In this article, we’ll discuss how you can create great content on Instagram. We’ll share engaging Instagram post ideas and examples that can be the inspiration you need to unleash your full potential.
Did you know that 90% of the over 2 billion monthly active users are followers of at least one of the 200+ million businesses on Instagram? Also, seven out of ten U.S. marketers and business owners use the platform to promote their companies. These figures make it imperative to build your brand presence and grow your community on Instagram.
How can you get around to reaching the huge Instagram audience and enhance your brand awareness both globally and locally?
The answer is simple: Post regularly. This will help you increase exposure and draw the attention of existing and potential customers. Besides, the more posts you share, the better you grow your followers and engage with them.
As simple as this may sound, however, it takes a lot of thinking, planning, and monitoring to benefit fully from the Instagram marketing potential. And most of all, it takes fascinating and captivating content your audience loves.
It’s estimated that each business shares 1.56 posts per day, which may sound quite reasonable. Considered globally, however, this means that more than 300 million business posts flood the feed of Instagram users daily. Your content needs to be truly irresistible to help you stay on top of the competition.
Let’s dive right into the examples.
Instagram Post Ideas: Five Examples of Great Instagram Story Posts That Grew a Following
Let’s take a look at some outstanding examples of brands that leverage Instagram’s marketing potential to the fullest. The numbers speak for themselves!
Asos
The fashion retailer reached a 3-point increase in engagement and awareness by using videos in their Instagram stories. They make it easy for followers to complete purchases by hitting the link button in their stories.
Nike
The brand has built an Instagram strategy that drives staggering engagement reaching more than 12 million views, 500,000 likes, and 28,000 comments.
In the story below, they engage with their followers by offering entertaining content inviting fans to respond.
NASA
With Instagram stories, Nasa shares extra details. They use a friendly yet informative tone to keep audiences engaged.
Sephora
Created by nearly 500 thousand contributing users, Sephora’s stories in 2014–2016 led to almost 264 million likes and comments. The company still uses its successful Instagram strategy to drive engagement, simplifying the purchase process for its followers.
Buffer
The company, which offers the excellent social media solution, uses Instagram Stories to keep community engaged by sharing valuable statistics, surveys, and white papers. This is an example of a highly effective way to connect with your audiences through delivering discussion-provoking and informative content.
Let’s look at the ways you can make your Instagram content work for your business.
Instagram Post Ideas: How to Create Fascinating, Branded Content for Instagram
The 2022 Instagram Engagement Report by Mention and Hubspot states that 2021 saw a doubled average engagement rate of 5.86% as compared to 2020.
What content should you post on Instagram to reach these figures?
Your Instagram Content Must Be Interesting and Relevant to Your Audience
Heavily-filtered photos have stayed in the past, and new categories, such as Reels and Stories have been growing in popularity. In addition, the feed supports not only images but carousel and video content as well.
So, the available options are many. But the most important question is…
What content do your audiences prefer?
Mention’s report clearly points at video as the most engaging type of content, with each video post receiving 1097.9 likes and 24.25 comments on average. This is closely followed by carousels, generating an average of 933.7 likes and 23.2 comments.
The takeaway?
Carousels, combining multiple videos or images (up to ten), are the most effective format that can help you engage with your audience.
How can you make this medium work for you?
Use Creative Visuals and Engaging Copy to Attract Attention
This is the age of information. Therefore, keep in mind that most of your followers are already overloaded with it. They aren’t willing to see words and sentences all-around their feeds. Offer bite-sized chunks of engaging copy distributed in the caption and a visual with a concise verbal message. Make it brief and complement it with the image.
Let’s now turn to the other essential component of your posts: the visuals.
Undoubtedly, they have to become part of your social media strategy. To do it right, there are several factors you need to consider:
- Study your audience’s interests. Do some research to understand your audience better. What are they interested in? What types of visual content they’ll want to see? Such details will help you build visuals that are likely to engage your existing followers and attract new ones.
- Put together a mood board. Use a consistent style to build your brand. Add key images, color palettes, and words that best convey the essence of your brand.
- Pick up your themes. Identify your pillars and blend them with the current content.
- Mind your timing. Post visuals at peak times but don’t miss the big picture. Plan your visuals ahead and think of the occasions when you’ll need more content, such as special events, product launches, or holidays. This will help you avoid the last-minute production stress and stay on track with your calendar and budgets.
Bring Your Post to Life with Emojis and Hashtags
Use consistent hashtags and emojis to engage with your audience.
Not only do hashtags help Instagram audiences find your post easily, but they can also increase engagement. Adding at least one of them to your post can bring in an average of 12.6% more engagement.
Emojis, on the other hand, substitute tone of voice and body language and make your post livelier, boosting the interactions with it by up to 47.7%.
So, benefit from the positive impact of a little 💙🙏🌸🌅🎁 but make sure to not overdo it.
Top Tip:
Adding between six and ten emojis doesn’t contribute to a greater engagement, and using more than ten can considerably impair it. So, emoji-fy your post but stay at five or less.
