Whether you’re trying to grow your own influencer account on Instagram or using it as a marketing tool to drive sales, Instagram is one of the most powerful social media tools at your disposal.

That may be because, according to Instagram, 90% of users on the platform follow at least one brand or business. Not only that, but one study estimates over 35% of decision-makers use Instagram to inform their B2B purchasing decisions too—even more than Linkedin.

That makes a powerful argument for selling on Instagram! But if you don’t know what you’re doing, Instagram marketing can also be frustrating, discouraging, and overwhelming.

Many social media marketers spend hours each week planning a perfect Instagram, only to see discouragingly small growth and engagement numbers.

To remedy this all-too-common issue marketers face, we’ll use well-known psychological studies and more recent Instagram marketing science to reveal 7 “No-No”s when it comes to your Instagram marketing.

If you’re routinely committing any of the Instagram “sins” we mention below, dive deeper into your own engagement and follower data and consider dropping these bad habits.

No-No #1: You’re a Little Too Polished

No-No #2: You’re Unpredictable & Infrequent

Few companies have the luxury of hiring a full-time Instagram marketer. And few influencers have the luxury of working on their account full-time!

All of this leads to one simple truth: none of us have as much time to post on Instagram as we want to.

Unfortunately, for many of us, this can lead to unpredictable posting schedules and large gaps in our posting calendar.

But beware: science shows that the most successful Instagram accounts post frequently and consistently.

In our own study of over 100,000 Instagram users, we found the more often you post on Instagram, the more likes and followers you gain.

Our findings suggest that accounts who post at least once per day, seven days per week, grow their following significantly faster than accounts who post less than seven times in a week.

Frequency leads to high engagement, which the Instagram algorithm loves, rewarding your account with even more engagement and followers.

Consider scheduling out your Instagram posts in order to get ahead of your own schedule and keep up the consistency!

And if you can’t quite manage to post on a daily basis yet, don’t worry: there’s also a strong positive correlation between consistent posting and account growth.

One study found that accounts who were more consistent and predictable in their posting saw an increase in followers and engagement.

And Tailwind can help! Create unique Instagram posts, visually plan a scroll-stopping feed, and set a schedule to keep you rhythmic and consistent while posting at peak times of engagement!

No-No #3: You’ve Got a Static Bio

When one of your hard-earned followers actually wants to learn more about you or even purchase something you have for sale, can they do it easily?

The default behavior for Instagrammers is to put a “link in bio” (a long-used work-around for Instagrams “no links in captions” rule).

But many big accounts don’t utilize their Instagram bio to convert followers into customers!

And while research shows no correlation between your bio’s length and the number of followers you have, if your bio never changes and your bio link is never updated you’re missing out on some big opportunities. 

We recommend implementing Smart.bio to house one link that auto-updates with all your content as it goes live!

No-No #4: You’re Not Leveraging Instagram Stories

You may not include Instagram Stories in your Instagram marketing strategy. According to the most recent data, that’s a big mistake.

According to a Facebook-commissions survey, 58% of users who watch stories at least once per week say they have become more interested in a company or product after seeing something about it in Stories. 

Not only that, but the same report claims 50% of people surveyed admitted to having made a website purchase after seeing a product or service in Stories.

Instagram Stories are a huge opportunity for social marketers. Instead of turning a blind eye to this growing trend, we suggest you dive in with both feet.

If you’re short on time, consider using an Instagram Stories background template in Tailwind Create to get started. You can then seamlessly schedule your Story creation and post with a push notification!

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No-No #5: You’re Asking Too Much; and Giving too Little

Years ago, a university professor was featured on NPR for his experimentation with the Rule of Reciprocity.

In essence, here’s what happened:

The professor sent out 600 holiday cards to complete strangers at Christmastime. As a result, he got 200 holiday cards back from these same strangers. That’s a 33% reciprocity rate.

So what does this humorous study mean for your Instagram account?

If you’re asking for a sale, a like, or a follow too often without giving back to your community, then you’re working too hard in the wrong direction.

Social Media expert Gary Vaynerchuk calls this “jabbing” more than taking a “right hook.”

Instead, try this: for 2 weeks, just follow people in your target audience, comment on their photos, complement their posts, and give away free stuff if you can afford it in an Instagram giveaway (free digital products with no strings attached or free swag like stickers or t-shirts).

Then sit back and watch the law of reciprocity go to work for you. You’ll be amazed at the goodwill, followers, and engagement you’ll generate.

No-No #6: You’re making too many cold pitches

Along the same lines as sin #5, if you’re asking for the sale too many times on your Instagram account, you’ll find yourself with a decline in followers and low engagement. 

To reduce follower loss and increase sales,  it’s important that you’ve appropriately prepared your audience long before you ask them to get out their credit cards.

In other words, you’ve got to warm up your leads. This all starts by getting your “foot in the door.”

