6 tips to improve your Instagram content strategy and grow a loyal following

Remember when Instagram was just a platform for selfies and vacation photos? True, there are still plenty of those to go around, but today, 90% of Instagram users follow a business⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Why? Because it enables them to directly interact with brands they love. For a while now, brands have taken advantage of Instagram’s business potential, and many are absolutely killing it on Instagram⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

But as Instagram adds new features and adjusts its algorithm, your brand must adapt to stand out from the crowd of businesses vying for customer attention. One way is through long-held, reliable tactics, like providing value and creating original content⁠(opens in a new tab or window). The other is to evolve with your audience and take part in Instagram trends. The best way to grow a loyal following on Instagram is to have a flexible strategy you can measure, experiment with, and adjust to increase engagement.

Here are six tips you can apply to your Instagram content strategy to help you increase followers⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and develop a thriving business.

To maximize Instagram’s business potential, you and your marketing team need to create an Instagram-specific content strategy. You probably already have an effective marketing strategy to increase sales and grow your business. But that strategy provides guidance on your marketing efforts as a whole. Instead, use the details of this overarching strategy to inform and perfect your Instagram content strategy.

Knowing what your Instagram audience likes, dislikes, and engages with can help you devise an effective Instagram content strategy. Consider whether your Instagram audience tends to be the same demographics. Do they have the same interests as your customers on other channels? What do they respond most to online? What compels them to engage with your content? Why do they follow you?

Everlane⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is a great example of a brand that knows its audience well. Through research, surveys, and engaging with their audience, the team at Everlane can discover the interests of their followers. As a result, the Everlane Instagram feed features natural and authentic images of its diverse, ethically minded customer base.

Customers who care about supporting eco-conscious brands choose Everlane because they believe in radical transparency and ethical factories. Everlane provides its eco-conscious customers with a yearly impact report⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to show its progress and how its customers make all the difference.

Instagram provides unique ways to express your brand image that may differ from other platforms and marketing campaigns. To keep your online presence consistent, decide how your brand image will translate specifically to Instagram. Use your current brand style guide⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to inform your Instagram presence and create an Instagram-specific style guide.

A consistent and unique theme present throughout your Instagram content will build trust and help you stand out from your competition. Consider whether you want most of your Instagram content to be very image heavy⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or more artsy with illustrations and collages⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Maybe your brand prides itself on comedic content, and you want to mostly include memes and witty sayings.

Whatever you choose, choose content themes that match your brand identity and appeal to your audience. Some content theme ideas include:

• Creating a mascot
• Using emojis in your Instagram captions
• Designating an in-house spokesperson or “face of the brand”
• Partnering with an influencer or famous person
• Posting user-generated content
• Featuring customer stories
• Posting similar graphics and images

Your Instagram style guide should have a clear description of the theme as well as how that theme will be expressed. This includes tone of voice, color palette, and types of imagery and footage that matches your brand identity. It is helpful to create a brand kit⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that includes all of the assets and templates ready for your content creation team to use.

Your Instagram profile is a quick way to leave a first impression on your audience and potential customers. Create a link in bio⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or an Instagram bio that exemplifies your brand identity and what you can offer your customers with just a few phrases. For example, in GhostBed⁠(opens in a new tab or window)’s business profile, the company highlights its accolades and invites its customers to use the branded hashtag #ghostbed for a feature. It also has a consistent color palette and icons in its story highlights, which often feature the customers who use its hashtag.

Not only does GhostBed convey its benefits, but by highlighting personal stories, it also conveys its brand image of being a family-owned business that fosters a genuine community. The relationship between the brand and its customers is strengthened, while its brand image shines through its Instagram profile.

The Headspace⁠(opens in a new tab or window) Instagram profile includes mostly similar graphics with a sprinkle of videos that feature meditation experts and Headspace users. Headspace followers immediately recognize the fun and vibrant colors and positive reminders they get from Headspace. Not only does it present a consistent brand image, but it also builds rapport with its audience, who appreciate these reminders.

