There's no one size fits all strategy when it comes to marketing your business on Instagram. Every single account is slightly different. We all have different content, different tones, different audiences, and different goals. This means that what works for one person likely won't work in the same way for another person. That's why we have created a personalized 6-step guide to help you identify the absolute best strategy for your unique business.

Every good Instagram strategy is based on data – you simply can't beat hard numbers and facts. And luckily, Instagram provides you with all of this information within your Instagram Insights. The problem is that most people have no idea how actually to use this information to create actionable, measurable results. Throughout the following 6 questions, we are going to help you narrow in on the specific analytics you need to be tracking in order to accomplish your goals on social media (whether that's trying to grow a following, increase sales, generate new leads, etc.) and exactly how you should be using these numbers. As you go through these 6 steps, we recommend recording your responses and repeating this exercise every 3 months in order to reevaluate your progress and track your goals.

Step 1: What is your primary goal on Instagram?

List the following 8 goals from 1 (most important) to 8 (least important).

________ Drive traffic to your website (Website Clicks)

________ Build a community around your brand (Engagement/Likes)

________ Get people to contact you (Call/Email)

________ Create content that sparks conversation (Comments)

________ Increase brand awareness (Impressions/Reach)

________ Grow your following (Profile Visits/Follows)

________ Create viral content (Shared)

________ Reach and resonate with the right people (Saved)

The first step to perfecting your Instagram strategy is to hone in on precisely what needs work. Take your top 1-3 goals and make them front and center for the time being and put the rest in your peripheral vision. It's crucial to know exactly what you are trying to achieve first and foremost. If you try to knock out all of your goals at once, you'll likely spread yourself too thin and could easily end up achieving none of them.

Step 2: Who is your ideal client/customer? And what do you know about them?

·      Where are they located? __________________________________________________________

·      How old are they? ___________________________________________________________

·      What gender do they identify with? ___________________________________________________________

·      What interests do they have? ___________________________________________________________

·      How do they behave online? What platforms are they using? Who else are they following?

____________________________________________________________

Answering these questions will help create a clear picture of exactly who your business is trying to reach. Keep in mind, who YOU think your target audience is and who it ACTUALLY is are sometimes two entirely different things. In order to accurately answer these questions, you will want to dig into your sales history and pull from the hard data – don't just make assumptions.

You will also want to refer to the "Audience" tab in your Instagram Insights to see who your account is really reaching and resonating with right now. Think of this like checking your work. You can have amazing content, but if you're not attracting the "right" people, then it's all going to flop. If your answers are in line with this data, then keep up the great work, but if they aren't, then it might be time to reevaluate the type of content your posting and brainstorm ways to better appeal to your target audience.

Step 3: Now that you know who you’re trying to reach, think of 3 brands that share a similar audience as you do (these can be competitors, bloggers, or complementary businesses)

1.     ________________________________________________________

2.     ________________________________________________________

3.     ________________________________________________________

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you can pinpoint other accounts that have already built a community with the people you want to reach, then you can use this as a blueprint for your own success. Take a look at their content, identify what strategies and practices they are using that you're potentially missing, and figure out how to incorporate these into your own social media strategy. Keep in mind, copying what others are doing won't yield respect or success. Instead, you want to look for the big picture trends and topics and then put your own unique spin on them.

step 4: What does your activity look like? 

Analytics are how you track your success. If you're not writing these down and tracking overall trends, improvements will be few and far between. For now, you are just recording and starting a benchmark, but as you move along, this data will be used to identify holes in your strategy that may be keeping you from seeing the results you desire. For example, if you find that a wide audience is viewing your posts, but viewers are passively seeing your content and not clicking on your website or following through with your call to action, then this might mean you need to focus more attention on the context of your posts and the value of your offering (i.e., you're not giving people a good enough reason to click through to your website).

In Instagram Insights, look at the "Activity" tab and track your activity metrics at least once per month using this chart.

step 5: What does your top content look like? 

Under the "Content" tab in Instagram Insights, look at your top performing 6 posts. What differentiates these top 6 from the rest of your posts?

 Do the photos have anything in common? If so, what?

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

What about the captions? What do they have in common?

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

This is a crucial step because it literally tells you what your audience is loving and what isn't resonating with them as much. When you look at this information, you are looking for trends and similarities among your top-performing posts. Your job is to identify these similarities and post more content like that.

step 6: When is your audience most active?

Tab over to the "Audience" tab in your Instagram Insights and scroll all the way down to the bottom graph. This tells you what time of day your audience is most active on Instagram. This information tells you when your audience is most active, i.e. exactly when you should be posting your content! By simply shifting when you post your content to be at a time when it is most likely to be seen is an easy and super effective way to boost the performance of your posts. Use this information to fill in the table below.

Instagram marketing is all about the details. One small hiccup can be the difference between someone passively seeing your post and someone taking action after seeing it. The reason analytics are so crucial to your success is because this is how you can identify those hiccups so that you can focus your attention accordingly. Working hard is important on Instagram, but working hard on the RIGHT things will yield 10x better result.

We hope this guide makes you realize that you already have all the answers you need to have a killer Instagram strategy! The information just needs to be applied to your marketing strategy in the appropriate way, and you'll be on your way towards success in no time!

Have any questions? Drop them in the comments below!

Written By: Analiese Ross, AMR Digital Marketing, Founder & CEO