Fun Ideas to Try on Your Business’s Instagram

Instagram is one of the most widely used social networks, with over one billion monthly users and growing. As a business, the pressure is there to be on the network and post regularly, but what more can you do? We’ve put together some fun ideas to try on your business’s Instagram account that you may not have thought of! Try them out and let us know how they work for you!

Instagram Stories

More and more users are watching Instagram stories and you should be one of them! Instagram has put a lot of effort into creating tools to make stories more engaging and interactive. Here are some of our favorites to give you ideas to try on your business's account.

• Countdown sticker – This feature is perfect for creating buzz around something you want to announce for your business. Product launching soon? New location opening up? Use the countdown sticker on your stories to build anticipation to that announcement! You can find the sticker among the other Instagram stickers. You just give the countdown a name and set a future date and time and you’re all set! The sticker will count down for you. Other users will be able to turn on reminders and share the countdown to their own story.
• Poll sticker – The polling sticker was one of the first interactive stickers that Instagram rolled out for stories. It’s a simple poll with two options that you can customize for your business. It will show users results as soon as they vote. Use it to get your followers more involved with your brand. You can ask which meal they like best from your restaurant or what colors they want to see your newest product offered in.
• Quiz sticker – One of Instagram’s newest stickers is a multiple-choice quiz! Use this feature to share fun facts with your followers or quiz them on different elements of your brand. Brands also use this as a way to poll their followers with more than two options. The possibilities are endless!

Hashtags

With the constant algorithm changes on Instagram, it can be hard to get your brand’s page exposed to new users. Hashtags are an incredibly powerful resource to help get your Instagram page discovered and in front of new eyes. Hashtags are the way that content is categorized on Instagram. You’ll want to make sure you use relevant ones to your business. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags on your posts and up to 10 per story, so take advantage of this!

When deciding on hashtags to use for your business’s Instagram, try to incorporate a mix of small (under 10,000 posts), medium (10,000-100,000 posts) and large (100,000+ posts) hashtags to maximize your potential reach. Using small hashtags makes it more likely that your post will stay at the top of the hashtag and get more people viewing it. Using a large hashtag may seem appealing because there are so many people using it, but you won’t get much exposure because your post will quickly get buried beneath all the other posts using that hashtag.

When using the maximum number of hashtags, you might want to hide them to keep your posts looking clean. For feed posts, you can post hashtags in the comments of your photo rather than within the caption. Your post will still show up in those hashtags since it’s still connected to the post, but your caption will look a lot cleaner and only speak to your messaging without distracting readers with 30 hashtags. On Instagram stories, you can minimize the size of the hashtags and hide them behind a sticker so it doesn’t clutter up the story you’re trying to share.

Branded Content

Instagram has been increasing the capabilities that brands can have to work with influencers. Businesses can now promote branded content, meaning they can take content posted about them by influencers and use it as part of their overall admix. For example, if you have an influencer post to Instagram about your product or service, you boost it with advertising. This will help you reach new audiences. This is a great way to mix up your business’s normal posts with user-generated content (UGC), which is five times more likely to convert than professional content.

Instagram is constantly creating new features and updates for accounts to use to increase engagement and overall brand awareness, so these ideas are just the beginning of things to try on your business's Instagram. Big Marlin Group offers social media management and strategy services to help your business maximize its potential on all social media platforms, including Instagram. Contact us today to see how we can help your business take marketing to the next level.