I recently undertook General Assembly’s Instagram masterclass. The class is designed to teach those who are Instagram newbies and those looking to increase their Instagram utilisation alike; I fall under the latter. The workshop began with the usual pleasantries and after that, we dove right in.
Two Key Factors For Insta Success
The first thing we were told was that in order to have a successful Instagram, you had to understand two basic factors. Your message and your audience.
Your message is what you want to “get across to people” and your audience is those people you want to hear your message. If your message is unclear, you will have a harder time finding a permanent audience. When you have a strong, clear message in what you post, not only will you get more profile visits but your audience will grow faster and stick around longer.
All Praise The Algorithm
Next, we discussed the almighty Algorithm. The most simple explanation of the algorithm is that it curates your feed – what you see and when you see it as you scroll. It takes note of what kind of content you are looking for and engaging with, then will show you content that is similar to that which you prefer.
In order to get the algorithm on your side you must understand 3 key things – Engagement, Relevancy and Consistency.
Engagement is when your followers, or other users comment, like, share and generally interact with your content. Relevancy is making sure you are using up to date hashtags and creating new, interesting and relevant content. Consistency I’m sure we all know the meaning of, but in relation to Instagram, it means you must be posting some kind of regular content – whether that be on your feed, reels or stories.
What Is What On Instagram
Your Feed
Your feed is the main page on Instagram where you upload permanent content, content that doesn’t expire into the internet black hole never to be seen again after a certain time (unless you choose to delete it of course). Feed content is usually the most significant content, what you post here should be ‘on brand’ and ideally will allow for some engagement from your follows, and between you and your followers.
Your Reels
Reels is somewhat new to Instagram. It is short-form video content. On your profile page, you can choose to keep reels separate from your feed or the videos you create can be present on your feed too. A good thing to note is that often reel content is linked to particular audio, so using trending audio in your reels can help you increase reach, i.e people go looking for videos using that particular audio and boom there is your content waiting for them.
Similar to your Feed content, Reels content is also permanent once it is uploaded.
Your Stories
Stories are a little different. They are only available on your profile for 24 hours unless you highlight them, which we will talk about later. The short-lived nature of stories is actually an advantage. Stories create a space for you to show another, often more personal side to yourself or brand; a more intimate space. Plus, features like ‘polls’ and ‘questions’ in stories also allow for a lot of engagement and quick communication with your followers.
Carousel Posts
In recent years, Instagram updated to allow you to post more than one picture per post on your feed. This feature is called the carousel and it is an amazing way to increase engagement. As people swipe through each picture on the carousel, Instagram recognises this as engagement with the content, thus the more swipes the more the algorithm will favour your content. Not only that, carousels can allow for personal aesthetics to be catered too and they are a really great way to relay information.
Your Profile
Your profile is where your identity and brand should be clear and dominant. Your handle should be purposeful and clear and your profile picture should depict who you are. Your bio should not only get to the point of who you are but also spark interest for those visiting your profile. On your profile, you can also create a ‘highlight’ which allows your stories to remain visible there.
Your Highlights
Highlighted stories should offer visitors to your profile some additional info e.g price list, travel destinations etc. Popular ideas are a “meet me” where you introduce yourself, “services” where you talk about your business and “testimonials” to build trust!
My Key Takeaways From The Masterclass
I was taught some interesting tips during the masterclass, one of which was to dive into your own analytics on the platform, keep track of what content is working and what isn’t. If your current tactic isn’t yielding results, change it up!
Another tip was to imagine your ideal customer and then create high-quality content to attract and keep that customer. These customers are ‘personas’ and there may be more than one kind. The last tip was to not get caught up in ‘vanity metrics’ like having huge amounts of followers or likes but rather focus on conversion rates. If you have 1000 followers but only 5 of them buy your goods/services, your conversion is lacking. In contrast, if you have 500 followers and 499 buy your goods/services your conversion is killer and you are more likely to thrive on the platform.
Overall, I learned a lot! It was very interesting to explore the features of Instagram in a way I hadn’t before and I look forward to using some of the information I learned to improve my Instagram account and usage, and you can too!
Thanks To General Assembly for the awesome class, which we snapped up while all of their courses were 50%. Be sure to check out their page for some amazing free and paid classes, where we often go for training here at CLS.