 – Direct call to action for job applications (plus increased reach through markers); perfect tool for discovering new talents
Line 2 – description of the activity, short and concise
Line 3 – Contact Option for Clients and Applications
The last step for a good channel, the editorial, permanent support with new contents. Now it gets memorized, we come to the editorial plan.
Editorial plan: When and what to post?
Depending on how big your company is, you are still responsible for your social media channel yourself, you have a first employee who takes care of it in addition to the actual work or you even have your own small team that specifically takes care of social media marketing and the various channels from Instagram to Facebook, tiktok, Twitter and YouTube.
Either way, you have to post every day. Why is this so important? Only through regular postings, one has regular mentions. Here frequent users will hear their name that you are more likely they will fall back in case of a purchase decision on your product rather than on the competition. Whether it’s a service or a classic physical product, modern apps for smartphones or financial services, the more users have heard of your brand, the more likely they are to choose. Advantage 2, regular postings not only increase brand awareness among people, through frequent interaction also increases the likelihood that they will become followers of their social media channel.
Regular contributions make you more interesting, because the users know that they get added value on their channel, e.g. the daily inspiration with fashion comma the small lifehacks for mini-games of a certain app or even city tips a hotel chain. It is important that the users permanently get added value from you in order to have the incentive to follow them.
An editorial plan can help a lot, because you think about the content that will come, at the same time a certain period of 14 days or 30 days is planned, so that you can concentrate better on the actual business, you do not have to invest time daily for inspiration. The daily work then focuses on community management, e.g. answering comments and direct messages.
The editorial plan can be designed very simply, a key point list with the daily contents. This includes not only photos, but also texts, but we will come to ingenious texts later. Now we have learned everything about profile picture, biography, inspiration for our own picture language, the next step is now the community building! Love your first 1000 fans, because they are the first to appreciate your new social media concept for Instagram and the first potential 1000 brand ambassadors for you.
Community building: How to build your first 1000 followers
As in our Facebook Marketing guide, our biggest recommendation for Instagram is for the first 1000 fans! They are the first to value their brand, their new social media concept and they are also the first to be their potential new brand ambassadors in Instagram.
Never leave a comment unanswered from the beginning. The minimum, press like for each individual comment. Ideally, they will use their social-media-manager to respond to every single comment under every photo and video on Instagram. 85 % of all companies underestimate this part and do not care about their community-management. While large budgets are set in shootings, hardly anything is invested in involving the existing fans in their own campaign. But it’s these fans who are the big capital on Instagram. Your big target. Your own community. Therefore, as just recommended, start by actively commenting on other comments from the beginning. Reply directly to messages, here you can also use very well to refer to your website or online shop. But you can also involve your users by asking questions or by using Instagram Stories and surveys, which we will come to later.
Technical aspect of virality
You can stretch this concept up and down. Take just as much care of your first 100 fans, these 100 followers are your first brand advocates. Ben one of these followers comments on one of their media content, the probability that one of his or her friends also get to see the posting from them increases. When they respond, the interaction increases again. If the user joins a conversation and makes another comment, they are even more likely to appear in the feeds of the user’s friends.
Organic aspect of virality
Not only the algorithm will bring them up in the frequency of the advertisement, i.e. their reach will increase, also the users themselves will tell more frequently about their brand. A small practical example, use AB comments 10 photos. Out of 10 brands, only one brand responds to the comment. Will the user become a friend? Yes, of course. The probability of a recurring interaction, i.e. a new comment or likes, will increase.
Commitment and Interaction: Creating Value Added
Encashment and interaction means creating more value. As described before by the involvement of followers through active likening and commenting but also through own activities.
Added value always means something for the user that he can’t get anywhere else. Starting with the regular postings, so that e.g. the technology freak gets his technology news every morning, but also fashion victims who want inspiration for new outfits every morning and evening. It continues with practical tips and lifehacks from everyday life, so the DIY store could give practical garden tips in summer and then in autumn it goes to the living room and kitchen. They can give the user insights, for example into production processes but also photo shootings. Added value can be generated in many places. As a social media agency, we help you to highlight the right and important features and exploit them in a smart strategy. Let yourself as a user on your own channel to develop understanding of their followers.
But added value can also be much more. Do you happen to own your own shop space? Through exclusive promotions and events, the digital world and the real world can be combined very well. The same is also true for online shops, you can give practical saving tips, e.g. coupon codes that are valid for only two hours and that is of course only available exclusively on your Instagram channel!
Hurry up with the concept and the technical details, don’t forget one thing, the emotions!
Texts and emoticons (emoji)
Writing good and ingenious texts is not easy, because Instagram doesn’t have much space. Messages must be packaged very briefly. That’s why it’s important to have a very good advertising text, which brings new, good little texts every day, which have nothing to do with advertising but go on a very personal track. On the other hand it is important to use emoticon. Because we all know the famous phrase, pictures say more than a thousand words! The same applies to emoticons, which help to convey emotions quickly and easily. Just as we already talked about emoticons in the biography and their power for a quick explanation, the hammer for the craftsman, the office building for the real estate agent, the dress for the Moda online shop, the same principle naturally also applies to postings. A heart quickly says you like something very much. An astonished smiley shows you’re surprised. Messages can be transported more easily by Sophie.
Basically, every company and every Instagram channel must find its own standards. For the mentioned fashion online shops we recommend very short and concise descriptions, with other brand names in the description, for the image transfer. Positive image transfer is not only achieved by mentioning other brands, but also by mentioning other instagram channels. Another advantage is that the other channels become aware of the marking. Which helps to generate first likes again. In a nutshell:
Short and concise descriptions, usually no more than 20 words
Emoticons for fast emotional effect
Mark other profiles and brands for reach and image transfer
Call to action offers
Precise Hashtags, we’ll get to that later
Call-to-action in the post and stories
Call-to-Action means a direct reference to our ultimate goal. Would you like to sell a smartphone via the online shop? Then point this out directly to the user:
“now the model XY is available in our shop! Now be one of the first!”
