How to Create Quality Content for Instagram

With nearly one billion monthly active users, Instagram is easily one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide. What does this mean for you and your business? It means that Instagram is a great place to connect with new and existing customers and promote your brand. The downside? With billions of users posting millions of photos, reels, and stories a day, it can be difficult to stand out.

There are a few golden rules of growing your instagram following and increasing the reach of your posts, from hashtag strategy to targeted ads. However, one of the most important (and often overlooked) ways to build a loyal Instagram following is through creating quality content.

While pretty pictures will attract an initial audience, your long-term goal should be to offer value to your specific audience and niche. Whether you want to be inspirational or educational, you need to identify the purpose of your Instagram (is it to convert to sales? Educate about your products?) and then implement a strategy.

Through crisp photography, educational reels, and informative carousels, you can carve out a social media presence that’s unique and effective. Let’s dive into how to create quality content for instagram to help grow your brand.

With nearly one billion monthly active users, Instagram is easily one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide. What does this mean for you and your business? It means that Instagram is a great place to connect with new and existing customers and promote your brand. The downside? With billions of users posting millions of photos, reels, and stories a day, it can be difficult to stand out.

There are a few golden rules of growing your instagram following and increasing the reach of your posts, from hashtag strategy to targeted ads. However, one of the most important (and often overlooked) ways to build a loyal Instagram following is through creating quality content.

While pretty pictures will attract an initial audience, your long-term goal should be to offer value to your specific audience and niche. Whether you want to be inspirational or educational, you need to identify the purpose of your Instagram (is it to convert to sales? Educate about your products?) and then implement a strategy.

Through crisp photography, educational reels, and informative carousels, you can carve out a social media presence that’s unique and effective. Let’s dive into how to create quality content for instagram to help grow your brand.

In this article we will cover:

• Identify Your Brand Purpose
• Best Type Of Content For Instagram
• Content Pillars For Instagram
• Instagram Content Ideas
• Instagram Marketing Help

Identify Your Brand Purpose On Instagram

Before you even open up Instagram, you need to identify your purpose. You need to find your ‘why.’ Why do you want to be on Instagram? Why should your audience care about what you post? What do you want to get out of Instagram? If you don’t have a reason or passion for your social media or your purpose is nothing more than “make money” or “be Instagram famous” you’re not likely to succeed.

Instead, consider your brand values or mission statement and how that can relate to your Instagram. For example, do you want to help your followers solve a problem? Do you want to inspire your audience with motivational images from your portfolio? Do you want to meet potential customers?

Every successful social media strategy starts with understanding why you’re on Instagram and what you hope to achieve through it. Speak with stakeholders, look at your brand values, and take some time to identify your ‘why’ before moving forward with content creation. This will not only help you have a more genuine and thoughtful social media presence (something highly prized on Instagram) but will also help to inform the type of content you’ll produce.

Best Type Of Content For Instagram

The best type of content for Instagram are the ones that have quality content that’s inspirational or educational. Before we go any further, let’s define some key terms. “Quality” can mean different things for different people. In this context, creating quality content means both high quality in terms of visuals and in value. Visuals should be crisp, never blurry, and videos should be edited smoothly with no shaking.

No matter the brand, company, or service, the best content on Instagram usually follows a similar pattern and set of rules. These successful types of content are:

Professional Imagery: Whatever your service or product, you need to elude a sense of professionalism. Even if you want to showcase some behind the scenes content, make sure to have clean, well-lit photos or videos. While we highly recommend having a few professional photoshoots of your employees, office, products, or services, we understand you might not always have the budget for this. Luckily, there are several easy ways to work around this.

First, you can utilize user-generated content. Whether you want to venture into the world of influencer marketing or simply encourage customers to use a specific hashtag, you can use the images and videos of others on your social media page. Not only does this practice further your reach, but creates a better sense of authenticity and relatability by using real customers.

Second, you can opt for stock photos. Search through sites like Shutterstock or Unsplash for free, high-quality images you can use on your Instagram. Lastly, it’s important to have some authentic and genuine content, if you want to showcase some behind the scenes or casual in the office images, post those on your Instagram stories instead of in your main feed.

Inspiration: A brand’s identity is integral to a brand’s success and exceptional social media content will set you apart from competitors. Having inspiring visuals with a consistent tone creates a seamless experience for your customers that exudes a subconscious feeling of connection and assurance. Every piece of content, whatever length or style, should give the viewer a sense of what your brand is all about and inspire them to live within the visual world you’ve created.

The best way to approach this is to determine what is most inspirational about your brand or services. If you’re a travel company you’ll want to highlight the sense of wonder that comes with a customized travel experience. If you’re an architecture firm you want to create content that makes a follower feel as though they’re living within one of your designs.

Education: While successful Instagram accounts will offer inspirational content, others find benefit in creating educational content. One of the key aspects in building a loyal social audience is to provide some kind of value. The more interactions on an Instagram post will boost your stats, followers, and Instagram will be more inclined to promote your post and account to others. This means you want to create content that encourages people to save, send to others, watch, comment, and like.