Use a Sales Funnel to Guide Your Audience to Conversion
Your Instagram marketing efforts are part of your overall strategy, and building a sales funnel will help you convert by producing well-targeted content tailored to every stage of the buyer’s journey.
It’s vital to create Instagram content that works for the awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty stage of the funnel.
Instagram Post Ideas: Five Ways to Improve Your Existing Instagram Content
It’s not about attracting more vanity followers, it’s about building an engaged following. Users engage with brands that they know and like. It’s exactly your content that helps them learn about your business and decide if they like you as a brand or not.
So, what can you do to enhance the content you’ve already created on Instagram? Do an audit of your profile and adjust it accordingly:
- Think about what your followers want to see: Keep the content that corresponds to your audience’s preferences and discard the rest.
- Use hashtags to attract new followers: Inspect your posts, story highlights, reels, and videos. Do they have relevant hashtags? Make sure to edit them, adding some #location #yourbrand #industry #yourproduct to #gainmorefollowers.
- Tag other people and brands to increase your social reach: This will make your post visible and accessible to their followers as well, expanding your audiences and improving your chances to attract new followers.
- Use multiple formats like videos, photos, and stories: Your followers may differ in their content preferences. Meet their expectations by diversifying your content. It will also contribute to establishing a robust and full-blooded presence on Instagram.
- Don’t just post about yourself and don’t be too promotional: Create the content that your followers need and love. Remember that it has to bring value. This is how you’ll be able to build trust and loyalty. Position your brand as the support your followers need to face their challenges by showing your concern and offering helpful information.
Tips for Generating More Engagement on Instagram
Defined as the total number of interactions with your posts, such as likes and comments, engagement is the most reliable indicator of your content performance. The greater it is, the more effective your Instagram content is in its primary purpose – to build brand awareness and attract potential customers.
What do you have to do to drive more likes and comments on your posts on Instagram?
- Be authentic: This will help you really connect with your audience.
- Don’t be a robot: Avoid coming across as a chatbot and add a human touch to your message by including some natural humor, entertaining element, or anything that will make you sound more personal. This is your brand’s face – make it appealing to your followers to communicate and relate to.
- Don’t be too promotional: Relating all your content to what you are trying to sell will build up reservations in your audience. And this is what your business definitely doesn’t need.
- Use stories: To spice up your content, you have to become a fascinating storyteller able to meld words with visuals and create great content.
- Be interesting: Think of curious facts, capture latest industry trends, or come up with original pieces of information. Make sure to deliver content that is relevant to your followers’ interests and present it in an engaging way – no one would like to read boring posts and the chances are that you’ll lose your audience for good if you don’t live up to their expectations.
- Add value: “What’s in it for me?” Remember that this question runs in your followers’ minds on seeing any Instagram post or story. Make following worth the time by including special offers, must-have deals, or just helpful tips.
Instagram Post Ideas: How to Create Interesting Instagram Stories
With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram stories are an excellent marketing opportunity every business should tap into. You can use Instagram stories to promote your products, company events, or even posts. Here’s how:
- Be creative and learn the steps of good storytelling
- Be consistent with your values – people with similar values will flock to you
- Be engaging – create content that starts conversations
- Use video in storytelling and bring it to live
- Make your story interactive by using polls and quizzes – this will drive engagement and will prompt your audiences to respond to your content
Why You Need to Map Out a Plan for Your Branded Content on Instagram
Building a plan for your Instagram content will help you ensure that your Instagram activities correspond to and work toward your overall marketing goals.
What Should You Include in Your Content Plan?
Start by clearly identifying your Instagram goals. Why are you embarking on the platform? Are you looking to expand your audience, increase engagement, boost sales, drive more traffic to your company’s website, or create a community?
Your goals will determine the type of content you’ll need, which leads us to the next step:
Identify your Instagram content theme that is consistent with your brand image. It includes:
- Your feed branded theme with filters, fonts, and colors that speak for your company
- Post format that helps you achieve your goals (Instagram stories, lives, videos, carousels, or images)
Build your content. Create types of content in line with the content marketing matrix, which provides an effective framework for your efforts.
Everything you post on Instagram has to serve the purpose of helping your audience overcome their pain points.
How to Create a Content Plan
Now, it’s time to bound your various types of content to the respective stages of your prospects on their buyer journey.
The awareness stage of the Instagram sales funnel
This is where you need to attract new followers and let them know more about your brand.
So, take a close look at your Instagram bio and optimize it. What do you do? What’s your purchase process? How can your customers contact your team? Your audience should be able to find the answers to these questions effortlessly.
It’s easy to say and yet it requires you to address the following details:
- Include a brief introduction stating your industry.
- Provide a link to the company’s website to help your prospects learn more or make their purchase. You can also include contact details, such as a phone number or an email address (using buttons is a handy option).
- Include tags or hashtags that can be used by customers who want to be featured in your Instagram content
- Make sure to add story highlights showcasing your latest product launches, collections, or company news.
- Consider adding a Shop button allowing your customers to look at your products and buy on Instagram.
