Content Strategy: Goals for Each of the 5 Instagram Post Types

love it or hate it but Instagram truly is top tier when it comes to diversity and different types of content that you can post on the platform they truly offer the most wide variety of types of content that you can create which allows you the flexibility to create content that not only plays into your strengths but that your audience loves to consume and that helps you as a small business owner Market your business online but each post type often has a different outcome or they have different goals associated with them depending upon how you use them and this this is the part that can feel a bit overwhelming you don't understand why you need to be on Instagram stories every day or why you need to be creating and posting reals or getting over the fear of going live on Instagram so I want to dive into the five main types of posts that you can create on Instagram and how you can use each of them to create content to Market your small business now before we dive into this I do have one caveat for you a well-rounded Instagram strategy is going to include all of these different post types yes each and every single one of them but as we go through this you do have to understand that you're going to have strengths and weaknesses in each of these different post types and you don't have to create one of these posts each and every single day in order to be successful as you go through this video just remember your overall marketing goals associated with social media keep in mind your ideal audience member and how they consume content and don't forget to play into your strengths when it comes to creating content as well so starting with the very first one instagram feed posts this is the one that you're most familiar with this is the one that Instagram was built on but these are going to include your single photo and single Graphics type posts yes we used to be able to also post just a square video in the feed post but that has changed in recent years and now all videos show up as reals we'll dive into that in just a bit so what's the overall goal of feed post the first thing that I want to talk about here is that feed posts Aren't Dead despite what that random Instagram expert has said and the good thing with feed posts is they can help you achieve almost any marketing goal that you have for social media these are often the EAS easiest types of posts for people to create and the way that I like to approach feed posts is I consider them more maintenance content because these types of posts don't often go viral or get me the growth or the reach or any of these other kind of things yes that can happen sometimes but for me and the way that I approach feed post is I want to consistently show up and give value to my current followers and my current audience and that's how I do that with feed posts they help me maintain consistency and messaging but let's tap into some specific goals here let's say you are wanting a bit of an engagement boost maybe you want some more likes and more comments maybe some more shares create a quote post on Instagram those always tend to get shared the most For Me Maybe you really want your audience to save something and you want to teach them something a fun infographic will do give them a list give them a chart that you can put in one single Instagram image maybe you want to connect with your audience on a more personal level and really kind of of pull them into your community a selfie or a brand photo will do with a nicer caption so again this type of post can help you achieve a couple of different goals but always keep in mind that this was the original posting format on Instagram and people treat it as such there are a ton of different sizes that you can post as you can go back to the original Square I personally recommend using portrait as much as you can because it tends to take up a lot more room on somebody's mobile device versus like a landscape or a square image the one thing that you need to keep in mind with a feed post on Instagram is that it does need to stop the scroll and you more than likely have to expand a bit more in the caption whenever you do this type of post and getting right into post type number two Instagram carousels Instagram carousels are one of my favorite things to create because you can include more media meaning you can include between two to 10 slides of photos graphics and videos or some mixture of the three so the way that I like to approach this and the goal that I have in mind with my carousels is is I basically want to convey some type of message or I want to help my audience dive even deeper into a particular subject or topic it's going to help give more context and information into more complex topics or issues it's going to give them that context or perspective that they need to really connect with you as a brand to really understand a specific topic that you want to educate them on and overall it's just the perfect post type to get into something way deeper so the really cool thing and the trend that we've been seeing with carousels over the last couple of years is they tend to dominate the explore tab for two main reasons number one being that they really do provide a lot of information to people and go in on topics that people need to learn and understand we've already kind of gone over that but it's also because the nature of a carousel keeps people looking at your content for a longer period of time as they swipe and as they look through that entire Carousel they're spending more time on your post than they would a traditional feed post and yes carousels can show up on the explore Tab and they can help you reach new people but I don't want you to think that you're automatically going to go viral every time you post a carousel instead I want you to view a carousel as providing more value to your current audience when you show up with that intention and with that goal in mind the content and that piece is going to perform so much better for you and one last really cool thing that I love about carousels and that makes it so different than all the other pieces of content it is the only style of content that has a chance to show up in your followers feed more than one time you've probably notice this as you're scrolling through your feed you'll see somebody's Carousel post and you'll see the first slide if you didn't engage with it or interact with it the first time around it's likely that that Carousel is going to be shown to you again and show you the second slide now not only is this really cool because it helps people see your content over and over again but also you need to optimize your Instagram Carousel posts to kind of Aid in this process so that first slide and that second slide are the most important and the way that I like to format mine is that first slide is going to be a nice big bold hook to really reel people in but that second slide is just like a quotable moment or some context or talking about people's problems whatever I can do to continue to draw them into that Carousel and in case they are seeing that second slide as they scroll through their feed it is enough for them to stop scrolling as well so getting into post type number three the one that feels a little controversial and that people have a lot of opinions on is Instagram reels most commonly used Instagram reels are about a 60 to 990 second video depending upon your profile you might have the option to record up to 90 seconds but I think vast majority of people at least have that 60-second option and these are vertical videos that you tend to create whether you're talking to the camera or using a trending audio or a very viral sound but Instagram reals also now house every single piece piece of single video content meaning if you post a single video as a feed post it's going to show up in your reals tab or when you do an Instagram live and want have it saved to your profile it's also going to show up as a real so now this is where things start to get a little bit different the goal of reals yeah sure it's definitely