Discover Boating Social Media 101: What + When to Post on Instagram
Discover Boating's social media team shares their first Instagram installment of its Social Media 101 summer series. In case you missed last month’s Facebook series, just click on the following titles for the full article: What and When to Post on Facebook; How to use Facebook's Business Manager Tool; How to Advertise on Facebook; Lead Generation Ads, Website Traffic & Sign Up Button Tips
Instagram has 500 million users with 90 percent under 35 years of age. With 300 million people using the social platform daily, the photo-sharing app is second only to Facebook for best engagement rates.
Why should your business be on Instagram? In a world with constant distractions, visual content has become key to a business’s marketing strategy success. Instagram gives businesses a unique platform to visually represent their brand. Plus, more than half of Instagram users follow brands, according to a 2015 study in AdWeek. Read the full article here.
Wondering what content to post and when?
What to post. High quality images and videos work best on Instagram. Instagram is a place where you can turn your brand into art and use it to inspire and engage with consumers. Get inspired with tips in this blog post on taking quality photos. Also consider your brand’s look and feel, and if it makes sense create a content theme, such as types of photos, colors and more to give your page a cohesive look. This has proven successful for many businesses - check out Instagram’s favorites here.
Other things to consider when posting:
- Captions – Make sure your caption is concise, but also inspires engagement. Ask people a question or tell them to ‘double tap’ to like a post. The more direct you are, the more engagement you’ll see.
- Hashtags – Research relevant hashtags. Pick popular ones like weekday themes or holidays (i.e. #MondayMotivation or #July4th), but also pick ones that are not as popular (i.e. #dockside has only about 60k posts versus 300k), so you give your content a chance to stand out from the crowd. Generally, there’s no limit to hashtags on this channel, but we recommend 5-10.
We have noticed our @DiscoverBoating followers tend to engage more with photos and videos that help them envision themselves in the photo (for example, feet up on a bow overlooking a beautiful lake). Check out our latest posts for examples.
When to post. Here’s a helpful article with suggested posting times which average the most engagement. Keep track of what posts perform best on certain days and times to help pinpoint when your followers are on Instagram.
For more information on Discover Boating’s Instagram campaign, contact Colleen Richardson, [email protected].
The next Discover Boating Social Media 101 installment will explore best practices for Instagram and how to build followers and engagements.