Transcript: Lesson One

The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

Video 1.1: How can a successful Instagram strategy impact your business?

Instagram is the current darling of the social world. Following fallout and drastic algorithm changes resulting from the
Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, people flocked to Instagram, many not even realizing they were owned by the
same company. Brands in particular love Instagram because engagement is higher. Ten times higher than Facebook, in
fact, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and a whopping 84 times higher than Twitter.

But how do you know if Instagram is right for you?

“Before businesses start using Instagram, they really need to think about the big picture, the big goal, the purpose of why
they are on the platform, and craft everything around that end goal, and it does build post by post. I always like to say that
Instagram is essentially a digital magazine, and each post is a page that you're turning that goes back to the promise that
you make in your bio, which is essentially the cover of that digital magazine.”

Let’s dig a bit deeper to help you determine if Instagram makes sense for your business to use.

First, check to see if your competitors are using Instagram. If they’re rocking the channel, then that means you can, too.

Next, if your product or service is visually compelling, then Instagram is definitely a channel where you can excel. But if you
sell B2B services, that doesn’t mean the channel is off the table. HubSpot is a great case in point. HubSpot doesn’t have a
tangible product you can touch and easily photograph, but there’s a good reason that 132,000 people follow us on
Instagram. We showcase our company culture, we share industry news and mind-blowing stats our followers love, and we
teach quick tips about social media and other business topics.

Are your customers on Instagram? First you need to know who your ideal buyer is. If you already have buyer personas and
other marketing strategies in place, you can draw from those to help. Some factors to consider when narrowing down your
target Instagram audience are age, location, gender, income, interests, motivations, and pain points.

Don’t know where to start? Monitor popular event and interest hashtags that are related to your business. Find out who’s
using and engaging with the hashtags and check out their profiles. You can also take a look at your competitor’s followers.

Think about your buyer persona and take a look at these stats to help you see if the demographic you’re targeting is part
of the mix.

Then you need to ask yourself, “Am I mobile-friendly?” Since Instagram is accessed primarily from mobile devices, your
links to landing pages need to be optimized for mobile.

And finally, consider how your business goals will align with your goals for Instagram. If your goals are increased sales but
you’re a B2B company, that might be harder for you than a B2C company that can take advantage of advertising that
allows a user to purchase directly.

To better understand if Instagram is a fit for you, let’s look at the best ways to use Instagram to market your business.

o Brand awareness
o Customer delight
o Customer loyalty and retention
o Attracting new prospects
o Directing sales for B2C companies, and
o Advertising
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

You can also use Instagram for some clickthroughs to landing pages, but that’s limited primarily to one link in your bio, in
Instagram stories for business accounts that have over 10,000 followers, and for advertisers. So keep that in mind if driving
traffic and clickthrough rates are important to your business.

After you determine your Instagram audience, do a competitive analysis to see what other marketers in your field are
posting. If you already know your top competitors, start with searching for their Instagram profiles. If not, try searching for
terms related to your business or industry to find similar accounts. Conduct a quick audit of related accounts to see what
types of posts are getting the highest amount of engagement, what popular hashtags they’re using, what kinds of captions
they’re writing, how often they’re publishing, and how quickly they’re growing. This information will serve as a benchmark
as you start growing your own account.

Once you have a sense of if the channel is right for you and if your business goals can align to your Instagram strategy,
you’ll want to decide what key performance indicators (or KPIs) you want to track. Is it increased engagement? Followers?
Map out these KPIs ahead of time. They’ll help you make key decisions regarding content, campaign, and advertising
strategies.

Instagram can be one of the highest-performing social platforms in your marketing arsenal, especially if you’re using it
authentically. What do I mean by that?

I mean that when developing your plan, you:

o Shouldn’t buy followers.

