Instagram Marketing For Your Wellness Business: Four Key Questions Answered

Since its launch, Instagram has become the ultimate social media platform for sharing photos. For wellness businesses, it has the potential to educate, inspire, and build trust with your audience.

To access this potential, you need a carefully thought out Instagram marketing strategy. Social media’s marketing power continues to rise, so it doesn’t make sense to leave things to chance on these platforms.

Taking the right approach will help you stay top of mind with your existing community, as well as extend your reach to people outside of your network. You should set goals for the platform, be consistent in posting, as well as strategic on where you focus your efforts.

Content-wise, the number one rule is to share content that adds value. It could be educational, inspirational, or something light-hearted and fun. Above all, it should be relevant to your community and the people who you hope to draw into your network.

Here, we’ll provide you with some actionable tips to demystify IG marketing and make it work for your wellness business.

Instagram Marketing: 4 Key Questions Answered For Wellness Businesses

1. Why Is Instagram Important?

First, let’s look at some compelling Instagram stats that support the case for marketing on this platform.

According to research:

• the platform has more than one billion active monthly users and 500 million daily active Stories users (source)
• the US has the largest audience with 130 million users (source)
• over two-thirds of global users are aged 34 years and younger, while 33.8% are between 25 and 34 years (source)
• 90% of accounts follow a business on IG (source)
• 83% of users have discovered new services or products on it, and 81% use it to research products and services (source)
• 63% of users visit the platform daily (source)
• people have positive perceptions of the brands they follow on Instagram – 72% see the brand as committed to building community, 76% as entertaining, and 78% as popular (source)
• of the popular social media platforms, Instagram sees the second-highest ROI for marketers, after Facebook (source)

2. How Should I Set Up My Profile?

Switch To A Business Profile

Switching from a personal profile to a business profile is easy to do and gives you access to important features.

For example, your followers will be able to click the contact button on your Instagram page to get in touch with you directly.

You will also get access to the analytics tools, which give you insights into how your posts are performing. From there, you can get a better understanding of your audience.

And if you decide to promote your content through advertising, you will be able to create and publish ads directly on IG, instead of having to go through Facebook’s tools for advertising.

Simply go to profile settings, click on Switch to Professional account, and complete the process.

Optimize Your Account

A few things on your profile should be optimized to ensure that you make the right impression on your audience.

Profile picture – it’s a good idea to use your logo, headshot, or another consistent image across your social media profile pictures so that people can easily identify you.

Bio – you have just 150 characters to let your personality shine through. Let people know what you’re about and why they should follow you.

You can feature a CTA that encourages people to take a specific action, such as use your hashtag. It’s also a space where you can include a clickable URL to drive visitors to a website of your choice.

Pin stories to your profile – IG stories are a hit with viewers and pinned stories sit prominently on your profile. Organize yours into highlights and pin them under specific categories to showcase your products and services.

3. Which Types Of Posts Should I Publish? When and How Often?

Create A Content Calendar

Consistency is vital for engaging your followers on Instagram, as they begin to anticipate your posts. Creating a content calendar with a publishing plan allows you to stay on track and keep showing up for your audience.

Consider adding a mixture of the following types of posts to your Instagram marketing plan:

• stories – stand out in that they are prominently positioned to attract views and are incredibly easy to digest
• educational posts – pair an image with an explanation around a facet of your practice
• behind the scenes posts – lend an authentic glance into the workings of your practice
• “how-to” posts – provide guidance or instructions on how to achieve a specific action
• user-generated content – shows your clients in class, on retreat, or benefitting from your teachings (ask for permission before reposting your clients’ content!)
• posts made by your team – your team members are close to you and what you do; they are perfectly placed to capture great content for your business.
• motivational posts – amplify your brand values
• relevant/trending stories – highlight news that’s refreshing and relevant in your space
• video – keep them to less than a minute in length for maximum engagement
• Live posts – draw in a live audience with content that is captured and published to your profile in real-time (e.g., reveals or Q&A sessions that allow viewers to react and comment using the chat feature)

Time Your Posts To Align With Your Audience’s Browsing Behavior

The ideal times and days to publish on Instagram are influenced by people’s daily routines and behavior.

Generally speaking, the timing correlates with events such as when people wake up – one of the first things they do is to check their phone. When they are running low on mental energy and focus – they take a break and look to their mobile for inspiration. Or when they head into their lunch break at work – they have free time and spend some of it on social media.

Data from Hubspot suggests that the ideal time to publish on IG is between 2-3 PM at your audience’s local time.

Thursday is the best day of the week to post on, not only at 3 PM, but also at 5 AM, 11 AM, and 4 PM.

Post Consistently

The answer to the question, “How often should I post?” really depends on what you and your team can realistically manage to keep up with consistently.

Social Buddy suggests posting between one and three times a day, although this is a general rule and may not work for everyone.

The reality here is that consistency is more important than frequency.

4. How Can I Get More Eyes On My Content?

Write Effective Captions

Post captions can be up to 2,200 characters. That said, people will only be able to see the first 3 or 4 lines, after which they will have to click on more.

But this doesn’t mean that you should keep captions shorter.

It means that you should make sure that the most important information you want to convey is at the beginning and that it is engaging.

Use Hashtags Strategically

People search hashtags for information and imagery on specific topics. As a result, using them in your posts, photos, and comments can get your content seen by interested people.

The Digital Marketing Institute suggests that using several hashtags often leads to better engagement and that businesses get the most reach with 10 or 11 relevant tags on their platform.

Measure Results

Using Instagram Insights, you can measure your content’s success in terms of the engagement it receives. Engagement can be likes, comments, shares, clicks, and so on.

By looking at what’s working and what’s not, you can shape your content calendar going forward and adjust your Instagram marketing strategy accordingly.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot for wellness professionals to consider in perfecting their Instagram marketing strategies. We’ve only just touched on the surface in this post, so keep checking back to our blog for more tips on how to promote your wellness business or offering.

For a comprehensive look at some of the finer details related to IG and the other major social media platforms, access our free guide to social media marketing.

Here, we provide actionable tips for making six leading social media platforms work for your wellness business. There is platform-specific guidance, as well as a general checklist of best practices to help you master your strategy.