With short form video and story like functions on the rise, how can brands leverage newer features on social media such as Instagram Highlights?
Otherwise known as IG, Insta, or just The ‘Gram, Instagram is an American image and video sharing social media network and is owned by Facebook. The primary function is not only for users to post their own content, but to engage with the content of others. Like minded users are able to connect via the use of hashtags and location geotags, so it differs greatly from the Facebook model of a community of “friends”.
In the early 2010’s, using Instagram was as simple as slapping a filter on an image and posting it with a few hashtags. Today, the platform is much more advanced than its original goal of being a photo sharing social media network, and now includes features such as Reels, IGTV and Stories.
To capitalise on the rapid rise of short form video, Instagram Highlights are a newer feature that expands on the concept of Stories. While it’s been a popular addition for everyday users, how can businesses best leverage it?
Three Effective Ways To Use Instagram Highlights
First released in 2016, Stories are short fifteen second vertical clips, videos or images disappear after twenty-four hours, and operate on a whole different model when compared to the format of traditional posting.
As a less formal and unofficial form of social media marketing, Stories have proven to be an effective tool to boost engagement, especially with existing audiences. However, the downside of its fleeting nature is that many businesses have found content creation for Stories to be an exhausting waste of resources, especially as they only last for a day – until now.
Unlike Stories, Instagram Highlights live permanently on your business profile, allowing you to add or delete content from them at any time. These albums sit right underneath your profile bio section and above your regular feed, and are essentially a “highlights reel” of your brand’s most important or valuable Stories previously shared. To use Instagram Highlights effectively, businesses should consider the following tactics.
Showcase Your Products – Whether or not active Instagram users have engaged with your business before, if they’re browsing your profile and see a highlight dedicated to “Products,” they might be more likely to click through the content included in your highlight versus scrolling through your entire feed. By adding products to your Instagram Highlights, you’re saving the precious time of your audience members.
Answer Q&As – In 2018, Instagram introduced the “Questions” sticker, which allows followers to submit questions to your business when you add this to your Instagram Story. This allows you to share the questions that users have asked, or their responses to questions you’ve asked, and their profiles won’t be shared publicly. When answering questions, you’re often providing valuable insights, so pin them to your Instagram Highlights so they don’t go to waste.
Educate And Add Value – One thing that every business should already be doing with Instagram Stories is sharing links – or at the very least, infographics – to summarise and promote your other content marketing efforts, such as blogs, podcasts, videos or even ebooks. While helpful resources will vary depending on your product, service, industry or sector, adding valuable information to your Instagram Highlights will keep your engagement levels up.
If you’re a business trying to make your mark on social media, it’s important not to forget about how it relates to your website’s optimisation and the content marketing you use to weave it all together.
If not actioned properly and without a well thought out plan of attack, marketing on social media can result in a lot of work with minimal results. If you lack the time, energy or resources to give this the proper attention that it deserves, it might be worth considering outsourcing the work required to the professionals – but where do you find them?
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources, but avoiding these responsibilities altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has actually never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
