Beyond Social Media: How to Use Instagram to Build Brand Identity

Jen @ ZippyPaws
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

Unless you’ve been stuck in Don Draper’s advertising world, you know that social media, especially Instagram, is the new advertising tool. Millennials use Instagram to learn about a company and to make purchasing decisions. Sometimes all it takes are a few swipes for a young consumer to decide if they love the brand or not.

Being voted as 1 of the top “5 Pet Industry Instagram Pages”, ZippyPaws has found its sweet spot on Instagram. We may not be the pet company that has the most followers or the most likes, but we take immense pride in our authenticity. We approach Instagram as a visual portfolio — a direct representation of our brand and our beliefs.


Got an Instagram account but not sure what to post or how to generate engagement? Read on…

1. Develop your Instagram goals

Companies use Instagram for different purposes, so the first step is to really narrow down to a few goals you’d like to achieve. ZippyPaws’ goal on Instagram is to show consumers its products in use. We want to show that through playtime, our products help strengthen the bond between a dog and its owner.

ZippyPaws’ goal with Instagram was never qualitative — the numbers are just a celebration of success. We never spent a single dollar to buy followers or likes. That’s just not our way. Sure it may boost the numbers for a bit, but they’re just ghost followers and, frankly, dead weight. I’d rather gain 5 loyal, dedicated followers than 100 ghosts, because ghosts can’t tell their friends about ZippyPaws. 👻

Finding a goal sometimes is a learning process — we didn’t nail our goal until two years or so after our first post on Instagram. As our company grew and our business goals changed, our Instagram changed and evolved as well. Once we found something that worked, we stuck with it and constantly try to perfect our craft.

A cohesive gallery invites more followers

2. Decide on a cohesive look & feel

When a consumer lands on your company’s Instagram, that means you’ve done something right! Now the trick is to get them to click the blue “follow” button. I estimate that someone who looks at a company Instagram, at most, only scrolls down twice and click into two pictures to view comments and likes. This is why the first impression is crucial. The first glance of your gallery as a whole must display a consistent look & feel. It should also represent your brand and your mission.

ZippyPaws’ mission is to create beautifully-designed, high quality pet products for the modern dog and dog owner. We choose photos that are playful, colorful, energetic so that our Instagram reflects our mission statement.

Bonus tip: Add a call to action in your bio for engagement. Tell them what’s most important to your brand!

How do you want your audience to feel when they visit your page? Should they feel excited for your company’s upcoming events? Should they feel like your brand is #goals, a must-have item that will improve their social status?

It’s a learning process to find out what kinds of images work for your purpose. A great way is speed up that process is to ask your audience — what do they need? It’s useful to keep track of the analytics of the performance of photos, captions, or time of day posted. After several weeks of careful planning and analysis, it should be clear what resonates the most with your audience.

4. Engage, engage, engage

If “location, location location” is the golden mantra of real estate, then “engage, engage, engage” is the social media equivalent.

Everyone knows to like and comment on posts, but a more rewarding engagement process is to create meaningful relationships with influencers in your industry. These are people who take amazing photos, create content, or are just social butterflies. For ZippyPaws, we look for dog owners who love beautiful photography just as much as we do, and create a partnership from there. These are the people in your industry whose words carry weight and mean a lot to their followers.

5. Promote the sh!t out of it!

After carefully curating a gallery of photos that are true to your brand, it’s time to put it everywhere!

Just like an artist has a visual portfolio, your Instagram is your company’s visual storyboard of what it has to offer.

I like to cross-promote our website and our Instagram. Some shoppers love to view a website for more info, whether it may be product descriptions, a deeper dive into our company history, or just being able to browse on a bigger screen. Other shoppers might enjoy looking at photos more. On our company platforms, I make sure we have plenty of links to connect the two so that we offer the best shopping experience tailored to that consumer.

This photo shows the desktop version of the ZippyPaws “Shop Our Instagram” page, where shoppers can easily click into Tuesday’s photo to buy that cute toy!

ZippyPaws uses its Instagram gallery as a shopping tool on its website.

Here are some of my favorite company instagrams. Each account is so aesthetically pleasing and evokes emotions that resonate with their target market. Feel free to share yours with me!

Fairyblooms // online succulent store

Cluse // lifestyle watch store

Packlane // custom package service

BMW // luxury cars

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Jen @ ZippyPaws

Written by

Behind the scenes from the co-founder & designer of ZippyPaws Dog Toys. Also sharing my personal photography.

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