Your Speakers:

The post Making Dollars and Sense out of the Creator Economy with Lia Haberman appeared first on Sprout Social.

Instagram is quickly becoming the go-to network for influencers, with recent stats saying that carousels, Reels and Stories are among the most popular content types for creators.

As creators continue to dominate the platform, brands need to know how Instagram influencer marketing works. In this post, we’ll break down the basics.

What is Instagram influencer marketing?

Instagram influencer marketing is a promotional strategy based on partnerships between brands and social media creators (“influencers”) on Instagram.

The concept is simple enough. Brands partner with creators to promote products on their Instagram profiles and then compensate those creators for their efforts. And while influencer marketing is popular on many platforms (like TikTok and Facebook), 86% of social marketers cite Instagram as the top platform for their influencer marketing strategy.

What makes someone an Instagram influencer, though?

The term refers to the level of influence that these social media creators have on their audiences. That’s because everyday consumers look to influencers for product recommendations.

In short, influencers are users that influence purchasing decisions. One-third of people on Instagram have been inspired to buy something based on an influencer’s post.

Most Instagram influencers don’t actually refer to themselves by the term, though. Creator or content creator is more common these days. Although influencer used to be synonymous with celebrity, times have changed.

You don’t need millions of followers to be considered an Instagram influencer. There are different levels of influencer, which can be broken down into the categories below:

• Nano-influencers: between 1,000 and 5,000 followers
• Micro-influencers: between 10,000 and 100,000 followers
• Macro-influencers: between 100,000 to 1M followers

And while 70% of social marketers see the biggest impact from macro-influencers, 43% also see a huge impact from micro-influencers.

What are some examples of Instagram influencer marketing?

Chances are you’ve encountered your fair share of Instagram influencers in the wild. Below are a few examples of influencer content in action.

Sponsored content (#ad or #gifted posts)

Sponsored posts are disclosed by creators with a tag such as #ad or #gifted if they were given the product for free. Through gifting, brands provide creators with free products in exchange for a post. Sometimes additional compensation is also offered.

Below is an example from BoxyCharm. Frequent sponsored and gifting campaigns makes their beauty products practically can’t-miss on Instagram.

Affiliate links

Many brands boast affiliate programs on Instagram. When someone clicks on an influencer’s affiliate link, that interaction is tracked. The affiliate is compensated if the person that clicked converts.

If you’ve ever seen the phrase “link in bio” when referring to a product, you’re likely looking at an affiliate post. Many influencers will also have static affiliate links in their bios through Instagram tools like Linkt.ree.

Reposting Instagram influencer content

Brands will often supplement their own Instagram content strategy with posts from influencers.

For example, a company might reshare an influencer’s photo shouting a product to their stories feed. Mixed with organic content and customer tags, the influencers’ posts fit in seamlessly.

What are the benefits of Instagram influencer marketing?

So, why are influencer relationships worth the time and effort? Below we highlight the key benefits for brands.

Greater reach and exposure

Brand accounts have been hit hard by the Instagram algorithm when it comes to reach and engagement.

On the flip side, creator accounts are thriving. Influencers often boast some of the most engaged-with posts you can find on Instagram.

But beyond that, also consider that influencers can boost the exposure of brands by introducing them to a larger audience. For example, check out Hero Cosmetics’ 104,000 followers…

…and the creator they partnered with that currently has an audience three times that size.

See how that works? Especially for up-and-coming brands, influencers serve as an alternative to Instagram ads.

Increase social sales

Again, Instagram influencers represent an advertising channel for brands beyond traditional paid posts.

Collaborations, ambassadorships and product gifting can be more cost-effective than conversion-based campaigns.

There are tons of question marks around paid ad targeting. Through Instagram influencers, brands can estimate their promotions’ reach beforehand. This is based on factors like the creators’ audience size and engagement rate.

Consider that 43% of people already follow influencers on Instagram. There’s no denying the correlation between social sales and brand awareness. That’s why featuring creators as part of your funnel supports your sales efforts.

Show off your products in action

If you want to bring your products to life, influencers can make it happen.

This is where the “create” aspect of “content creator” comes into play. For example, skilled influencers understand:

• Relevant scenarios and applications of your product(s)
• The real-world struggles, challenges and pain points of your audience
• How to highlight your brand’s value proposition

Look no further than the beauty industry that’s brimming with talented influencers. From skincare hacks to makeup challenges and beyond, beauty influencers know how to flex their creativity.

Tapping into an influencer’s skillset, you can uncover totally new ways to sell your products.

Humanize your brand

Done right, Instagram influencer marketing can quite literally give your brand a face.

The importance of delivering authenticity can’t be overstated when competition is so fierce on social media. Breaking through the noise means having real people promote your brand and tell your story.

That’s because creators highlight the human element of your business. Again, influencers that reflect your audience know the struggles your customers are facing.

This highlights the popularity of brand ambassador programs right now. After all, who better to speak on your brand’s behalf than someone that legitimately loves your products?

Earn valuable influencer-generated content

Note how user-generated content can be repurposed throughout your marketing funnel. Well, the same applies to influencer-generated content. This includes:

• Featuring influencer content and reviews on product pages
• Promoting influencers throughout your content marketing strategy (think: social media, email)
• Use your influencer content as the basis for an ad campaign

According to Instagram, ads featuring influencers result in higher conversions and brand awareness.

Translation? The value of influencer content goes far beyond a creator’s initial post.

How much does Instagram influencer marketing cost?

The amount you need to budget for Instagram influencer marketing depends on the type of influencers you plan to work with. As you can imagine, nano-influencers and micro-influencers charge less than macro-influencers. The more followers an influencer has, the more they are typically able to charge.

Common rates we see are as follows:

• Nano-influencers: $10-100 per post
• Micro-influencers: $100-5,000 per post
• Macro-influencers: $5,000-10,000 per post

Celebrity influencers can even be seen charging hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per post. Cristiano Ronaldo, the most followed Instagram user, charges over $3M per sponsored post.

Your required budget will depend on (a) how many influencers you want to work with and (b) what level of influencer you want to partner with. And with 73% of social marketers stating that their influencer marketing budget is shared with their overall social budget, it’s important to make sure that every dollar counts.

How to build an Instagram influencer marketing strategy

3. Track your results

Like with any other type of campaign, your social media metrics and KPIs matter.

As we mentioned, influencer marketing is often criticized due to its lack of concrete ROI. The reality, though? There’s plenty of data to track on behalf of your influencers. Not to mention KPIs relevant to your business goals. This includes:

• Engagement rate (ratio of followers to interactions) to gauge your influencers’ level of reach
• Followers and audience growth
• Conversions and link clicks (for affiliate campaigns)
• Reach to understand how many people see your promotions
• Traffic to see how on-site visitors from influencers behave

And that only scratches the surface!

Tracking all of the above requires coordinating with influencers and keeping a close eye on your own data.

That’s the upside of using an influencer marketing platform like Sprout Social. For example, Sprout’s platform makes it a cinch to monitor engagement metrics and keep a better pulse on campaign performance.

The post Mastering Instagram influencer marketing: strategies for success appeared first on Sprout Social.

Think about it: From personal brands run by individual creators to large-scale corporate marketing efforts, the competition is heating up. Without the right tools, you’re essentially navigating a stormy sea in a leaky boat.

Competition is high—you need the right tools at your disposal to streamline your efforts and compete with millions of creators in the same space.

Tools like Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram can help. In this guide, we cover what it is, how you can access it and what features you can use to build a powerful creator profile.

What is Creator Studio?`

Creator Studio is a dashboard content creators and brands use to manage their content, audience engagement and data analysis of their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

You can schedule posts, interact with your community and even monetize your content. It’s a one-stop shop that’s excellent for beginner creators and brands.

It has recently been renamed Meta Business Suite and combines Facebook and Instagram Creator Studio features—like planning posts and sending messages—in one place. Plus, it includes more advanced tools for monetization, like billing and commerce.

What is the difference between Facebook and Instagram Creator Studio?

Facebook Creator Studio and Instagram Creator Studio were previously two separate dashboards, each with their own platform-specific features. Meta has streamlined the experience to create a comprehensive dashboard that houses both studios under one roof.

This unified approach makes it easier for marketers and content creators to manage, analyze and optimize their social media activities across Facebook and Instagram.

Getting started with Creator Studio

You can access Creator Studio from your desktop and mobile.

To access Meta Business Suite on your mobile, simply download the Meta Business Suite app on iOS and Android. Once you connect your accounts on mobile, you’ll be able to:

• Create, schedule and manage posts and stories across Facebook and Instagram.
• Respond to all of your messages and comments in one place.
• View your notifications and to-do list.
• See post and ad insights across Facebook and Instagram side-by-side.
• Access and manage your published and scheduled posts within a calendar.

If you’re new to Meta Business Suite, here is a quick breakdown of how to connect your accounts to start using Creator Studio.

How to connect Facebook to Creator Studio

To log in from your desktop, you’ll need to first log into your Facebook account. You’ll also need access to a Facebook Page since the tool is specifically for content creators and brands.

Once you’re logged in, go to Pages from the main menu on your personal profile.

Within the Pages settings, click on Meta Business Suite.

You will now have access to Creator Studio.

Have multiple pages? You can easily switch between them. Just select the dropdown menu, and you’ll see a list that displays your different pages. Select each page to manage and monitor its content and analytics.

How to connect Instagram to Creator Studio

Connect your Instagram creator account to Meta Business Suite on your desktop with these steps.

1. In the Meta Business Suite desktop, select Settings from the left-hand sidebar.
2. Select Business assets.
3. Click Add Assets and select your Instagram account.
   
4. Then click Claim Instagram account after reviewing and agreeing to the terms.
5. Enter your Instagram username and password in the new window, and click Log In. If you’re already logged into Instagram, you can also choose Continue as [Instagram handle] if that’s the account you want to connect.
6. If your Two-Factor Authentication is turned on (which it should be), enter your security code.
7. Click Confirm.

Once you’ve linked your Instagram account, simply head over to the Meta Business Suite app or the website on desktop to access it.

Roles and permissions in Creator Studio

To secure your account, it’s a smart idea to provide only those permissions people need to do their work. For example, assigning access to your Business Account or your Instagram account. Limiting access organizes the workflow and secures your account against unintended changes or breaches.

Your Business Account allows you to assign partial access or full control to people. To do this, you need to:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click People.
3. Select the name of the person whose access you want to change.
4. Under Business Account access, select Manage.
5. Make your changes.

Here’s what each level of access means:

Partial access:

• Basic: Users with basic access only see tasks and assets assigned to them. This is the default permission when adding people to a Business Account.
• Apps and integrations: App and integration owners create access tokens, monitor events, edit application files and set up the Conversions API.

Full control:

• Everything: People with full control of a Business Account can manage everything—settings, permissions, tools and business assets. They can also delete the Business Account.