One study on the foot-in-the-door strategy performed in the 60s aimed to see how many homemakers would allow a visitor to enter their home and observe their cleaning habits (a rather large commitment). 

Three days prior to their request, researchers telephoned 50% of participants to ask a few questions about their cleaning supplies.The women who responded positively to the initial telephone call (foot in the door) were 2x more likely to respond positively to the second request.What does this mean for your Instagram account?

Start with small requests (share a post with a friend, tag a friend in the comments) and work your way up to larger requests (purchase my product, sign up for my service, schedule an appointment).

The idea is to leverage the “foot in the door” strategy to your advantage to generate more eventual sales by building trust.

No-No #7: You’re Not Repeating Yourself Enough

You might think it’s annoying to your followers for you to post about the same things over and over again.Research shows just the opposite.

One researcher showed this by displaying a series of foreign characters to a group of participants and asked them to assign meaning to each symbol. Over time, the participants began to assign more favorable meanings to the symbols they saw more often. 

Another pair of scientists displayed just how strong repetition can be when they showed their participants an octagon for only milliseconds among other shapes.

After a short time, they found that participants “developed strong preferences for objects that have become familiar through repeated exposures” even if those objects were not immediately recognizable.

In layman terms: people begin to like things they’ve seen a lot.

Even if they’re just momentarily scrolling past you in their Instagram feed, that repetition can be the difference between your audience recalling you or your competition when the time comes for a purchase.

Putting all this “science” to good use

To wrap this up, allow us to offer some advice about following science and social media marketing tips.

Things change fast. Every account is different. Every audience is different.

And while many of these tactics will work well for most people, there may be some here that are a total flop for you. That’s okay!

The idea is to test as many things as possible, find out what works for you, continue to iterate, learn, and grow. 

That’s the fun of social media marketing. And if we here at Tailwind can help along the way, that’s what we’re here for. Go get ‘em!

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Having a well-planned and researched Instagram marketing strategy can give your brand a serious boost. You may not have one in place just yet, but it’s never too late to get started. If you don’t know what to include in yours, use these tips to create a marketing plan that will put you on top.

1. Create Shoppable Instagram Posts

If you sell products online, take advantage of the tools Instagram has available for you. Tagging products on Instagram makes it much easier for potential customers to get the information they need in seconds. They no longer have to go to your website and look for the item they’re interested in just to see the price. Instead, a tagged post will show them that information and link them to the product if they’re ready to purchase.

If you’re not already using shoppable pins as part of your Instagram marketing strategy, you could be missing out on tons of potential sales. Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to be sure you’re using the best quality images to drive attention to your products. To get great images of these and attract the right attention to your shoppable posts, consider using mockups.

If you sell mugs, for example, using a coffee mug template means you can save time and money by forgoing a photoshoot altogether. Simply upload your design on to the mockup, download it, and it’s ready to post.

2. Use Stories to Capture Your Audience

Whether you run a personal brand or a small business, Instagram Stories for business are definitely worth checking out. It’s no secret that feed posts are on the decline thanks to the popularity of Stories. Influencers and big brands alike have resorted to posting less often on their feed and instead are spending more time posting to their Stories.

Since Stories are easy to post and allow you to get creative with your content, they’re definitely something you should include in your Instagram marketing strategy. On top of this, they also have great reach, which can help you attract and retain more followers.

Instagram Stories can be an image or a video, and both are easy to create. If you want to create video content but are scared you don’t have the skills to pull it off, you can use a quick video maker. Since these already have the right dimensions, you have one less thing to worry about when designing your content.

Instagram also has plenty of add-ons to make your Stories even more interesting. Feel free to play around with their text options, gifs, music, and stickers to make your posts more fun and aesthetically pleasing.

3. Use All the Space You Have

Instagram gives you tons of different spaces in which to post content. Your best bet is to make the most of each space. It’s true that Instagram Stories get lots of attention but the regular feed is still important! Be sure to post at least a couple times a week while creating content for your Stories.  On top of this, you can also create longer-form videos for your IGTV. Instagram Live is another option you can use to reach your followers. This is great for events, behind the scenes footage, and Q&A type features. 

Don’t forget about the power of ads as well. Using your Instagram business account, you can create ads for a couple of different spaces, so don’t limit yourself to basic posts.

As you get to work on your different posts, keep in mind that each space serves a different purpose. This means you should create different types of content for each one that makes sense for that space. For example, shorter videos are great for Stories while longer ones make more sense for IGTV.

Another thing to keep in mind is the size limitation each space has and the orientation of the video or image you want to post. Posting a horizontal image on Stories, for example, likely won’t have the visual impact you’re after.

4. Get Viewers to Interact With You by Adding Stories to Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Getting your followers to interact with you on your feed posts may not be as easy as it seems. However, with the Stories option, this is way easier to achieve.

