Brands can’t afford not to be on Instagram, as it is the most popular social media platform in the United States. However, simply setting up an Instagram account for your business and hoping for the best isn’t enough. If you’re on the platform, you should have a purpose and be bringing something of value to the table for the company.

A few best practices can help you get a leg up on the competition when it comes to using Instagram for your business. Steps are taken to increase your brand’s visibility, gain new followers, and increase audience engagement on the platform.

To help you grow your Instagram following, we’ve compiled a list of some of the finest techniques. We’ll find out.

1. Keep a steady stream of high-quality images coming in

Instagram is all about pictures. An image that has been improperly photographed or designed will not do the trick. You need eye-catching images and videos that draw in your target audience immediately.

Make sure your Instagram feed has a consistent appearance and feel by using the right colors and effects in your photographs. Keep to color schemes and visual styles that are consistent with your brand’s personality.

Colors white and orange are prevalent in every post on Whataburger’s Instagram feed.

2. Keep up to date with Instagram’s changes and developments

Because Instagram is always growing, marketers must stay abreast of the most recent trends and functionality. You’ll be able to take advantage of these improvements and updates before your competition does.

Reels and Instagram Shopping have been introduced to the platform’s popular content alternatives like Stories and IGTV, which marketers can utilize to engage their audience or increase sales. Furthermore, it has added new capabilities, such as augmented reality effects, to Instagram Stories to keep up with the latest trends. If you want to get your brand in front of more people, you can even design your own AR filters.

3. Focus on the Needs and Desires of Your Audience

You can learn a lot from your audience’s behavior and activities, even if they don’t directly communicate their ideas. Use your social media analytics to see what kind of material your audience enjoys engaging with.

It turns out that consumers and marketers have differing ideas about what makes a brand the best in class on social media, according to the Sprout Social Index, Edition XVII: Accelerate report. More than half (47 %) of customers prioritize customer service, followed by engaging content (46 %) and openness (44 %). Try to go outside of yourself and use statistics to figure out what your clients are genuinely interested in rather than making educated guesses about the type of voice or content they might find intriguing.

When it comes to social media analytics, you can get answers to queries like: What are the most popular content formats? What is the most effective method for eliciting their feedback? Including questions in your captions may be beneficial.

It’s a good idea to answer these questions and others that help you connect with your audience in order to generate content ideas. Make adjustments to your Instagram content strategy to meet the specific needs of your target audience and potential clients.

4. Become a Master of Synchronicity

When it comes to Instagram, one thing has stayed constant: the importance of engagement. Increase your reach and interaction by posting at times when your followers are engaged on social media.

To get the most out of your content, you need to post it at the proper time, when your audience is most active and engaged. Tuesdays are the greatest days to post on social media, with peak hours between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., according to our most recent data.

When it comes to the best times to send out your messages, factors such as where you live, the industry you work in, and how your audience responds can all influence the best times for you. Read our report to learn more about each industry’s optimal timing, and use your account statistics to identify the best time for your business. Afterward, you can schedule your posts to go out at these times.

When using the publishing capabilities at Sprout Social, you can take use of By figuring out when your target audience is most active, ViralPost provides an automated alternative to all of this manual research. ViralPost will then send your content out automatically at the most appropriate times. Streamlining your publication process will allow you to reach your audience at a time when they’re most receptive.

5. Tell Stories With Images

Memorableness is essential to the success of your brand. Storytelling comes into play in this situation. Instagram is the ideal place to tell your brand’s story through visually stimulating stories. Start telling compelling tales about your business’s history, customers, employees, and the impact your brand has on the world through compelling graphics.

This is how Equinox tells the story of fitness as a way of life. Instagram is used by the brand to share visually appealing visual stories that align with their brand motto, “It’s Not Fitness. ” “It’s just a matter of time,” he said.

6. In Order To Make Your Material More Discoverable, use HashTags

On Instagram, hashtags are your most trusted companions. People who have viewed or interacted with comparable content will see your content in their Explore pages if you include these hashtags. Because of this, hashtags on Instagram are an excellent approach to increase content discovery and brand awareness.