Key Creator Studio features

Creator Studio comes with multiple features that provide unparalleled control over your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Whether you’re a solo content creator or managing a larger team, Creator Studio offers the tools you need to refine and execute your Instagram and Facebook marketing strategy. Here are some key features:

Content

Within the Content section, view all the content you’ve previously posted: posts, reels, stories and collections.

Use the dropdown filters at the top to sort your posts by type, date or other categories like marketing channels. The search bar is also quite handy when you want to find a specific post.

Sort your posts using the tabs at the top by published, scheduled, drafts, expired and expiring.

Want in-depth insights on a specific post? Click on “View Insights” to get a snapshot of how it’s performing and see what it looks like in your feed.

The Content tab also makes it convenient to manage your posts. Click on these three dots to access options like edit, boost or delete. Action lists are different for photo posts and video posts.

Insights

The Insights feature provides granular data on various aspects of your content and audience. Deep-dive into metrics like reach, impressions and follower demographics.

This feature offers four categories of general insights:

• The Overview section allows you to compare your current reach with a previous period and provides actionable tips for expanding your audience.

• The Results section displays key performance indicators like the number of visits to your page or profile, new likes and follows, and trends.

• The Audience section gives you data on your followers from Facebook and Instagram, along with geographical information like the cities and countries where your audience is most concentrated.

• The Benchmarking section enables you to gauge your performance by comparing it with businesses operating in the same niche or category as you.

The four categories are just the tip of the iceberg. You can also dig deeper into the insights by going to the Content, Messaging and Video tabs.

Inbox

The Inbox feature puts all your chats and comments from Facebook and Instagram in one spot, eliminating the need to jump between apps.

Organize and classify messages to make sure you’re not missing anything urgent. Other features like creating orders directly from messages and inserting saved replies streamline administrative tasks so you can focus on more meaningful interactions.

These features work together to create a centralized hub for all your audience interactions.

Live Dashboard

The Live Dashboard in Creator Studio allows you to manage and monitor live videos on Facebook or Instagram. It gives you the controls to start, stop or manage various aspects of your live broadcast.

See real-time data while streaming live, such as how many people are watching, comments coming in and even reactions to your video.

Use the Resource Hub as your control room for live videos, where you can engage with audiences in real-time and track how well your content performs.

Planner

The Planner feature in Creator Studio brings together your content calendars from Facebook and Instagram.

It offers a unified view to make content management more seamless. Toggle between weekly and monthly views to get a broad or detailed look at your content calendar.

 The calendar displays posts for Instagram and Facebook. A view on platform-specific content helps you plan your Instagram marketing strategy as well as Facebook marketing strategy separately.

The Planner tool’s filters help sort posts by content type, like posts, stories, reels and ads. Click on each post to view individually and see metrics like interactions and reach.

Sound Collection

The Sound Collection feature is a library of music tracks and sound effects you can freely use in your Facebook and Instagram videos.

It’s an easy way to elevate your videos, engage your audience and add a professional touch to your social media posts.

Monetization

The Monetization section in Creator Studio supports anyone looking to earn money from their Facebook and Instagram content.

You’ll find different monetization methods, like in-stream ads for your videos, fan subscriptions and branded content partnerships.

Some users also get access to Stars, a video monetization tool. Your audience can buy Stars and send them to you on your posts with Stars enabled.

Ads

The Ads tab is a centralized command center for all your Facebook and Instagram advertising needs. You can create new ads, oversee existing ones and monitor their performance.

The Ads section provides a quick snapshot of your campaign’s reach and engagement levels.

It offers audience insights, breaking down the demographics of the people your ads are reaching, which you can adjust for different time frames using the calendar.

For those wanting to dive deeper, the All Ads tab offers even more granular data on individual campaigns. Details such as the amount spent on each ad, its reach and overall progress are available here.

You can also view complete results for each campaign and boost an ad again if you’re satisfied with its performance using this tab.

Scale your social media presence with Creator Studio

Meta Business Suite is a powerful toolset that elevates your social media management by bringing together the best features of Creator Studio and other Meta services. It’s your go-to hub for all things Facebook and Instagram.

Of course, sometimes you need a bird’s eye view that goes beyond just these two platforms. That’s where Sprout Social comes in.

Sprout offers extensive features beyond what the native Creator Studio can provide. It’s a convenient way to scale your social strategy beyond Instagram and Facebook in one unified dashboard.

Learn about more social media marketing tools that optimize your social media management and help you build a strong presence at scale.

The post Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram: A guide for marketers appeared first on Sprout Social.

Learning how to schedule Instagram posts in advance helps free up your social media team to do other important tasks, like strategy building, content creation, community engagement and more.

Throughout this article, we’re going to talk about the different ways you can schedule your Instagram content, the benefits for doing so and a few great scheduling tools to keep in your arsenal.

Table of contents:

• How to schedule Instagram posts from the Instagram app
• How to schedule Instagram posts from Meta Business Suite
• How to schedule Instagram posts using Sprout Social
• Benefits of scheduling Instagram posts
• Tips for scheduling posts on Instagram
• Instagram scheduling tools to use

How to schedule Instagram posts from the Instagram app

After years of users asking for it, Instagram finally added in-app scheduling near the end of 2022. Users are able to schedule up to 25 posts per day and up to 75 days in advance. Keep in mind, only business profiles have access to this feature. Personal profiles are unable to schedule content.

Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Open your Instagram app and tap the + at the bottom of the screen or swipe the home feed to the right to create a new piece of content.

Step 2: Select Post or Reel, depending on the type of content you’re creating.

Step 3: Either take a photo or record a video using the in-app camera or upload one from your camera roll.

Step 4: Add any stickers, effects, etc., then add your caption.

Step 5: Tap Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen.

Step 6: Toggle the Schedule this post option on, then select your preferred date and time from the menu that appears.

Step 7: Go back to the previous screen and tap Schedule.

How to schedule Instagram posts from Meta Business Suite

You can also use the Meta Business Suite to schedule your Instagram content. First, connect your Instagram Business Account to your Facebook Page so you can access both from the Meta Business Suite.

Then follow these steps:

Step 1: In Meta Business Suite, click Create post or Create reel.

Step 2: Specify which Instagram account you want to share your post or reel to. It may also include your Facebook Page—it’s up to you whether you also want it to post to your Facebook Page or only to Instagram.

• Step 3: Upload your media, then write out your caption. Be sure to include your mentions and hashtags (you can even save hashtags to reuse in your content). You can even geotag a location if you wish.
• Step 4: Toggle the Set date and time option on, then select your preferred date and time. Click Active times to access a popup showcasing some of the upcoming times that your audience is active.

Step 5: Once you’ve selected your time, click Save then click Schedule.

How to schedule Instagram posts using Sprout Social

Scheduling Instagram posts natively is straightforward, but how about when you have a larger social strategy across multiple platforms to plan and schedule?

With a dedicated social media publishing tool like Sprout, you can do so much more. Cross-posting. Team collaboration and permissions. In-depth analytics. The list goes on.

We make it so easy to upload to your feed, add a Carousel or Story imagery, finalize your content and schedule it whether you’re on desktop or mobile.

Below is a precise, step-by-step process of how to schedule Instagram posts on Sprout.

Step 1: Open your Sprout Social calendar

The first thing you need to do is open Sprout Social to the calendar menu. You can view this as a list, week or monthly calendar. Next, it’s time to choose the image(s) or video to post. If you’re not 100% sure what you should publish, check out our in-depth guide on Instagram post ideas.

Step 2: Compose your Instagram post

Click the pencil/paper icon in the top right corner of your screen. Choose your Instagram account to get started composing your new Instagram post.

Upload your photo or video, input your caption and hashtags, tag users and more.

Step 3: Select your preferred date and time

Scroll down in the Compose interface to the When to post section. Choose your preferred date and time—or select the Optimal Send Times option to see when Sprout Social says your audience is most likely to see your content.

Step 4: Stage your post for scheduling

After your content is edited and approved, you can click Schedule to add it to your calendar, or move the post to Draft, Queue or Submit for Approval. Let’s take a look at each option:

• Schedule: Use the schedule feature when you want to publish your Instagram posts at a specific time. This is great for when you’re launching an Instagram contest and want the post to go live right when it starts. It’s also helpful if you’re scheduling an Instagram post as a part of a larger campaign, and need content to go out at a specific time of the day. Plan finished content for the future and see your scheduled posts in Sprout’s Publishing Calendar.
• Draft: Not sure if your post is ready to go live quite yet? Want to create multiple “backup” Instagram posts for the future? Draft is a great spot to park your unfinished content or items that still need approval.
• Queue: The Sprout Queue is ideal for edited posts ready to go live—especially if you’re not sure when to post your content. When you queue your Instagram posts, Sprout picks the best time to publish within the window you specify.
• Submit for Approval: Choosing an approver ensures your content is properly edited, grammatically correct, timely and on-brand. Select specific approvers to review your content before it goes live.

Benefits of scheduling Instagram posts

Businesses have begged for scheduling features on Instagram for years. But why are so many marketers eager to queue up their content? Below are some of the biggest benefits of scheduled Instagram posts.

1. Develop a more comprehensive content strategy

Food for thought: Different types of content (think: carousels, images, Stories and Reels) all receive different rates of engagement. This means brands need to diversify their content strategies and not just post the same type of content over and over.

When you schedule posts on Instagram, you give yourself time to actually assess your content calendar.

And when you don’t have to rush to publish Instagram posts, you have time to gather the various assets you need to create fresh, compelling content.

Want to spend a few days workshopping a storytelling post or editing a video? No problem.

2. Free up your schedule to interact more with followers

If nothing else, scheduling Instagram posts can free up some serious time in your schedule. That means more opportunities to interact with followers and reply to comments.

Even the best Instagram scheduler can’t do the legwork of building relationships with customers. When you stick to a social media post scheduler consistently, you can dedicate more time to engagement.

3. Better time management means higher quality posts

Think about the effort that goes into any given post or campaign.

Writing captions. Tweaking images. Tagging. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Writing Instagram posts last-minute is a recipe for burnout. By scheduling posts on Instagram, you can batch your time appropriately and craft more meaningful posts.

4. Create seamless marketing campaigns beyond Instagram

Your social media campaigns shouldn’t be siloed.

From organic and paid social to email and beyond, all of your channels should be on the same page in terms of creatives, landing pages and promotions. This creates a better customer experience.

Through social scheduling, you ensure that your posts fire off at the right time. If you’re using a social media management tool such as Sprout Social, you can actually sync all of your social channels (think: Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest) so you don’t have to publish manually or in real-time.

5. Encourage collaboration and brainstorming

Again, scheduling encourages brands to begin working on posts well in advance.

This means marketers and colleagues have time to hash out the best captions and creative assets.

Useful for both social teams and marketers looking for feedback from clients or influencers, collaboration and Instagram scheduling go hand in hand. Coupled with a social media approval process, it’s a cinch to get multiple sets of eyes on your content before it goes live.

