---
# System prepended metadata

title: Instagram Guides
tags: [education, ' guides']

---

---
title: Instagram Guides
tags: education, guides
description: Instagrumpy frameworks
---

# Goals & Objectives
## Overview

Goals refer to the end result you want from your instagram campaign. Objectives, on the other hand, are strategies or actions that help you achieve those goals.

In order for a digital marketing strategy to be effective, it has to contain a set of goals and objectives that define what you want to accomplish through your efforts.

### Takeaway skills

1. Defining what is important for your account or business.
2. Developing high-level strategies to reach your milestones.
3. Measuring performance on your objectives.

### We’ll cover the following:

- What are "Goals & Objectives"?
- How to define goals?
- How to define objectives?
- What are the key performance indicators?
- Summary


## 1. Goals & Objectives

Every business, organization, and individual has goals for their endeavors. In digital marketing, these goals can range from increasing leads to building awareness or creating a strong community presence. Meeting your social media goals is important because they help you target your audience in a way that will have the greatest impact.

Your company's goals are translated into marketing objectives, after which content strategy is utilized to attract customers and create a positive return on investment.

Having clear objectives informs all of your future actions and helps improve the effectiveness of every step you take toward achieving a goal. For example, if one goal was “drive brand awareness within our target demographic” and an objective from this goal was to run a photo contest with the hashtag #newproductrelease, this would tell you exactly what type of campaign or content would be most effective at reaching this specific objective.

## 2. Defining Goals

Social media is a great tool for businesses because it allows entrepreneurs to connect with their target consumers more directly than ever before. However, this opportunity can easily be wasted if business owners don't understand why they are using social media in the first place. Defining clear goals for social media use will ensure that you have an effective strategy that aligns with your brand's overall business objectives.

**How can we make sure that the time and efforts we invest in social media provide us with as much value as possible?**

A fascinating study revealed that goal setting can have a significant influence on an individual's performance and happiness. In 2010, a group of researchers in Canada examined the impact of goal-setting on the academic performance of 85 pupils over four months. They discovered that the subset who went through intensive goal-setting training had significantly better outcomes than the control group.

Long-term goals should be outlined before launching any type of social media campaign. Defining metrics helps businesses determine which stats are most important to track throughout the course of a given project or initiative.

Here are some examples for reference:

- **Small business:** connect with local fans and build a stronger community presence.
- **Startups:** create awareness for a new product launch and generate leads.
- **Enterprise:** provide a timely customer service channel to increase loyalty.

The most frequent aims of an Instagram Marketing Strategy are as follows:

- Increase brand awareness
- Generate new leads
- Grow revenue
- Build community
- Boost engagement
- Drive traffic to your website
- Effective customer service
- Improve public relations

## 3. Defining Objectives

It's time to draft your SMART social media objectives once you've decided on your broad goals. We can't recommend the SMART goal-setting approach enough for social marketers, and it's extremely popular.

If you're not familiar with SMART, it stands for:

- **S**pecific: Your objectives should be obvious, basic, and well-defined.
- **M**easurable: This is where analytics come in handy. You'll need a goal with one or more metrics.
- **A**chievable: Is it doable or not feasible within your means?
- **R**ealistic: Is it feasible for you to achieve your objectives with the resources you currently have?
- **T**ime-sensitive: A time frame is required for every objective, whether it's a year or several months long.

**Example**

- Increase follower count by 3000 in 90 days.
- Receive 150 emails in the next 30 days.

## 4. Key Performance Indicator

The KPI or Key Performance Indicator is an important measure to keep track of when you are promoting your brand across various social networks. These metrics can be used not only as measures of success but also as tools to help improve future marketing initiatives and campaigns.

A KPI report consists of different numbers that come together to provide a picture regarding how successful a particular social media channel has been. Such reports indicate the value and impact of this channel on targeted markets (eMarketing). The KPI itself might be based on such factors as "Likes" received on Instagram or the number of comments. You can get your hands on KPI reports by using Instagram Insights and third party tools as well.

