Similar to Youtube, Instagram thrives on its visual nature, so to keep your content ahead of the game to stand out. To set yourself up for success let’s ensure your Instagram posts are effective.
We’ll introduce you to 15 Instagram post ideas that’ll transform your presence on the platform and leave your followers wanting more.
How Instagram Posts Boost Your Marketing Efforts
Although it’s a great platform to catch up with friends, or watch entertaining videos, it’s also one of the best social media platforms to conduct your marketing. Instagram has the means to be an extremely effective marketing tool, if you know how to use it.
Master Instagram content by posting a wide variety of content, from industry news to educational content. The more variety, the more you can target every aspect of your audience for engagement and growth.
Content Strategies For Instagram
Tune into these Instagram tailored best practices. Follow these three content strategies to perfect your Instagram engagement and wow your audience.
1. Post At Optimal Times
Don’t let impressive content go unnoticed, it’s crucial you publish your content at optimal times. Understand when your target audience is the most active on the platform and include the best known times to post on Instagram.
2. Follow A Consistent Schedule
Your content will receive the most attention when it publishes on a consistent schedule. If your followers aren’t sure when or if you’ll post, they are less likely to see your content.
Don’t leave your audience high and dry. Create a consistent publishing schedule that your marketing team can easily stick to and your audience will meet you there.
Find The Best Way To Plan An Instagram Content Calendar With A Template!
3. Create Engaging Content
Now, we will dive into exactly how to do this next, but here are some quick tips for creating engaging content your audience genuinely wants to see. Consider developing brand colors and using them for the majority of your posts. This way, your content feels familiar to your audience and if you need a post to stand out, you can choose a different color scheme.
Use the free Instagram Caption Generator to generate AI-powered Instagram captions to boost your engagement.
Try our The #1 Free Instagram Text Generator!
15 Game-Changing Instagram Post Ideas
Now into the main course of the post. Feel free to put these ideas in your back pocket, so whenever you hit a content block or need to refresh your Instagram postings, you can refer back to these.
1. Product Showcase
There is never a bad time to shine a spotlight on a new or improved product. Go the extra mile to express excitement, anticipation, and even the creative process for how the product came to be.
There’s plenty of flexibility to a post dedicated as a product showcase. You can post one as a tease for an upcoming product or introduce it while it’s actually live! Either way, you’ll get your followers buzzing about the product and that’s a job well done.
Nike made a short video dedicated to their new drop: The Air Max Dn. With eye-catching edits, and while keeping the video short, fans enjoyed the update on a fresh pair of sneakers.
2. Behind-The-Scenes
Give your following a sneak peek into what a day-in-the-life looks like for you. More often than not, your followers are interested in what goes on behind the scenes, and are curious to learn things beyond your product.
Film a little behind the scenes of things your followers would never see. Give them a tour of the office, a “what’s in my bag”, or introduce them to your workspace. Anything to make your followers feel more a part of the process.
Take a peek into how Louboutin took their followers behind the scenes during a sketch session. For any Louboutin fan, this was probably a very surreal experience. They got to see one of their favorite designers, brainstorm, sketch and bring a design to life!
3. Flash Sales
Just like your product showcases, you should never hesitate to announce a flash sale (especially because it is time sensitive). Consider posting an instagram story with a countdown until the flash sale goes live, and then perhaps posting the second it goes live.
Generate some electricity around your sale and/or discount and your followers will come running.
This is how Strng Official announced a flash sale about workouts on their app! The use of emojis, hashtags, and offering sneak peek into one of the workouts, got followers talking!
4. Industry News
Remember your business is part of something bigger. Your following is interested in your product, so you can assume they have their foot in the main industry as well. Post about any industry news that relates or affects your business.
Use this as a moment to prove your expertise in the field as well as further inform your users!
5. Seasonal/Holiday Posts
Don’t let seasons and holidays pass you by without acknowledgement. You can celebrate these holidays with discounts/flash sales, themed products, or showing your following how you celebrate.
Remind your following you aren’t just an Instagram robot but a hard-working team behind the screen.
Look at how Tito’s vodka got into the Christmas spirit for their followers! Creating a beautiful holiday themed post definitely gets followers excited and gets them thinking for the holidays with Tito’s in mind.
Bonus points for Tito’s because they added a Christmas specialty drink recipe in their caption!
6. Customer Testimonials
Give your followers a chance to speak their mind! Encourage users to provide feedback and reviews of your product, so in the future you can repost positive testimonials! Re-posting to Instagram with customer testimonials proves to potential leads that your product is worth the hype and delivers on its promises.