Tips for scheduling posts on Instagram

We’ll say it again: You can’t just queue up your posts months or weeks in advance and expect your Instagram to grow on autopilot.

Below are some key considerations for brands looking to leverage Instagram scheduling for the first time.

1. Optimize your post timing to maximize engagement

A nice added bonus of scheduling is that your business isn’t beholden to “business hours.”

Based on our research on best times to post on Instagram, there’s a correlation between time of day and engagement:

Although these numbers aren’t the be-all, end-all of follower activity and vary based on your time zone, they’re eye-opening in terms of when the average Instagram user is active:

Marketers using Sprout social as their Instagram scheduler can increase engagement with our ViralPost algorithm that optimizes post timing. Rather than guess or decide when to post via trial and error, you’ll know exactly when to post, based on real follower engagement data.

2. Take extra care when crafting your captions

It’s no secret that Instagram captions represent valuable real estate when it comes to engagement.

They shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought. For each post, consider:

• Which hashtags are you using? How many? Are they in your first comment (see below)?
• Do you need to tag any accounts?
• Did you write an appropriate call-to-action?
• How does this caption compare to your most recent one(s)?

Much like your content strategy needs to be diverse, the same rings true for your Instagram captions.

When you schedule posts in advance, you have time to put your captions under the microscope and ensure there’s some variety. Likewise, you can confirm that you’re using the right hashtags and aren’t missing any key details before your post goes live.

3. Keep a close eye on your content calendar

Piggybacking on the point above, scheduling based on a defined content calendar encourages both variety and consistency in terms of your posts.

As you queue up your posts, ask yourself:

• Are we hitting the appropriate publishing frequency (think: daily, four times a week)?
• Is there enough variation in our content schedule (think: video versus carousel versus photo)?
• How are we promoting this content to encourage engagement (think: Stories, questions in CTA)?
• Are there opportunities to cross-post this content to other networks (like Facebook)?
• Have the appropriate stakeholders reviewed this post before it goes live?

The answers to all of the above ensure more thoughtful, goal-driven posts that are poised to perform well. Below is a quick snapshot of what a content calendar looks like in the Sprout app:

4. Block off time to engage with customers

Despite popular belief, scheduling Instagram posts doesn’t make your presence more “passive.”

Quite the opposite, honestly.

Yet again, scheduling frees up your schedule to interact with customers in real-time.

Mind your notifications and make sure your comment section never gathers cobwebs. Be proactive and make a point to respond to social customers ASAP for the sake of satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Know when to hit “pause” on your scheduling

Whether due to a brand emergency or a bigger crisis management effort, sometimes you need to put a stop to your scheduled content.

Failure to do so could come off as insensitive or result in otherwise poor engagement when your followers’ minds are elsewhere. For example, publishing promotional content during certain holidays, on somber occasions or in the wake of tragedies is not the best for your brand’s reputation.

This speaks to how Instagram scheduling is so much more than putting your brand on autopilot. As a side note, Sprout has built-in features to pause scheduled posts and resume them when the time is right.

Instagram scheduling tools to use

Third-party tools can make Instagram scheduling even easier than the in-app tool. Additional apps allow you to schedule content to multiple social media platforms at once, have additional features and can help with your overall social media management. Here are three tools you might consider.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s Instagram scheduling tool is a great option to consider when looking to schedule social media content ahead of time. Not only can you schedule content on a number of platforms—Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, YouTube and more—but you can also get access to optimal scheduling times, create a collaborative process with your team and analyze your post performance.

Meet Edgar

Meet Edgar is an automated scheduling tool. The way this software works is you’ll upload your Instagram post creative and set a category, then the automation creates various content and schedules it for you. Essentially, Meet Edgar makes sure you never run out of content, even when you haven’t scheduled anything new.

SocialBee

SocialBee is another great scheduling tool, this time with an AI generation feature. With SocialBee, you can let AI generate your captions for you, making your strategy more efficient. Upload your visuals and let the AI take over from there, crafting your caption and scheduling your post.

Learn how to schedule posts on Instagram today

The post How to schedule Instagram posts: Your complete guide for 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

But if you’re not thrilled with your Instagram growth and engagement, you’re not alone.

Competition on the platform is fierce. And cracking the code of Instagram’s algorithm can be tricky.

Thing is, taking steps to grow your audience is absolutely worth it. That’s because the bigger your audience, the more opportunities to delight your customers.

Ready to tweak your presence and learn how to get more followers on Instagram? This post breaks down how to make it happen.

Jump to a tip: 

1. Optimize your Instagram account
2. Keep a consistent content calendar
3. Schedule Instagram posts in advance
4. Engage with customers, brand advocates and influencers
5. Avoid fake Instagram followers
6. Showcase your Instagram everywhere you can
7. Post content that followers actually want to see
8. Make meaningful conversation with your audience
9. Find hashtags where your followers hang out
10. Take steps to delight your Instagram followers
11. Use geo-tagging to attract local followers
12. Leverage short-form video content
13. Partner with influencers in your niche
14. Organize stories as highlights
15. Go live on Instagram

15 ways to get more Instagram followers

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, this post is about building an organic following.

And yes, the distinction matters!

Some brands want to take shortcuts when it comes to trying to get more Instagram followers. We don’t pretend that pay-for-play sites exist.

That said, these services aren’t worth it for brands long-term. The Instagram algorithm weeds out low-quality accounts and phony engagement from paid bots.

But we’ll bite: there’s definitely some legwork involved in growing your audience authentically.

Doing so is totally worth it, though. Read or watch the video below for our best tips on getting more Instagram followers the right way.

1. Optimize your Instagram account

Before you worry about how to get followers, consider how your Instagram business profile is set up first.

Ask yourself: does your profile “look the part?” For starters, consider your:

• Your Instagram bio (including your slogan, tagline and/or a branded hashtag)
• Your profile picture
• Your bio link (and where it points to)

These details define your brand identity on Instagram. More importantly, they impact your account’s discoverability. Building a follower-friendly account means:

• Having a search-friendly username. Stick to either your brand name or whatever’s closest to your existing social handles. If your name is too long, shorten it to a variation your audience would recognize (ex: Cold Stone Creamery’s account is @coldstone).
• Making your profile picture professional. An appropriately-sized logo is ideal. Any text in your profile picture should be legible on a smartphone screen.
• Minding where you point your bio link. This is crucial for turning Instagram followers into meaningful traffic or customers. It’s your only way to funnel social traffic to your site and promotions.

Linking to your homepage is fine but not always ideal. To encourage more meaningful interactions, a social landing page that points to multiple links can help.

This gives your audience total control of how they engage your business next. That means a better experience for your followers.

The best way to optimize your account is to follow a proven Instagram marketing strategy. Download our free guide to get started.

Instagram for Brands: A Guide to Instagram Marketing Strategy

Published on 

2. Keep a consistent content calendar

Momentum matters on Instagram. In other words, you likely won’t get followers on Instagram if you post at random.

Creating content and providing value is what builds your audience. Doing so consistently is what helps you keep them. Don’t let your Instagram account gather cobwebs.

That’s why sticking to a regular posting schedule is crucial.  In terms of when and how much to post, you don’t have to stick to a set-in-stone number. Most brands post daily or near daily. This tracks our own research on how often to post as well.

For reference, below is a breakdown of the best times to post to Instagram.  “Optimal” engagement is during the mid-to-late morning and early afternoons during the week.

If you’re worried about your posts not getting seen enough, we get it. Consider how features like Stories can get more eyes on your content if it wasn’t seen the first time.

3. Schedule Instagram posts in advance

There’s no denying that brands are at the mercy of the Instagram algorithm for reach. Still, posting at the right times can still give your posts more visibility. Anything you can do to maximize engagement is a plus.

This speaks to the value of scheduling Instagram content. With Sprout’s newest tools, brands can schedule Stories, Carousels, Reels and Posts.

Scheduling content in advance ensures control and organization. Instagram scheduling tools ultimately help you hit that cadence we mentioned earlier. The ability to crosspost content from other networks helps here, too.

You can also use Sprout’s ViralPost feature to nail down your timing, too. Our platform analyzes your engagement history and identifies the best times to post.

Perfect your Instagram content plan with Sprout Social

In addition to scheduling a complete picture of your Instagram content calendar, Sprout offers even more features to perfect your brand’s feed.

Share IG-approved visuals with your team using our Asset Library, or test out our grid preview feature to make sure every aspect of your presence is true to your brand style.

Get a hands-on look at these features and more with a 30-day free trial of Sprout.

4. Engage with customers and brand advocates

Figuring out how to get more Instagram followers means engaging your audience.

And one of the best ways to do that is through responding to and republishing their posts.

Enter the power of user-generated content. UGC campaigns build social proof by showing followers you’re invested in them. For example, Drunk Elephant regularly regrams their followers’ posts. They gather content with their #BareWithUs and #DrunkBreak hashtags.

5. Avoid fake Instagram followers

There’s a big difference between fake and legitimate followers on Instagram.

We get it, too. For the sake of quick growth, it might be tempting to purchase followers.

But the drawbacks outweigh the benefits 100%. Why? Because fake Instagram followers…

• Confuse your potential organic followers. An inactive, low-engagement account with a big following is suspicious. This can be a turn-off for fans that’d otherwise follow you and engage.
• Provide no monetary value to your business. Think about it. Your bot followers can’t buy your stuff, can they? 
• Generate no buzz: If you have 10,000 fake followers, how many are going to engage with your posts? Does it really even matter if your posts are brimming with spam comments?

For example, Lush Cosmetics takes the time to answer questions and engage followers all the time. This results in customers regularly returning to share shout-outs and positive comments.

6. Showcase your Instagram everywhere you can

Don’t be shy about promoting your Instagram if more followers are your goal.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to promoting your ‘gram, either. Here are a few ideas:

• Add social media icons to your website and marketing emails. Social media icons make it easier for people to find your business and help you connect with customers.
• Feature an Instagram feed on your homepage or product pages. Many e-commerce brands have dedicated UGC feeds on-site (see below).
• Re-share Instagram-specific content or announcements on other social channels. For example, you could talk about an upcoming IG Live via TikTok or Facebook.

7. Post content that followers actually want to see

Easier said than done, we know.

Filters. Captions. Content types. Post times. That doesn’t even scratch the surface.

There are so many variables to consider, right? It doesn’t help that Instagram’s algorithm is fickle. What works for one brand might not work for the next in terms of format and timing.

For example, some brands swear by Carousels. Others are all-in on Reels. Both approaches can work. You’ll quickly find on Instagram that some content gets more likes than others. This is why testing is so important.

Instagram’s native analytics are surprisingly powerful. That said, investing in Instagram analytics tools will take things to the next level.

For example, Sprout makes it easy to benchmark and analyze Instagram content across accounts. Rather than second-guess what’s working and what’s not, our reporting spells it out for you.

Be confident in your content strategy by analyzing those variables we mentioned earlier.

And if you’re unsure where to start, try analyzing your competitors. A staggering 90% of brands say that social media data helps them keep up with competing social accounts.

