The 3 laws of Instagram marketing
and how to leverage them to create better content
The digital revolution has profoundly and permanently changed the marketing landscape for brands. Whereas 10 years ago an average consumer might still be expected to passively consume any kind of advertisement presented to him, today our brands face extremely critical and selective users, who are bombarded with a perpetual flow of content and advertisement. The first and foremost objective in any marketing campaign has become to capture the attention of its target audience, even if only for a few brief seconds. But the competition for attention is fierce : any content we put our there is in direct competition with all the other apps installed on the consumer’s phone, with their friends, their family — with all the potential information available on the internet. So how should we go about creating content for our digital branding on Instagram? What kind of content might best capture the attention we so desperately seek?
Before we can even begin to formulate an answer to this question, we should first understand the three fundamental laws that apply to all social media, and Instagram in particular :
- Attention is currency. At any given moment the user — and the user alone — determines what content will hold and consume his attention. His attention is his digital form of currency — if he likes our content, he will “vote” for it by allowing it to consume his limited attention, liking it and potentially sharing it with others in his network.
- Engagement is king. No matter how many followers our brand has, if they’re not engaged with the content we’re putting out there, then we might as well have none. The effectiveness of every piece of content used in our campaigns can be measured directly with one simple metric : the engagement rate of our audience.
- Value always wins. The distinction between advertisement and other forms of content is slowly disappearing — leaving only the distinction between the useful and the useless, between what we like and what we don’t. It matters less and less where content is from and more and more what whether or not it’s perceived providing authentic value.
Creating better content by leveraging the three laws of Instragram marketing
The three points identified above translate directly into three clear steps towards optimising our Instagram marketing strategy : identifying our target demographic, defining a user centric content strategy and truly engaging our target community.
Identifying a target demographic
As we have stated above, the perceived value of our content is extremely important in capturing the attention of our target audience. But in order to be able to provide value, we need to have a clear idea of who we are providing it to. And this, in turn, forces us to first clearly identify our target demographic.
When defining our target demographic, it pays to be as specific as possible. As I often say to my clients : if you cannot embody your target demographic into a single person, then you haven’t found your target demographic. For example : “young kids who like roller-blades” is not a sufficiently specific demographic. We cannot ask specific questions about this demographic, since it is far too heterogeneous. “John, a 16 year old boy who loves roller-blading and other outdoor activities” would be an example of a step in the right direction. We could ask ourselves what John would think of our brand and of our content — what kind of other interests he might have.
On Instagram, defining a target demographic also means identifying Instagram accounts belonging to said demographic, as well as the community that they belong to and interact with. Basically, we need to make absolutely sure that the people we are trying to reach are actually using Instagram. You may think this is completely trivial, but too many brands that are only just discovering the user-centric approach to content creation and curation overlook this crucial step in preparing their Instagram campaign, finding themselves with content that never reaches its target audience.
Should our target demographic exist on Instagram, do not hesitate to dig a little deeper in order to quantify your potential audience. How big are the communities in which our target demographic is actively involved? Is there only one such community that might be of interest to us, or are there several? If there are several, which one should we pick as an inspiration in our content creation? There are many potential questions we might ask ourselves, and depending on our brand and marketing objectives the process of identifying our target audience with precision can be laborious — but rest assured : the effort will be worth our while.
Defining a user-centric content strategy
Once we have clearly established what community of Instagram users we are targeting, we can begin to formulate our user-centric content strategy. I usually help my clients implement a two-step approach, consisting of first identifying potential content features and subsequently selecting and shaping these in order to fit their pre-existing brand identity.
Amongst our target community, who are the content leaders, the biggest influencers? What Instagram accounts are getting the biggest response from our target audience? Can we identify one or different types of content that are the most successful? Is it possible to establish patterns within this content, patterns in terms of colours used, type of photographs, hashtags, etc? During the initial stage of formulating our content strategy, we should be willing to broaden our horizon as much as possible, to open our mind to possibilities that we might not have naturally associated with our brand. At this stage the most important thing is to generate as many potential content features as possible, without excluding any one of them from the get-go.
For example, we might identify that the Instagram accounts we identified as representing our target demographic (remember John, our 16 yr old roller-blade loving adolescent?) are extremely engaged in a community of skaters sharing pictures of their latest tricks, as well as in a community of users sharing information about the latest sneakers. We might use this information to infer that users like John might respond well to content appealing to their rebellious, anti-establishment nature. We might also extract visual themes, particular colour palets and hashtags that seem to work particularly well on John’s demographic. At this stage, we don’t filter — we just observe, note and collect as many of these potential content features as we can.
Once we have procured a clear list of content features, we can begin to combine them and shape them in a way that is consistent with our pre-existing brand identity. In this age of pervading social media, consumers perceive brands as single entities, regardless of where there might run into them. Depending on the overall marketing strategy of your brand, you may wish your Instagram content to be recognizably “you”, even while catering to the likes and needs of your newly identified target audience. This balancing act between user-centric and brand-centric thinking can be a delicate one, and in the end we will have to decide where we want to draw the line when it comes to deviating from pre-existing campaigns. This issue is of course less of a concern for newer brands, or brands that do not yet have a clearly established identity or successful concurrent campaigns, allowing them more untethered creative freedom in the pursuit of their target audience’s attention.
Engaging our target community
Engagement is king, but it’s a two-way street. In order to obtain any kind of organic growth amidst our target demographic, we must engage the community we wish to be a part of. This not only establishes our brand as an authentic presence, but brings visibility amongst those who matter the most : the influencers and content-leaders.
Out-bound engagement as a driver for organic growth is a topic in and of itself, one that we’ll be addressing in future articles. For now, the most important take-away message is that in-bound engagement doesn’t come cheap. Unless our brand has a pre-established following, through an existing identity, a blog, SEO traffic or any other in-bound channel, we will have to invest time and effort in order to convince our target demographic that our brand is worth their attention. This not only means creating consistently high quality content catering to a very specific audience with a clearly established goal in mind, but also reaching out to those that we would like to reach out to us.
This might imply, for example, assigning a community manager to drive this interaction — to like posts, leave comments, etc. They key here is, once again, to be authentic. Although third party solutions for automating these interactions do exist, it is my experience that they fail to establish the authentic engagement that we are trying to create, and my advice to you would be to stay clear from using them.
Instagram’s power comes first and foremost from its communities and their high rate of engagement, but in order to benefit from these you will have to become a part of the community. Instead of staying on the outside looking in, you will have to be willing to get your hands dirty and step right into the center where all the action is taking place.
Although outbound engagement can represent an investment for our brand, it will be more than worth it. Not only will it allow us to engage our target audience, it will also make it easier to understand what drives them, what kind of content they like and are willing to share. This will provide us with invaluable consumer insight that can be used to improve our marketing campaigns.
So where do we go from here?
Well, the best way to see how the approach outlined in this article can work for you or your brand, is simply to try it. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and to allow user-centric content strategies into your existing marketing vocabulary.
And of course feel free to tell us about your own experiences, we’d love to hear from you! :)