Fake followers are less engaged and unlikely to buy your product. Quality over quantity should always be
your motto in the social media world—and that’s true of Instagram, too.
o Should provide more than just pretty pictures.
Your followers want value, information, or entertainment. Try to provide a good mix of content that meets
all three of those desires.
o Should be consistent.
Don’t be a once-in-a-while poster of pictures, and don’t just randomly share images and videos without a
plan behind them. Your followers will appreciate consistent and cohesive content.

I asked marketing strategist, David Meerman Scott, about a company he thought was doing it right in Instagram.

“I'm a massive fan of a company called Grain Surfboards. They're a tiny, little company, just a very small handful of people.
They make wooden surfboards. Interesting boat-building technique that they use to create these wooden surfboards. But
what's awesome is that surfboards and surfing is incredibly visual. So they've focused, although they’re on many different
social networks, they've focused on Instagram, the visual aspects of Instagram. So they have pictures of surfboards being
made in their factory. They have pictures of some of the people who come to buy or make surfboards 'cause you can
actually make surfboards with them, which I've done, which is great. They have pictures of people surfing. They have
pictures of them surfing. The people who make the boards actually then ride the boards. And it's just a really awesome way
that they've used to generate attention about what they're doing in a way that makes people feel like, "Yeah, I want to be a
part of that. And it helps them to grow.”

Grain Surfboards is clearly doing something right with 52,000 followers on their Instagram page. The images they share are
interesting, beautiful, and inspiring.

NO Here’s the moral of this story: When you’re using Instagram authentically, you blend more seamlessly into the broader
Instagram content without coming across like you’re merely pushing marketing messages and advertising at your audience.
Participate in the feed as an individual, the way your friends might use it, rather than being a brand intruding in the space.
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

Video 1.2: Optimizing your business profile

There are two key pieces to your Instagram strategy: your content, which requires the most work, and your profile, which
will be viewed by those who are interested in your brand. It’s important to optimize your business profile to make sure that
you’re maximizing some of the opportunities it can bring to your strategy. You’ll want to keep your profile updated based
on changing business goals, campaigns that you’re highlighting, and more.

It’s likely that you may already have an Instagram account at this point. If not, these tips will help you as you set it up. And
if you do, check yourself against the following tips to make sure you’re optimizing your profile for success.

“When creating your business profile on Instagram, there's five things to keep in mind: having the right username, having
an awesome avatar photo, and if it's a brand logo make sure it fits in the little circle and is not cropped. You want to make
sure that your subtitle has SEO, you want to make sure that your bio says who you are, what you do, and why do it in some
snappy creative Instagram language, which is not what you put over on Facebook or LinkedIn. And then you want to have a
call-to-action and a link that you can track as your URL.”

Let’s go into more detail on those five things and a few more things you can do to make your profile the best it can be.

First, make sure that your account is connected to a business email to ensure your profile isn’t linked with your personal
Facebook account.

Next, if you aren’t using an Instagram business profile, now is the time to switch. Business profiles provide more in-depth
insights and make it easier for you to promote content. Note that your business must have a Facebook business page to
switch to an Instagram business profile. To switch to a business profile, navigate to the upper right-hand corner of your
Instagram profile and click the gear icon to view your settings. Scroll down and click on “Switch to Business Profile.”

Business profiles give you access to Instagram Insights, their analytics program. It also gives you a few more important
contact fields in your bio, the ability to boost posts with advertising, and—if you meet the criteria—the ability to include
links in Instagram stories.

Then, take a look at your username. Is your username recognizable and easy to find? If your business name is taken, try to
keep the first part of your business name in your username. Avoid using numbers if you can, as you might be seen as a
spam account. Note that you can easily change your username when you need to in the settings.

Also, pay special attention to your subtitle.

When it comes to SEO on Instagram, businesses need to know that in the bio, in the subtitle, you can have keywords, and
you get 33 characters there. And even emojis are searchable on Instagram. So whatever your industry, business, or
keywords are, if you can put that in the subtitle that makes sense for your business, you have more opportunity of getting
found when people search in the explore tab.”