You obviously shouldn’t copycat your competitors. That said, you can take notes on what they’re doing or posting that drives engagement.  Sprout’s Instagram Competitors report can provide a breakdown of what’s working in your industry. A little competitive research can go a long way.

Oh, and keep your ear to the ground with new Instagram trends. That way you won’t miss out on platform-wide opportunities to hop on trending content formats.

8. Make meaningful conversation with your audience

Food for thought: 60% of marketers use Instagram as a service channel.

The platform is perfect for going back and forth with followers. Likewise, many popular post ideas center around asking questions and engaging in a dialogue for a reason.

Off-the-cuff questions, shipping concerns or praise for products are all fair game from followers. Check out how Cometeer responds to all of the above on their Instagram posts:

Being supportive and responding promptly shows people that you care.

You’d be surprised at how your Instagram followers increase once you start acting more personable. Our Index research shows that 89% of consumers will buy from a brand after following them on social. Every interaction counts.

Again, try to respond to as many questions or comments as possible. Doing so could make or break someone becoming a long-term follower or a customer.

9. Find hashtags where your followers hang out

Instagram hashtags have been a staple of the platform, like, forever.

That said, they don’t hold as much weight as they used to.

Dumping hashtags into your posts isn’t going to net you any new followers. Especially when there’s so much noise on the platform.

Be proactive by focusing on industry-specific hashtags relevant to your customers. For example, Lashify regularly posts content to the #LashEducation hashtag. Tags are less general and competitive than #beauty. Becoming more visible within these types of tags is meaningful for brands in the right niche.

Understanding how your hashtags perform on Instagram is critical. With Sprout Social’s hashtag analytics tools, you have direct access to in-depth performance and usage data. Figuring out which hashtags to use is just a few taps away.

10. Take steps to delight your Instagram followers

When you make your Instagram followers happy, you’ll see the payoff in audience growth. The best Instagram accounts have fans and communities (hint: not just followers).

For many accounts, this means building customer relationships. Content that highlights your personality and the humans behind your brand is a plus. This includes:

• Inspirational content
• Humorous content
• Re-sharing UGC with unique captions
• Storytelling posts
• Behind-the-scenes photos and videos
• Posts that raise awareness for social causes

Also, make sure your content aligns with your brand voice and values. Avoid coming across as needy, solely sales-driven or robotic at all costs.

11. Use geo-tagging to attract local followers

Instagram brought back location stories last year. But now, users can find them on a map. This feature helps people search for top posts and stories in specific locations, such as a coffee shop or a shopping mall.

And how do you get your content to show up on the map? By tagging the location, of course. Geo-tagging your posts and stories makes your content visible to people in the vicinity or users checking out the place where your photo or video was taken.

Wondering how to tag the location in your Instagram story? Simply use the location sticker and type in the location you want to tag.

12. Leverage short-form video content

Sprout’s data shows that 66% of consumers want to see more short-form videos from brands. This means Reels should be on your radar.

Reels are fun, snappy and they’re algorithm gold. Think tutorials, product highlights or even quick behind-the-scenes peeks.

And since you only have a few seconds to grab attention, get creative. Use the built-in tools like stickers, cuts, filters, music, voice-overs and transitions to craft trendy, eye-catching Reels.

Cherry on top? These bite-sized videos can easily be cross-promoted on platforms like TikTok, helping you reach new audiences and attract more followers.

13. Partner with influencers in your niche

Partnering with influencers with an established following is another way to grow your own audience. Content creators can get your brand in front of your target audience and build ongoing awareness for your products.

Start by finding the right influencers. You can use Sprout’s listening tools to identify relevant influencers in your niche.

Search for creators that align with your brand’s values and aesthetic, and boast an engaged (not just large) following.

Then, figure out how you want to partner with them. There are several ways to go about this:

• Paid sponsorships: This is the most straightforward type of partnership. You pay the influencer to promote your product or service. Make sure to agree on the specifics, like the number of posts, type of content and any particular messaging or hashtags you want to include.
• Product exchanges: Instead of monetary compensation, some influencers are happy to receive free products in exchange for a review or a feature on their Instagram.
• Affiliate & brand ambassador programs: Set up a program for smaller influencers who genuinely love your brand and are willing to promote it over time. Reward them with points, discounts, commissions and other perks in exchange for a long-term relationship.
• Collaborative content: Create content together. Whether it’s a joint Instagram Live, a giveaway or co-created posts and stories, collabs can offer fresh perspectives and help you reach a broader audience.

Finally, don’t forget to track the effectiveness of your influencer campaigns. Look at metrics like follower growth, engagement and ROI to decide if it’s worth pursuing a long-term relationship with a particular influencer.

14. Organize top stories as highlights

Ever created a killer story that you wish could live on your profile forever? With story highlights, it can.

Highlights are groups of select old (expired) stories. You can organize them by theme or topic, such as Q&As, tips or events — making it easier for people to find relevant stories.

They’re also located at the top of your profile, which makes users more likely to check them first before scrolling down to your posts. Think of Highlights as a curated portfolio that showcases the best of your brand.

15. Go live on Instagram

Host Instagram Live sessions to interact with your audience directly. This helps foster real-time engagement and build a sense of community.

For example, you could host virtual events like product launches, show quick tutorials or simply have candid chats and Q&A sessions. If you’re an e-commerce store, users can even shop your products in real-time.

Plus, you can share these Live streams as stories that last for 24 hours, allowing followers who missed out to catch up later.

How to make the most of your current Instagram followers

So you’ve got a decent following on Instagram—high five!

But let’s be real, it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about creating a buzzing community that’s as excited about your posts as you are.

Here are five ways to keep your existing followers hooked to your content:

• Engage with followers: Instagram isn’t for monologues — it’s a place for conversation. Reply to those comments, ask your followers what they think and encourage user-generated content.
• Offer consistent value: Whether it’s killer how-to guides, exclusive promo codes or just a good laugh, make sure every post adds value to your followers’ feeds. The goal is to keep them coming back for more.
• Show your human side: People connect with humans, so drop the corporate mask. Show your followers the real faces and stories behind your brand. Maybe it’s a day-in-the-life of your awesome cafe or employee spotlights.
• Stay on top of trends: Instagram is always changing. What worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Whether it’s a popular filter, a viral challenge or a new feature — jump in and give it a try. It keeps your feed fresh and your followers intrigued.
• Track analytics: Keep an eye on those metrics to see which posts your followers are loving, what’s not doing so well and when they’re most active. This data can help you refine your strategy and create more engaging content.

How to get more Instagram followers (the wrong way!)

Disclaimer: Sprout Social does not endorse purchasing Instagram followers. We don’t recommend services that sell followings or “Likes.” 

As the social space becomes more crowded and competitive, brands are willing to take risks for the sake of instant results.

We’ll say it again: brands shouldn’t buy Instagram followers. Nobody should!

Why you shouldn’t buy followers on Instagram

Here are some reasons why buying followers to grow your account is a serious mistake.

Your real followers know what fake followers look like

Social consumers are getting savvier. Privacy concerns and social scammers have made people hyper-aware of weird activity. In short, people today are spam-detectors.

A sudden follower spike is a red flag. Not to mention having bots stink up your account with endless spam followers. This all damages your reputation and keeps you from growing an authentic Instagram following.

Fake followers bring nothing to the table

You’re probably worried about your Instagram metrics and understandably so.

That said, your follower count doesn’t mean much if your “followers” don’t drive engagement. You might look “bigger” at a glance but who cares? Consider how your engagement rate on the platform will suffer if your follower count is inflated.

If nothing else, buying Instagram followers violates TOS

No surprises here.

Consider how Meta has taken direct action against buying engagement in the past. They’ve gone as far as to shut down companies that sell likes. That’s because this practice violates the platform’s terms of service:

Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent.

How are you growing your Instagram following?

Listen: getting more followers on Instagram isn’t going to happen by accident.

And despite what you might have heard, there’s no silver bullet solution for making it happen.

The tips above can help you build the foundation for an organic following that actually engages with you. Putting these tips into action is so much easier with a powerful publishing and analytics tool like Sprout.

Want to see our suite of tools in action? Start a free trial today and see for yourself!

The post How to get more followers on Instagram: 15 tips to grow your real audience appeared first on Sprout Social.

As social media teams across the world figure out strategies to not only incorporate Threads  but also excel at it, this webinar will examine what we’ve learnt so far and explore thoughts on what we think is in store. 

Hear insights from social media consultant and industry analyst, Matt Navarra, and Senior Social Media Manager from financial favourite and industry disrupter, Monzo.

You will learn:

• The current state of Threads and how early adopter brands leverage its capabilities
• How businesses can use Threads for community building, customer care and more
• Key distinctions and differentiations between Threads strategy vs. other social channels
• Predictions for 2024 and beyond

Your speakers:

The post The Rise and Fall Of New Platforms: What Threads Has Taught Us About Emerging Social Media appeared first on Sprout Social.

Instagram hashtags can help your Instagram content get discovered by an even larger audience than the one that already follows you on the platform. Including relevant hashtags in your captions or comment section helps improve the visibility of your posts.

Throughout this article, we”ll talk more about how to use hashtags on Instagram, the benefits they bring your brand and marketing strategy, top Instagram hashtags and more.

Table of Contents

• What are Instagram hashtags?
• How to use hashtags on Instagram
• 5 Benefits of hashtags on Instagram
• Top Instagram hashtags in 2023
• Top Instagram hashtag generators
• Types of Instagram hashtags
• Tracking and analyzing Instagram hashtags
• 7 Best practices for Instagram hashtags
• Get started with Instagram hashtags today

What are Instagram hashtags?

Instagram hashtags are words, phrases or numbers with the pound or hashtag symbol (#) in front of them in Instagram captions. Using this symbol categorizes your Instagram content and helps them be found more easily on the app.

Here’s an example of what an Instagram caption with hashtags might look like:

You can include up to 30 Instagram hashtags on one single post, though Instagram itself recommends sticking to between 3-5.

How to use hashtags on Instagram

Hashtags have several different uses that can help you grow your account and keep your content organized. Let’s run through a few of the main uses for Instagram hashtags.

Increase visibility on your posts

First, like we’ve mentioned, hashtags help increase visibility on your posts. Not only do hashtags make your posts come up in search results for keywords you’ve used, they also help fuel the Instagram algorithm. The algorithm will place posts in other users’ feeds based on their interest in the hashtags included within your post.

Invite user-generated content

Instagram hashtags are also a great way to invite users to create user-generated content (UGC) for you to share on your feeds. Highlight a branded hashtag in your Instagram bio for followers to engage with and so your team can easily find UGC photos. Here’s an example of what this might look like:

Categorize Instagram posts

You could also choose to use hashtags for more of an internal purpose, like categorizing your Instagram posts. For example, a clothing store called The Closet might use hashtags for their various products, like #TheClosetShoes, #TheClosetAccessories or #TheClosetDresses.

