Instagram has over 1.44 billion customers, making it the second-largest social media community worldwide. What’s much more spectacular is that Meta’s youthful sibling continues to seize the likes of Millenials and Gen Z.
These two generations account for 71.7% of Instagram’s customers in the US. It’s clear they’ll’t resist turning to the ‘gram to submit photos of their tropical holidays and have interaction with their favourite manufacturers.
So in case you’re searching for a technique to one-up your Instagram sport and seize the eye of this sizable viewers, an Instagram audit is a superb place to begin.
A profitable Instagram audit may help you consider your model’s present efficiency on the platform and guarantee every part is so as earlier than you tackle any new campaigns or methods.
On this submit, we’ll present you methods to carry out an Instagram audit (in 1-hour or much less) and methods to use these outcomes to drive future success on Instagram.
Are you prepared? Let’s dive in.
What’s an Instagram audit?
An Instagram audit is an easy technique to analyze your Instagram account and determine alternatives for enchancment. It’s an important methodology for anybody seeking to develop their social media following or increase engagement.
If you run an audit, it is best to have a look at your Instagram account as an entire — not only one submit however your complete presence on the platform.
If you have a look at what’s working and what’s failing to supply outcomes, you may apply these insights to future methods to maintain your account rising and evolving.
1-hour Instagram audit guidelines
Operating your personal Instagram audit is usually a little overwhelming, particularly in case you don’t know the place to begin. Don’t fear. We now have you coated.
With these six easy steps, you may conduct a front-to-back Instagram audit in 1-hour or much less.
Let’s soar proper in.
Step 1: Consider your present targets
Earlier than your subsequent Instagram audit, it’s essential to both determine any new targets for utilizing the platform or recall the earlier plans you set throughout your final audit.
If that is your first audit, you’ll wish to give attention to creating new targets.
For instance, if you’re a brand new service-based enterprise, your Instagram purpose is perhaps to realize followers and enhance engagement along with your goal prospects. In case you are a retail or ecommerce retailer, you would possibly give attention to producing extra gross sales by utilizing Instagram’s purchasing instruments.
Alternatively, if this isn’t your first rodeo, consider a routine Instagram audit as a progress report.
It’ll provide help to perceive what targets you’ve been capable of obtain since your final evaluate. And most significantly, it’ll make clear the place you fell brief and set up new and improved targets for the subsequent go-around.
Regardless if that is your first time across the block or the fiftieth, the knowledge you unlock throughout an Instagram audit can enhance your future methods. However do not forget that your targets in your Instagram must be an extension of your overarching social media and enterprise targets.
Step 2: Verify your profile particulars
Don’t overlook the small particulars. Double-check your deal with, profile title, and bio for inconsistencies.
Your Instagram profile is a direct reflection of your model. And first impressions are every part. Your Instagram bio solely has 150 characters to work with, so make it depend.
Luxurious Presence, an organization that focuses on creating web sites for realtors and rising their on-line presence, recommends making a memorable bio along with your emblem because the profile image, a brief enterprise description, and a hyperlink to your web site.
Take The Corcoran Group, a luxurious worldwide actual property agency. With over 132,000 followers, they don’t go away any stone unturned on their Instagram profile.
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It’s elegant and arranged, with their emblem because the profile image, a brief description of their enterprise mannequin and the way they add worth, and a easy, clear hyperlink to their web site.
They go above and past by together with a related hashtag for his or her area of interest and sharing well-designed Instagram Highlights. And for the icing on the cake, the blue test mark signifies they’re notable sufficient in the true property business to be eligible for verification by Instagram’s standards.
Observe The Corcoran Group’s lead and take note of the main points. It issues greater than you suppose.
Step 3: Look at your content material technique
Have you ever put all of Instagram’s codecs to make use of to assist develop your attain?
There are all kinds of codecs you can leverage to share content material along with your followers: photographs, movies, carousels, Tales, Reels, reside broadcasts, and shoppable posts. Sharing a mixture of content material codecs offers your viewers varied methods to interact along with your model.
With the rising recognition of TikTok and short-form video, don’t miss out on the chance to begin creating just a few Reels right here and there to see in the event that they resonate along with your target market.
Fortunately, in case you conduct common Instagram audits, you’ll rapidly be taught the format your viewers enjoys essentially the most primarily based on engagement charges with every format.
Along with selecting the suitable codecs, contemplate how your visible content material helps your model. Can customers inform what your model represents out of your newest Instagram posts?
For instance, suppose you’re an e-commerce enterprise. In that case, you’ll wish to guarantee your merchandise are the focus of your Instagram content material with a mixture of contextualized life-style content material and direct product advertising pictures.
CB2 does a wonderful job utilizing a wholesome mixture of codecs like movies, shoppable posts, and carousels to maintain their followers focused on new product launches. It’s additionally very clear from their content material that CB2 is a model that sells fashionable furnishings.