Below you'll find some of the KPI's to measure for the most common objectives.

**Increase brand awareness**
- Count of followers
- Reach of your posts
- Total mentions and shares

**Generate new leads**

- Emails collected
- Information shared
- Conversions of leads from Instagram

**Grow revenue**

- The number of signups
- Conversion from ads

**Build community**

- Growth in members (Facebook/Slack)
- Number of questions & responses

**Boost engagement**

- Likes, shares, and comments per post
- Total mentions and replies

**Drive traffic to your website**

- Total traffic from Instagram
- The bounce rate of Instagram traffic

**Effective customer service**

- The number of support questions
- Response time to customers
- Customer satisfaction score

**Improve public relations**

- The potential reach of a campaign
- Engagement from Influencers
- Outreach by media

## Summary

Your goals are translated into marketing objectives, after which content strategy is developed and utilized to attract followers and customers to create a positive return on investment. Clear objectives ensure that social media is used effectively and aligns with business goals.

You should draft SMART social media objectives to make sure you are working towards achieving your goals.

The KPI is an important measure to take into consideration when you are promoting your brand across social media networks.

# Instagram Profile

## Overview

You've probably heard that first impressions are important, right? In real life as well as online. It all starts with a profile that stands out.

### Takeaway skills

- Importance of impeccable Instagram profile

### We’ll cover the following:

- Key aspects of Instagram profile
- Summary

## 1. Key Aspects of Profile

1. **Profile Photo:** If it is your personal account or if you are a creator or influencer, then always use a real photo of you. In the case of a brand or company use the logo. This becomes identifiable for your audience, so try not to change it often.
2. **Picking Username:** You may feel that all good ones are already taken but you can always find something creative and memorable. In the initial stages try a couple of them to see which one sticks and get feedback from friends and family as well.
3. **Profile Name:** This does not have to be the same as your username. For best results choose a meaningful name - your name, brand name, or what you do (example: Yoga & Meditation). Instagram uses the name in the search results and a meaningful name will help you get discovered.
4. **Instagram Bio:** Write a bio that connects with your audience. You can further take help from the framework Instagram Pitch and Target Audience to make your bio pop.
5. **Writing Instagram Bio:** While you can write a simple bio on the Instagram mobile app, there is a way to make it look better. Use an external tool such as online character counter tool to write your bio. Keep the bio at 150 characters or less. You can use line breaks and emojis (emoji tool) to make it look better. Once done to your liking, and if you used the online character counter tool then first, copy and paste it into any text editors such as Notes or Notepad. Then again copy and paste it into your Instagram bio on your desktop. It won't work on a mobile phone.
6. For the Business or Creator account, choose the relevant category.
7. Setup Instagram contact options, especially if you are a local business.
8. **Instagram Link:** This can be a link to your website but generally you may want your audience to see a nice-looking page with more than one link. As Instagram only allows one link, you can use third-party tools such as Link in Bio or Linktree.

## Summary

There are multiple components to your Instagram profile and you must not ignore any of its components. The better you set up your profile, the more professional it will look to your audience and will prof=vide you with the brand identity and growth in following.

# Instagram Algorithm

## Overview

The Instagram algorithm determines what content gets seen. So it is necessary to understand the basic principles at play. Knowing the Instagram algorithm is the key to having a successful account.

It's also worth knowing that the Instagram algorithms change from time to time, and we do our best to keep this framework updated.

In a nutshell, the Instagram algorithm is the set of regulations that govern how far your content may reach organically.

### Takeaway skills

- Basics of the Instagram algorithm
- Key signals to keep in mind
- How to work with the latest Instagram algorithm

### We’ll cover the following:

- How does the Instagram algorithm work?
- What are the key ranking signals?
- Tips to making the best out of Instagram algorithm
- Summary

## 1. Instagram Algorithm

Instagram doesn't use one algorithm to regulate what people see on the platform. They employ a variety of approaches, classifiers, and methods for each purpose.