Stories offer tons of features that can help make posts more interactive, which makes it easier to get a response from followers. You can run a poll, ask your followers a question, post a quiz, include an emoji slider, and allow replies. All of this makes it easy for your followers to interact with you without too much commitment. If you do get replies from your followers, don’t just leave them hanging. Reply back to foster even more interaction.

5. Optimize Your Profile and Content

We all know that hashtags can help your posts get discovered more easily, but are you using the right ones? For the best results, use a combination of trendy hashtags as well as some with fewer posts. Since trendy hashtags may be full of tons and tons of posts, the smaller ones can ensure your content doesn’t get lost in the masses. Don’t forget to also add hashtags to your bio and your Stories!

Another thing to keep in mind is that keywords can also make a difference when used in your profile and in your posts. With the changes being made to the Explore page, it’s very likely that these will come into play. In the past, this may have looked like a jumble of posts, but there is now more organization to it. With the introduction of the categories on the top of the Explore page, optimizing your content is more important than ever.

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6. Use Text-Based Images

Have you noticed brands posting images of tweets in their Stories and in their feed? These types of posts and those that feature memes are super popular. No matter who you are or what your brand is, there are bound to be some you can use to get more attention for your profile.

If you also have a Twitter account, you can use your mentions on Twitter to find the perfect content for your feed. A great example of this is Glossier’s roundup of Tweets that they post to their Instagram Stories.

Another way to tackle this is by using text-based images that are designed for your brand. Think more artsy designs and graphic, typography-based designs. These will often include a message that aligns with your brand and that reflects it through your use of color and imagery.

7. Design a Branded Feed

When it comes to Instagram, it’s important that you find your aesthetic and stick with it. By doing this, you can let viewers know it’s you at a glance. They shouldn’t have to look at the account name to know the post belongs to you.

To achieve this, you can stick to a color palette or a couple of different styles when it comes to the type of images and videos you post. Take your time to find your aesthetic so that it’s something that represents your brand perfectly.

For a branded look, try to stick to the color palette used in your logo. This is a better option than putting your logo on your images because you want them to look natural and not salesy. If you don’t have a logo yet, use an online logo maker to design a professional one that will take your brand to the next level.

8. Personalize Your Posts

We just mentioned that branded posts are the way to go. Beyond your color palette, you can also get creative with the design of your posts by adding some additional elements to them.

An easy way to create a unique look and an aesthetic that is truly your own is by creating a design that represents your brand. A lot of brands are achieving this through doodles they add over their images, personalized filters, or other artsy flairs that separates their posts from the norm.

9. Post User-Generated Content

User-generated content is always a great idea, no matter what social media platform you’re working on. If you’re not familiar with user-generated content, this basically refers to images, messages, art, and any other content that your users send to you or that they tag with your brand’s hashtags.

If someone has mentioned your brand in a funny tweet, if they’ve posted an image wearing your products, or if they’ve created a video reviewing your items, sharing this with your followers can be powerful. Of course, you first want to get permission to share this content. Your followers will appreciate it because they know you’re listening and are interested in interacting with them.

If you don’t have any of this, you can ask your customers to share images of themselves with your products using a certain hashtag or even run a contest on your profile to encourage them to share user-generated content.

10. Get Into the Augmented Reality Game

One of the biggest Instagram trends you shouldn’t ignore right now is AR. Augmented reality may sound quite serious, but it can offer Instagram users a fun way to interact with your brand even if they’re not a customer or a follower yet.

Examples of AR include those fun filters you’ve probably seen all over Instagram for a while now. If you’re a makeup brand, you can create a filter that allows people to see what they would look like with the different lipstick colors you offer. If you sell items like handbags, you can also create a filter that allows people to see what one of your purses would look like with their outfit before they commit to purchasing it.

11. Don’t Ignore TikTok (Develop it Alongside Your Instagram Marketing Strategy)

TikTok is known for being the social network that is basically an extension of Instagram. Instead of creating a curated feed that looks effortless and at the same time impressive, TikTok is all about production and doing the most.

Young people love it but TikTok isn’t just a trend for them. There are plenty of brands and bloggers who are jumping on the bandwagon and having fun with this platform. It’s also no longer just for individuals, so you can definitely use TikTok to take your brand further by including it in your marketing plan.

If you’re thinking TikTok has nothing to do with Instagram, that’s not quite true. TikTok style videos are hugely popular, so they’re definitely influencing the content being posted on Instagram. Don’t shy away from these trends. You can expect Instagram to include more features inspired by this platform sooner rather than later.

Master Instagram in No Time

With these tips, you’ll be more than ready to create your Instagram marketing strategy. Which tips are you most excited to try out? Share your thoughts and other tips that have worked for you with us in the comments!

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About the Author:

Roberta Camarena is a marketing professional with expertise in organic content creation. She is currently a content marketer at Placeit and has several years of experience in social media marketing and content writing. Her background in education and communications have led her to many diverse writing positions. On the weekends, you can find her at a neighborhood cafe getting some writing done and getting distracted by dogs.