5 Ways to Improve Your Brand’s Instagram Page

Instagram thrives on images. Learning how to create the best visuals is key to optimizing your brand’s social media page. So, here are five tips to help you improve your brand’s Instagram page.

Encourage creation of User-Generated Content (UGC)

Many brands fear that allowing users to create content regarding their products or business can be detrimental to their image. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In a 2012 Comscore study, user-generated content (UGC) led to a 28% increase in engagement rates compared to standard brand posts. Not only that, but videos featuring and/or created by users on YouTube received 10x more views than those created by brands. And the list of benefits from UGC only goes on and on.

In short, letting users create content for your brand is good for business.

One way to encourage UGC from fans is through promotions. Think Coca-Cola’s personalized bottle campaign, encouraging people to take photos of bottles with their name on it. You can also encourage users by holding contests, or running hashtag campaigns. Whatever gets users creating content is good for your business.

Be visually consistent

High-quality visuals are key to any successful marketing campaign. Using your 10-year-old iPhone isn’t gonna cut it when creating images for your brand. And if you aren’t using some kind of photo-editing software to clean up those images, that only makes your job more difficult.

But equally important (or more, depending on who you ask) is maintaining a consistent visual style. A makeup brand that posts glossy, hyper-edited images one day and grimy, completely unedited photos the next are going to be giving their viewers visual whiplash. Conversely, a brand that maintains visual consistency can be instantly recognizable by their style alone.

Maintaining visual consistency will also make your brand more similar to other top brands. According to a social media report by WebDam, 60% of Instagram’s top brands use the exact same filter for every image they post. Emulating these techniques will subconsciously make viewers associate your brand with other successful brands. People associate bigger brands with brands they can trust. And as we’ve discussed before, there are few greater boons for your business than getting people to trust your brand.

Create Quiz Images

Quizzes are one of the most powerful ways to boost engagement on your social media platform.

People like to assert their opinion. Whether it’s on world politics or the best topping to put on guacamole, everyone enjoys discussing what they think. This is particularly true if they see their opinion as the minority or most controversial opinion, in which case they get the added joy of feeling like a martyr.

Quiz images allow users to engage these behaviors. They get to assert their opinion in choosing their answer to the actual quiz. And they get to discuss it further in the comments, or share it with people they know. According to a study by BuzzSumo, 82% of people who came across a quiz in their newsfeed engaged with that quiz. And because many social media algorithms reward engagement among posts, posting a quiz image can be a great way to boost overall engagement in your brand.

Embrace Video

In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg stated that video was Facebook’s future. Now in 2021, video remains one of the dominant means of gaining audiences and introducing them to new brands—from Snapchat’s increasingly video-heavy Stories to the social media mammoth that is TikTok.

The numbers back this up. In an excellent 2021 article by Lemonlight, Alexa Nizam compiles 61 statistics about video marketing that confirm its social dominance online. One statistic from a study done by Animoto found that “Video ads were the #1 way consumers discovered a brand they later purchased from.” Another from a study conducted by YouTube found that “over 70% of viewers say YouTube makes them aware of new brands.”

An added benefit of video is that it isn’t nearly as costly as it used to be. A relatively recent Instagram trend has been the “no-edit edit”—abandoning oversaturated, heavily edited photos and video in exchange for images with little-to-no alteration. There once was a time when video was a costly affair, requiring whole lighting and sound teams. Now anyone with a good video camera (or just a phone) can make a video for their brand. The only thing limiting you is your own imagination.

Hire a Professional

Lastly, digital marketing isn’t for everyone.

You may be your brand’s owner, in which case you might be too busy to manage your brand’s Instagram page. Your brand may be so big as to necessitate a dedicated social media team that coordinates with professional photographers and production specialists. Or you may just be inexperienced with digital marketing (there’s no shame in it!). Put simply, sometimes it’s just better to hire someone else.

Enter social media specialists. People with expertise in Photoshop, analytics, creating quality copy, and all the other skills necessary to run a successful social media page. It can be tempting to dismiss the need for a professional due to the added expense. But with over 53% of the world’s population now on social media, investing in your social media presence can never be a bad idea.