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Posts and practices that businesses shouldn’t do on Instagram
Posting regularly on Instagram can be tricky. Many social media managers will tell you how difficult it is to manage regular posting while maintaining good engagement and likes. In truth, it is a difficult balance. It is important though that companies maintain their best practices even when the posting gets tough.
Here are some things we believe companies should avoid doing on Instagram:
1. Don’t spam your followers
Many businesses battle with this question: how often should I post? It is usually a matter of trial and error for many companies. While there are some statistics about when is the best to post to Instagram. For example, a 2019 Hootsuite report found what times to post work for each industry and one of their statistics revealed that businesses in the food beverage industry get better engagement on Friday’s at 12 pm.
However, the times and days that work for each business vary immensely due to the fact that each business and their audience will have different behaviours/interests. Take a magazine or news websites, for example, they will typically have to post as the news happens, therefore they must post multiple times a day, whereas a furniture company would likely only have to post twice or three times a week.
The best practice for this is checking page analytics and finding out when exactly followers are engaging with posts or ads.
2. Not Having a Strategic Plan
Far too many business posts regularly without intention. It is important that businesses have a main goal when using social media. What are the goals: are the page and posts aimed at getting more sales on a website? Or is it to gain more brand awareness online?
Once a company has a clear understanding of their main goal they can then work backwards and find the type of content and mediums that work towards that goal. For example, a company looking to get more online sales through social media may find that using Instagram Shopping and Instagram Story ads works best for them and their marketing objectives.
Having an overall goal for social media is one of the best ways to have a general direction for content creation and more importantly, it makes creating content a lot easier.
An extra tip: divide your content into 3-4 categories and stick to them. For instance:
- seasonal posts
- product posts
- out of the box posts (memes etc)
3. Inconsistent Branding
A brand, especially one that is advertising on a variety of platforms, has to have a consistent look, feel and sound. Essentially, brands have to ensure that their posts are noticeable to viewers regardless of the medium and ensure there is a connection between all their content.
This may sound like the content has to be mundane but that is not the case. It just means that there is a consistent look and flow to the brand’s work. This doesn’t mean they all look the same but rather that they fit with the brand’s overall image.
The best practice for this particular problem is for companies to have a “Brand Guide” that indicates the colours, fonts and types of images that the brand uses for their content. This will not only help the brand always come back to the core “look” but it will also help future employees or new graphic artists have details to reference when creating content.
Some extra things we would recommend you avoid:
● Do not under any circumstances buy followers: Some companies have done this but it is not a worthy investment. Very often this is evident to Instagram users when companies have a lot of followers but not high engagement on their posts.
● Don’t use too many hashtags: hashtags are great for collecting user-generated content and even for companies looking to engage with their followers, however, using too many hashtags take up a lot of space and it often looks like spam.
● Use HQ images: most companies cannot afford constant professional imagery however, taking high-quality images can now be done using certain smartphones. They’re also great apps like VSCO, Canva and more that make editing and creating great posts a lot easier for businesses!
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Need to boost your company’s branding and overall marketing goals? Connective Pros can help! Contact us via our website or send us an email at info@connectivepros.com to get a consultancy for your business.