Okay first, I’d like to say CONGRATULATIONS!

You taking the time to read this blog is a strong indicator that you truly care about your Instagram business account and if you continue to learn and grow, you’re guaranteed to do great!

We all need to start somewhere, right?

Your ‘somewhere’ could mean:

• You have an account but don’t know what to post

• You have a few posts here and there but no real strategy

• You post consistently with a good following but looking to optimize

• Or anywhere in between

In this guide, we’re going to be sharing our top tips and tricks to get you optimizing your account so you can reach more clients and build more awareness!!

So let’s dive in!

Where to Begin? Start Here...

Before you post ANYTHING on your Instagram, you should always be asking yourself the following questions:

1. Is this relevant or relatable to my followers?

2. Is it engaging or entertaining to my followers?

3. Am I providing value to my followers?
   

Posting without a strategy or plan is NEVER a good idea. The first thing you need to do before moving any further is to come up with a plan.

What is your goal? (check all that apply)

• Gain followers

• Increase your brand awareness

• Drive more traffic to your website

• Attracting more clients

• Get more engagement

• Other:

• Please Specify:______________

Regardless of what you’re trying to achieve, your goals will need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely, or ‘S.M.A.R.T. Goals’

Setting S.M.A.R.T Goals

If you’ve run a business for any length of time, you know how important setting up goals are to achieving success. The same thing applies for Instagram.

So what exactly are S.M.A.R.T Goals?

1. Specific — the more specific you can be with your goals, the easier it will be to clearly see what you are trying to achieve. Example: I want to grow my following on Social Media is great, but is it specific? How about I want to double my instagram following in 6 months.

2. Measurable — how will you measure your success? For example — saying you want to double the number of your existing Instagram followers gives you a specific number to try and hit.

3. Attainable — is your goal attainable? Can you realistically double the number of your followers? If you already have a large following and it’s taken you years and years to build, saying you want to double it by the end of the week seems a bit unrealistic. Make your goal something that you need to work hard for, but it also needs to be attainable

4. Relevant — a relevant goal is aligned closely to your business objectives. Does this goal support your business’s objectives, vision, or values?

5. Time Specific — give your goal a deadline. Every goal that you set must have a target end date. You need something to work toward and a deadline to focus on. Ultimately, deadlines will keep you accountable to minimize the risk of procrastination.

Change your profile to a “Business or Creator profile”

Switching your Instagram profile from a personal account to a business or creator account will unlock some new powerful features for your business to take advantage of.

First, you will receive call-to-action buttons like “message, email, text or call” allowing clients to easily contact your business.

Second, you will get access to your account’s insights! Insights will let you know what time your followers are online most which is helpful when figuring out your posting schedule. Analytics also let you know how your posts are performing, telling you which ones resonate best with your audience and what they potentially want to see more of. Ultimately, these metrics are vital for the optimization of your account.

Third, as a business/creator profile, you get access to ads within Instagram; so if you want to do some paid promo, it’s easy and accessible.

Finally, if you get to the point where you have all your content created and ready to post, you can save time by ‘scheduling it’. You have to have your instagram account connected with the matching facebook business page (which also lets you share your instagram content to facebook as well if you want). There are so many great scheduling resources available right now. If you’re looking for free & easy, we suggest using the meta business suite.

To switch to a business/creator account go to Your Profile → Settings–>Account → Switch account type. Now there is a difference between the creator and business accounts so make sure to do a little bit of research and find out which one works best for you.

Keyword searches in your profile

What exactly is a keyword and how can it improve your optimization?

To help future clients find you easier, make sure you are adding words into your bio that a potential client might use to look up your business. More and more people are using instagram to find salons in their area, so make sure you are using all the words they might use to search a business like yours up.

They might search YOUR CITY | TYPE OF EXTENSIONS YOU OFFER so add lines like this:

• London hair extensions

• Nano hair extensions in London

• Hair extension salon | London ON

Take some time and think of good, searchable keywords that one might type if they’re looking for your business online. Then play around with your bio to try and fit as many of these words in as possible but try to avoid overcrowding or making it too words.

Now you may not be able to get all of those specific keywords into your display name, but getting the really important ones in there is going to help your account show up when a potential client types those words into the search bar. Try optimizing your display name to: [your name] - [location] Hair Extensions for example.

When it comes to your bio, you have some more characters available to get more keywords in compared to your display name. In a few short sentences, your social media bio needs to be clear about what your business is and what it does and why a potential client should follow you.

We suggest when crafting your bio, aim to sound natural and let your brand personality shine through.

Utilize all forms (posts, reels, stories) but MOST importantly … REELS

For social media optimization, posting consistently is key to getting on top of searches, hashtags, and explore pages.

Since Reels were added to the platform mid-2021, they have completely taken off. Instagram created ‘Reels’ to compete with TikTok, and because of that, they started prioritizing Reels in the feed over other types of content.

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you scroll through your instagram home feed, it doesn’t take long before a reel comes up, and if you click on that, you’re now in the ‘reel section’ that will share only reels compared to the home feed that will show posts as well.

Play around with trending sounds and ideas to see what fits your strategy best.

Planning Content Ideas

Coming up with content ideas can be incredibly stressful for some, but only if you don’t know where to look or if you’re going one post at a time. The most mentally and time draining thing you can do is coming up with your content ideas on the day that you’re posting that piece of content.

We suggest you plan your ideas about a month in advance. I sit down at the beginning of every month and plan all of my Instagram posts for the next 30 days. Now, I won’t create all 30 posts on that day, but I will make sure the ideas are noted down in an easy-to-find platform (like google slides) so that when it comes to the content creation, I know exactly what needs to be done. This also gives me a platform to jot down little caption ideas that come to me throughout the day rather than on scrap pieces of paper that get lost on my desk.

Some of you may be thinking 30 content ideas are A LOT, but trust me, it isn’t as difficult as you may first think. Especially after learning about these few places that I consistently go to for my content ideas:

1. Ask your audience – You don’t need to over complicate your content idea generation. Sometimes it can be as simple as asking your audience what their problems are, or what they ACTUALLY want to consume. This is where I suggest you utilize the story stickers made available to you by Instagram (particularly the question sticker). You don’t have to directly ask “what content do you want to see?” but instead ask your questions discreetly, for example:

   • What do you currently struggle with when it comes to _____

   • What about ______ do you find most challenging?

   • What do you find hardest _______

   From these questions people are going to respond with their pain points

2. Quora – Quora is a question and answers website. It’s as easy as heading over to the website and searching your niche in the search bar. You can then filter your search by questions. Every question that appears under that search can be considered as a content idea. You can safely assume that these questions are common problems for individuals in your niche. Take this, and create a post solving the problem.

3. Answerthepublic.com – With one simple search of your niche, it accumulates all of the google search insights that relate to your search term. But when I say “accumulates” I don’t mean 10-15 ideas, what I really mean is that it generates hundreds of ideas!

Conclusion

Creating and managing a fully optimized Instagram account capable of attracting and engaging followers will require an organized plan of attack, hard work and plenty of patience. Being able to measure performance and being willing to make changes in reaction to the numbers will put you well ahead of the competition!

Hopefully you found value in this article. Keep this somewhere close so you can look back on it whenever you need a refresher!

Happy Optimizing, Friends!