Use industry-specific and specialist hashtags to help you narrow down your target audience. The most popular hashtags in the world, or even in your region, may be a waste of time if your material isn’t seen by the right people. Instead, focus on relevant hashtags for your product or service. Also, don’t forget to promote user-generated content by using hashtags (UGC).

On Nature’s Path’s Instagram posts, like this one, the company mixes branded and specialty hashtags together. Instead of clogging up the caption, the hashtags are included in the comments.

It’s simple to use Sprout to improve your Instagram hashtags. If you want to retain your hashtags in the first remark of your posts, our Instagram publishing offers first-comment publishing, which eliminates the need for further steps.

7. Learn to Take Full Advantage of Games and Challenges

It’s one of the most effective Instagram best practices to use games, contests, and challenges. It is common for these to be highly engaging because they encourage audience engagement directly. Your audience is more inclined to participate in contests and games if they can win rewards from brands they like or that correspond to their interests if you provide a reward.

To entice your audience to leave a remark, consider creating interactive quizzes and trivia games. Alternatively, you may host contests that require participants to like, share, or tag their friends in the comments section of your posts.

In many contests, participants are encouraged to submit their own user-generated content (UGC), which gives you a larger pool of content from which to develop your editorial schedule. Your followers could participate in a challenge by taking a certain activity. To put it another way, this may be anything from creating an elaborate cosmetics appearance to performing a dance routine. Encourage them to post photos and videos of themselves completing the challenge, which will increase your brand’s visibility when they use your relevant branded hashtags and tag your social media accounts.

8. Use Instagram’s Paid Ads to Increase Your Audience’s Exposure

When it comes to social media, organic brand exposure can be more difficult than ever because of how active the site is. In comparison to other major platforms, Instagram performs better, however, an Ignite Social Media investigation indicated that just 14,100 of 150,000 followers will see an organic post in their feeds..

You can increase your Instagram’s visibility by implementing paid ads. The use of paid targeting can help you get your material in front of those who aren’t already seeing it in their organic, algorithmically-served content.

Promote your products and content to highly relevant users with sponsored advertising. A variety of highly precise targeting options are available for Instagram advertising to ensure that your brand is seen by the correct individuals. As a result, you’ll be able to gain more fans and clients.

When starting a new campaign or expanding your audience, even if you don’t plan to use paid advertising on a regular basis, make sure it’s part of your strategy.

9. You can Expand Your Audience by Partnering with Social Media Influencers

Influencers can help your Instagram promotion efforts because they have the power to reach hundreds of thousands of people through their posts. When people trust the suggestions of influential people, it can do wonders for your client base. Influencer marketing is one more technique to get your brand in front of new audiences.

Working with influencers whose audiences are similar to your own is essential when seeking collaborations. That is to say, only work with influencers that have the ability to share your message with their intended audience. An influencer is someone who has become well-known in your field or a closely connected one. As an illustration, eco-friendly and organic product manufacturers might use vegan food influencers.

10. Make Decisions Based on Information

Finally, don’t underestimate the value of data. If you want to get the most out of Instagram for your business, you need to follow best practices such as tracking your post performance and gauging audience engagement. In the right hands, statistics may help guide your content strategy and marketing decisions, as long as you know what to search for.

The following are a few of my thoughts:

• You may learn a lot about your readers by keeping an eye on their comments and how well your posts are performing. After that, you can tweak your Instagram content strategy in light of what you’ve learned.
• If you want to get the most out of your influencer marketing strategy, you need to look at the people your target audience follows and admires.
• Keep an eye on Instagram’s latest trends to get a head start on creating relevant posts, making adjustments to your campaign, or starting from scratch.
• To see how your campaign is doing, monitor audience engagement. Then, to get the best results, search for ways to enhance, adapt, or recreate your campaign.

It is possible to continuously improve your strategy by tracking your data and seeing what is working and what isn’t.

Using data efficiently means that you’re not only producing content and campaigns on Instagram but providing a priceless source of learnings about what works for your business and customer base along the way.

Take Advantage of The Power of Instagram to Promote Your Business

Brands of any size can use these Instagram best practices as a jumping-off point to expand their following or elevate their profile’s visibility.

Download our free and thorough Instagram for Brands guide for further in-depth advice on how to utilize Instagram for your brand.