Mango are doing great at introducing the audience to their business:
- Educate or entertain your audience with your content (share behind-the-scene stories, answers to common questions, how-to tips) and use hashtags to be easily discovered.
- Have your product or brand supported by influencers.
The consideration stage of the Instagram sales funnel
Your content creation at this stage is aimed at building trust and establishing your brand as an industry expert.
To do so, share expert advice and demonstrations or tutorials on how your product works.
Other types of posts suitable for the middle of the funnel are free demos and lead generation campaigns aiming to collect your potential customer’s contact details.
Let your users test your product themselves or offer them lead magnets, such as guides, white papers, insights into latest industry developments, or case studies. In this way, you’ll get their email address or phone number in exchange for content that brings them value.
The decision stage of the Instagram sales funnel
It’s time to prompt your lead to actually make the purchase and they can do it without even leaving Instagram.
The platform offers the Instagram Shopping feature and allows you to build an in-app storefront containing your collections and product listings. Now, you have to make sure you tag your products in your content.
Post your limited-time offers, set up sales campaigns, and use Instagram Drops to tease your followers with announcements of upcoming products before their official launch.
The loyalty stage of the Instagram sales funnel
Express your gratitude to your buyers in your posts and make them feel like part of your community. This builds closer relationships and makes your customers return to you.
You can also run loyalty programs on Instagram and offer exclusive discounts for the members.
Having identified the particular types of content to create, decide on posting timing and frequency that will best contribute to your strategy. You can use your competitors’ Instagram practices as a benchmark in case you can’t think of the best way to schedule.
Create a posting calendar and set up your posts for the time of the highest Instagram activity.
What Are the Most Important Things You Should Be Posting About?
When filling your calendar, think of the best topics to post. Consider topics that are relevant to your:
- Audience
- Brand
- Niche
- Goals
- Industry
Also, post educational content as well as a mix of fun and serious content.
For example, Lufthansa’s feed combines airplane photos, destination shots, travel tips, and engaging quizzes. On the other hand, Nikesportswear shares motivational posts, tips for keeping their products, and activity shots along with videos and photos of their products.
How to Boost Branded Content on Instagram
To enhance your Instagram marketing, you have to improve your following and increase your exposure. The following tips will help you boost your branded content:
- Keep it simple and to the point, as users aren’t likely to read long copy
- Use engaging images that complete the verbal component of your post and attract the audience’s attention
- Ask questions to drive more engagement
- Make it personal – the more natural and human your communication is, the greater is its efficiency in connecting you with your prospects
- Respond to comments to show your followers that their opinion and concerns are important to you and you value the time they take to respond to your post
- Collaborate with influencers to increase your social reach – ask them to highlight your product or brand in some of their content, which will positively impact brand awareness
- Use the right hashtags – this is a promising way to increase your visibility and put your brand on more users’ radars. If you’re wondering which hashtags best suit your business, simply peek at your competitors’ posts for some ideas.
Top Tip:
Promote your branded content across the different social platforms to build a solid social presence and brand awareness.
How to Add a Link to an Instagram Story
Instagram lets you use a sticker to add a link to your stories. Upon tapping, it will lead your followers to the linked website.
How to Add Links to Stories on Your Instagram Page
Follow these steps to insert a Link sticker in your story:
- Create a story by tapping the Plus button. You can upload photos and videos from your device, or you can capture your story at the moment by selecting your camera roll.
- Tap the sticker option in the navigation bar at the right top of your screen.
- Locate and hit the “Link” sticker.
- You’ll be able to insert the desired link. Confirm it by tapping “Done.”
- You can place the link sticker anywhere in the story.
By tapping on your link sticker, you can select from the color options.
How to Add Links to Stories on Your Instagram Business Page
If you’ve created a business account on Instagram, the steps to add a link to your story are the same as in your personal profile.
So, you need to create your story, tap the “Link” sticker, and insert the website address where you wish your followers to land. Finally, you select the color and the text by tapping on the “Link” sticker.
Top Tip:
Switching to a business Instagram account gives you the opportunity to use Instagram insights and view how your prospects interact with your content, including your stories.
These insights are accessible through the Instagram App. You can look at tappable metrics and a summary page. Selecting the metrics, you can see different screens and check each figure by hitting the (i) at the right top. Choose the period you want to get data for through the drop-down at the top. Insights are available for the past 90 days.
Final Thoughts on Instagram Post Ideas
Instagram offers businesses of all sizes and industries the opportunity to connect with existing and potential customers in a direct and unobtrusive way.
You can engage followers with company news, product launches, or industry insights through Instagram stories while still letting them control the communication – your followers decide whether and when to see your posts and interact with them.
To make this powerful marketing tool, you need to craft content that is visually appealing and guided by the key principle: bringing in value to your audiences.
With the Instagram post ideas and tips we discussed, you’ll be able to build an Instagram marketing strategy, develop a posting plan, and create targeted content in line with your business goals.
Time to put your imagination and creativity to work and come up with your original ideas. Roll up your sleeves and #happyposting!