The primary purpose is to make the most of users' time. As Instagram makes most of its revenue through advertising, they want users to spend even more time browsing the app.

But, how does the algorithm determine whether a piece of content is worth showing to a particular person at any given moment?

The algorithm immediately goes through all available material whenever a person opens the app and makes the following decision:

- Which posts to show in the newsfeed, and in what order
- Which posts to display on the Explore tab
- Algorithms works for all post types be it still images, stories, or reels

Essentially, it analyzes the user's past actions, sweeps through all available posts, and then determines how interesting each one is to that person. The most engaging material rises to the top.

This is done by calculating the thousands of data points that provide ranking signals.

## 2. Ranking Signals

According to Instagram, its algorithms employ key indicators in their analyses, which vary depending on each element.

Instagram claims that its systems can extract "thousands" of signals, but the most essential ones on Feed, Reels, and Stories, are:

**Relationship**

The algorithm assumes that people who’ve interacted with your account in the past will be interested in your new content.

It examines your relationship based on the following interactions:

- Following each other on Instagram
- Direct Messaging each other
- Commenting, liking, saving, or tagging posts
- If they searched for you by name

The algorithm will recognize a good relationship if your audience is loyal and regularly engages with your posts.

**Timeliness**

This is something else you may have noticed: the Instagram algorithm believes that the most recent postings are most essential to people and the newer posts are displayed at the top of the newsfeed.

**Interest**

In most cases, the algorithm's purpose is to provide people what they want. Instagram analyzes the content and then distributes it to those who may be interested in those particular content.

Instagram senses interests through users' likes, comments, and engaged with a certain type of content recently.

For example, if you are interested in yoga, then you'll see a lot of content including ads around yoga in your feed and explore tab.

**Popularity**

Instagram also looks at how popular a post is, for example, how many people have liked it or saved it. It also looks at how quickly it is getting engagement and how long it can keep the users engaged.

Most of the content which makes it to the top of the exploring tab is popular and it gives these contents a chance to find a new audience.

**Reels**

It deserves a special mention because besides being one of the latest content types introduced, it is also considered the most important by Instagram.

Tiktok has become more popular these days and this is Instagram's answer to keep users engaged in their platform. Short-form and entertaining videos are getting the most engagement among all forms of content.

Instagram also looks at the audio track being used and its popularity in addition to its quality, originality, and popularity.

## 3. Working with Instagram Algorithm

**Create Reels**

Instagram itself admitted that it is no more a photo-sharing platform, in addition, all reports suggest that the algorithm is currently “boosting” Reels aggressively. Instagram wants Reels to replicate TikTok's success, period.

Quality and originality are important and not the number of reels you post. If it is engaging, Instagram will increase the reach, improving your chances to be discovered by more people and that means more followers and engagement.

**Post carousels**

Carousels are multiple still images combined into one, it increases the amount of time a user engages with the post and the Instagram algorithm likes it.

According to Hootsuite's research, they have three times the engagement and 1.4x the reach of other post types.

**Post consistently**

The newest post gets to the top of users' feeds and that is the reason it is key to post consistently.

Data shows businesses post more than 1 post on average daily and for the right reasons, the more users see you the more chances you get for engagement.

In June 2021, Instagram's chief Adam Mosseri revealed that a feed posting frequency of two per week and two Stories each day is optimum for developing a following on the app.

**Posting time**

People are spending around 25 minutes each day on Instagram and there are 100s of posts competing for their attention.

You may be tempted to find out the best times to post content on Instagram, there are plenty of resources on it if you search. Still trying to find out when your audience is most active.

Just experiment with it, post during different times, and see which one gets you more immediate likes. You'll eventually find the best timings for your posts.

**Hashtags**

They may be one of the oldest tools to get discovered on Instagram but are not any less than others.

Accurate, and thoughtful hashtags indicate to the algorithm what's in your post and who may be interested in it.

## Summary

This article has given you a lot of insight into the Instagram algorithm. If you want to take advantage of this information, it is important that you post at least two times per week and use hashtags in your posts correctly to increase engagement with your audience.