5 Benefits of hashtags on Instagram

Hashtags should be a major part of your Instagram marketing strategy. There are many use cases for them—but also many benefits. Let’s cover five major benefits that hashtags can provide.

1. Increases exposure & discovery

The biggest reason for using hashtags is for the increased exposure and discovery. Clicking on a hashtag in Instagram leads to a gallery of both the top posts and latest posts that used the hashtag.

From there, you’re able to explore all the related posts, making hashtags a great way for people interested in a certain topic to find more accounts to follow. This means that if you use the right and most relevant hashtags for your brand, others searching on that hashtag will find those posts.

In addition, your audience can use branded hashtags to show off their experiences with your products or services as a form of brand advocacy. Hashtags are good for overall brand awareness. Even clicking through one post on the search results page will lead you to other similar posts.

2. Encourages audience interactions

When you use branded hashtags and encourage their use, it becomes another form of engagement. Tagged feed posts are saved in search results and tagged Story posts are saved for the duration of the Story. Think of Instagram hashtags as just another way to reach and engage your customer base.

3. Competitor analysis

How much digital space are your competitors taking up in your market? Hashtags help you analyze your share of voice on social media. Chances are that you and your competitors will have overlapping hashtags, especially if you’re using industry and local ones. With a social media competitive analysis, you’ll be able to analyze the share of voice, sentiment and engagement of those posts.

In an ideal share of voice situation, your posts and ones that your customers have tagged are taking up the bulk of those hashtag search results. You can also check out posts with your relevant hashtags for content inspiration and to get ideas on where your brand might be falling short compared to competitor content.

4. Content research

Similar to what you would do for SEO keyword research, hashtags can help you research different content ideas. Say you want to increase your share of voice in the #NaturalSkincare hashtag. That’s rather tough since there are over 9.8 million posts using the hashtag.

However, you can use the search results page’s Top tab to see what the best posts have been. Use this area as inspiration.

What seems to be working for similar brands? Is there a certain style or caption that’s trending now? By clicking into top posts for details, you might also be able to find additional hashtags that are less highly populated, but just as relevant to your audience, similar to secondary keywords for search optimization.

5. Links digital and IRL campaigns

Go shopping in any retail store these days and chances are that you’ll come across a marketing campaign with a hashtag attached. Whether they encourage you to use their general brand hashtag or a campaign one, hashtags offer an easy way to connect digital and in-real-life campaigns.

Top Instagram hashtags in 2023

If there’s one rule to keep in mind when using Instagram hashtags, it’s to always keep them relevant to your business and the content you’re posting. However, there’s nothing wrong with using popular hashtags in your industry—so to help you find those, here are some of the top Instagram hashtags of 2023 for a variety of different industries.

Top 50 Instagram hashtags in 2023

1. #love (2.1B)
2. #instagood (1.6B)
3. #instagram (1.1B)
4. #art (1B)
5. #photooftheday (1B)
6. #photography (1B)
7. #beautiful (823M)
8. #picoftheday (720M)
9. #happy (698M)
10. #follow (695M)
11. #instadaily (639M)
12. #tbt (583M)
13. #repost (557M)
14. #summer (548M)
15. #like4like (514M)
16. #reels (509M)
17. #instalike (502M)
18. #photo (488M)
19. #me (454M)
20. #selfie (451M)
21. #music (441M)
22. #friends (438M)
23. #life (436M)
24. #smile (435M)
25. #family (435M)
26. #girl (426M)
27. #trending (372M)
28. #model (358M)
29. #design (353M)
30. #motivation (351M)
31. #handmade (345M)
32. #lifestyle (343M)
33. #likeforlike (328M)
34. #sunset (323M)
35. #artist (316M)
36. #dogsofinstagram (307M)
37. #beach (294M)
38. #amazing (287M)
39. #drawing (286M)
40. #nofilter (285M)
41. #cat (282M)
42. #instamood (279M)
43. #igers (277M)
44. #sun (270M)
45. #sky (260M)
46. #follow4follow (250M)
47. #funny (236M)
48. #l4l (221M)
49. #followforfollow (212M)
50. #tagsforlikes (191M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for B2B

1. #b2b (3M)
2. #work (147B)
3. #smallbusiness (121M)
4. #business (109M)
5. #entrepreneur (99.4M)
6. #success (87.9M)
7. #marketing (75.8M)
8. #digitalmarketing (29.7M)
9. #sales (20.4M)
10. #ecommerce (14.2M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fashion and beauty

1. #fashion (1.1B)
2. #style (641M)
3. #beauty (528M)
4. #ootd (426M)
5. #makeup (395M)
6. #hair (242M)
7. #fashionblogger (165M)
8. #shopping (154M)
9. #outfit (146M)
10. #fashionista (136M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fitness

1. #fitness (520M)
2. #gym (254M)
3. #workout (216M)
4. #fit (191M)
5. #health (164M)
6. #training (140M)
7. #fitnessmotivation (139M)
8. #bodybuilding (134M)
9. #fitfam (123M)
10. #goals (111M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for food, beverage and restaurants

1. #food (507M)
2. #foodporn (300M)
3. #foodie (241M)
4. #instafood (237M)
5. #yummy (199M)
6. #delicious (148M)
7. #foodstagram (119M)
8. #foodphotography (109M)
9. #foodblogger (83.8M)
10. #foodlover (77.3M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for technology and software

1. #technology (26.4M)
2. #tech (19.7M)
3. #engineering (14.8M)
4. #innovation (14.2M)
5. #programming (6.6M)
6. #computer (6.5M)
7. #coding (6.1M)
8. #electronics (5.9M)
9. #software (5.9M)
10. #instatech (2.1M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for travel

1. #nature (782M)
2. #travel (697M)
3. #explore (489M)
4. #naturephotography (230M)
5. #travelphotography (216M)
6. #travelgram (173M)
7. #wanderlust (149M)
8. #adventure (143M)
9. #instatravel (125M)
10. #travelblogger (84.9M)

Top Instagram hashtag generators

If none of the keywords we compiled above fit your business (or you want to find more options), you can use a hashtag generator tool to help. Here are the top six Instagram hashtag generators you might want to try to build the perfect list of hashtags for your business.

1. Sistrix Instagram Hashtag Generator

The Sistrix hashtag generator tool is easy to use—but only allows limited use with a free account. You can get 25 free queries a day before you’ll need to pay for a premium account. Twenty-five queries is quite a lot, so you may be able to get by without needing to upgrade.

Simply type a or a few hashtags into the text box and press the Enter/Return key to get the best 30 hashtags relating to your initial search. Pick out the most relevant ones to add onto your post.

2. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is a useful tool that can help brands find keywords across a number of sites—including hashtags for Instagram. With this option, you can even use some geolocation to ensure you’re finding top hashtags in a certain area. This is a plus for local brick-and-mortar businesses who only service customers in a specified location. It also has the option to select which language you want hashtags to appear in.

Type your initial hashtag or keyword into the text box, change the filters if needed, then click the magnifying glass icon. The results you’ll receive are limited for the free account—just a list of hashtags without details on their usage. But if you want more information, you can upgrade to a paid account. Plans start at $69/month.

3. Inflact

Inflact is an AI-based hashtag generator that can help come up with hashtag ideas based on a keyword, photo, or existing Instagram post. This can be useful if you’re not even sure of which keyword to start with—or if you simply want to see what the tool would come up with for your photo.

Once you input your query, the tool will provide you with hashtags from three categories based on how often the hashtag is used: Frequent (hard to rank in top posts), Average (medium chance of ranking) and Rare (easy to rank). The tool also gives you a recommendation of how many hashtags to use from each category.

4. Toolzu

Toolzu is similar to Inflact in the ways you can start your hashtag query. Input your information (either keyword, URL or photo), then click Generate Hashtags to get started. This tool will generate the volume of posts using the hashtag and how difficult it may be to get viewers using the hashtag.

Toolzu also has iOS and Android apps so you can easily search for hashtags on the go while you’re on your mobile device.

5. Display Purposes

Display Purposes will provide you with a list of hashtags based on a starting point. Type a few hashtags into the text box to get started. Each suggested hashtag generated is scored based on relevancy to our query and popularity. Daily Purposes offers another tool that will scan your profile and come up with hashtags based on the content you’ve already been posting, which is a useful feature.

6. All Hashtags

All Hashtag can generate hashtags based on a single keyword. Choose whether you want top results, random results or results for hashtags that are currently trending. You’ll get a list of the best 30 hashtags based on your query. The tool has a “Copy” button making it easy to immediately copy all 30 hashtags and paste them into your caption or comment. Remember to limit the number of hashtags you use per post for best practices and quality engagement.

Types of Instagram hashtags

There are a few different types of hashtags that brands should know about, each with its own benefit and application. Learn more about the types of Instagram hashtags you’ll want to use.

Branded & product hashtags

Branded and product hashtags are hashtags that you create with your brand and/or product name in them. These are often used for gathering UGC and increasing brand awareness.

Here’s an example of a branded hashtag. Plant store The Sill uses the hashtag #PlantsMakePeopleHappy in their Instagram bio. They’ve also created product videos surrounding this hashtag.

If you click the hashtag, you’ll see that there are 12 million posts in the results, meaning it’s a popular and well-used branded hashtag. All of the posts included are relevant to The Sill’s content as well, so they can easily reach out to people posting content under that hashtag to ask if they can feature it on their own feed.

Campaign hashtags

Campaign hashtags are specific to marketing campaigns that you’re running. Usually, these involve the brand running a regular campaign and adding a hashtag to it in a caption or in the corner of the post.

One example of a campaign hashtag is the #EssenceFestxTarget one used to promote their recent collaboration. For all posts related to this campaign, both Target and Essence Festival will use the unique hashtag, as well as any influencers they work with.

Campaign hashtags don’t need to be tied to a product or sales. REI’s #OptOutside campaign encouraged people to go out rather than shop on Black Friday, and therefore wasn’t centered around purchasing.

Community & industry hashtags

Nearly every brand community and industry has at least one hashtag that’s used within them. To find yours, head to some popular community and industry influencer posts and check out their hashtags. Many of these hashtags are simple. The hashtags that are easy to think up are usually the most used.

For craft beer enthusiasts, several exist: #CraftBeerLover, #CraftBeerLife and #CraftBeerNotCrapBeer are just a few of them. As you can see, all three of these are pretty straightforward and natural to think up, and include in posts for relevant brands.

Location hashtags

Location hashtags are pretty self-explanatory. Most brands are based somewhere and if you have a physical location, this is even more useful for you. Relevant location hashtags include your city and its associated topical hashtags, your neighborhood, the mall name you’re in and any other defining features.

One example is the above #chseats. This is one of those location + topic hashtags. The posts tagged with these are relevant for anyone searching for food recommendations or users in the Charleston, SC area. Other location hashtags to explore include any branded ones that your city’s and state’s tourism boards have already established.

