Stories are an excellent way of raising the profile of your brand on Instagram®, and you should incorporate them into your Insta strategy alongside posts.

Successful business accounts on the Gram use stories to update their followers in real-time, and they provide a great way of being creative.

This post will explain different ways of drawing in your audience with stories and will indicate how to make the most of this Instagram® feature. 

Use Polls and Quiz Stickers

Stories are engaging and fun and encourage your followers to interact with you.

The new Insta stories quiz stickers allow you to share trivia-style multiple-choice questions with your followers and track the results.

As well as being fun, they are an easy way to conduct some market research and also to get feedback on a particular product or service.

You can also ask your followers to tell you what they want to see more of and amend your strategy accordingly.

If you’re looking for a 1:1 marketing...

The best time to post on Instagram® depends on several unique factors to your business.

As a business, you will have acquired a unique set of followers from different parts of the world, meaning it’s difficult to predict precisely when the best time is to schedule your daily posts, without looking at your Instagram® insights.

That being said, Later recently conducted some research into 12 million posts that discovered that the best time to post is between 9 am and 11 am EST.

But this is not necessarily relevant to your business. You need to find the best time to post that works for you, and here are four things for you to consider.

Day of the Week

When you’re scheduling your posts on Instagram® bear in mind that people use social media differently at the weekend than they do during the week.

For example, using that same study by Later that has already been mentioned, they found that the best times to post on a Monday...

If you're new to Instagram®, particularly for your business, it can be challenging to get used to the platform and understand how to get the most out of it for your business.

Prioritizing one thing over another and understanding the importance of analytics and metrics can set your head-spinning.

Still, it's essential if you're going to get the most out of the Gram for your business.

In this post, we share five of the best Instagram® practices that help you get the most out of the platform.

Monitor Analytics Over Time

If you're currently monitoring your analytics on a day-to-day basis, it isn't easy to discern any noticeable pattern.

This then makes it nigh-on impossible to inform a successful Insta strategy.

To get the most out of your analytics, you need to look back on them over a more extended period, perhaps a month, as this gives you a much better picture of how your business is performing on Instagram®. 

Focus on Some, Not All Metrics 

There are...

While curating a beautiful feed on Instagram® is mainly down to the quality of your pictures, you also need to make sure you’re writing captivating captions underneath your snaps to encourage engagement with your followers.

If your captions don’t live up to the hype of your pictures, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Here are five helpful tips on how to write a captivating caption underneath the images you share on the Gram.

Use Hashtags Wisely 

Hashtags are super important on Instagram®, and using them correctly helps get your content in front of your desired audience. That being said, you need to be creative when deciding which hashtags to use.

While you don’t want to pepper your posts with hundreds of tags, you don’t want to leave yourself short either. A good rule is to make sure the hashtag speaks to the picture you’re sharing and links back to your niche.

Don’t jump on random hashtags just because they’re...

When you’re trying to build your presence on Instagram®, it’s a good idea to utilize as many of the platform’s features as you can.

A feature of the Gram that’s often overlooked by business owners is DMs or direct messages.

This is perhaps because the feature is of more benefit to personal Instagram users than businesses, but that isn’t the case.

This article will explain why DMs are awesome and why you should be using them for your Instagram® business account. 

They Help Your Followers Get to Know You 

DMs are an effective way of introducing yourself to your followers, as well as sending them informative, relative messages.

When someone follows you, it is a super nice touch to drop them a private DM as a way of saying thank you for following you.

You could include something they might not know about you or your business in the message, and this is an excellent way of developing trust with your potential customers, as well as helping...

Have you made use of carousel posts on the Gram for your business yet?

They are a super-effective way to showcase something fabulous about your business when one standard feed post simply won’t suffice.

Companies are utilizing carousel posts to share more snaps, close-ups, and variations with their audiences, which allows them to portray their products and services in different ways, thus making them more appealing.

In this post, we take a look at five types of carousel posts that convert on Instagram®. 

Case Studies 

Building hype around one of your products or services is an effective way of increasing conversion on Instagram®.

If you want to tell your customers how great your product or service is, there’s no better way to do this than through a case study.

Your case study can involve several posts, including pictures of the product, a written testimonial from a happy customer, and perhaps an image of the customer enjoying your product.

This builds...

In 2021, it seems impossible to run a business without a social media presence.

Many companies utilize Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote their products and services, but Instagram® is somewhat under-utilized, given its popularity for personal use.

Only 30% of businesses that use social media have an Insta account, which is quite frankly a little hard to believe!

Perhaps the standout feature of Instagram®, compared to other social media platforms, is your ability to curate your business's personal brand.

Let's take a look in a little more detail what we mean by personal brand. 

Your personal brand is critical to success on the Gram, as it gives your audience and potential customers the chance to know the real you and to realize there is a real person behind your products and services.

Here are three ways in which you can build your personal brand on Instagram® in 2021:  

Be Clear About Your Identity 

It seems like an obvious place to...

It’s not easy to create compelling, engaging content for your Instagram® feed consistently.

You can sit there for what seems like hours, racking your brain, trying to come up with something original to post on your feed.

So what’s the secret to posting consistently great content on the Gram?

Here are five things to help you come up with the best ideas for your Insta content. 

Search the Comments Section to Find Some Niche-Specific FAQs 

If you think about it, part of your job is to create content that helps people answer questions about a particular product or service.

If people can gain value from your posts, they’re much more likely to engage with them.

To begin looking for questions that your audience is asking, a great place is the comments section of similar accounts to yours, and specifically, from influencers within your niche.

If you know the answer to some of the questions they’re asking, create content that seeks to answer the...

Instagram® is a superstar in the social media world when it comes to engagement.

According to research, approximately 2-7% of followers interact with every post, which is significant compared to Twitter, where engagement is as low as 0.2%. 

It is the high-level engagement that makes Instagram® so appealing to businesses, as it is an effective way to interact with your potential clients.

In this post, we take a look at five ways in which you can engage with your followers on Instagram® and encourage them to sign up for your mailing list. 

Research What Your Audience Really Wants

Every great business strategy starts with research.

You must research what your audience actually wants if you’re going to have any success persuading them to buy your product. This is 100% the case on Instagram® too.

Think carefully about creating an offer that your audience may be enticed by, whether it’s for a limited-edition product, or a weekly discount code, for...

When you first set up your Instagram® business account, it's natural to want lots of followers fast.

Looking at influencers in our niche, we see that they have thousands of followers and want to replicate them and get our content in front of as many people as we can.

But getting your first 1000 followers doesn't happen overnight, and don't be tempted to get paid followers to boost your numbers! This doesn't help business in the long run.

In this post, we share five helpful steps that help you reach 1000 followers on the Gram organically. 

Voice Note Your New Followers 

When someone follows your business account, it's a nice touch to drop them a short voice message to thank them.

This way, they get to know the personality behind your brand and realize they're actually following a real person!

This personal touch makes them more comfortable with your content and is likely to boost their engagement with whatever you post.

Please don't take your followers for granted, as...