Your profile picture will be one of the first things people see when searching for and visiting your profile, so keep your
image consistent with your branding and visual markers. Consider using your logo or another familiar image. Notice that
your profile image is circular. Instagram will automatically crop your photo to fit inside the circle, so leave room around the
corners of your image.

For reference, keep in mind the minimum profile picture dimensions for Instagram, shown here. Don't deviate too far from
this minimum so users don't see a blurry or stretched photo when visiting your profile page.
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

Next, you’ll need to optimize your Instagram bio. Bios have a 150-character maximum, so you’ll need to be direct and
concise. Tell your audience who you are and what you do using a hint of personality. You can also use hashtags and bio
links (for example, @hubspot) in your profile if you want to tag someone. Adding a hashtag is helpful because users can
follow hashtags, which increases your chance of being seen in search. Instagram users are also looking at keywords, so
it’s a great idea to add a keyword into your bio. According to SocialMediaExaminer, putting a keyword in your name
triples your searchability scores. But, even if your username doesn’t contain the keyword, people can still find you through
the keyword in your subtitle. You can also get creative and use emojis and line breaks for visual effect.

Your bio is the only place in your profile and posts where you can feature a clickable URL and drive traffic to an external
site. It’s common for businesses to update their featured URL to align with their most recent post. Ideally, you should use a
call-to-action before this clickable link. If you can make it trackable with a link shortener, even better. You can also use an
emoji to help bring attention to the link.

There are also ways you can do more with just that link. Sue Zimmerman explains:

Sue B. Zimmerman, Owner Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

“Yes. How do you use that one link strategically on Instagram? There's a couple of suggestions that I have. So if you're in a
campaign and your goal is to grow your email list for example, I would create a UTM for that free offer that you have to
grow your list. Often we're not in a campaign, and we're looking to grow our community, grow our engagement, grow our
online presence. So what we use is a tool called Linktree, where you're able to have more than one link, and I suggest no
more than four or five max, but you can put multiple links to drive traffic to multiple places that make sense. So if you have
a YouTube channel, you could have your channel there, if you have a Facebook group, you could have that, if you have your
recent article about x y and z, you can have that article. And so if you're gonna share multiple links in a link tree, you don't
want to have too many links, or people aren't gonna take any action at all. And the links should cohesively make sense
when they're making a choice of which one to click into.”

Check out the resources section for the link to LinkTree.

Make sure that your link leads to a mobile-optimized site. Since the vast majority of users are viewing Instagram on mobile,
you want to make sure any site you redirect them to provides an optimal user experience, especially if you’re looking for an
immediate purchase on a clickthrough.

You might also want to consider A/B testing your profile. Create a few different versions of your profile and test them one
after another for similar periods of time to determine if one type of CTA works better than another.

Next, let’s talk about your Instagram business category. This should be the same as the category you picked for your
Facebook business page, which you need to use Instagram for business. However, if you like, you can add more granularity
by clicking on “Edit Profile” and scrolling down to the “Business Information” category.

If you’re a brick-and-mortar company, you should make sure to add your address into settings to enable map directions for
users. If you’re a service that uses a reservation system like Yelp or OpenTable, or sells tickets through services such as
Eventbrite, you’ll also want to add the right action button. There are a variety of services to connect to, so check them out
to see if they’re right for you.

Last but not least, be sure to update your account settings. Click on the upper-right menu bar, then at the bottom, click on
“Settings.” There you’ll be able to do things like change your password, check out posts you’ve liked, enable notifications,
and more. Here are a few things you should check out right away:

• Story controls: You can manage who can see and reply to your Instagram stories in your Story Controls. We
recommend allowing all your followers to see and reply to your stories to increase brand engagement.
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

• Comments: Receiving comments on your content can be exciting and encouraging, but certain comments may go
against brand values or offend your audience. Instagram can automatically hide comments that contain certain
keywords or phrases. For example, you may want to hide comments that contain offensive expletives. To do this,
you must enter the specific words and phrases into your Instagram settings and turn on the feature.

