Following up from my post on Instagram tips for Businesses last week, I wanted to visually demonstrate how effective strategic marketing on social media is, by bringing you 8 of my favourite feeds! Every one of these brands uses a different set of strategies that you could incorporate into your own business. Get ready for some serious inspo – and then apply those top tips to your own branding!
1. GoPro | @gopro | 13.5m followers
GoPro’s content is entirely made up of User Generated Content (UGC). They encourage their customers to share their images and videos on social media by tagging #GoPro, providing the company with a plethora of awesome images taken with their products by users all around the world. Not only does this create an incredibly diverse and interesting feed, it requires very little effort from them, as they don’t have to create any of the content!
Top tip: Encourage your own UGC by creating an easy to remember hashtag for your customers to use when they share images linked to your product.
2. National Geographic | @natgeo | 85m followers
National Geographic has one of the largest audiences on Instagram with a whopping 85 mill followers. Similar to GoPro their content is largely made up of other people’s images, but they are all high quality professional shots created by photographers (many of them National Geographic Photographers). The result is visually stunning and the captions accompanying each image always tell an educational and interesting story, revealing information on geographical topics from around the world such as landscapes, wildlife and cultures.
Top tip: Engage your followers by telling a story in the caption of your images.
3. Desenio | @desenio | 448k followers
Desenio are an online store that sell high quality posters and fashionable art prints. As they are in the arts industry, you’d expect no less than a beautiful feed but they really out do themselves. They style their products in every shot, giving their audience inspiration and ideas on how to display their art in their own homes. Desenio’s consistent editing, colour scheme and composition from picture to picture creates a seriously attractive and likeable aesthetic.
Top tip: use the same filters or editing tools on all of your images. The more consistent your feed it, the better it will look!
4. Unicorn Superfoods | @unicornsuperfoods | 29.6k followers
Unicorn Superfoods are an Australian company that have developed 4 vegan friendly and 100% natural superfood coloured powders that add vibrant colourings (as well as extra nutritional value) to any type of food base. Their feed is made up of delicious and unique looking food shots, turning snacking into some sort of rainbow art form. They massively encourage customers to create their own recipes and share them on social media, again creating lots of User Generated Content for them to incorporate into their feed.
Top tip: Inspire your audience to make something beautiful and different with your product. Not only will they be more inclined to buy from you, but they’ll also be more interested in photographing it and sharing it on their own networks.
5. Innocent |@innocent | 84.7k followers
Innocent is one of my favourite social media accounts, despite their massive success they don’t take themselves too seriously and are the epitome of a modern day business. They focus on the feel good fuzzy vibes, with a huge emphasis on charity, giving back to the community, a love for their in-house team and cute dogs, plus they seem to have a habit of creating arty puns out of fruit and veg (note the runner bean and ‘avo-car-do’ below…). What’s not to love?!
Top tip: Connect with your audience through humour! They will get a massive feel-good factor from following you and will subconsciously associate your product with those positive emotions.
6. Joe Wicks – The Body Coach | @thebodycoach | 2m followers
Joe Wicks is a super successful health and fitness guru that grew his Instagram following through his extremely popular #Leanin15 videos. In just a 30 second video clip Joe would put together a quick and easy to follow recipe, often incorporating strange accents, singing out the window and flinging packets of rice across his kitchen. Although his feed and branding is pretty basic, Joe’s massive success lies upon his popularity, likeability and relatable humour. He has since launched 90 day fitness plans and has over 90,000 clients, a four book deal and is filming his own TV show! A little humour goes a long way.
Top tip: Incorporate videos into your feed. They add a great deal of variety to your content and allow your audience to connect with you on a more personal level.
7. The Honest Company | @honest | 788k followers
The Honest Company is a US based business founded by Jessica Alba that sells a huge range of user-friendly products for baby, beauty, health and home. Their Instagram feed focuses on their products, cute babies and funny, frank relatable quotes. Quotation images on Instagram and Social Media are one of the best tools to use to boost your engagement (cute babies aren’t bad either). People relate to quotes (especially when you know your target market well) and they are an amazing way of revealing your personality across to them. Take a look at a couple of the @honest ones below…
Top tip: Use your own branded template when incorporating quotes into your feed. It looks a lot more professional than screen-shotting someone else’s!
8. Spell & The Gypsy Collective | @spell_byronbay | 847k followers
Spell is a unique clothing brand based in Byron, Australia. Their social media strategy centres on product shots, their beautiful coastal lifestyle and the use of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful tools in social media at the moment, and Spell clearly demonstrates how much positive exposure they generate by gifting their products to influencers, bloggers and celebrities with large networks and followers. Not only do they get their brand name associated to fashionable and popular individuals, but they also get well styled and high quality images created for them.
Top tip: Incorporate lifestyle shots into your branding to sell a desirable way of life, not just a product.
If you need some help with your content creation, branding or social media and marketing strategy, get in touch on hello@katyclapham.com.
Feature image by @veggiestina via @unicornsuperfoods
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