Themed or holiday hashtags

Participating in relevant social media holidays can be a fun way to engage your audience. Things like #InternationalSushiDay and #InternationalDogDay can be great for sushi restaurants and veterinary offices to post about.

One of the hashtags we mentioned, International Sushi Day, is on June 18, and on Instagram, the hashtag has over 23k posts. This is perfect for sushi restaurants and sushi-adjacent businesses to post about.

Daily hashtags

Daily hashtags aren’t limited to Instagram and they’re easy to find. These hashtags include the day of the week and a specified topic. There are generalized ones such as #MondayMotivation and #ThrowbackThursday. Nearly any brand can take part in these, and there are plenty of niche topics covered.

These hashtags cover more interest-based topics and also happen to be daily. For example, on #MonsteraMonday, plant lovers post a photo of their monstera plants. These daily hashtags take a little more work to find but if you’re following influencers in specific fields, you’ll see them in your feed.

Trending hashtags

This type of hashtag is one of the more difficult ones to post since it involves keeping tabs on the latest and knowing how to apply them to your brand.

For example, one of the trending memes at the moment is a superimposed video of Jennifer Lawrence from the Hot Ones wing-eating challenge crying and asking, “What do you mean?” over and over again. By searching the hashtag #WhatDoYouMean, we can see a number of brands and creators using this meme for their content.

Keep in mind that memes and trends are short-lived. You need to catch on early to participate and reap the benefits of jumping on the trend. You may need to up your trendspotting skills for social media to get the most out of jumping on memes and trends in a timely and brand-relevant way that resonates.

Tracking and analyzing Instagram hashtags

So you’ve decided on all of your hashtags and you’re ready to get started on the new social strategy. What’s next? Checking in on how all these hashtags are working out for you. Tracking your hashtag analytics is important to ensure you’re improving performance with the ones you chose. If not, you may need to find better hashtags to use.

As you start to use the same hashtags, you’ll start noticing when you receive more engagement or more spam comments. To make sure that you’re using the right hashtags for you, find a social media tool that offers Instagram hashtag analytics.

Sprout Social’s Outbound Hashtag Performance Report keeps track of all the hashtags you use on posts as well as their performance. With one glance, you’ll notice which hashtags you use the most and which ones get the most engagement.

These two may not generate the same results, especially if you’re switching up the hashtags for posts. By reviewing your analytics, you might end up finding that your most relied-on hashtags are not actually the ones resonating the most with audiences.

7 Best practices for Instagram hashtags

Gone are the days where hashtags were new and brands threw in every popular hashtag, regardless of its relevance. While there’s no single right way to use hashtags on Instagram, there are some best practices to improve performance. Here are several to think about:

1. Test how many hashtags to use on Instagram

How many hashtags should you use? This is a tricky question because the answer varies wildly. If you’re including them within your caption, stick to 3 to 5—like Instagram recommends. If you’re going to use the first comment for hashtags, then up to the full 30 hashtags would be acceptable. However, this is not to say that you should use 30 hashtags for every post. This leads us to our next tip.

2. Use hashtags in the first comment

Too many hashtags in a caption can overwhelm valuable real estate and make posts look messy. Keep captions minimal, and if you’re using more hashtags, move them to a comment. With Sprout’s Compose box, you can schedule the first Instagram comment along with your post and caption.

3. Find the best hashtags for you

There are several ways to find the best hashtags for your brand. The first and easiest is to look at the influencers and accounts you already follow and note which hashtags they’re already using. Another way is to begin brainstorming various ones and type them into the Instagram search bar. As you type, related hashtags also show up.

In the example above, #coffee is such a popular hashtag that using it might result in more spam comments than you want. Instead, scroll further down the results to find more niche ones that are targeted and relevant to your audience.

4. Follow relevant hashtags

Instagram offers the ability to follow any hashtag’s search results. When you do this, these posts appear in your feed, alongside all the other posts from accounts you follow. This is a good tactic to use for following industry or community hashtags because it helps you keep tabs on them. It should not be used as a solution for branded hashtags, though, because it doesn’t guarantee that every post will show up in your feed.

The above example uses #PlantMom as the hashtag. Simply hit that follow button to stay informed on that Instagram hashtag.

5. Encourage the use of branded hashtags

Once you’ve created your list of branded hashtags, make sure to start using them in every relevant post. The most general branded hashtags are often placed in the Instagram bio along with a call-to-action for using them.

In the above example, Grove Collaborative puts their branded hashtag #GroveHome in their IG bio. Customers can then use this hashtag whenever they post about the brand. It makes it easy for Grove to find and share those photos on their own feed.

6. Create a list of hashtags

Instead of copying and pasting the same set of hashtags for every post, divide them up into topical ones. For example, your education posts might have different hashtags than a new product announcement post. Instead of generating a new list for each post, keep different lists handy for the various types of content topics that you post.

Save these types of list sand text Sprout’s Asset Library to make it easier to attach the right hashtags to each Instagram post.

7. Add hashtags to Instagram Stories

While Stories do disappear after 24 hours, don’t discount the use of hashtags on them. These show up in the search results, too, and are another easy way of getting more interested followers. Have too many hashtags to put into a Story? Enter your text like normal and then hide them behind a gif or sticker.

Get started with Instagram hashtags today

Using hashtags on Instagram has many benefits for brands: increased brand awareness, higher engagement engagement and improved competitor analysis insight. Before jumping into hashtags, it’s recommended to understand the various types that are out there and some best practices to follow.

Ready to get into more #InstagramStrategy? Take a look at how to create an Instagram strategy for your brand.

The post Instagram hashtags: How to find and use the best hashtags appeared first on Sprout Social.

We’ve broken these Instagram hacks down into categories so you can easily find the sections you need the most help with.

Table of contents:

• • • General Instagram hacks
    • Instagram bio and profile hacks
    • Instagram hacks for sharing content
    • Instagram hacks for writing captions
    • Instagram hacks for commenting
    • Instagram stories hacks
    • Instagram growth hacks
    • Instagram reels hacks
    • Instagram direct messaging hacks

General Instagram hacks

1. Get post notifications from your favorite accounts

Is there an Instagram account you love? Or a feed you want to keep an eye on for inspiration? Turn on Post Notifications for specific accounts so you receive push notifications when they post new content.

Head over to the Instagram Profile you want to stay up to date with. You should see a bell icon in the top right corner of their profile, right next to the three dots. Tap it, then choose if you want to receive notifications for new posts, Stories, reels, videos or live videos.

2. Save your favorite posts

Instagram allows you to create Collections and save photos that you love. Whether you’re scrolling through your feed, the Explore page or a specific account, if you find a photo you want to keep for later, simply tap the bookmark icon on the right side directly underneath the photo.

You can even organize your saved posts into various Collections by going to your profile, tapping the hamburger menu, then tapping Saved. Organize similar images based on your interests for simpler reviewing at a later time

3. Monitor how much time you’ve spent on Instagram

Keep an eye on your social media scrolling and screen time in the Instagram app. From your profile, tap the hamburger menu and select Your activity. Then scroll down and tap Time spent to find out how much time you’ve spent on Instagram each day.

4. Limit your scrolling time

In the exact same area, you can tap Set daily time limit and set a time limit for how long you want to allow yourself to spend on Instagram each day. The app will then send you a notification when your allotted time is up.

5. See your Liked posts

Want to take a trip back down memory lane? Head over to your profile and tap the hamburger menu. Then tap Your activity. From here, you can view all interactions you’ve had on the app—your likes, comments, tags and more.

6. Manage multiple accounts from one device

Instagram allows you to log in and manage up to five accounts from a single device, which is incredibly helpful for social media managers.

Simply go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu then tap Settings and privacy. From here, you’ll scroll down to the bottom to click Add account. You’ll be taken to the login page to add another account to your device.

Then you can navigate between the various profiles in one of two ways. First, you can go to your profile and tap the dropdown menu by your username. Second, you can switch to another profile by holding down on the profile tab in the bottom right corner until each account option appears.

Perfect your Instagram grid with tools from Sprout Social

Keep the look of your brand’s Instagram consistent by managing your media in Sprout’s asset library.

Store approved images that fit your campaigns’ theme and style so that any team member always has access to the content they need.

Test out the asset library and all of our other essential Instagram features with a 30-day free trial.

Instagram bio and profile hacks

7. Add line breaks to your bio

Use separate lines to explain what your brand does in your Instagram bio. However, you can’t access this from the regular ABC keyboard.

Instead, tap the 123 button in the bottom right corner to access the keyboard with numbers and special characters. Here, you’ll get access to the Return button where you can add line breaks to make your bio more digestible.

8. Tag other profiles in your bio

If you tag profiles in your bio, they’re automatically clickable. This gives you the perfect opportunity to promote your other accounts on the app.

Use this as an opportunity to tag your company handle in your personal bio or tag sister companies directly in your brand bio.

9. Include hashtags

Just as you can link to other profiles in your bio, you can also include hashtags. This is a great way to promote any branded hashtags your company may use for user-generated content.

10. Change your bio’s alignment

Stand out from the crowd and the rest of the left-aligned accounts out there and center or right-align your content.

It’s easy to do. Simply copy the spaces between the arrows, but not the arrows themselves: >>⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<<

Then paste those spaces before each line of your bio. Add or remove spaces as necessary to perfectly center or right-align your bio.

11. Include keywords in your profile name

Place a couple of strategic industry keywords in your profile name (not necessarily your username) to help your account show up for even more results when people search for people in your industry.

Because Instagram users sometimes search by keyword rather than username, adding a keyword into your profile name increases your chances of being found.

For example, this photographer opted to use “Charleston Wedding Photographer” as their profile name.

12. Use special fonts

You can actually incorporate fun and different fonts into your Instagram bio by using a website like LingoJam. Type up your Instagram bio and copy and paste your favorite font into your profile. Get creative, especially if your brand voice aligns with these font styles.

But, before filling your Instagram bio or captions with these special fonts or unicode characters, keep in mind that they are not accessibility-friendly for people who are using screen readers. Use sparingly or for decorations, but don’t rely solely on these fun fonts, as you don’t want to exclude fans and followers from accessing your content.

13. Add special characters

Take another step to create a unique and engaging Instagram bio by using special characters. While you could always just choose a few emojis from your smartphone’s keyboard, why stop there?

Instead, you can use a free app like Character Pad on your smartphone or copy the symbols from Microsoft Word on desktop, then paste them right inside of your bio.

Again, keep your screen reader-using followers and fans in mind, as we’ve pointed out in hack #12.

Instagram hacks for sharing content

14. Customize how strong your filter is

If you love a filter, but don’t want the full effect on your photo, it’s easy to adjust its strength. Select the filter, then tap the magic pen icon at the top of the screen.

Then, adjust the filter strength on your photo by using the slider below the image. You’ll preview the look and feel of your photo at the same time.

15. Get creative with your grid

There are so many ways to get creative with your Instagram grid.

