While there are many things you can do to boost your engagement and grow your Instagram account, there is one that will help you above all else on Instagram in 2021 – use as many features as you can! Posting is great and is a key part of your Instagram strategy but it should not be the only thing you are doing on Instagram this year. If you don’t feel like you have time to do more, I challenge you to cut your weekly posts in half and use that time to try out new features. Watch and take note of what happens to your stats! Most likely you’ll see a boost!
So what content can you create besides posts on Instagram? Believe it or not there are 5 other ways you can be getting your content out on IG! Here’s a breakdown of each one:
Instagram Stories
Likely you have used stories but maybe not enough. Stories are quick and easy to make and doing several a day can help boost your engagement. For some, stories can get more views than their posts! Need some help with what to post on stories? Here’s a few easy ones when you’ve run out of ideas:
- Share other people’s Instagram posts to your Stories.
- Ask a question of your audience, share their responses and tag them. Consider this market research.
- Do a poll. More free market research! Find out what your audience wants.
- Behind the scenes. Share a day in your life.
- Share your family, friends, and/or furbabies. Share a little bit about the person behind the business so your audience can get to know you.
- Share a quote from one of your blogs or podcasts. If you blog, or podcast, you have so much content that you probably aren’t using!
- Go through your phone. Often we have a ton of cute photos and videos sitting on our phone. If so, use them for stories!
- Share your recent post or reels and tell someone why they want to click to see it.
Instagram Reels
Whenever Instagram rolls out a new feature, use it! It will always help boost your engagement. While Reels’ extra boost power is not what it once was when it first came out, it is still good and better than not using it. And I promise you don’t have to dance if you don’t want to… so what can you post on your Reels? Here are some ideas:
- Talk about a recent win in your business. Bonus: if you have enough time tell your audience how they can get that win too.
- Tell them what you do and who you help.
- Share an app, tool, etc that you love and why others will love it too.
- Share your tips whatever they are – easy makeup routine, killer client management system, how to balance home school and work, life hacks, etc.
- Talk about trends in your industry.
Instagram Lives
These are hard for a lot of people – me included! They do still help with the algorithm though and you really should give them a try. Once a twice a week is enough and you can use many of the same ideas that I shared in Reels or even some of the story ideas can be turned into a Live.
IGTV
This one is a bonus. If you have great videos to post here, then definitely do it! If not, one of my favorite hacks is to download the Instagram Live when you are done and then upload it to IGTV. Content repurposing at it’s best! Or if you do YouTube videos, you can reformat them for IGTV too. Don’t stress too much about creating new content for this one. Chances are you already have content you can use!
Instagram Guides
Instagram Guides have been around for well over 6 months now but I’m still surprised when I mention them that many don’t know what they are. They are a great way to link your content together to make it easier for your audience to engage with. If you want to see an example, hop over to my Instagram Profile and look for the little book icon. Click it and you’ll see a guide I made labeled Instagram Tips. This guide links together my recent Instagram Tip posts so they are easy to find.
Instagram Content Schedule
Now you know what to post but when, right? Here’s a weekly schedule I think will do great for Instagram in 2021:
3-5 Posts
5-7 Days of Stories (1-5 Stories a day)
1-2 Reels
1-2 Instagram Lives
1 IGTV
IG Guides monthly as they make sense with your content
Remember the most important Instagram rule though – Be consistent! Commit to only what you can do every week. If it’s just 3 posts and 3 stories, that’s ok. Do what you can do consistently and work up to more.
To learn all my Instagram tips for 2021, download Explode Your Instagram for free!
If you need more social media and marketing tips – here are a few ways I can help for free:
✳️ Want to know what your Instagram engagement rate is? Find out instantly with my workbook: http://bit.ly/IGengageWorksheet
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