Brands on Instagram need to follow a precise, planned and original strategy that catches the attention of users. Let's see how you can achieve it
Instagram is the social network linked to image and design, but also to entertainment and leisure. Although there is room for all types of content (as long as it complies with the rules), the most popular content is that which engages the public and generates a pleasant experience. In contrast, on Twitter or Facebook, news and current affairs are more important. Therefore, the objective of brands on Instagram is to generate a need for users through positive stimuli, often linked to social values, rewards, influential people or human stories.
By its nature, Instagram is the best platform to boost your brand's image and one of the largest: it has around 1.2 billion active profiles worldwide, according to Statista figures. Along with TikTok, it is the fastest growing and evolving social network, as it is constantly launching new tools and resources to adapt to user behaviour.
Therefore, if you are a brand and you are looking to get the most out of your social media strategy, do not ignore the benefits that Instagram offers and improve the profitability of your business. In this sense, let's look at three facts that demonstrate the usefulness of being present on this platform for companies, offered by The Social Media Family:
- 80% of users follow, at least, the account of a company or brand.
- 60% of users are first introduced to a product on Instagram.
- Instagram users are 70% more likely to make a purchase via mobile compared to other social networks.
Tips for your brand to succeed on Instagram
To increase your customer base and improve your brand image, consider some of the following tips and research the work of the 10 brands on Instagram that we will be featuring below.
- Enhance the visual impact. Your account's feed should be visually striking. Brands on Instagram should prioritise graphic design because that is what prevails on this social network. Therefore, decide what visual image you want to give and create a unit where your profile images and your publications are in harmony. To do this, you can use applications such as Canva.
- Use the different tools offered by Instagram, but prioritise the image. The digital world is evolving fast, and Instagram has decided to exploit the possibilities offered by the video format (without forgetting its great ally: the still image). Therefore, follow this trend and create audiovisual content from time to time, but remember that the users' favourite format is still the image.
- Create a community and try to get its members to share your content. Interaction with your followers is essential for them to feel part of your brand and, consequently, share your content with their own community. Look for loyalty over abundance.
- Don't focus your strategy on selling and showing products. In line with the previous point, focus your activity on creating quality content that your followers find useful. This is incompatible with a strategy linked exclusively to selling your products or services. Therefore, identify your audience's tastes, talk about them, try to awaken a need to buy and offer your product as the best option.
- Tell human stories. Creating a community is easier if users are aware that there is a human person behind a company account. In this sense, your followers will value your personal contributions, but also those of other people: tell social stories linked to your sector that add human value to your strategy.
- Take advantage of current affairs. Instagram does not require the same link to news or current affairs as Facebook or Twitter (something closely related to trending topics), but you cannot ignore the most important events or the most important dates of the year. We are talking about Halloween, Christmas, Women's Month or LGBT Pride, etc. But also about far-reaching news or news related to your sector that may interest your audience.
- Be creative and original. Instagram is a very competitive social network, so don't hesitate to experiment to seek differentiation both in your own business and among the rest of the brands on Instagram.
- Be constant, but not saturated. Keep your profile active to remind your community that you are there, but don't post all the time because you can saturate it. Therefore, look for quality over quantity and establish a balance through a posting calendar
- Collaborate with other brands or influencers to reach new audiences.
- Join the trend of creating sweepstakes and contests.
- Introduce hashtags in your posts organically. Hashtags are a way to reach new users and increase the reach of a post, but they are not the solution to your interaction problems, so it is important to introduce hashtags that are related to the post and integrate them as naturally as possible.
- Don't use filters- brands that don't use filters on Instagram get 21% more interactions than those that do.
- Keep inmind that the general profile on Instagram is young and female. In Spain, the most active age groups on Instagram are between 18 and 39 years old. In addition, around 55% of the accounts belong to women.
- Remember that Fridays and Sundays are the best days to post. From Monday to Thursday, activity is continuous, while Saturday is the day when the fewest users use Instagram. In addition, the ideal time to share content is 21:00.
10 brand success stories on Instagram
To illustrate all these tips in real cases, OCCAM presents 10 brands with an interesting and successful communication strategy on Instagram.
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Heura
Description: food brand of vegetable products.
Followers: 202K.
In addition to a unified design centred on the colour yellow and the diversity of formats, they are committed to a fun and didactic communication strategy. In fact, their description reads: "Our formula for changing the food system: 80% memes, 20% data". They also organise a lot of prize draws with restaurants and other brands, share news that may be of interest to their followers and focus their strategy on the fight against climate change (presenting themselves as one of the possible solutions).
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Ben & Jerry's
Description: Ice cream brand.
Followers: 37.5K.
Here the visual design is led by the colour blue and aesthetic photographs. Its strategy is in line with that of Heura because it presents itself as a fair trade company that is committed to activism as a form of business. Although they differ in that Ben & Jerry's resorts less to humour and more to the presentation of its ice cream catalogue. They also hold raffles, combine formats and create publications unrelated to their products.
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KFC
Definition: Fast food restaurant chain.
Followers: 780K.
In this case, we are dealing with a very different strategy to the other two, where visual design is not important in favour of comedy and memes. In this sense, it is aimed primarily at a young audience and only talks about its products through humour.
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Platanomelon
Description: erotic products brand.
Followers: 1M.
The maximum exponent of visual care can be found in this account. They create informative and attractive publications on topics related to their brand and are committed to interaction and a variety of formats, although the image carousel prevails.
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CYCLO
Description: online shop for sustainable menstrual products.
Followers: 124K.
It also offers educational content, but with a difference: it does it mostly in a personal way with videos where the founder of the company appears. Therefore, it merges humanisation, interaction, diversity of formats and unified design to reach its potential customers, offer content that is useful to them and sell its products.
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Krash Cosmetic's
Description: cosmetics brand.
Followers: 216K.
Between videos and images, it presents itself as a revolution in the world of make-up through gender-neutral and vegan products. Therefore, it fuses claims aimed at a specific young audience by adapting its communication strategy. It is worth highlighting its commitment to take advantage of Halloween, a time of year that generates special interest among young people.
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Motel Rocks
Description: Women's clothing brand.
Followers: 1.8M.
This British fashion shop stands out for displaying its catalogue through different formats and with a particularity of success: it does it without filters.
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Airhopping
Description: low-cost travel search engine.
Followers: 246K.
This company targets a young audience (mainly students) through humour, unified design, sweepstakes and publications that invite interaction with the account. It has a special feature: in its featured stories it includes a description of its referral programme so that users can participate and invite friends to download the application in exchange for rewards.
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Mr. Wonderful
Description: Online gift shop.
Followers: 2M.
This is one of the most striking cases in terms of graphic design. Although they target a young audience, they seek to reach more audiences with their optimistic and positive messages through publications designed for users to share with their partners, friends or family.
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Filmin
Description: film and series streaming platform.
Followers: 164K.
From Catalonia, we find this source of audiovisual content aimed at an audience passionate about cinema, as its catalogue offers mostly independent and not very commercial films. Even so, it has managed to create a loyal community through a constant work of content creation based on the dissemination of the works available on its platform, whether informative, interactive or humorous.
Now that you know how brands work on Instagram, do you dare to create your own community?
