Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. As of December 2017, there are 800 million monthly active users who are posting up to 95 million images per day*.

Catching the attention of audiences on Instagram is becoming harder than ever before. It is essential for businesses to optimise every part of their Instagram profile and content to cut through the noise, increase your reach and encourage authentic engagement.

In just a few simple steps, we explain the best ways to improve your Instagram account to stand out in 2018. Carefully considering your Instagram bio text, image dimensions, hashtags as well as investing time in producing captivating Instagram Stories will ensure your Instagram profile is optimised and appears polished and professional.

*Source: Omnicoreagency.com

Craft the perfect Instagram bio 

Your Instagram account bio explains the essential information about your business. Appearing at the top of your profile, this bio offers a valuable space to describe what makes your company unique.

Take this opportunity to describe your brand in text that is visually striking. Using dot points, emojis and short sentences to keep readers engaged. Focus on keywords and phrases that best represent the values and ethos of your business.

Here are the best ways to speak about your business on Instagram and why hard selling doesn’t work on social media.

Get clicks with links

Instagram is a fantastic platform to showcase the success and achievements of our business. Although a predominately visual platform, it’s important to remember that driving traffic back to your own website is the main goal of your efforts of social media.

Including links to your website in the captions of all posts will give purpose to your content. To optimise your links, ensure you shorten URLs using software such as bit.ly to avoid cluttering your captions will lengthy text.

Add a link to your website in your Instagram bio, and direct users back to this link at every opportunity.

Increase your searchability 

To optimise your account, your content must be easily discovered. Taking time to add geo-locations and hashtags to every post will increase your searchability and reach to new users, and allow a broader audience to find your content in a few easy clicks.

Think about what geo-location tags may be relevant to your business. Add suburbs, local businesses, brand names or trending topics as hashtags in the first comment of your images to help your content reach a targeted audience.

Consider image dimensions 

Improve your Instagram feed by resizing all images to the correct dimensions and specifications. Use 1:1 or square images (1080 x 1080 pixels) sizing to create a consistent feed, or resize images to 1080 x 1350 pixels to dominant more screen space on user’s phones.

For Instagram Stories, images should be resized to 1080 x 1920 pixels for best results. Remember to bring life to your images on with filters, text overlays, and moving animations.

Remember to tell a story 

Instagram Stories continue to dominate the platform in 2018, so its essential to include this as part of your social media strategy.

Improve your chances of reaching the top of the feed by regularly posting new content to Instagram Stories. Create visually rich images by adding emojis, text, hashtags, geo-locations and even GIFs to every slide, and remember to include a call-to-action to get your audience engaging with your Instagram account.

Wondering what new feature you need to be aware of? Here are 4 recent Instagram updates to help build your engagement.

Need help with your digital marketing?

Chronicle Republic Communications is a boutique Sydney marketing consultancy for real estate, property and interiors professionals. We specialise in social media, content marketing, email marketing, blogging, search engine optimisation, social media advertising and much more!

If you are looking for social media for real estate, property or interior design our digital marketing experts can help you bring your brand’s story to life.

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