for your followers but this is the main piece of content that is going to help you with growth and reach to New audiences to potentially getting you new followers and the reason for this is that there is a whole Tab in a whole separate algorithm dedicated to reals videos that is similar to like the for you page on Tik Tok that is algorithm based and it shows you content based on what it thinks you want to see so your real has potential to show up in the feed of somebody that isn't already following you giving you the chance to gain them as a follower and reals are often suggested even as people scroll through the normal feed even if they aren't following them when it comes to this type of content you do have to understand that even if you're posting a very simple reel or a very simple video they tend to be a bit more timec consuming than the other post types or often times you have to develop certain skills in order to produce them effectively and one last Quick tip here about Instagram reals I'm a bit more long-winded or sometimes I have a video that I want to post that's over that 90c Mark you can still upload videos that are longer than that bandwidth depending upon your account again and it will still show up as real you just don't get access to the reals editor that's inside of Instagram natively now getting into Instagram stories with Instagram stories we also have a unique feature that shows Instagram stories at the top of somebody's profile as a separate feed and again most of you know that Instagram stories expire after 24 hours making them even more unique and the cool part about Instagram stories similar to carousels is that there's a ton of mixed media that you can produce you can add videos you can add photos you can add graphics and then one extra component to really help with engagement is that you you have the option to add stickers and links and all kinds of fun things inside of the story itself for people to interact with so now the big goal of this content is to build rapport with your current following I truly don't care what that Instagram expert said saying if you add enough hashtags to your Instagram stories will reach new people it's simply not true Instagram stories are to create nurture content with your current followers Instagram stories are not for reaching new people or growing your audience and I think myor thing about Instagram stories it is the least curated content that you can create it can take you literally seconds or minutes to get an Instagram story posted and honestly in my personal experience the more curated and more time and effort and energy you put into your Instagram story honestly the worse it performs people really want to go into Instagram stories to see the intimate moments to get to know you as a person see the behind the scenes and see what your life is like think of them as snapshots in moments in time that we know we won't get back we can only see these for 2 2 4 hours and people really like how easy it is to consume and to create these and then one quick tip here is yes we know that they expire but if you do have a top performing story or you have something that you really want people to consume over and over again that you created in stories you can save them to Instagram story highlights you can almost consider this another type of content that you create on Instagram but all you simply have to do is save it to a highlight you're not going out and creating something crazy this is going to stretch out the lifespan of your Instagram story give it a longer shelf life and people can come back and view it past that 24-hour Mark and the last one I want to talk about here is Instagram lives now before you run away and hide in a corner let's dive into how to actually use these listen I know Instagram lives can be very very scary but we need to kind of talk about how you can integrate them into your overall Instagram strategy so Instagram lives give you the unique ability to connect with your current audience in real time you can answer their questions really engage in a conversation which is so unique compared to the other posting types so there are actually two main goals that you can focus in on when going live on Instagram and the first is if you were doing a solo live meaning just by yourself you're going to continue to nurture the relationship that you have with your Audience by either providing them value or genuinely having a conversation with them so the goal is nurturing or type two is if you go live with other people with other people in your Niche with peers it's going to give you the ability to reach new people and potentially grow your audience so the second goal with Instagram lives is actually growth and you can use lives to your advantage in so many different ways you can talk about so many different topics and you can actually approach the end goal in a couple of different ways here so often I've seen either solo lives or live rooms with others where people will create timely content meaning you can only watch that live live you aren't going to be able to catch a replay and in doing so and in marketing the live in that that way you can give people this weird sense of exclusivity and they're like I'm watching this in real time and I'm getting this information that nobody else can get you can also use lives to your advantage by downloading the live afterwards and splicing it up for Instagram reels so that people can still watch the live in its entirety in real time and then you can take those key pieces where people were really engaging with the live or you want to provide more context and turn them into posts later on down the line or the most common way to do this is after you're finished with the live you can simply repost the entire replay and it'll show up in the reals tab now one cool thing that I want to dive even a little bit deeper here is live rooms the way that I want you to approach these is obviously select people that you trust because you don't want to show your current audience to somebody else and break that trust with your current audience so you'll want to tap into people that you know talk about similar things or they have similar shared values as you and the cool part here is that it's going to show up in people's feeds and be like hey so and so is going live with so and so and when you're in this live room you can encourage people to hey follow this person follow that person and it's an easy drop- down menu and basically it's just like a fun growth tool to get you in front of other people's audiences one quick example here I've done live rooms in the past with other industry experts in my Niche and some of them have bigger audiences than me I did a live one time where I joined three other women who were absolutely brilliant but they all had 20 to 30,000 followers more than I did and I was very grateful that they let me into their live but the thing here is they all encouraged their audiences to come and follow me and in that 30 minute live I gained 200 new followers while those results aren't always typical that's the one way that you can use Instagram lives to your advantage to help with growth and reach as well so the main purpose of this video was to help you understand the different types of Instagram posts most of these you're probably familiar with but I also wanted you to get a deeper understanding on the goals of each of these posts something we often don't think about I want you to acknowledge why you're creating them in the first place and how to introduce all of these different pieces into having a well-rounded content strategy on Instagram but now if you need help managing all this content that you create for Instagram I do have a free air table content planner template that you guys can grab at the link in the description below I'll see you guys next week and don't forget to hit subscribe

Channel: Amber Figlow

Views: 3,530

Keywords: instagram, instagram tips, post types, instagram advice, social media, social media tips, social media advice

Id: at02w66Z308

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2024