• Adding additional Instagram accounts: Do you manage multiple accounts? No problem! Instagram allows users to
add up to five accounts so that you’re able to quickly switch between them without logging in and out. You’re also
able to have multiple people logged into the account at one time. Just be sure you have an up-to-date editorial
calendar so that everyone is aware of what to post and when to post it. To add an account, click on the gear to
reveal your settings. Scroll to the bottom and click “Add Account.” Enter the username and password of the
account you’d like to add. To switch between accounts, go to your profile and at the top of the screen, click your
username. Simply click on the account you’d like to switch to.

There you have it! Everything you need to optimize your Instagram profile to help your business grow better.

Video 1.3: Understanding the Instagram algorithm

There are a variety of factors involved when it comes to how your Instagram audience will see and interact with your posts.
Understanding how the Instagram algorithm affects your content will help you maximize your marketing efforts to drive
visibility, attract new customers, and reach more people.

Sue B. Zimmerman, Owner Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

“The key factors to keep in mind when thinking about the Instagram algorithm, which is always changing, it really is based
on engagement, how much time people are spending on your account. And I want everyone to understand that there are
four neighborhoods. So if you're creating content in your feed and people are spending time not only looking at your photo
but actually reading your caption for a long time, and this is why long micro blog post captions are really good to have now,
because people are spending more time looking, Instagram is noting that, the algorithm's a part of that. Or if people are
viewing your stories, and they're actually interacting with those interactive stickers, the question, the poll, and the slider,
and people respond to you, that's part of the algorithm. Or if you are doing Instagram lives and people are staying on and
consuming your content there, that helps with the algorithm. And IGTV, which recently rolled out, it's a thing, and people
are also consuming content there. So all four of these neighborhoods play a big part in how much Instagram is pushing
your content out for other people to view what you're producing.”

Sue talked about the four areas of Instagram that will make a difference for businesses when it comes to engagement.

Essentially, there are three main factors that determine what you see in your Instagram feed.

Number One: Interest and relevancy

Instagram will prioritize posts that it believes will be of more interest to you or have greater relevance in comparison to the
posts you’ve liked and engaged with in the past. This was a big shift when it first came about, moving posts from a
chronological timeline to this new format which focuses on the content topics you tend to view and how you’re connected
to the users you follow. This algorithm change proves to be a bit of a challenge for marketers, as many have seen a shift
away from branded content being viewed. Some marketers are reporting that only 10% of the audience will ever see
organic content. Compared to the 1% opportunity for your content to be seen on Facebook, that's not a statistic to take
lightly in the marketing world. So keep this in mind as you think about your content's interest and relevancy levels."
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

Currently, 90% of a user’s Instagram feed are comprised of posts from friends and family. But the idea of a “friend” is a
loose one. If a user likes a couple posts from the same person, then they will soon see a lot of posts from that person in
their feed, even if they’re not the most recent.

That brings us to

Number Two: Timeliness

While Instagram is no longer chronological, it still considers timeliness to be important for prioritizing and will reorder only
the new posts between a user’s current visit and their last visit. That means if a friend has posted five photos since your
last visit, and Instagram has determined that friend has relevancy to you, you’ll see those five photos mixed into the other
top photos in your feed. The more a user refreshes during a session, the more likely they’ll see content beyond those top
individuals that Instagram considers their friends and family. That means that it’s probably best to post primarily when
your audience is most active to improve your chances of being seen.

So let’s talk about

Number Three: Relationships

This also connects deeply with the relevancy factor, showing you the accounts that you always interact with. The algorithm
will take into consideration likes and how long a user looks at a post. It will also use information from Facebook to
determine relationships.The good thing about this for brands, however, is that if a user spends a certain amount of time
looking at an ad, they’ll be more likely to see that ad again later or see ads in similar categories.

The relationship factor will also take into account a user searching for a profile, ranking that profile higher in
the feed moving forward.

What this means is that brands need to engage regularly with their followers. Answer questions, reply to
comments, and actively seek out engagement. This will in turn foster new interactions, thus boosting your
profile and content in users’ feeds.

