It all comes down to the context of the content you are posting in your Instagram posts. One thing’s for sure, there is no hard and fast rule on what makes the perfect caption. What we do know is that a post can be up to 2,200 characters long. That’s a whole lot of space to share with your audience. Keep in mind that one of the factors affecting how your Instagram post performs in the algorithm is “time spent on post”. The longer your posts, the longer people are going to take to read them, the longer they’ll spend looking at your post, the more your post will be favored by the algorithm.
The takeaway? write longer posts. We are not saying you have to start writing 2,200 character essays, but start experimenting with longer content (Micro-blogging) and see if it enhances your post engagement. Every caption is an opportunity to say something meaningful to your audience. Start telling stories that leave your followers eager for more. Be authentic. A high level of authenticity can go a long way to building stronger connections with your audience. Showcasing the good with the bad, your struggles and your wins, will make your brand will be more relatable, which makes it more likeable.
Instagram Really is a Human 2 Human Communication Tool
It’s time to start using it as one. In this digital age, people are craving human connection more and more, and when your audience feels connected to something they will want to engage with and share it.
User Generated Content
UGC is crucial. It’s a great way of establishing brand trust among your followers. After all, why should they take your word on your products? You’re biased and therefore not the most trustworthy source. But if your customers are posting photos with your stuff and raving about how good it is, well that’s a little more enticing wouldn’t you agree?
Reposting Content
Repost photos from relevant accounts that you think appeal to the interests of your audience. By doing this you can tag that account and appear in their tagged photos, they may also comment on the post, drawing some of their followers to your account. Similarly, repost images that customers have posted with your product (again UGC), if they bought your product some of their followers are likely also potential customers. REMEMBER: reposting should never compromise your account’s vibe.
Ask and You Shall Receive
Getting new engagement can be hard, but don’t be a nag, try to engage users in ways that aren’t needy and annoying.
- Ask people a question, urging them to comment on your post
- Tell them to tag a friend on a witty meme
- Tell them to “like” if they agree with a quote or caption
Instagram Feed Aesthetic
The overall aesthetic of your Instagram profile is the first thing your audience will see when they click through. The colors, layout, tone, and general feeling of your Instagram page all contribute to a cohesive aesthetic that can help turn visitors into followers. More and more people are turning to Instagram to search for their favorite brands, which means your Instagram profile is just as important as your website homepage, if not more important.
Choosing an Instagram Aesthetic
Taking the time to consider exactly what you want your aesthetic to be is essential. What do some of your favourite feeds look like? Are they bright and airy or dark and moody? What color tones of the images and does it all follow a pattern? Think about your brand personality. Does your brand keep things casual and fun? Are you formal and composed? Maybe your brand is minimalist. We like to come up with 4-5 words that describe a brand’s personality – Refined, Elegant, Sophisticated, Unique, etc. These are all processes to help achieve the feel you want and guide you when choosing what type of photos/content you post. A good way to do this is to create a mood board. You can use a ton of different programs to create your mood board and get your creativity flowing.
Quick Takeaways
- longer captions are favoured by the algorithm because they cause
- users to spend more time on your post
- asking people to engage with your posts works – don’t be too proud
- user generated content is golden for boosting your brand
- think about how your feed represents your aesthetic
- this is the quickest way people decide whether or not to engage with you.
How To Use Hashtags in Instagram
How do they work?
Instagram’s #1 goal is to keep people’s eyes glued to the platform for as long as possible. For that to happen they need to ensure they’re serving users with content they actually want to see. They know what users want by tracking everything they do on Instagram – who they follow and unfollow, how long they look at each image, what they search for, everything. All of this data informs which content gets placed on whose screen.
To be used effectively, hashtags should be considered a way to categorize your content, so that Instagram knows which audience to show your posts to. Think of it like a folder on your computer. Folders allow you to find exactly what you need, quickly and efficiently (unless your desktop is an unruly clutter of files and screenshots).
Common Hashtag Mistakes
Using hashtags that are too competitive
Did you know that the most popular hashtag on Instagram is #love? It has over 1.6 billion posts. Imagine you’re in a crowd of 1.6 billion people and you have to find one specific person. It’s a serious case of needle in a haystack. When you publish a post in a hashtag group with over 1.6 billion other posts, it’s pretty likely your target audience isn’t going to find it, completely defeating the purpose of using that hashtag in the first place.