Producing a consistent theme helps Headspace stand out on the explore page and enables users to instantly recognize it. The more recognizable you are, the more likely you’ll form a loyal following.

If you want to stay relevant on Instagram, you have to play the game of the algorithm. Keep up with algorithm changes so you can adjust your Instagram content strategy accordingly. As business accounts see a drop in organic engagement⁠(opens in a new tab or window), reevaluating and adjusting your strategy is more important than ever.

There are three feed views users can choose from on Instagram: the main feed, a “Following” feed, and a “Favorites” feed. Instagram released the option to view the feed by following or favorites⁠(opens in a new tab or window) in 2022 to give users more control over what they see when they scroll through the Instagram app.

The content you create should be such high-quality content that your audience wants to include you in those lists. Treat your Instagram strategy like a funnel, and develop content that resonates with people at different stages of the buyer's journey. The more loyal your audience becomes, the more likely they’ll include your content in their curated views.

• The main feed view: This is the non-chronological, algorithm-controlled feed that users have been used to—and in some cases, very frustrated with—for a while now. If your content only appears in this feed, it’s likely that the user is not a super fan yet. This content generates brand awareness and helps you gain new followers.
• The “Following” feed view: This feed will only display the content from accounts users already follow. To ensure your audience doesn’t mute or unfollow your brand, continue to provide high-value content and build rapport.
• The “Favorites'' feed view: This feed displays all accounts the user has favorited. This will likely be a much more exclusive list of accounts. Users who add your brand to this list are likely already customers. These customers don’t want to miss insider scoops, special announcements, and unique perks of being a member of your community. Create this type of content periodically to maintain your loyal customers.

Ultimately, every post needs to work well in each feed view. Giveaways are a great way to generate awareness, gain followers, provide value, and inspire a feeling of exclusivity. Anthropologie⁠(opens in a new tab or window) created an Instagram Reel for a denim gift card giveaway. In the caption, it asks users to follow it and tag a friend using its hashtag #AnthroGiveaway.

If you sell products, create a shop on Instagram to boost your engagement and gain a loyal following. Instagram prioritizes Instagram shopping⁠(opens in a new tab or window) on the app by including a shop icon in the bottom menu for easy user access.

Once you’ve created your shop, you can add product tags to your images and Reels that link to the respective shop pages. To increase exposure, include relevant hashtags in captions that users will find on the discover page.

For example, Madewell⁠(opens in a new tab or window) has a shop on Instagram and intermittently adds product tags to its images. Notice that not every post is tagged for the shop. Your Instagram profile is not a replacement for your ecommerce store. Maintain a consistent balance of content types to avoid a reputation of being too focused on sales rather than community building.

If you notice that your tagged product posts get high engagement but low sales, consider adding a reminder to add the product to the user’s wish list. The user might not be ready to purchase your products now, but when they are, they’ll easily be able to find your product again on their wish list and make the purchase.

When you notice a dip in your organic engagement, advertising on Instagram can boost your Instagram presence. According to an Instagram report, 50% of users who see ads on Instagram are more interested⁠(opens in a new tab or window) in the brand than ads they see off Instagram. Use Instagram ads⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to boost your posts and reach your target audience. These ads can help you gain new followers or act as a reminder for existing ones.

Yardzen⁠(opens in a new tab or window), an online landscape design and build platform, uses Instagram ads to draw traffic to its website and increase awareness about its brand. The Yardzen team uses Canva to design ads for Instagram stories⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and boosted posts. One way to increase engagement on ads is to use a CTA, such as this invitation to take a quiz on its site.

The creative team at Yardzen also uses Canva to easily experiment with creative refreshes. Kendra Poppy⁠(opens in a new tab or window), head of growth at Yardzen, told us that when an ad performs well, they “tweak the color on Canva in an effort to avoid ad fatigue and improve account deliverability.”