The more people see what you are posting on Instagram, the better chance they will have for engaging with it!

# Feed Aesthetic

## Overview

The appearance of your Instagram account is the first thing potential customers see when they visit your brand's profile. The colors, layout, tone, and overall vibe of your Instagram page all contribute to a style that may either attract new followers or drive them away.

A distinct and well-integrated Instagram aesthetic not only looks good, but it can also enhance brand recognition and company success. It will send the message of your brand's voice, personality, and help followers recognize your content when it shows up on their feeds.

### Takeaway skills

- Create unique instagram aesthetic

### We’ll cover the following:

- Approaching instagram aesthetics
- How to create instagram aesthetics?
- Examples
- Summary

## 1. The Approach

The importance of Instagram aesthetics also known as Instagram themes is quite important when it comes to marketing. Companies need to have a cohesive marketing strategy that includes their social media platforms as well visual aesthetics with their logos.

In the end, before you start creating aesthetics, several items must be completed for your brand's aesthetic to benefit your business.

**Define your core values**

The appearance and feel of various brands on Instagram are influenced by distinct priorities. If you're a yoga clothing business that specializes in eco-friendly attire, for example, your Instagram account will reflect these ideas.

It can show up through color choices (more on that later), topic selections, and any messaging communicated via stylized text posts.

This can be completed using the Instagrumpy framework, Instagram Pitch. It is located in the prerequisites section at the bottom of this page.

**Define your target audience**

Developing your brand's appearance becomes second nature when you know who your content is trying to reach out to. The clientele of a Yoga apparel shop will be significantly different from those of an Electronic Music clothing shop.

You'll also find that this helps you to define your brand's personality. Is it more casual and modern? classic and traditional? Or something else entirely? You may choose your conversational tone, such as formal or informal, by using the appropriate words.

You can define your target audience using the Instagrumpy framework, Target Audience. It is located in the prerequisites section at the bottom of this page.

**Define brand colors and typography**

Color is crucial in developing a distinct Instagram aesthetic for your business. According to a study, color influences customer purchasing decisions by about 85%. Color, in addition, boosts brand recognition by 80%.

Once you’ve picked your colors and fonts, incorporate them into all of your content.

You can define your brand colors and typography using the Instagrumpy framework, Brand Colors, and Brand Typography. They are located in the prerequisites section at the bottom of this page.

## 2. Creating Instagram Aesthetics

Good aesthetics make the feed appear to have been made on the same day in the same light, with everything looking cohesive.

**Editing**

The most consistent Instagram aesthetics will have mastered their editing techniques. There is no mixing of dark and gloomy images with light and lively content. 

The ideal method to maintain your Instagram aesthetic is to use presets on your photographs. Instagram presets are pre-made filters that you may apply to photos using a program like Canva. This will help you not to worry about forgetting how much brightness you usually add to your shots again.

Whatever you do, whether it's a picture or text-only post, it must have your brand's characteristics. All you have to do now is make sure they're properly edited with the proper colors, textures, typefaces while also keeping their captions and perspective in line with your brand's personality.

Some tools like below can help you edit your content well:
- Canva
- InShot
- Adobe Spark

**Scheduling**

After that, you'll need to plan out your Instagram feed. You want your Instagram page to appear well-considered and professional, so carefully preparing it is the way to go.

When you plan your feed, you'll be able to see which pieces of content look best together—and which don't. You'll be able to tell where you need another shot of your brand's primary hue and where you could use a brighter photo in the mix.

The tools mentioned below can help you with planning and scheduling content:
- Planoly
- Later
- Hootsuite

## 3. Instagram Themes Examples

Colorful Theme by [@canva](https://www.instagram.com/canva/)

![](https://i.imgur.com/CBaW6U2.jpg)
Canva

Color coordinated Instagram theme by [@stellamariabaer](https://www.instagram.com/stellamariabaer/)

![](https://i.imgur.com/PL6H0YG.jpg)
stellamariabaer

Checkerboard Instagram theme by [@bossbabe.inc](https://www.instagram.com/bossbabe.inc/)

![](https://i.imgur.com/jagTsvp.jpg)
bossbabe.inc

## Summary

The top 9-12 posts on your Instagram feed are often the first pieces of content that visitors see. From the type of imagery you choose to the filters and editing techniques you apply, every tiny detail builds a stronger story for your audience to follow.