Picking Irrelevant Hashtags
They type of hashtags you use informs Instagram of the type of content you are posting. Which is why it’s important to choose hashtags that are relevant to your content. If you are posting about your holiday to Rome and use the hashtag #beauty, it’s likely you are not going to get a lot of hits, and even if you do rank you’ll be reaching the wrong audience and what’s the point in that? By using specific hashtags that are effective in describing the content you can reach the audience you actually want to reach.
Using repetitive hashtags
A little known fact is that Instagram can penalize you for using the same hashtags over and over again. It’s important to create variations of your hashtags.
Hashtag Ranking
Ranking is imperative when it comes to understanding how hashtags can help you grow your Instagram account. Say your account has 10,000 followers. You post a quality piece of content and choose the hashtag #instagood (which has 1.1million posts). In the same hour Kim Kardashian, who has 156m followers, post a selfie and adds the hashtag #instagood. Kim’s post is pretty much guaranteed to appear in the #instagood hashtag group because she has a huge following and as a result will get a higher engagement.
Because of this, her post will rank in that hashtag group while yours slips by relatively unnoticed. Think of hashtags the same way you would SEO because that’s essentially what they are. Just as you would optimize a blog post by including top-performing keywords that align with your content so it will appear higher in a Google search, you can optimize your Instagram posts with the right hashtags. As with SEO keywords, some are going to work better for you than others . It’s a good idea to do your research and figure out what those hashtags are.
Do Your Research
Be sure to spend plenty of time deep-diving into some hashtag research, to ensure you’re using the best possible hashtags for your posts and brand. Look at what hashtags your competitors, audience, and influencers in your industry are currently using. When conducting hashtag research, go to the explorer page and in the search bar type a hashtag that’s relevant to your niche. Instagram will give you suggestions for related hashtags and tell you how many people are using each hashtag. As we have said before, avoid really popular hashtags, the competition is too fierce.
Quick Takeaways
- choose hashtags without too many posts so that you can dominate
- the feed rather than getting lost in a sea of 23k posts
- hashtag research goes a long way – make a strategy and stick to it
- it also penalises you for being too repetitive with hashtags
- when creating your strategy, always stick to the power 3 (average likes, competition score and potential reach) and you’re guaranteed a win.
Instagram Algorithm
Okay so, the Algorithm. Why did it change in the first place? Basically, Instagram found that people were missing on average 70% of the posts in their feed. The algorithm changed things up so people now see what’s most relevant to them rather than what’s most recent.
But Why Then is My Engagement Down?
The answer is pretty simple – the Instagram algorithm shows users high-engagement posts first. The sole purpose of Instagram is to keep users on the platform longer. And although they always say they care about the user experience, the real reason they want this is because the longer people stay on the platform the more money Instagram can generate. Somewhere along the line they realized that showing users posts in chronological order is less effective at keeping them on the app than showing people the most highly-engaged content first. That’s what the algorithm does. It serves users posts they are most likely to engage with, first.
From a Brand’s Perspective:
- Post – We post the content
- Measure – The Instagram algorithm shows the post to a small percentage of your total followers within the first hour to measure how quickly and how much they engage with that post.
- Compare – It uses this data and compares it to your previous posts on similar days and at similar times.
- Placement – The better your post performs in the first hour, relative to previous posts, the higher in the feed it will appear and the more
likely it is to appear on the Explore page. - Prediction – The algorithm predicts the likelihood that your followers will engage with the post in comparison to other accounts they follow. This works to display the posts it thinks the user will engage the most with.
There Are 3 Factors That Determine What Shows in a Feed
Interest – How Much You Care About a Post – The algorithm predicts how much you care about content. If it thinks you’ll like the content of a post, that post will appear higher up.
Timeliness – How Long Ago a Photo or Video Was Posted – The algorithm wants to show you posts that are recent because they are often the most relevant.
Relationship – How You Engage With Accounts – The accounts you like, comment and message with the most will get priority in your feed.
Quick Takeaways
- how well your post performs in the first hour determines how many
- people see it following that
- how often you use the app is also factored in
- accounts you engage with get priority
- the amount of people you’re following is also taken into consideration
Credit – Hugh Res
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