Another way to stay relevant on Instagram and use the algorithm to your advantage is to follow trends. There are many graphic design trends⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to keep in mind as you design content for Reels⁠(opens in a new tab or window), stories, or regular Instagram posts. However, if you only have time to focus on one type of content, it should be Reels.

Right now, the Instagram feature that performs best is Instagram Reels. Reels allows users to easily edit and produce fun and engaging video content. If you want to scale your following, it is no longer an effective strategy to just post photos and stories. Use Instagram Reels to increase exposure and engagement.

If you’re skeptical about hopping on board, just scroll through your main feed on Instagram to see how prevalent Reels has become. You’ll notice that there are suggested Reels popping up and grabbing your attention away from other posts. Whether you follow those accounts or not, it’s clear that Instagram is pushing to compete with TikTok and prioritizes Reels over other post types.

Rather than simply copying what others are doing, try to put an interesting spin on it. How can you make it unique to your brand while still staying in line with the rules of the trend?

For example, GhostBed hopped on the “Friends” theme song⁠(opens in a new tab or window) trend and introduced its employees in a fun behind-the-scenes Reel. Through quick cuts and cute descriptions of each employee, its audience gets a sense of its brand identity.

Tips and ideas for Reels:

• Choose an enticing cover image for your Reels
• Create seamless transitions with the align tool
• Experiment with different kinds of transitions⁠(opens in a new tab or window)
• Add text to make it accessible
• Create a dual frame
• Use product tags in your Reel
• Turn a group of photos into a Reel
• Collaborate on takeovers

There are many more creative Instagram Reel ideas to explore, and you can find Reels templates on Canva⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to help you get started. Whether you go viral or not, your audience should relate to your brand voice and the tone of your content. When they do, they are more likely to take an interest in your brand and follow your Instagram journey.

One of the many benefits of using Instagram for business is its inherently social nature. The more you treat your Instagram marketing strategy like a community-building project, the more you’ll grow. From influencer marketing to featuring user-generated content to co-sponsoring an Instagram live event, there are many ways to build and grow your Instagram community.

Instagram recently released a new tool called Creator Marketplace⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to help brands discover and collaborate with creators on Instagram. Teaming up with other creators can make your brand more relatable and interesting. It can also help widen your network and increase exposure, both of which can lead to loyal customers and followers.

The insurance company, Lemonade⁠(opens in a new tab or window), dedicates almost its entire Instagram strategy to collaborations with other artists. Each post features talented artists who create animations with pink themes to reflect Lemonade’s bright, signature color. Of course, the company always gives credit to the creators, and more often than not, those creators also post about the art they got to make for Lemonade.

If you don’t plan to rely solely on collaborations for your Instagram strategy, you can save those collaborations for special occasions. Use a content calendar to plan out⁠(opens in a new tab or window) collaborations that align with relevant events, holidays, sales, seasons, or launches.

When you feature your employees, customers, or loyal fans, you present a unified and deeply human experience. It makes your brand more relatable and approachable. As humans, we are moved to act by stories of triumph and connection.

Ultimate Kilimanjaro⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a guide service for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, shares photos of both its customers and employees. In the first image below, a photo was captured of its crew guiding the oldest person to successfully climb Kilimanjaro, Anne Lorimor (89 years old).

In another post, Ultimate Kilimanjaro features one of its guides, Ezekiel. By featuring a member of its team, other community members, like previous customers, may want to join in on the conversation. In this post, a comment from a customer praises Ezekiel⁠(opens in a new tab or window) for his amazing job at helping them summit on a prior trip.

This image not only shared a personal look at the team behind the profile but also acquired a review from a previous customer. The comment acts as a form of social proof for anyone who comes across the image next time they’re searching for a guiding company. A glowing review matched with a glowing smile is hard not to like and follow!