One of the best ways to do this is by posting valuable content that educates an audience. These can be through How-To reels or carousel posts that break down a complicated topic. For example, a digital marketing agency might post a carousel explaining how you can improve your SEO rankings.

Think about some of your FAQ’s and services, what are things you wish people knew? What are you always being asked by potential customers? Tackle these questions on your Instagram to showcase your value as a brand to follow.

Loyalty: Arguably, the best type of Instagram content and social media presence is one that stays loyal to its audience. This can mean a couple things. One, it means understanding your audience. Look at your Instagram stats and insights that show who your audience is, where they are located, and what their age range is. Stay loyal to this target audience by posting content that’s proven to be relevant to them.

Two, build a sense of community on your social media. Make sure to respond to DMs, comments, and tagged posts in a timely manner. This shows that your company is genuine and cares about it’s customers.

Content Pillars For Instagram

Fun fact, about 81% of people choose to use social media to research a company’s products and services. This means it’s integral for your business to have an effective social media marketing strategy. One of the best ways to create quality content for Instagram and build a strategic plan is to identify your content pillars. Not sure where to begin? We’re answering all your questions about content pillars and social media marketing below.

What Are Content Pillars?

Content pillars for Instagram are about 3-5 topics that your company or brand will ultimately post about. They serve as guidelines for the type of content you’ll create and in turn, what your audience can expect of you. In addition to helping you carve out your unique niche, they help to amplify you as the expert in those areas. Essentially, content pillars help give you direction, build brand awareness, and lead to increased engagement and conversion. For example, if you’re an interior design firm you might identify your content pillars as the following:

• Before and after photos and explanation of this was achieved
• Importance of interior design
• Different types of interior design styles
• How interior design impacts mood

How Do I Determine My Content Pillars?

In order to identify the best content pillars for your company you’ll want to look at your analytics to see what content has performed well, who your target audience is, and what resonates most with them. Consider every aspect of your Instagram posts from hashtags, type of visual, caption, and the time of day it was posted. Then you can begin to replicate those for higher engagement.

Next, look at what your competitors are doing. This doesn’t mean copying their tactics, but rather, keeping up to date with industry news and trends and hopefully identify any content gaps or opportunities your competitors have missed that you might be able to fill.

How Do I Find Content Pillar Ideas?

Your content pillars for Instagram will vary largely depending on your target audience, type of brand, and social media purpose. If you’re unsure where to start, conduct some SEO research to find pain points, interest, and similar terms that your audience might be searching for. For example, use sites like Answer The Public or Also Asked to get inspiration for similar topics and find new ways to educate and inspire your audience.

How Do I Use Content Pillars?

Once you’ve identified your key content pillars, use the above resources and keyword research to break down those topics and pillars into specific post ideas. For example, if you’re an interior designer and one of your content pillars is ‘how interior design impacts mood’ consider creating an educational carousel that educates your audience on “The Best Calming Paint Colors.”

Create a content calendar to keep all your posts, videos, graphics, and reels organized and ensure there isn’t too much content overlap and you’re hitting a diverse range of topics based on your pillars.

Instagram Content Ideas

Not sure what the best types of Instagram content pillars are or need ideas to post on social media? Regardless of your company, here are some helping starting points to get you inspired for your next Instagram post;

• About Us: Go beyond the typical “Hi, we’re an architecture firm” and give your followers more thoughtful insight into who you are as real people. Show off the best spot in your office, the most popular coffee order in your office, your employee’s pets, how you got the name of your company, and other interesting facts.
• Motivational quotes
• Client testimonials
• Social Media holidays: From #NationalCoffeeDay to #WorldKindnessDay do research on upcoming social media holidays
• User-generated content
• Post Your Why: Talk about what inspired your company, what your motivations are, and what separates you from others in your industry
• Behind the scenes of products, services, your office, or what a typical day looks like
• Products & Services: Showcase the benefits of your products and services and post product images, videos, and other information about what you offer and how they help your followers
• Videos tours of recent designs/projects
• A look at the making of a product or what goes into a specific service
• Posts that drive visitors to your website, ie: to read a latest blog post

Instagram Marketing by ThoughtLab

Each of these Instagram marketing strategies require a combination of expert know-how and a little bit of wizardry. Depending on the type of brand in question, these pillars and avenues will need to be tailored to your specific audience, product, and location. That’s why it’s helpful to find a knowledgeable partner to take marketing your brand off your to-do list.

Hiring a professional Instagram marketing agency is a smart way to create a plan of action that suits your goals, desires, and most importantly, your budget. Plus, their expert know-how and software will likely produce ideas you never even thought of. An ideal social media marketing partner will provide all the services you need to market your brand, including:

• Content strategy
• Social media strategy and execution
• Generating content ideas
• Copywriting and editing
• Graphic design
• Video production and animation
• Professional graphic design and video editing
• Analytics that report the best ROI from your content
• Hashtag strategy
• SEO research

Ready for someone to tackle all your social media marketing needs? We’re happy to take it from here. Contact ThoughtLab today for a free consultation and lets tell your story the right way, together.