There are three additional criteria that play a smaller part in Instagram feed rankings: frequency, following,
and usage.

The first is Frequency. This is based on how often a user accesses Instagram, and will show the user what it
considers to be the best posts since the user’s last visit.

Next is Following. The more people a user follows, the wider the pool that Instagram uses to show content, so
the user will likely see less of any one specific brand or person.

And the third criteria is Usage. How long a user is on Instagram determines what they see. If it’s a short
session, you’ll only see the best, top-priority posts. If it’s a longer session, then Instagram will dive deeper into
the content mix of the people the user follows. This way of displaying content has led to some people
accustomed to shorter sessions to think that Instagram is hiding posts in their feed. But if you scrolling, you’ll
eventually see everything by everyone you follow.

There are a few other points to consider when thinking about the Instagram algorithm.

• Instagram doesn’t look at photo or video content differently. One type of content will rank higher if a
user engages with it more often, but unlike some other channels, video will not rank over photos, and
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

vice versa.

• Instagram’s feed doesn’t favor users who use stories, Live, or IGTV.

• It doesn’t matter if you have a business or personal account. Instagram doesn’t give better visibility for one over
the other. What matters is great content.

• While Instagram says that being shadowbanned isn’t real, there are a lot of indications that it might be. What is
shadowbanning? It’s the act of blocking a user's content on social media sites in such a way that the user doesn't
know it's happening. If you're shadowbanned on Instagram, your content won't appear on anyone's feed unless
they already follow you. This can happen if you use bots to run your account, use too many hashtags, or have
exceeded certain following limits. It can also happen if you’re using a popular hashtag that has been overtaken by
inappropriate content, which leads to Instagram removing access to that hashtag for a period of time. For more
information on banned hashtags and how to combat shadowbanning, check the resources section.

So how do you get around the algorithm and still have your content be seen? Let’s hear it from Sue.

Sue B. Zimmerman, Owner Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

“So a savvy business owner needs to be posting consistently. You need to show up, you need to be committed, you need to
stay top of mind, and you need to post. And even if you're not getting a double tap, a like, and all the comments that you
want, if someone is staying there and they are literally on your phone for 30 seconds or a minute, that really helps. But if
you're not posting, nothing's gonna happen, right?”

Exactly! That’s the first of a few ways you can get around the Instagram algorithm. Let’s look at some of the possibilities.

• As Sue said, post frequently. It’s especially beneficial if you’re doing frequent story posts, which tend to have
higher engagement and will improve the chance that your content will appear in a user’s feed.
• Ask questions in posts to boost engagement.
• Reply to comments quickly to further engagement and build affinity among your followers.
• Use trending hashtags. You can use a service like Hashtagify to help you find relevant hashtags to your topic.
• Post high-quality images and video. Quality makes a big difference on Instagram, perhaps more so than other
social media channels. If you have beautiful, interesting content, users will engage more.
• Use live video, and pre-promote that live video. Users can comment and engage in real-time, which again boosts
visibility.
• Post when your users are most active. Users who are spending more time in Instagram scrolling are more likely to
see a wider variety of content.
• Consider creating an Instagram pod. This is a group that boosts each other’s engagement which will help your
content be viewed more often. See the resources section for more about Instagram pods.
• Work with influencers, and have them tag you as part of that collaboration.
• And finally, consider advertising. You can easily boost posts and take advantage of the same deep targeting that’s
available on Facebook while benefiting from the generally higher engagement that Instagram offers.

I asked Sue about her thoughts on if Instagram favors one type of content over another.

“I don't think that Instagram favors someone who uses one format over another. However, the explore tab is now showing
you IGTV videos that you might be interested in watching based on your engagement. They're showing you videos, and
they're showing you posts. So creating that format I think is advantageous, just so that you get more opportunity to show
up in the explore tab.”
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

I want to leave you with one last thought about the Instagram algorithm. At some point, it will probably change. Stay up-to-
date on news about the channel. The HubSpot marketing blog is a great way to do so since we regularly cover major social
media updates. That way, when it does change, you can easily pivot and shake up your marketing strategy to match.