This is one of our very own customer testimonials, explaining his satisfaction with one of our most popular products! You take the time to recognize and appreciate your customers’ kind words, and you gain a deeper understanding of what exactly they liked about it.
7. Before-And-After
Providing your audience with a before-and-after post really puts into perspective the demand for your product. Show-off why your product is the only one that can do what it does.
If a before-and-after doesn’t quite work for your specific product, consider a comparison post. Compare your service or product to others and how yours stands out. Your followers will appreciate clear side-by-side representations.
Here, a salon took advantage of an impressive before-and-after! This idea shows your followers with two pictures exactly what your product/service can do for each and every customer!
An effective before-and-after post also helps followers visualize themselves in that place and motivates them to try it out.
8. Go Instagram Live
Show another side to your brand by going live! This feature on Instagram is wildy under-used as it encourages and drives engagement as well as interaction. Since Instagram lives aren’t the primary use of Instagram, you can surprise your audience with a live video. If some followers missed it, they will be hanging on to the edge of their set for the next one.
Followers that join the live can interact with you in real-time, asking questions, listening along, or starting conversation!
9. Employee Features
Turn the spotlight on some stellar employees. Give them an opportunity to open up about who they are outside of the workplace and not just as an employee but a person.
Here at CoSchedule we call it a “coworker corner”. Each week the entire company listens in and learns past surface level information about who they work next to!
Your followers will love seeing the employees take the floor, and probably wish they had it at their work too.
10. Upcoming Events
Be sure to touch base on upcoming events whether that’s through short videos, posts, or an instagram story, ensure your following is aware of the event with all questions answered. The more you promote it the more traffic it’ll receive!
Keep in mind those optimal times to post we talked about earlier and include those in your strategizing here! Give details about said event during those optimal times and you have yourself a big hit.
Lululemon posted an engaging video of an event they hosted a few days prior. They took the chance to thank those of their following that attend and recognize where to find the footage of the event on their app! Both of these encourage people to return to more future events and show those who didn’t attend, what they missed out on!
11. Community Involvement
AS a company it’s important to give back to your local community and get involved. Share on social media how you participate in community events/volunteering and be proud of where you came from!
The roots of your company lie in your community, time to show it some love.
12. Company Milestones
Share your company milestones with your followers and allow them to celebrate the good news with you! After all, you couodn;t have done it without them. Congratulate your team, followers, and coworkers for a job well done.
This also helps put into perspective just how much progress and hard work you accomplish on a daily basis. Recognize your hard work, celebrate it, and then keep pushing forward.
13. Educational Posts
Sort of along the lines of dedicating a post it industry trends, you can introduce new topics to your followers and educate them! By branching out to new, but related topics you can learn alongside your audience.
Take a second to share your expertise and interests about topics similar to yours.
14. Quotes
This is the perfect chance to break up serious content with a light, motivational saying. It can be common themes and phrases said around the office or exchange at the water cooler, or it can be famous quotes your team lives by.
Wherever you get the quote from, keep it lighthearted, motivational and authentic.
15. Ask A Poll Question
Poll questions are one of the best ways to understand your audience on a deeper level and also give them the chance to be heard. After all, you and your customers are a team, working together in a mutually beneficial relationship.
You can ask your followers what products they prefer/use the most, or what they would like to see in the future. You can even tease an upcoming launch and ask what they think the product will be. All of these answers hint to what sort of things your audience enjoys about your product, as well as drive interaction through Instagram.
Apartment List nailed the idea of a poll, and asked their followers if they prefer green tops of skyline! Learning more about their audience one poll at a time.
Brands Who Crush Instagram Marketing
Let’s see what we learned put into action. Here are some examples of successful brands with impressive instagram marketing.
GoPro
Right alongside how Instagram focuses on visuals, so does GoPro. They share plenty of content on their Instagram stories, consisting of aesthetically pleasing videos from unique perspectives. GoPro also takes advantage of trending hashtags and posts consistent user-generated content.
Incredibly cool content, as well as boosted user engagement, however we do not condone these actions unless you’re… well a professional.
AirBnb
One thing AirBnb does exceptionally well on Instagram is their ability to let their photos speak a thousand words. They post click-worthy content, so it forces viewers to stop and digest their content.
Talk about product showcases!
Glossier
Check out how Glossier promotes seasonal products on their Instagram! For example, they took to their feed to celebrate Valentine’s day with the perfect products to match it.
Etsy
If you don’t know what Etsy is, it’s an entire platform dedicated to selling and purchasing objects, art, items, that any artist made. So, you can imagine their user-based content is through the roof. Not only do they advocate for the most vintage and unique items, but they promote small businesses 24/7. Users will never find a dull moment scrolling through Etsy’s instagram because their variety keeps them alive!