Colorblock your grid by incorporating a main color into nine photos at a time before switching it up. You can create a pattern where every third photo is a quote or graphic. You can have each photo flow into the next to create a puzzle grid.

Check out our post with 18 top Instagram accounts to check out for inspiration.

16. Save drafts for later

Have you started editing a post, but aren’t ready to publish it yet? You can save it as a draft to come back to later!

Tap the plus sign and choose the image you want to work with. Add filters or start writing your caption, then tap the back button a couple of times.

The app will alert you and ask if you want to discard your post or save it as a draft. Choose Save draft to leave the app without losing your edits.

When you’re ready to post it, tap the plus sign again, then tap Drafts to finish publishing. You can also go back and delete your drafts by tapping Manage then Edit to remove the draft(s) you select.

17. Save your live video

Do you have an Instagram Live video you want to save and repurpose for later? It’s incredibly easy to do. As soon as your live broadcast ends, simply tap Download Video and it will save directly to your camera roll for you to edit later. Keep in mind that it can take a few minutes to appear in your camera roll—especially for longer videos.

18. Remove the audio from videos

Not every video needs audio, and not every video comes out with perfect or appropriate audio either. If you want to remove some background noise or your video doesn’t necessarily need any audio, Instagram allows you to remove the audio in the app.

When uploading a video to share in your feed, tap the music icon at the top of the editing page to access sound options. To remove the sound, tap Controls, then adjust the Camera audio down to 0.

You can add music, audio clips, voiceover or other sound effects in your audio’s place if you choose to do so. Just search for the type of audio you’d like to add instead.

19. Create a cover photo for your video

Want to choose the clip from your video that appears in your profile? You can find a good place in your video or create a cover photo by using a graphic design tool like Canva or Visme.

When you’re ready to share the video in Instagram, tap the Edit cover button on your video thumbnail. This allows you to choose a clip from the video that you want to appear as a cover photo or upload one from your camera roll.

20. Turn your Instagram feed into an online shop

If you have an ecommerce business, Instagram shopping is a tool you definitely want to take advantage of. Share photos of products and tag them within each post, and you can effectively turn your Instagram feed into an online shop.

This is exactly what Dress Up has done in their feed. As you can see, each post with a shopping bag icon in the corner has products tagged, making it possible to purchase products directly from the post.

Since 70% of Instagram users look to the platform for their next purchase, the shopping feature can help drive traffic to your site as well.

21. Schedule your Instagram content ahead of time

Make your Instagram management strategy as easy as possible by using a social media management platform such as Sprout Social to schedule your Instagram content ahead of time.

Instagram hacks for writing captions

22. Add line breaks to your captions

Just like adding line breaks to your bios, it can be a great idea to add line breaks to longer captions and break up a giant wall of text.

Again, simply head over to the 123 keyboard rather than the default ABC keyboard to access the Return button.

Alternatively, if you use a tool like Sprout Social to write your captions, you can add the line breaks into that tool’s caption box directly by hitting the Enter/Return button on your keyboard.

23. Hide your hashtags

Don’t want your hashtags to appear at the top of your captions? There are little tricks you can do to hide them further down in your captions so that you can still promote your posts to a wider audience without spamming your followers.

Take a page out of WallyGrow’s book and include several periods between your caption and your hashtags to put some space between them and push them down away from your photo.

You can also place your hashtags in a comment underneath your photo to keep them out of your caption entirely.

With Sprout, you can post your image and first comment at the same time, so you have the opportunity to capture engagement from hashtags immediately and keep your caption free of hashtags.

24. Use special fonts in your captions

Another great application of a previously mentioned Instagram hack is to use special fonts or characters to jazz up your actions. Incorporating special fonts into your captions can make them even more engaging than the regular Instagram font.

Again, use special fonts and characters sparingly in your captions so your content is accessible to your followers who use screen readers, as we pointed out in hack #12. However, this hack used in the first sentence of your caption or to call out certain words can help grab attention or create emphasis.

Instagram hacks for commenting

25. Filter comments based on keywords

If you’re dealing with a social media troll, or you want to keep your social media feed clean of certain words for your audience, you’re able to filter or block comments based on specific keywords.

Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu before going to Settings and privacy.

From there, scroll down and tap Hidden Words. In this area, you can choose to hide comments and messages that contain offensive words, but you can also create and manage custom words, phrases and even emoji that you want filtered out.

26. Turn off commenting on certain posts

Not every post needs a comment. If you want to turn off comments on certain posts, Instagram allows you to do just that.

When you’re creating a new post and get to the page where you add your caption, tap Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen, then toggle the Turn Off Commenting option.

You can also turn comments on and off retroactively by going to an existing post, tapping the three dots and toggling the commenting feature on or off.

27. Reply faster to comments

Do you get a lot of the same questions on your posts? “When does this sale end?” or “When will this item be restocked?”

It’s easy to set up quick-reply methods on your smartphone so that you can respond to each one as efficiently as possible.

iOS smartphone users can do this in their iPhone settings in General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.

There are already several options in place for autocorrects, but you can tap the plus sign in the top right corner to set up a few shortcuts for quick-responding to comments.

For example, you can create a shortcut where you type “HalloSale,” and have autocorrect replace it with your brand’s actual Halloween sale information.

Instagram stories hacks

28. Change highlight covers without publishing them to your story

Previously, you had to publish new Instagram story highlight covers to your story in order to actually change your highlight covers.

But now, you can change your highlight covers straight from your camera roll.

Simply tap and hold the highlight you want to update, then tap Edit highlight on the popup that appears. Tap Edit cover then select the photo you want as your new highlight cover from your camera roll.

29. Create shapes with text

Instagram Stories has several different fonts, meaning you have several different ways to customize your story content. So play around with different symbols and fonts to create eye-catching captions to your Stories.

For example, the Instagram Story above likely uses enlarged m-dashes (—) as decoration and a backdrop to a snippet of text. The overall look and feel of these decorations will change depending on which font you use.

The asterisk can be used as stars or snowflakes, and periods can be blown up to create large dots. Just be conscious of overdoing it with extra characters–similar to what we mentioned about special bio fonts in hack #12, screen readers may interpret these as individual text characters and create confusion for those relying on them to interpret your content.

30. Create ombré or rainbow text

Decorate your Instagram stories by creating ombré or rainbow text. This is a fun effect, but you need to practice it a few times because it can be hard to master.

Once you write your text using the font of your choice, select all of it, or the words you want to ombré/rainbow. Then you need to use one finger to hold the words you’ve selected and the other finger to hold down on the color you want to start with.

Pro tip: This order is important. You must hold your text before touching the colors or else this won’t work.

Drag both fingers across the screen simultaneously, moving across the text and across the colors at the same time. You’ll go from top to bottom or bottom to top to ombré the text with a single color and front one side to the other to create a rainbow effect.

You’ll need to do this process slowly in order to master it and get your colors just right. Don’t rush! The end effect is well worth it.

31. Create a solid background

Don’t want an image as your story background? You might opt for a solid background in order to share some sort of announcement or news with the stickers or text options.

To do this, take or upload a random photo to get your story started. Then, open up the Draw menu. Find the color you want to use as your background, then tap and hold on your screen. Your full background will change to that color.

32. Hide a story from specific users

When you create a new story, open it up. Then tap the three dots in the bottom right corner labeled More. Tap Story settings, then Hide story from. This will allow you to select specific accounts to hide all of your stories from. You can reset this to remove accounts from this list once the story you’ve hidden from them has expired.

33. Add images from your camera roll

You can add an image from your camera roll to your story by swiping up on the story screen and choosing a photo from your camera roll. This will add the photo to the full screen of your story.

If you want to add an additional photo—or add a photo from your camera roll onto a photo or video you just took—tap on the Stickers icon from the editing options. Tap on the circle with the camera icon to access your camera roll.

Once you’ve added the photo to your story, you can resize it, move it around and even tap on it to change the shape of the image. Get rectangle, heart, star, circle and square options.

34. Add multiple photos in a story

There are a couple of different ways you can add multiple photos in a single story.

The first way involves adding photos from your camera roll—which we just learned how to do in the last hack. Start by taking a photo in the app that you’d want to use as a background. Or you can head back to hack #31 and create a solid background.

Then, follow the steps from hack #33—head to the Stickers menu and tap the option to pull something in from your camera roll. Repeat this step to pull as many images as you want into your story.

The other option is to use a grid layout. Open up the story camera. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see options like “Create,” “Boomerang, “Layout” and more. Tap Layout—or the icon with three windows in a square.

This will enable you to create a grid with multiple photos in a single story. You can choose between six different grids with the ability to add two, three, four or six photos to a single story.

35. Turn live photos into Boomerangs

If you have live photos turned on in your iPhone settings, you can easily turn these photos into a Boomerang in your story. Swipe up in the stories camera to access your camera roll. Existing live photos will have the Boomerang icon (an infinity symbol) in the top left corner.

Tap one of these photos to open it in your story. It will default to a still photo, but you can tap the Boomerang icon again in the top navigation to convert the life photo into a looping Boomerang video.

36. Add brand colors to your story

Want to get the text or drawing you add to your story to match your brand colors exactly? Start by saving an image with your brand palette to your camera roll.

Next, take a photo/record a video or upload one from your camera roll. Then, go into the Stickers menu, tap on the camera roll option and bring the image with your brand colors into the story.

Type out your text or open the drawing menu. Select your text then tap the dropper to select a color from your photo. You’ll want to use the dropper tool before you start drawing. Choose a color from your color palette to use in your text or drawing.

Instagram growth hacks

37. Cross promote your content

Cross-promoting your content is a great way to grow. You can easily connect your Instagram account to a Facebook Page to cross-promote posts, reels and stories.

To share a post, make sure you’ve connected your Facebook and Instagram business accounts. Then, you’ll have the ability to toggle the option to share to your Facebook Page on or off each time you post a new Instagram image or video.

You can also opt in to share your stories to both platforms as well.

If your business uses Twitter, you can even cross-promote your tweets onto your Instagram stories easily. Select a tweet, tap the sharing button and select Instagram stories. It will appear seamlessly as a sticker in your story for you to easily share with your audience.

38. Use paid advertising

Take advantage of Instagram advertising to help reach an even wider audience. Choose from a number of ad types, like:

• Photo ads
• Carousel ads
• Video ads
• Reels ads
• Story ads

Create your ad visuals, write your captions and select your target audience before promoting your ads on Instagram.

39. Create an influencer marketing strategy

Influencer marketing is a great strategy for Instagram as the platform is so visual and there are endless influencers in every niche to work with. Create a strategy that focuses on the outreach and partnership with influencers in your industry.

You can send them free products to try then put together a budget for each influencer to create photos or videos to promote your products. This is a great way to reach an even wider audience of your target customer.

40. Publish at the best time

Don’t publish your content willy nilly—look at your data to discover the best times to post. Based on Sprout Social’s analysis, the overall best days to post include:

• Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon
• Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Fridays from 9 to 11 a.m.