Video 1.4: Understanding Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is a prime benefit of having a business profile on the social network. While not a deeply robust/dynamic
tool, Instagram Insights provides easy-to-digest, up-to-date/current data about the effectiveness of your content — in turn,
helping you make smarter decisions about your marketing strategy.

Sue B. Zimmerman, Owner Sue B. Zimmerman Enterprise

"When it comes to insights, you need to pay attention to them, and it's really easy to do. There's three horizontal bars on
the top-right, you go to the back end, you look at your insights, there's so much information there. You wanna look at
those impressions that you're getting, you want to look and see how many people are saving your posts that you ... Every
time you post something you can tap in and look at the saves, because that really helps with the algorithm as well. And you
want to look and see your demographics, and the best time to post, you want to see each day of the week. Instagram
shows you when is the best time to post based on the engagement that you're getting on your post."

Let’s unpack that. To view insights into your overall Instagram account, navigate to your profile.
In the upper right-hand corner, click the three-bar icon, which will take you to your overall insights. Within Insights, you'll
see some general information about people who are engaging with your profile, like how many followers you gained or lost
in the previous week.

Before we dive in, it's important that you're aware of the limitations of Instagram Insights. Instagram Insights is only
accessible from the mobile application.

Additionally, you can’t download your metrics, and, at present, you can only view data for the previous week. That means
you have to track this information manually on a weekly basis, or use third-party tools to better understand your data over
time.

Let’s start by taking a look at the “Overview” tab.

Here you'll see a quick recap of activity over the last seven days including how many accounts you've reached, your content
interactions, if followers were lost or gained, and what content you have shared.

Click on the “Accounts Reached” section. Reach reflects the number of unique users that have seen any of your Instagram
posts.

Within this category, you'll see insights for:

• Impressions - How many times your posts where seen.
• Account Activity - Profile visits, website taps, and other activity.
• Top Posts - The posts that generated the most reach and engagement.
• Top Stories - The Instagram Stories posts that generated the most reach and engagement.
• Top IGTV Videos - The IGTV videos that generated the most reach and engagement.

Under Account Activity, there are a few more metrics to explore:

"Profile Visits" reflects the number of times your profile has been viewed and "Website Taps" represents the number of
times any links you've included in your business profile have been clicked.
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The Elements of a Successful lnstagram Marketing Strategy

You can sort your Top Posts page by type of post —photo, video, carousel or shopping — by timeframe, or by the type of
reach.

Next, let’s look at content interactions. Navigate back to "Recent Highlights" and click "Content Interactions." This will bring
up a page showing how your content is performing in terms of engagement, breaking down the metrics by content type.

"Likes" speaks for itself, and reflects the number of users who liked your post. As with likes, "Comments" reflects the
number of comments left on your post. "Saves" highlights the number of unique users who saved your post, or clicked the
bookmark icon below it.

Navigate to "Recent Highlights" and click to review the "Follower Breakdown" page. This page reflects how many followers
you've gained or lost over the past week, as well as the average times of day when your followers are using Instagram —
data that can be highly beneficial when planning posts.

Pay attention to your "most active times" because posting during times — when your audience is most active — will help
you boost engagement and, in turn, reach.

The final section is “Promotions.” Here you can choose to promote a new post, see active posts, and view activity on active
and inactive campaigns. You can see information such as the number of interactions with your offer, the impressions, your
spend and the demographics of your prospects.

Note: Your Instagram ad campaign results are also viewable in the Facebook Business Manager, which has additional
functionality for managing metrics.

Regularly monitoring these insights will help you identify important details about your audience, which content resonates
best with them, and how your promotional efforts are doing. Understanding these metrics is a crucial component to your
Instagram marketing strategy, so make sure you're looking at them regularly and adjusting your strategy along the way.