Instagram has over 2 billion active monthly users worldwide and is among the top five most-used social media platforms. So, it’s safe to say that your business's audience is among the many Instagram users.
But how can you be a manager effective on Instagram that can reach your brand's target audience on the platform? To help you succeed, here are some tips, tools, and professional advice that will make you a great Instagram manager.
Tips on how to manage an Instagram account
Here are some techniques you can follow as an Instagram manager to increase your brand's presence on the platform.
1. Follow best practices in management of an Instagram account
Make sure all your Instagram posts follow best practices to increase discoverability and engagement. One best practice is creating engaging content. For Reels, engaging content means grabbing your audience's attention with transitions and effects, interesting captions, and catchy audio.
To make your photos more appealing, use colors that align with your brand. Instagram suggests using natural light for bright and balanced images. The platform also encourages businesses and content creators to showcase their products by showing them in use.
Create a carousel with a mix of videos or photos to tell a story. Present your most compelling content in the first slide and use different angles to highlight the benefits and features of your product.
Make sure all your posts include a compelling headline that starts with the most critical information and is short and precise. Use a consistent brand voice and encourage your audience to take action, such as "Call today!" or "Buy now!"
Finally, use tags to make your posts easier to find. Tags include hashtags related to your business, such as #homeimprovement if you sell home improvement products or #fashion if you're a fashion or clothing brand. You should also tag your partners and collaborators when necessary to include them in the conversation. To help potential customers find your business, tag your business location.
Professional tip: Instagram prioritizes Reels, so aim to use Reels in your Instagram content frequently, especially Reels that highlight the key features of your product or service.
2. Optimize your profile
Optimize your Instagram so it's easy to find and makes your brand stand out. Include a keyword in your brand’s name and username on Instagram. For example, if your brand works in interior design, include the keyword “interiors” to attract users searching for that term in Instagram's search bar.
You should also use keywords in your bio and profile captions to optimize your profile for search results and to appear on Instagram's Explore page. Keywords also help create great hashtags, which can further assist users in discovering your page.
Professional tip: Check out the accounts of other companies in your industry to see which keywords they frequently use in their content on Instagram.
3. Respond to comments and direct messages that come to you on this Instagram account.
Managing an Instagram account is not just about posting content. It’s also about building a community. To grow and maintain your audience on Instagram, respond to questions, thank your followers for their support, keep them informed about upcoming products and services, and be a reliable source of knowledge about your brand.
What we like: Consumers prefer to interact with people, not just brands, so knowing that there is a person behind the account who will answer questions, engage, and provide information creates trust with your audience.
4. You need to have a consistent brand voice
Understand your brand’s mission and develop a consistent brand voice that aligns with its vision. To keep your brand voice consistent, create a style guide for you and your team to follow every time you post on Instagram or interact with followers.
Professional tip: A consistent color palette can also be part of your brand’s voice on Instagram.
Tools for managing an Instagram story
The following tools will help you effectively manage your brand's profile to make it stand out.
1. Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights is a platform tool that allows users to track followers and performance. With Instagram Insights, you can gain valuable information about the accounts you've reached or engaged with, your total followers, your shared content, interactions, and activities. The data collected from this tool will keep you updated on trends, content that resonates with your audience, and what type of content works well for your account.
The tool is only available in the Instagram mobile app.
2. Advertising Manager
Ads Manager is Meta's "all-in-one tool" for creation, manage and track ad performance across Meta properties – including Instagram. With Ads Manager, you can:
- Create brand new ads
- Define your audience for smarter targeting
- Set and manage your advertising budget
- Execute ads across multiple applications
Ad Manager also allows users to adjust campaigns, test ad performance, and gain real-time insights.
Professional tips and tricks for an Instagram account
We spoke with six Instagram managers to get their best tips and tricks for managing an Instagram account. Let’s dive into the trade secrets that Instagram managers swear by.
1. Focus on engagement
The main value proposition of Instagram is that the platform connects people with the things they love. This is why engagement is a key indicator for this platform.
Vana Korrapati, a digital marketing strategy expert and social media manager, says: "I always try to engage my audience by including some of them in my posts. This brings my audience together for a meaningful conversation."
Korrapati uses a clear tactic for a specific goal, meaning she has created a SMART goal – a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal.
You are more likely to achieve goals with these qualities.
For example, your goal on Instagram should be more than just increasing awareness. You need to know what tactics you will use and how to measure it accurately. Whether it's through the number of followers, impressions, reach, or engagement.
Korrapati measures her brand awareness goal through engagement metrics. She says, "My main goal on Instagram is to build awareness, so I track follower count, impressions, and reach."
Also, she constantly evaluates her process.
She says, "I actively use Instagram analytics in my campaigns to understand engagement and continuously adjust my strategy. Failing to evaluate your Instagram analytics can lead to targeting the wrong audience and driving irrelevant traffic."
2. Build an emotional connection
One of the key ways is to build an emotional connection. Instagram makes this easy because you can communicate directly with consumers and potential clients. You can do this by using interactive features like polls or by responding promptly to comments.
Moreover, building an emotional connection will help you increase trust with your audience.
You can monitor your comments to track the emotional connection with your audience.
3. Be consistent with your visual brand
According to Leslie Green, a campaign manager, she states, "Don't ignore the importance of consistent visual branding on Instagram, which includes posts, stories, reels, live videos, and highlight covers."
As more people search for products and brands within the platform, consider your Instagram profile like any other web page.
This means that you should follow our guidelines to help build a sustainable brand on Instagram.
Green adds: You want your page to visually communicate your brand as soon as someone lands on it. Instagram is a highly visual platform, so use that to your advantage with a consistent look and feel to increase brand recognition.
4. Use Instagram Stories
With Instagram Stories, you can show up for your audience every day — and you should. Stories are one of the best ways to get noticed by your audience.
If your Stories become something your audience watches consistently, you'll start appearing more often in their feed.
According to Kelsi Yamada, we love Instagram Stories — and your audience probably does too. Meet them there by posting your own and engaging them with the platform’s polls, quizzes, and question stickers. These stickers help make your Stories fun, memorable, and something to look forward to in the feed.
5. Test everything
According to Kelly Hendrickson, the important thing to remember is that what works for one account might not work for another.
That's why you need to try, learn, and repeat.
And remember, for every strategy you test and implement, you want to keep your customer’s focus at the center.
Hendrickson says, never forget your audience. People choose to be part of your conversation on Instagram. Give them a reason to stay.
6. Provide value to your audience by working smarter, not harder
Jennifer Stefancik, a social media manager, states that the best thing you can do on Instagram is to provide value to your audience.
She says, "Make sure that both the image and the caption, as separate elements, provide value to your audience."
Once you've achieved that, you need to work smarter, not harder. But how can you do that?
Stefancik says, "Use Canva (or a similar tool) to create your posts and stories in advance. Creating them on the spot can be unnecessarily stressful and leaves room for typos."
When creating posts, you can use the same fonts and colors, and plan interactive features like polls or questions. This helps your feed look consistent.
Additionally, Stefancik recommends using a link-in-bio tool so you can direct followers to different parts of your website. This also helps create value for your audience.
These are some of the most successful strategies we've used — but you don't have to just take our word for it.
While these insider tips from social media managers are helpful for anyone starting out on Instagram, don’t forget to test them on your own account. It’s essential to try out every strategy with your social media team to see what actually works for you.