However, you can use your Sprout Social account to help find the optimal times for your specific business and followers. When scheduling your Instagram content, choose the Choose optimal times option to select from times that Sprout’s AI has deemed best for your business.

Instagram reels hacks

41. Schedule your reels

Scheduling content makes the job of a social media manager so much easier. We’ve already covered how to schedule your typical Instagram posts—but make sure you’re scheduling your reels in advance, too.

Consider batching. Create reels in batches, then schedule them in batches. This can help make your content creation process much more efficient.

42. Share your reels in-feed

When you create a new Instagram reel, you have the option to also share it to the feed. This means it will appear in the main Instagram feed as well as on your main feed, rather than just in the reels tab. Toggling this option on gives you a better chance of reaching a larger audience.

43. Try out transitions

One way to make your Instagram reels even more engaging is to test out different transitions. A transition is how you splice two clips together. Creative transitions can make your videos even more fun to watch.

Check out various transition videos on TikTok and Instagram reels to find inspiration for transitions you can test out in your own video content.

44. Use music that’s trending

Using trending audio clips is a great way to increase viewers on your videos. Start by recording your reel in the app or uploading an existing video. Then, tap the music icon to access the dashboard we showed you back in hack #18.

From here, you can view featured audio, search for clips you want to use or browse suggested music for your videos.

Instagram direct messaging hacks

45. Experiment with disappearing notes

Instagram launched a new “disappearing note” feature in the Direct Messaging tab. With this feature, users can create a 60-character note that appears at the top of the DM tab. It can be used as a “status” of sorts, and this note disappears after 24 hours.

Take advantage of this feature and use it creatively. For example, consider sharing a limited time promo code to see if anyone uses it to make a purchase, share new product launch information and more.

You can also share a song as your disappearing note if you so choose.

46. Create a chat group

Working with multiple brands or collaborating with a few influencers on the same project? Consider creating a chat group in DMs. To do this, tap the new message icon in the top right corner. You’ll then type in the names of each person you’re wanting to add to the group. Then tap Create group chat to start messaging with everyone at once.

47. Make sure your notifications are set up

You won’t be able to answer messages in real time if you don’t have notifications set up. First, enable push notifications in your phone settings. Then, go to the hamburger menu on your profile before tapping Settings and privacy. Tap the Notifications menu.

Here, you can choose what types of notifications you want to receive—posts, messages, etc. Tap Messages to ensure that all of these options are turned on. This way, you’ll be immediately notified each time your brand gets a message from a customer.

Ramp up your Instagram marketing

Use these Instagram hacks to improve your Instagram marketing and start trying out some new tips and tricks. To ramp up your strategy even more, check out these 15 ways to engage on Instagram.

The post 47 Instagram hacks every marketer needs to know appeared first on Sprout Social.

With each new update comes questions on how it might impact your strategy. Will what’s working today work tomorrow? And if not, what needs to change?

Use this comprehensive guide to step up your Instagram game and future-proof your strategy. It covers basic tenets including:

• Setting goals
• Identifying your audience
• Developing a content strategy
• Engaging with your Instagram community
• Analyzing and applying data to refine your strategy

You can bet that Instagram has more in store for businesses down the road, so now is a great time to lay the groundwork, establish your brand’s identity on Instagram and build up your community. Get the guide today.

The post Instagram for Brands: How To Build A Creative, Engaging, High-Impact Strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Anyone with an Instagram Business account can use the network’s in-app reporting feature, Instagram Insights. While it may not provide the same level of detail as an advanced Instagram analytics tool, it’s still a valuable resource for conducting on-the-fly analysis.

This guide will show you how to access and use Instagram Insights to analyze your data. We’ll also share how to use the tool in combination with an advanced social analytics solution to drive results faster.

• What is Instagram Insights?
• How to get access to insights on Instagram
• How to see post insights on Instagram
  • Instagram Posts insights
  • Instagram Reels insights
  • Instagram Stories insights
  • Instagram Live insights
• What kind of performance data is available in Instagram Insights?
• Using Instagram Insights for performance analysis

What is Instagram Insights?

Instagram Insights is a free Instagram Business Account feature that offers performance data on your profile and posts, providing enhanced visibility into your audience’s preferences and engagement patterns.

With Insights, you can measure the success of your content, including grid posts, Stories, Reels and Live videos. It’s a valuable tool for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of your Instagram marketing strategy.

How to get access to insights on Instagram

Before we get into how to use the Insights tool, let’s go over how to access them. Heads up: This is a mobile-exclusive feature, so you’ll need the app ready to go before you get started.

1. Go to your profile settings

Go to your profile, then tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner of the app. Tap Settings and then tap Account to get started.

2. Create a professional account

To set up your Instagram for Business account, tap Account type and tools under the For professionals section of the Instagram Settings page.

Tap Switch to professional account and you’re ready to go.

3. Choose your category

Instagram business categories allow brands to clearly showcase the purpose of their business above their profile description. Choose the category that best describes your business.

Pro tip: The options listed under the suggested categories are just a fraction of the full catalog you can pick from. Use the search function to find the option that best suits your business, and don’t be afraid to get specific.

4. Navigate to Insights

Now that your professional account is all set up, you can access Insights from the same hamburger menu you used for your account settings.

You can only access performance metrics on content you’ve posted since converting to a business or creator account. If you recently switched to a professional account, you’ll have to wait until it has enough historical data to use the Insights tool.

How to see post insights on Instagram

Instagram offers a variety of ways to connect with your audience—grid posts, ephemeral content, short-form video, live streams, you name it.

To find out if your Instagram post ideas are resonating, check out the explainers below.

Instagram Posts insights

Go to your Instagram profile and tap a post you’d like to get metrics for. From there, tap the View Insights button below the image.

Instagram Reels insights

To view insights on an Instagram Reel, go to the Reels tab of the Instagram app.

From there, select the Reel you’d like to view metrics for. On the lower right-hand side of the Reel, tap the … icon. Then, tap the Insights button.

Instagram Stories insights

There are two different ways to view insights on Instagram Stories.

If the Story is live on your account, tap your profile picture. Tap through to the Story you’d like to report on. Once you’re there, swipe up on the image or video for Insights metrics.

If you’re looking for performance data on an older Story, tap the Insights action button on your profile and find the Story under Content You Shared.

Instagram Live insights

To view Instagram Live insights, go to your profile.

Tap Insights, then scroll down to the live video section in the content you’ve shared for a detailed breakdown on your Instagram Live performance.

What kind of performance data is available in Instagram Insights?

Once you navigate over to the tool, you’ll see some high-level Instagram audience insights and a gallery of recently shared content.

Click into either section for a more detailed look into the following metrics:

Accounts reached

For all Instagram content aside from Reels, accounts reached is the number of unique accounts that have seen your posts on their screen at least once. For Reels, accounts reached means the number of unique accounts who have seen your Reel at least once, whether or not they watched the video.

Once a post has reached more than 100 accounts, you can access demographic data on accounts reached. This data includes top countries, cities, age ranges and a gender breakdown.

Accounts engaged

Accounts engaged is the number of unique accounts that have interacted with your Instagram content through likes, saves, comments and other engagement activities. For posts, stories and Instagram Live, these metrics are drilled down into followers and non-followers.

Total followers

Business accounts with more than 100 followers can view overall trends in growth over time. They can also access follower demographic and platform usage data, including:

• Top locations
• Age range
• Times your audience is most active on Instagram

Plays

Plays is the number of plays video content received within a set time frame. That includes when a video plays automatically while a user scrolls through the app.

Using Instagram Insights for performance analysis

To take your Instagram game to the next level, you need to be making data-driven decisions. Luckily, you now have a wealth of performance data right in the palm of your hand.

Here are four ways to use your new Instagram business insights to your advantage:

Identify popular content 

With Insights, you can quickly identify the content that resonates most with your audience. All you need to do is look for patterns in what your audience finds compelling and tailor your content strategy accordingly.

For on-the-fly action items, we recommend conducting a brief start-stop-continue analysis of your Instagram performance data. This analysis evaluates the effectiveness of content and determines what actions to start, stop or continue.

It’s important to note that this type of spontaneous analysis is designed to provide quick takes on your Instagram strategy’s effectiveness, such as whether people reacted positively to a particular post.

For more complex questions, like determining the best time to post on Instagram, you’ll want to use a more advanced social media management tool. For example, Sprout customers can take advantage of ViralPost® technology, which analyzes audience engagement patterns and content preferences to detect the most active times for authentic engagement.

Track growth and engagement trends

A quick dip into the Insights tool is all you need to do to ensure you’re pacing well toward your monthly performance targets. If you happen to notice any inconsistencies, use Sprout’s suite of Instagram analytics reports to investigate the issue and its potential causes.

Use the Instagram Business Profiles Report to identify which types of content are driving results. That way, you can make strategic adjustments to stay on track toward achieving your desired outcomes.

Make stronger paid marketing decisions

Did you know that 50% of users become more interested in a brand after seeing an ad for it on Instagram? With these types of results, making every dollar count is critical.

Use Instagram Insights to optimize your paid performance so you can make better use of your budget.

Analyze your organic content performance to identify trends, themes and creative elements that resonate with your audience. Then, leverage that data to take your paid marketing efforts to the next level.

Gauge the impacts of an algorithm shift

An Instagram algorithm update feels like a monthly occurrence at this point. Keeping up with all the changes is one thing. Understanding how they impact your social media strategy is a different beast entirely.

Next time you hear about a rumored or confirmed algorithm update, use Instagram Insights to see how your strategy is weathering through the change. If everything is going according to plan, then you’re good to go. If you notice any performance dips, it’s time to investigate further using a tool that can provide a more comprehensive analysis.

Use Instagram Insights to create a picture-perfect social strategy

Instagram’s landscape is constantly changing. Trends come and go quickly, and what’s popular today may not be tomorrow. Use Instagram Insights in combination with a tool like Sprout to stay informed and up-to-date on what works and what doesn’t.

Of course, data is only part of the story. For practical advice on building your brand identity and expanding your community on Instagram, check out this comprehensive guide to Instagram for brands. It’s packed with valuable tips to help you achieve your platform goals.

Algorithm Behavior Competitors Direct Messages Engagement Followers Growth Strategy Hashtags Impressions Journey Know Your Audience Link Clicks Moment New Initiatives Organic Growth Paid Metrics Quarterly Audits Real-Time Campaign Insights Stories Testing, Testing, Testing User-generated content Video When to Post X-Factor Your Brand Zoom Out Algorithm

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Algorithms might seem mysterious, but in reality, they’re just a method of sorting posts by relevance to the end user. Social media networks are constantly tweaking their algorithms to improve the user experience and increase stickiness. Unfortunately, these changes can sometimes shake up your performance.

If it suddenly feels like the Instagram algorithm is out to get you, review your past few monthly reports. If you’re posting at the same frequency and with the same content mix, it may be time to adjust your strategy.

The post Instagram insights demystified: How to access and analyze your metrics appeared first on Sprout Social.