It’s daylight savings time. This time of year we get to “fall back”. That means we gain an hour, right?!
What are you going to do with that extra hour? Just sleep in like a wussy? I’m kidding. If you have the ability to sleep an extra hour, please do. I have a 7 year old, so that really isn’t an option for me.
So if you’re like me and won’t be able to sleep an extra hour, why not do something productive?
I put together 7 things you can do to improve your presence on Instagram for your business. Whether you do this on daylight savings or any time of year, these can help you be more strategic about how you use Instagram for your business.
1. Engage with 10 new accounts
Create a list of accounts that have an audience that matches your ideal audience. Add those accounts to your FAVORITES list. Pull up your Favorites feed and leave meaningful, genuine, insightful comments on their content.
2. Clean up your followers (and who you follow)
How many followers you have means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Go through and clean up bot followers or spam accounts. Ultimately this will help your engagement rate.
Also pay attention to who you follow. How does their content make you feel? Only follow accounts that ADD to your life.
3. Plan your content for the week (or the month)
Planning your content out doesn’t have to be rocket science. It doesn’t have to take forever. But you do need to be consistent. The more consistent you are, the easier it will get over time. If you are planning each post one at a time, you are doing yourself and your content a disservice.
Dedicate one hour to planning your content for the week (or the month) and you’ll be surprised how quickly the ideas start flowing.
BONUS: if you want help planning your content each month, join me for Content Connection – my free monthly content planning workshop.
4. Update your Stories Highlights
Your stories highlights are are place to get new followers up to speed. It should be binge-worthy content.
Go to your Archive and add relevant stories to the appropriate highlight. Just open the story and click the little heart in the bottom right corner.
Focus on a few clear categories—what you do, how to work with you, BTS & UGC.
5. Check your insights and update your posting schedule accordingly
Check your insights to look at the days and times your audience is most active – adjust your posting schedule if needed.
Find this info in the Followers section of your insights.
6. Research Reels Audio
Research trending reels audio and plan your next reel
- Look for the arrow up and to right to know the audio is trending
- Choose trending audio with less than 1000 reels using it
- Can the audio be applied to any industry
Save audios you want to use for your business. And then the key is to actually make them!
7. Optimize your bio
Your bio is where people make important decisions, like:
- To follow or not
- To click the link in bio
- To visit your website
- To browse your shop
- To watch your highlights
Make sure the right people can find you and know they are in the right place when they do.
- Optimize your name field. This is different from your username. It’s searchable, so make sure to include keywords about what you do that your ideal audience would be searching for. NOTE: this can only be changed once every 2 weeks, so plan carefully.
- In your bio, include:
- Who you help and how you help them
- Let people know why they should follow you (what can they expect)
- Call To Action
- Why should people click that link? What’s in it for them? Direct them there with a call to action and downward arrow emoji.
- Location
- Your location is important whether you are a local business or not. It helps people feel more connected to you and like they know you better.
Which of these 7 are you going to do?
amanda holliday 