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Content material is king. Work smarter, not tougher, by discovering the most effective content material codecs in your viewers throughout an Instagram audit.
Step 4: Assess your branding and aesthetic
Now that you simply’ve uncovered the most effective content material codecs, it’s time to begin interested by how your profile will look.
Your visible branding and aesthetic may help you make a wonderful first impression with guests and assist them resolve in the event that they wish to comply with your profile.
Colours can play a major position within the total cohesiveness of your Instagram grid and the way folks understand your model. Rolex does a stellar job of utilizing related tones of silver, blue, and inexperienced to create a smooth but luxurious aesthetic.
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You may as well use colours as a advertising technique to construct a buzz for brand new product launches.
For instance, Lollipop just lately launched a brand new Cherry Cola offered completely at Goal. The final six posts on their Instagram profiles characteristic pink not directly, form, or kind. The cohesive look pulls in viewers and entices them to be taught extra in regards to the collaboration.
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To verify your photographs are all the time on-brand and your profile appears to be like cohesive, schedule your Instagram posts prematurely to enhance consistency and enhance productiveness. With Planable, you may even schedule Instagram Tales and carousel posts.
So in case you resolve that you’re prepared to reinforce your aesthetic, use sources like Quicktools by Picsart to repeat and paste fonts, design templates, temper boards, and reference supplies. Now anybody in your group has entry to create constant content material with out reinventing the wheel each time you wish to submit one thing new.
The very last thing you need is to go on a wild goose chase to search out the precise coloration blue utilized in your earlier submit. Save your self time with pre-saved templates.
Step 5: Examine captions for consistency and tone
Consistency doesn’t cease along with your photographs. It additionally carries into the caption.
Your Instagram captions are there to assist increase the engagement of your content material, therefore why it is advisable to take note of what you write and the way you write it. And the model and tone ought to align along with your model.
As an example, in case you use a pleasant and approachable voice in your content material and weblog posts, it wouldn’t make sense that your captions are written in an excellent severe {and professional} tone.
Undergo your captions and check out rewording those that don’t match effectively along with your tone. You may as well use a rewording instrument to make the job simpler.
Are you searching for inspiration? Take notes from Starbucks’ Instagram posts. They use a pleasant tone that mimics that of their in-store baristas. In addition they maintain their captions brief and candy and sprinkle emojis right here and there to maintain the content material interesting.
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Step 6: Overview your engagement techniques
Conducting a evaluate of your Instagram engagement techniques is a good way to make sure you’re reaching your targets on the platform. Listed below are some inquiries to ask your self:
- Am I spending sufficient time replying to direct messages and feedback?
- Am I that includes sufficient user-generated content material?
- Am I following the correct set of like-minded manufacturers?
- Am I utilizing the correct Instagram hashtags for my area of interest?
- Am I publishing sufficient content material that resonates with my viewers?
To construct a group, it’s essential to have a two-way dialog along with your followers. You are able to do this by spending an hour per day liking and responding to feedback or blocking time to work together with posts that you simply have been just lately tagged in.
How insightful and relatable your content material is to your followers additionally determines the extent of person engagement.
For instance, HIMS has rapidly grown its viewers to over 143K by talking brazenly about delicate subjects resembling ED, Sildenafil remedy, hair loss, melancholy, and different males’s well being issues. Instagram audiences love content material that makes them really feel like they’re not alone of their struggles.
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Conserving engagement charges excessive is the recipe for achievement. Discover what’s working effectively for you and persist with it.
Step up your Instagram sport
TL;DR right here’s your 1-hour Instagram audit guidelines:
- Consider your present targets
- Verify your profile particulars
- Look at your content material technique
- Assess your branding and aesthetic
- Examine captions for consistency and tone
- Overview your engagement techniques
Throw away the notion that an audit of your Instagram profile is an advanced, time-consuming course of. With these six easy steps, you’ll rapidly perceive what sort of content material resonates along with your followers and what doesn’t.
The insights out of your Instagram audit will let you know precisely how folks work together along with your posts. You’ll be able to tailor future posts accordingly to drive follower engagement and construct model consciousness.
Now that what works, leverage a social media automation instrument to plan and streamline your publishing schedule. Constant publishing on Instagram helps maintain your model in entrance of the correct folks on the proper time.
And the most effective a part of all? It’s a rinse-and-repeat course of that’ll steadily drive higher outcomes each time.
Conduct your 1-hour Instagram audit right this moment. You received’t remorse it.
Kelly Moser
Kelly Moser is the co-founder and editor at Residence & Jet, a digital journal for the fashionable period. She’s additionally an knowledgeable in freelance writing and content material advertising for SaaS, Fintech, and e-commerce startups.