Of course, Instagram is not explicitly about advertising products. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t point that out directly. Therefore, make sure in your postings that you advertise your services or products accordingly. If the users are already interested in the photo or the video and now come to the description, you want information. So it’s not a contradiction in terms. Rely therefore on Call-to-Action offers to increase your sales.
Use Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories accompany you as a company or as a person through everyday life. No complex production, simple ideas and best just accompany. This saves a lot of time and really takes your users with you. If you are a wholesaler, for example, you show the beautiful photos on your postings, the feet and in your Instagram Story you really take the users with you, e.g. to the large warehouses, to the presentation of new products or simply to the breakfast table. People get deeper insights into their intentions, but thoughts also get the private touch Instagram needs.
The Instagram Stories can be placed on the left, unlike the Postings. For example, if you are introducing new products, you can directly inform the user that a swipe up, i.e. a wipe up on the smartphone, will bring them directly to your product.
Little planning, little effort
Constant accompaniment in everyday life, in (almost( all situations
Private insight for users
Instagram Stories are only 24 hours available
Links to online shop and website possible
Admittedly, very few entrepreneurs want to do instagram stories. Instagram stories, like any marketing tool, must be viewed to be pulled through. The form of marketing is admittedly different from classic poster advertising, yet it is very effective, especially when the community grows to over 10000 followers.
Many customers also ask us how many hashtags should we use and which hashtags should we use?
Use the right hashtags
When companies start with Instagram, there are often 20, 30 hashtags among the postings. Is that really effective? Let’s take a look at the practice.
Without going too deeply into the matter, the Instagram algorithm is structured in such a way that media content is usually displayed in the newsfeed for 24 hours, 72 hours and a maximum of one week. Depending on relevance. However, the majority of media has disappeared after 24 hours, as billions of photos are uploaded every day. What can we as a company take out of this learning for our Instagram Tips?
Heat map Positioning in online marketing
We all know the search engine Google, the most important platform when it comes to questions on the Internet. Where can I find something? What does something mean? What does something stand for? Where can I find more information about something? The golden brisk in online marketing is number one. The closer you are to this position, the more often you are clicked. Whether on Google or instagram. Here one sees once very beautifully on the basis of the largest search machine of the world on what the views of the user focus, green frequently, yellow very frequently and red almost exclusively.
Let’s take a beauty company as a practical example. This beauty company produces eyeliner. If we take a look at the Hashtag Eyeliner, we will see that the top posts usually have thousands of likes. In order to appear here in the trainings, we as you have to generate so many Likes. On the other hand, we disappear somewhere in the archives. From this we can conclude that if we find hashtags that are not played on so often but are interesting for our industry, then we can use them. In our best-practice example we now find out in the analysis on Instagram that there is very little material on eyeliners and tutorials. So we could occupy this topic profitably and we will do it. In this way a comma is created in the small example, through the entire analysis process a final strategy or conception for the instagram contents. The more specific our content is, the faster you can build a community, since the competition is proportionally lower.
You can now conclude from this that you are focusing on a few hashtags that are relevant to you. As a rough rule of thumb we can say:
Three general hash tags like #Beauty, #Eyeliner, #Makeup
3 special hashtags for the image #Contour, #Makeuplover, #Eyeshadows
So their releases are specially marked but not overloaded with hashtags. Another Instagram tip, many trust at the beginning on hashtags, which are conveyed to them on social media blogs with dangerous half-knowledge, maybe you’ve also seen a hash tag like #Like4like. On the one hand these hashtags are completely overrun, on the other hand it doesn’t really promote their interaction. Because we only give you a Like for a Like, if it would be like that, would not be a real fan and therefore only a ghost account. A one-time interaction, nothing more. Of course there are also hashtags like #Follow4follow. Suppose that’s how they get to 1000 front. None of this case but is really a brand fan and none of these followers will interact with their channel in any way. Ghost accounts again. What you want is a real community, with real brand fans who follow them because they want information and updates about them. Therefore, completely dispense with such hashtags and concentrate on qualitative hashtags.
Smartphone or SLR camera? The comparison
That was a lot of instagram tips! Now comes the big question everyone has. Do we need a professional SLR camera? If you have a modern smartphone nowadays, the camera technology is already so far that you can produce 100% of your content with the smartphone. From photo with focus, various sharpen or timelapse functions to elaborate videos that can even be edited on smartphone. In comparison, the differences between smartphone and SLR camera are actually not great. Social networks are mostly opened on smartphones, mostly in the app, rarely via the website. As a rule, all media are opened within an app on a smartphone. The size of the screen is therefore limited, not only on the smartphone, but also on the tablet. In contrast to large-format advertising posters, for example billboards or citylights, it does not depend on an extremely high number of megapixels, but only on the quality of the photos. Since the photos are not zoomed or displayed in XXXL, modern smartphones are absolutely sufficient for content production.
Of course, there are areas in which you also need additional equipment, from the SLR camera to the gimbal for camera movements or drones. Nevertheless, our recommendation as a social media agency, before you invest your money in a SLR camera, they better organize a high quality smartphone. Two birds with one stone, because you or your social-media-manager have all social networks on one smartphone and the whole production. This saves file transfer and communication channels, enables live postings but also live interaction with the followers on Instagram. For example, Instagram TV.
Instagram Tips and Advice
These were our Instagram tips and basics, directly as a recommendation from our social media agency. If you have any further questions about Instagram Marketing, we are here to help you. With numerous references, friendly and young team, we look forward to your call or e-mail.
4.9 / 5.0