With your Instagram feed and stories branded cohesively on your profile, visitors will be more likely to convert into followers when they get a strong first impression of your account.

# Branded Hashtag
## Overview

What is a branded hashtag? In plain words, It's your hashtag.

Creating a branded hashtag is an excellent approach to create rapid interest.

Instagram users adore tagging pages and utilizing hashtags to be discovered. It's a method of obtaining exposure while also gaining more followers.

### Takeaway skills

- Branded Hashtags

### We’ll cover the following:

- Creating a branded hashtag
- Summary

## 1. Branded Hashtags

According to research by Simply Measured, 70 percent of the most-used hashtags on Instagram have branded hashtags created by businesses.

Creating a hashtag around your brand is a fantastic strategy to increase its searchability; whether it's simply your brand name or something more inspirational.

A branded hashtag is generally unique to your business. It can be:
- company name, #nike
- company tagline, #justdoit
- name of your products, #airmax
- Related to your brand identity, #fitlife

**Keep it simple**

Maintain a short, simple, and easy-to-spell brand hashtag so that your fans and customers can remember it.

**Keep it memorable**

Hashtags that are funny, creatively constructed, or both have a better chance of being remembered.

**Keep it unique**

You don't want it to be overly narrow that it gets lost in the sea of hashtags related to other businesses or general such as #shoes or #fitness.

## Summary

You may use a catchy, branded Instagram hashtag to increase brand recognition, but it might take some effort to get people to start using it. You can try having a contest and ask your audience to post content with your hashtags to get high engagement and user-generated content.

Include your branded Instagram hashtag in all marketing materials, including emails, printed items, and corporate logos. It should also be present on all of your social media sites, not just Instagram!

Remember to add your hashtag to your Instagram bio so that your followers know to use it!

You can also create more than one branded hashtag to promote an event, a campaign, or a new product launch.

# How to Get 10k Followers on Instagram in Less Than 100 Days

Instagram is an ideal platform to connect with your audience, develop a brand, test new concepts, or sell products.

I had just quit my full-time consulting job with a handful of ideas to become an entrepreneur. But within 6 weeks, the pandemic hit the world.

Not a perfect time to start something new but to my luck, what started as a way to help the world’s social distancing effort in March 2020 has now turned into a startup I am most passionate about.

In March 2020, the pandemic was just getting started, and the world was trying to find ways to stop the spread. One of those was finding an alternative to handshakes and the use of “Namaste” by many celebrities caught my attention.

On the morning of March 13th morning, I got an idea to start a campaign to get people to pledge for namaste over a handshake. So in the next two weeks, I built a website with a covid tracker and a button to pledge. After launching the website on March 25th, I was hoping it would go viral. It didn’t. I shared it with friends, family, acquaintances, but no one cared.

I received my first lesson in entrepreneurship — nothing works without an audience, and I didn’t know how to build one. But, after talking to my sister, Priyanka, I realized social media was probably the only option to promote our concept.

## Initial Days On Instagram

I created an Instagram account and asked Priyanka to manage postings on a daily basis. Still, after 3 weeks, the total pledges we received were 48. While the website flopped, Instagram made sense as we could try many ideas and concepts to find what works and what doesn’t while building an audience.

I got hooked on Instagram and started spending a couple of hours every day to learn everything about the platform and build an audience for my concept.

Now after [25k followers](https://www.instagram.com/namaste.revolution/) and 1 year later, I am proud to call it my first successful startup, and I can tell you with certainty that Instagram is a [perfect place to test](https://medium.com/illumination/how-i-tested-my-startup-idea-and-acquired-customers-at-the-same-time-76eb83d67151) any idea and build a startup.

