How to Decide What to Post on Your Instagram Feed

So you’ve decided to commit to using Instagram for your business—now what? How do you use Instagram to achieve your marketing goals? What types of content will work best for you and your brand? To help you out, we’ll go over some of the best ways to drive clicks, inform people about your business and products, and increase audience engagement.

Instagram Content to Drive Clicks

If your brand has a blog, Instagram can be a great way to drive traffic to that blog. When you have a new post up on the blog, post a fun picture on Instagram with a quote from your newest piece. Most importantly, don’t forget to link to your blog in your bio, then direct people to the link.

Food bloggers and Instagram are a match made in heaven, and businesses can take some pointers from these successful partnerships. On Instagram, bloggers can share drool-worthy photos of their dishes, then tell their followers to go find the recipes on their blog. Alexandra Stafford does a great job of this, ultimately driving plenty of traffic to her blog (where people can not only find recipes but also buy her book and sign up for classes).

The key takeaway here is the combination of high-quality photos and a compelling reason to click. The photos draw your audience in, but they stay for the content. When brainstorming Instagram feed ideas, make sure you’re thinking of content that is both visually appealing and will help achieve your brand goals.

Show Off Your Products with Video

Very few businesses have the budget of name brands, but we can all take some cues from popular brand videos. Oreo, for example, has become known for their Instagram video content. While their videos tend to have a high production value, some of them are simpler and they all have a whimsical feel. The brand has fun with their video content and it fits well with the company’s image. It’s important to keep in mind that whatever content you post to Instagram, make sure that it is on-brand and speaks to your specific audience.

If you’re not sure what kind of video to post on Instagram—or if you don’t have the resources to produce a full video—try your hand at gifs! You can make gifs using existing footage or create something brand new with stock vectors.

Increase Engagement with Quotes

A great way to increase engagement on Instagram is to share quotes that resonate with your audience (and they’re helpful for when you can’t decide what to post on your Instagram feed). Quote posts are incredibly easy to make and they help brands connect to their audiences in a more personal way. If someone is scrolling through Instagram and they see a quote that they relate to, they’ll likely feel more connected to the account that published the quote.

The Honest Company makes great use of quotes on Instagram. They use a consistent layout, color scheme, and font for each quote, and they intersperse the quotes among other posts to form a cohesive feed for their brand. They’ve had a ton of success with this tactic, too—the quotes they share have some of the highest engagement among all of their posts, with thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.

Share a Slice of Company Life

Instagram is a platform where companies can get personal, sharing the successes of their employees and fun glimpses into your company culture. When companies share slice-of-life posts on their Instagram feeds, they add a human element to their brand voice and remind viewers that real people are behind the scenes. Plus, some companies have really wacky photos that they can’t help sharing!

Hootsuite is a great example of a brand using Instagram to highlight their employees. Their Instagram account is almost exclusively dedicated to company culture, with plenty of photos from around the office. What’s even cooler is that they have found ways to get employees to contribute content by sending their mascot on vacation with everyone. It also doesn’t hurt that their office is dog-friendly.

As with every type of content you publish, just ensure that it makes sense for your brand. Whether your brand is serious or playful, you can find plenty of content to fit into your feed in the Storyblocks libraries. Next, learn how to maintain an aesthetic on Instagram.