small business, Social Marketing, Social Promotion

6 Tips on Creating Visual Content for Your Instagram Business Account

If you are a small business affected by the pandemic then you must be feeling the urgent need to embrace the world of digital media. With the lack of traffic to brick-and-mortar stores, your company’s social media profile can be your new storefront, and creating visual content for Instagram is your key to attracting new customers.

If you weren’t giving your profile much attention before the pandemic, it’s time to delve into digital marketing to give your business a new platform to thrive in. We’ve outlined useful tips to guide business owners like yourself who may be new to digital marketing to help you make decisions geared toward boosting your online profile through visual communication.


1. The Types of Visual Content That Work On An Instagram Business Account

The most common types of visual content on Instagram fall under these categories:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Stories

To truly harness the power of visual marketing on Instagram, we’ll break things down into “content buckets” or content types that can help you strategize your content plan.

  1. Product Content – These are photos, videos, or Stories featuring a product, service, or location that you are selling.
  2. Branded Content – This is visual content created to increase your brand awareness by highlighting your brand’s story, culture, and other relevant processes.
  3. How-to’s / Tutorials – The Internet is an open book and people search for instructional content to learn something new every day. How-to’s or tutorials are among the most popular forms of visual content creation because they provide the audience with a direct value  — a new skill, recipe, or technique learned.
  4. Tips / Industry Advice – Posting tips and other types of advice related to your field will help boost your image as a credible source or thought leader in your industry.
  5. Listicles – People love lists because they are easier to absorb than full articles. Make sure to always add a list or two in your content feed.
  6. Behind-the-Scenes Stories – More than ever, there is a need to “humanize” your brand to make your business more relatable. Show people a glimpse of what goes on in your company or let the audience get to know your team so that they know that they are supporting real people with families and not just a faceless corporate entity.

Now that you know the types of photos, videos, and stories to add to your visual content mix, we’ll now talk about how you can create visual content for your Instagram feed that is also compelling.


2. Set a Theme, Pattern, or Color Scheme

Pay attention to the colors of your logo or packaging and translate them onto your feed. You can do a single color, double color, or even a rainbow-inspired color scheme by making dominant colors pop out on every image. 

Aside from using your dominant brand colors, you can also set a pattern to appear on your grid. In this feed, you will see that @ilonggofoodco alternated brown tiles with photos of food and stylized photos. It makes it easier to navigate the page’s content when you set a repetitive or predictable pattern on your feed.

An easy way to achieve a consistent color theme for your feed is to add filters through editing apps like Instasize. It would help to take photos of objects in your desired branding colors but adding filters helps to achieve an identifiable “look and feel” to your profile. 


3. Mix Artwork or Illustrations with Photographs

When it comes to visual content creation, you aren’t limited to just images or videos. Artwork, vector graphics, and even paintings can boost your profile’s visual appeal. Portico Direct, a real estate company with a fun and youthful vibe, adds illustrated images to blend in with photos of their properties. It is a refreshing approach compared to traditional or “too boring” real estate marketing.


4. Make Use of In-Art Text Captions

Another way to grab people’s attention as they are scrolling through your feed is to post a few images with text on them. You can do this to highlight product names, prices, or other features that you want your audience to know about. Just be careful not to overdo it or else you’ll achieve the opposite of your intended effect and end up with a cluttered feed.

cleanbeachco instagram sample
Source: Clean Beach

In @cleanbeachco’s Instagram feed, in-art text captions are used to highlight important announcements such as product releases and giveaways or contest updates. You can also be more creative when using text on photos. When the layout is proper, they can look very enticing to click on.

Most mobile editing apps have an “insert text” tool so just choose one with curated font styles that are trendy and professional. Don’t settle for boring fonts!


5. Don’t Forget to Apply These Tips to Your IG Stories

Some brands focus all of their creative energy on their profile or grid but they miss out on designing IG Stories to match their feed. There are a lot of ways to jazz up your vertical content so you can better engage with your customers. 

instasize instagram story
Source: Instasize

6. Refining Your Content Marketing Strategy for Instagram for Business

Once you’ve gotten the hang of posting the right kind of content for your brand, here are a few additional pointers to consider:

  • Set a posting schedule: Know the best time to post by monitoring which days and hours your audience is most active. 
  • Use the right mix of hashtags: Hashtags are another way to get your name out there. People click on hashtags to search for specific content so label your posts with appropriate hashtags and be easily searchable.
  • Add a call to action: CTA’s are important because they tell users what to do. Without a CTA, you’re leaving your audience hanging so tell them to “shop now” or “click this link.” An example of a great CTA is Instagram’s “Book Now” button. If your service requires scheduling appointments, adding this button to your post will make it easier for you and your clients to confirm bookings.
  • Post content of value: At the beginning of this article, we enumerated the different types of content that people want to see. Plot a content calendar by assigning a day for a how-to/tutorial posting followed by a listicle posting, or set a day for a video release followed by insider tips. Whether you decide to post your material like photos, videos, or Stories, make sure you have a good content bucket mix!

Conclusion

Remember to review and create visual content of different types for your Instagram and map out your social media strategy for each one accordingly. And don’t just stop there — you can play around with how your posts look on your feed to grab people’s attention and lead to higher engagement and conversions.


About Appointy

We at Appointy, help business owners grow and run their businesses with our online scheduling software. This blog was a part of our ‘Manage your Business’ category, where we provide expert tips, and resources, or simply talk about the challenges that small and medium businesses face every day. 

If you have any thoughts on this blog or would like to chat about your business struggles and achievements, let us know in the comments below. 

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