Rather than always developing original content from scratch, find ways to build off existing popular content. For example, repurpose content your team has already made, such as a blog post or Twitter thread. Or recreate trending pop culture content by creating GIFs out of popular TV show scenes. Not only will this help save time and energy, but it will also resonate with an audience that is familiar with and already loves that specific type of content.

Over the past few years, podcast listening has grown tremendously⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and that growth is expected to continue for at least the next two years. With the popularity of podcasts comes a new content type on Instagram: podcast clips. Podcast clips are either audio-only or video clips that give a sneak peek into a moment from a podcast episode.

Rather than creating content completely unique to Instagram, Andrew Huberman and his team repurpose a long-form podcast episode. Huberman, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, hosts a podcast called “Huberman Lab.”⁠(opens in a new tab or window) He records video footage of his podcast episodes and uses clips from it to post on Instagram. In his detailed captions, Huberman describes the key points from the episode.

Unlike Huberman, Sam Harris and his team at the “Making Sense Podcast”⁠(opens in a new tab or window) do not record video footage of the podcasts. Thus, to promote episodes on Instagram, they include audio-only snippets from the podcast conversations. They post these audio clips as Reels (a smart move considering how the algorithm favors Reels).

Harris and his team choose unique imagery as the cover image for the Reel, which matches the images they use for the podcast episode cover images. They also include text to make the post more accessible (another very smart move!).

If it fits your audience, recreate popular memes and trending pop culture to entertain and delight your Instagram followers. As you search for trending memes, find ones that you can make your own. For example, Morning Brew⁠(opens in a new tab or window) does an excellent job of creating memes relevant to the subject matter of its newsletters and audience. In some cases, it’s also relevant to the person that runs its Instagram account (as this very meta example⁠(opens in a new tab or window) below shows).

The benefit of memes and pop culture is that they require no explanation. All you have to do is put a creative spin on it that will entertain your followers and turn them into loyal ones. However, it’s important to keep in mind that you may be using copyrighted content. You should therefore make sure with the proper legal team that you have the right permissions to use the content.

To understand whether your new Instagram strategy is effective, collect Instagram performance data via Instagram Insights⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and other analytics tools like Google Analytics. The insights you gather from Instagram analytics will help you understand your audience better. It will also help determine which aspects of your strategy you should continue implementing and which you should discontinue.

Set measurable goals to track your progress. Some metrics to track include:

• How much you plan to grow by x time
• Daily engagement numbers (likes, comments, shares, and tags)
• How much website traffic comes from Instagram on a monthly basis
• How Instagram affects sales or subscription numbers on a monthly basis
• How often users engage with each other on your content (i.e., is a community forming?)

Gill Tietz, the host of the “Sober Powered”⁠(opens in a new tab or window) podcast, tracks how her Instagram content affects podcast listens and subscriber numbers. After posting a Reel about a new podcast episode⁠(opens in a new tab or window), Tietz saw an increase of 700 podcast listens compared to an episode published the prior week. This data is instrumental in deciding the direction of her Instagram content strategy.

We already knew that Reels are the number one feature to use right now. But the insights Tietz discovered assure her that they are indeed working for her business. Without data, your brand will not be able to grow efficiently and effectively. The more you can learn about your content’s performance, the better your content will perform in the future.

Instagram (and the social media marketing landscape in general) is constantly in flux. Whether it is due to adding new features to compete with other social media platforms or improving its own platform, change is inevitable. This means you and your content marketing team will have to prepare for adjustments to your Instagram content strategy.

Encourage your team members to embrace change rather than fear it. Then, implement a system that helps you navigate changes seamlessly. Do you have a working document or planner⁠(opens in a new tab or window) that outlines your Instagram content strategy? Can everyone access, edit, and comment on the strategy? Do you maintain a shared list of relevant Instagram news, updates, or feature launches?

Remember, your brand is not the only one facing these—at times—challenging Instagram changes. Your audience is too. What better way to grow a loyal following than to capitalize on the shared struggle and lead your followers through the changes? Educate them by example. Then continue to provide them with value as you grow your business.