We just started posting anything and everything we liked to read ourselves — we hit the topic of Ayurveda, yoga, life hacks to sustainability and promoting the benefits of namaste.

By the end of the 3 weeks, we were around 60 followers and over 60 postings. This felt so slow because I was always hoping to achieve virality.

To keep myself going, I took a pledge — if it takes 1000 posts for 1000 followers, I shall do it. And this determination is what worked in the end.

I kept reading articles and watching youtube to learn the tricks of the trade, and then I would try it, measure the outcome and repeat the process.

## The First Leg — To 1000

This was a very exciting phase. Every follow was satisfying, while every unfollow felt crushing. This phase is about getting the basics right and learning about your concept and the right audience.

Just following the below steps is more than enough to build a following in the initial days.

1. **Updating bio** — Let me tell you, this was not easy. When you want to write a compelling intro, it is easy to feel lost. Remember, what you write defines your account and the direction it will take. See sample below.
2. **Streamlining content** — Now, the bio should dictate what content gets posted and what does not. You may update the bio once every week, but slowly this would solidify content to focus on.
3. **Following others** — Follow influencers in a similar domain as yours and learn from what they are posting. Also, following their followers will get you some follow backs you desperately need at this stage.
4. **Sticking with the process** — Keep faith and determination, measure the outcome of every post. Instagram lets you see insights from every post — learn from it and keep repeating steps 1 to 3.

We spent hours every day at this time and understood more about our audience and what they liked. Some of our posts did well to take us to 1000 followers just in 45 days.

This was awesome. We gained so many organic followers without spending a dime and learned about what we wanted to share and what our audience liked.

I would caution you not to use any advertising at this stage — it is important to learn from the organic flow. Advertisements can give a false sense of growth.

## The Second Leg — To 10,000

After reaching 1000 followers, I still kept learning and trying new methods, but now I wanted to grow faster, so I looked into inorganic ways of growing.

I discovered that there are services that sell you followers or tell you that they use automation to grow your account.

They were so tempting, but further research revealed that they are not in line with Instagram’s policies as instead of real followers, most of the growth is from bot (fake) accounts.

The only good option left to grow faster was native Instagram ads, and let me tell you, it is fun. It felt like a cool game, and this is how I experimented,

1. Identify a post that did well organically
2. Promote one post only at a time for a day
3. Spend a maximum $5 per day on a post
4. Select different audience group each day

In two weeks since I started the above experiment, I got better at choosing the post that would get maximum likes and audience engagement.

I started promoting a post for more than a day if the results were good, and I had few posts bringing in many followers.

While doing promotion experimentations, I further

- improved the bio, which remains to the day
- paid for a design tool to improve the quality of our posts
- divided topics between myself and Priyanka to manage load
- paid for a scheduling tool to help us schedule the posting
- kept learning about our audience and what they liked

Despite all the hard work, I still think it was a miracle that we reached 10K on the 95th day.

## Beyond 10,000

This could be another article, but on a high level, I want to say that we made mistakes by just continuing the strategy thinking the growth will remain high but slowed down.

In the next 150 days, we gained 20K more followers to hit 30K but gaining each follower was getting more and more expensive.

So I stopped the paid ads completely since December of 2020, and we are losing on average 25 followers per day since then.

In this time, we also stopped posting completely for over a month to see how much it impacts our account; it didn’t impact at all.

So in total, we lost 4K followers in the last 6 months. Not that bad from my perspective, but great learning in terms of what would work for us going forward.

## What’s Next

I have been preparing a new strategy in the last two months. I am creating a process to make it easy for me to handle day-to-day tasks of posting and managing the account beyond myself and Priyanka. I want to get back to focusing on growing again.

I think the learning on Instagram taught me growth hacking — an essential skill-set for a startup founder or pretty much everyone.

I hope that our experiences would help some of you to gain more followers and learn some aspects of Instagram marketing.
