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